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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of History of the Warfare of Science with
+Theology in Christendom, by Andrew Dickson White
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom
+
+Author: Andrew Dickson White
+
+Release Date: April, 1996  [Etext #505]
+Posting Date: November 27, 2009
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WARFARE OF SCIENCE WITH THEOLOGY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by An Anonymous Volunteer
+
+
+
+
+
+HISTORY OF THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE WITH THEOLOGY IN CHRISTENDOM
+
+By Andrew Dickson White
+
+
+Two Volumes Combined
+
+
+To the Memory of
+
+EZRA CORNELL
+
+I DEDICATE THIS BOOK.
+
+
+
+Thoughts that great hearts once broke for, we
+
+Breathe cheaply in the common air.--LOWELL
+
+
+Dicipulus est prioris posterior dies.--PUBLIUS SYRUS
+
+
+Truth is the daughter of Time.--BACON
+
+
+The Truth shall make you free.--ST. JOHN, viii, 32.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+My book is ready for the printer, and as I begin this preface my eye
+lights upon the crowd of Russian peasants at work on the Neva under my
+windows. With pick and shovel they are letting the rays of the April sun
+into the great ice barrier which binds together the modern quays and the
+old granite fortress where lie the bones of the Romanoff Czars.
+
+This barrier is already weakened; it is widely decayed, in many places
+thin, and everywhere treacherous; but it is, as a whole, so broad, so
+crystallized about old boulders, so imbedded in shallows, so wedged into
+crannies on either shore, that it is a great danger. The waters from
+thousands of swollen streamlets above are pressing behind it; wreckage
+and refuse are piling up against it; every one knows that it must yield.
+But there is danger that it may resist the pressure too long and break
+suddenly, wrenching even the granite quays from their foundations,
+bringing desolation to a vast population, and leaving, after the
+subsidence of the flood, a widespread residue of slime, a fertile
+breeding-bed for the germs of disease.
+
+
+But the patient mujiks are doing the right thing. The barrier, exposed
+more and more to the warmth of spring by the scores of channels they are
+making, will break away gradually, and the river will flow on beneficent
+and beautiful.
+
+My work in this book is like that of the Russian mujik on the Neva. I
+simply try to aid in letting the light of historical truth into that
+decaying mass of outworn thought which attaches the modern world to
+mediaeval conceptions of Christianity, and which still lingers among
+us--a most serious barrier to religion and morals, and a menace to the
+whole normal evolution of society.
+
+For behind this barrier also the flood is rapidly rising--the flood
+of increased knowledge and new thought; and this barrier also, though
+honeycombed and in many places thin, creates a danger--danger of a
+sudden breaking away, distressing and calamitous, sweeping before it not
+only out worn creeds and noxious dogmas, but cherished principles
+and ideals, and even wrenching out most precious religious and moral
+foundations of the whole social and political fabric.
+
+My hope is to aid--even if it be but a little--in the gradual and
+healthful dissolving away of this mass of unreason, that the stream of
+"religion pure and undefiled" may flow on broad and clear, a blessing to
+humanity.
+
+And now a few words regarding the evolution of this book.
+
+It is something over a quarter of a century since I labored with Ezra
+Cornell in founding the university which bears his honored name.
+
+Our purpose was to establish in the State of New York an institution for
+advanced instruction and research, in which science, pure and applied,
+should have an equal place with literature; in which the study of
+literature, ancient and modern, should be emancipated as much as
+possible from pedantry; and which should be free from various useless
+trammels and vicious methods which at that period hampered many, if not
+most, of the American universities and colleges.
+
+We had especially determined that the institution should be under the
+control of no political party and of no single religious sect, and with
+Mr. Cornell's approval I embodied stringent provisions to this effect in
+the charter.
+
+It had certainly never entered into the mind of either of us that in all
+this we were doing anything irreligious or unchristian. Mr. Cornell
+was reared a member of the Society of Friends; he had from his fortune
+liberally aided every form of Christian effort which he found going on
+about him, and among the permanent trustees of the public library
+which he had already founded, he had named all the clergymen of
+the town--Catholic and Protestant. As for myself, I had been bred a
+churchman, had recently been elected a trustee of one church college,
+and a professor in another; those nearest and dearest to me were
+devoutly religious; and, if I may be allowed to speak of a matter so
+personal to my self, my most cherished friendships were among deeply
+religious men and women, and my greatest sources of enjoyment were
+ecclesiastical architecture, religious music, and the more devout forms
+of poetry. So, far from wishing to injure Christianity, we both hoped to
+promote it; but we did not confound religion with sectarianism, and we
+saw in the sectarian character of American colleges and universities as
+a whole, a reason for the poverty of the advanced instruction then given
+in so many of them.
+
+It required no great acuteness to see that a system of control which, in
+selecting a Professor of Mathematics or Language or Rhetoric or Physics
+or Chemistry, asked first and above all to what sect or even to what
+wing or branch of a sect he belonged, could hardly do much to advance
+the moral, religious, or intellectual development of mankind.
+
+The reasons for the new foundation seemed to us, then, so cogent that
+we expected the co-operation of all good citizens, and anticipated no
+opposition from any source.
+
+As I look back across the intervening years, I know not whether to be
+more astonished or amused at our simplicity.
+
+Opposition began at once. In the State Legislature it confronted us at
+every turn, and it was soon in full blaze throughout the State--from the
+good Protestant bishop who proclaimed that all professors should be in
+holy orders, since to the Church alone was given the command, "Go, teach
+all nations," to the zealous priest who published a charge that Goldwin
+Smith--a profoundly Christian scholar--had come to Cornell in order
+to inculcate the "infidelity of the Westminster Review"; and from the
+eminent divine who went from city to city, denouncing the "atheistic
+and pantheistic tendencies" of the proposed education, to the perfervid
+minister who informed a denominational synod that Agassiz, the last
+great opponent of Darwin, and a devout theist, was "preaching Darwinism
+and atheism" in the new institution.
+
+As the struggle deepened, as hostile resolutions were introduced into
+various ecclesiastical bodies, as honored clergymen solemnly warned
+their flocks first against the "atheism," then against the "infidelity,"
+and finally against the "indifferentism" of the university, as devoted
+pastors endeavoured to dissuade young men from matriculation, I took the
+defensive, and, in answer to various attacks from pulpits and religious
+newspapers, attempted to allay the fears of the public. "Sweet
+reasonableness" was fully tried. There was established and endowed in
+the university perhaps the most effective Christian pulpit, and one of
+the most vigorous branches of the Christian Association, then in the
+United States; but all this did nothing to ward off the attack.
+The clause in the charter of the university forbidding it to give
+predominance to the doctrines of any sect, and above all the fact that
+much prominence was given to instruction in various branches of science,
+seemed to prevent all compromise, and it soon became clear that to stand
+on the defensive only made matters worse. Then it was that there was
+borne in upon me a sense of the real difficulty--the antagonism between
+the theological and scientific view of the universe and of education in
+relation to it; therefore it was that, having been invited to deliver a
+lecture in the great hall of the Cooper Institute at New York, I took
+as my subject The Battlefields of Science, maintaining this thesis which
+follows:
+
+In all modern history, interference with science in the supposed
+interest of religion, no matter how conscientious such interference
+may have been, has resulted in the direst evils both to religion
+and science, and invariably; and, on the other hand, all untrammeled
+scientific investigation, no matter how dangerous to religion some of
+its stages may have seemed for the time to be, has invariably resulted
+in the highest good both of religion and science.
+
+The lecture was next day published in the New York Tribune at the
+request of Horace Greeley, its editor, who was also one of the Cornell
+University trustees. As a result of this widespread publication and
+of sundry attacks which it elicited, I was asked to maintain my thesis
+before various university associations and literary clubs; and I shall
+always remember with gratitude that among those who stood by me and
+presented me on the lecture platform with words of approval and cheer
+was my revered instructor, the Rev. Dr. Theodore Dwight Woolsey, at that
+time President of Yale College.
+
+My lecture grew--first into a couple of magazine articles, and then into
+a little book called The Warfare of Science, for which, when republished
+in England, Prof. John Tyndall wrote a preface.
+
+Sundry translations of this little book were published, but the
+most curious thing in its history is the fact that a very friendly
+introduction to the Swedish translation was written by a Lutheran
+bishop.
+
+Meanwhile Prof. John W. Draper published his book on The Conflict
+between Science and Religion, a work of great ability, which, as I then
+thought, ended the matter, so far as my giving it further attention was
+concerned.
+
+But two things led me to keep on developing my own work in this field:
+First, I had become deeply interested in it, and could not refrain from
+directing my observation and study to it; secondly, much as I admired
+Draper's treatment of the questions involved, his point of view and mode
+of looking at history were different from mine.
+
+He regarded the struggle as one between Science and Religion. I believed
+then, and am convinced now, that it was a struggle between Science and
+Dogmatic Theology.
+
+More and more I saw that it was the conflict between two epochs in the
+evolution of human thought--the theological and the scientific.
+
+So I kept on, and from time to time published New Chapters in the
+Warfare of Science as magazine articles in The Popular Science Monthly.
+This was done under many difficulties. For twenty years, as President of
+Cornell University and Professor of History in that institution, I was
+immersed in the work of its early development. Besides this, I could not
+hold myself entirely aloof from public affairs, and was three times sent
+by the Government of the United States to do public duty abroad: first
+as a commissioner to Santo Domingo, in 1870; afterward as minister to
+Germany, in 1879; finally, as minister to Russia, in 1892; and was
+also called upon by the State of New York to do considerable labor in
+connection with international exhibitions at Philadelphia and at Paris.
+I was also obliged from time to time to throw off by travel the effects
+of overwork.
+
+The variety of residence and occupation arising from these causes may
+perhaps explain some peculiarities in this book which might otherwise
+puzzle my reader.
+
+While these journeyings have enabled me to collect materials over a
+very wide range--in the New World, from Quebec to Santo Domingo and from
+Boston to Mexico, San Francisco, and Seattle, and in the Old World from
+Trondhjem to Cairo and from St. Petersburg to Palermo--they have often
+obliged me to write under circumstances not very favorable: sometimes
+on an Atlantic steamer, sometimes on a Nile boat, and not only in my
+own library at Cornell, but in those of Berlin, Helsingfors, Munich,
+Florence, and the British Museum. This fact will explain to the
+benevolent reader not only the citation of different editions of the
+same authority in different chapters, but some iterations which in the
+steady quiet of my own library would not have been made.
+
+It has been my constant endeavour to write for the general reader,
+avoiding scholastic and technical terms as much as possible and stating
+the truth simply as it presents itself to me.
+
+That errors of omission and commission will be found here and there is
+probable--nay, certain; but the substance of the book will, I believe,
+be found fully true. I am encouraged in this belief by the fact that, of
+the three bitter attacks which this work in its earlier form has already
+encountered, one was purely declamatory, objurgatory, and hortatory, and
+the others based upon ignorance of facts easily pointed out.
+
+And here I must express my thanks to those who have aided me. First and
+above all to my former student and dear friend, Prof. George Lincoln
+Burr, of Cornell University, to whose contributions, suggestions,
+criticisms, and cautions I am most deeply indebted; also to my friends
+U. G. Weatherly, formerly Travelling Fellow of Cornell, and now
+Assistant Professor in the University of Indiana,--Prof. and Mrs. Earl
+Barnes and Prof. William H. Hudson, of Stanford University,--and Prof.
+E. P Evans, formerly of the University of Michigan, but now of Munich,
+for extensive aid in researches upon the lines I have indicated to them,
+but which I could never have prosecuted without their co-operation.
+In libraries at home and abroad they have all worked for me most
+effectively, and I am deeply grateful to them.
+
+This book is presented as a sort of Festschrift--a tribute to Cornell
+University as it enters the second quarter-century of its existence, and
+probably my last tribute.
+
+The ideas for which so bitter a struggle was made at its foundation
+have triumphed. Its faculty, numbering over one hundred and, fifty;
+its students, numbering but little short of two thousand; its noble
+buildings and equipment; the munificent gifts, now amounting to millions
+of dollars, which it has received from public-spirited men and women;
+the evidences of public confidence on all sides; and, above all,
+the adoption of its cardinal principles and main features by various
+institutions of learning in other States, show this abundantly. But
+there has been a triumph far greater and wider. Everywhere among the
+leading modern nations the same general tendency is seen. During the
+quarter-century just past the control of public instruction, not only in
+America but in the leading nations of Europe, has passed more and more
+from the clergy to the laity. Not only are the presidents of the larger
+universities in the United States, with but one or two exceptions,
+laymen, but the same thing is seen in the old European strongholds of
+metaphysical theology. At my first visit to Oxford and Cambridge, forty
+years ago, they were entirely under ecclesiastical control. Now, all
+this is changed. An eminent member of the present British Government has
+recently said, "A candidate for high university position is handicapped
+by holy orders." I refer to this with not the slightest feeling of
+hostility toward the clergy, for I have none; among them are many of my
+dearest friends; no one honours their proper work more than I; but the
+above fact is simply noted as proving the continuance of that evolution
+which I have endeavoured to describe in this series of monographs--an
+evolution, indeed, in which the warfare of Theology against Science has
+been one of the most active and powerful agents. My belief is that in
+the field left to them--their proper field--the clergy will more
+and more, as they cease to struggle against scientific methods and
+conclusions, do work even nobler and more beautiful than anything they
+have heretofore done. And this is saying much. My conviction is that
+Science, though it has evidently conquered Dogmatic Theology based on
+biblical texts and ancient modes of thought, will go hand in hand
+with Religion; and that, although theological control will continue
+to diminish, Religion, as seen in the recognition of "a Power in the
+universe, not ourselves, which makes for righteousness," and in the love
+of God and of our neighbor, will steadily grow stronger and stronger,
+not only in the American institutions of learning but in the world
+at large. Thus may the declaration of Micah as to the requirements of
+Jehovah, the definition by St. James of "pure religion and undefiled,"
+and, above all, the precepts and ideals of the blessed Founder of
+Christianity himself, be brought to bear more and more effectively on
+mankind.
+
+I close this preface some days after its first lines were written.
+The sun of spring has done its work on the Neva; the great river flows
+tranquilly on, a blessing and a joy; the mujiks are forgotten. A. D. W.
+
+LEGATION OF THE UNITED STATES, ST. PETERSBURG,
+
+April 14,1894.
+
+P.S.--Owing to a wish to give more thorough revision to some parts of my
+work, it has been withheld from the press until the present date. A. D.
+W.
+
+CORNELL UNIVERSITY, ITHACA, N.Y.,
+
+August 15, 1895.
+
+
+
+CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME.
+
+
+
+  CHAPTER I.
+
+  FROM CREATION TO EVOLUTION.
+  I.  The Visible Universe.
+  Ancient and medieval views regarding the manner of creation
+  Regarding the matter of creation
+  Regarding the time of creation
+  Regarding the date of creation
+  Regarding the Creator
+  Regarding light and darkness
+  Rise of the conception of an evolution: among the Chaldeans, the
+  Hebrews, the Greeks, the Romans
+  Its survival through the Middle Ages, despite the disfavour of
+  the Church
+  Its development in modern times.--The nebular hypothesis and its
+  struggle with theology
+  The idea of evolution at last victorious
+  Our sacred books themselves an illustration of its truth
+  The true reconciliation of Science and Theology
+
+  II.  Theological Teachings regarding the Animals and Man.
+  Ancient and medieval representations of the creation of man
+  Literal acceptance of the book of Genesis by the Christian
+  fathers
+  By the Reformers
+  By modern theologians, Catholic and Protestant
+  Theological reasoning as to the divisions of the animal kingdom
+  The Physiologus, the Bestiaries, the Exempila
+  Beginnings of sceptical observation
+  Development of a scientific method in the study of Nature
+  Breaking down of the theological theory of creation
+
+  III.  Theological and Scientific Theories of an Evolution in
+  Animated Nature.
+  Ideas of evolution among the ancients
+  In the early Church
+  In the medieval Church
+  Development of these ideas from the sixteenth to the eighteenth
+  centuries
+  The work of De Maillet
+  Of Linneus
+  Of Buffon
+  Contributions to the theory of evolution at the close of the
+  eighteenth century
+  The work of Treviranus and Lamarck
+  Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire and Cuvier
+  Development of the theory up to the middle of the nineteenth
+  century
+  The contributions of Darwin and Wallace
+  The opposition of Agassiz
+
+  IV.  The Final Effort of Theology.
+  Attacks on Darwin and his theories in England
+  In America
+  Formation of sacro-scientific organizations to combat the theory
+  of evolution
+  The attack in France
+  In Germany
+  Conversion of Lyell to the theory of evolution
+  The attack of Darwin's Descent of Man
+  Difference between this and the former attack
+  Hostility to Darwinism in America
+  Change in the tone of the controversy.--Attempts at compromise
+  Dying-out of opposition to evolution
+  Last outbursts of theological hostility
+  Final victory of evolution
+
+
+
+  CHAPTER II.
+
+  GEOGRAPHY
+
+  I.  The Form of the Earth.
+  Primitive conception of the earth as flat
+  In Chaldea and Egypt
+  In Persia
+  Among the Hebrews
+  Evolution, among the Greeks, of the idea of its sphericity
+  Opposition of the early Church
+  Evolution of a sacred theory, drawn from the Bible
+  Its completion by Cosmas Indicopleustes
+  Its influence on Christian thought
+  Survival of the idea of the earth's sphericity--its acceptance by
+  Isidore and Bede
+  Its struggle and final victory
+
+  II.  The Delineation of the Earth.
+  Belief of every ancient people that its own central place was the
+  centre of the earth
+  Hebrew conviction that the earth's centre was at Jerusalem
+  Acceptance of this view by Christianity
+  Influence of other Hebrew conceptions--Gog and Magog, the "four
+  winds," the waters "on an heap"
+
+  III.  The Inhabitants of the Earth.
+  The idea of antipodes
+  Its opposition by the Christian Church--Gregory Nazianzen,
+  Lactantius, Basil, Ambrose, Augustine, Procopius of Gaza, Cosmas,
+  Isidore
+  Virgil of Salzburg's assertion of it in the eighth century
+  Its revival by William of Conches and Albert the Great in the
+  thirteenth
+  Surrender of it by Nicolas d'Oresme
+  Fate of Peter of Abano and Cecco d' Ascoli
+  Timidity of Pierre d'Ailly and Tostatus
+  Theological hindrance of Columbus
+  Pope Alexander VI's demarcation line
+  Cautious conservatism of Gregory Reysch
+  Magellan and the victory of science
+
+
+  IV.  The Size of the Earth.
+  Scientific attempts at measuring the earth
+  The sacred solution of the problem
+  Fortunate influence of the blunder upon Columbus
+
+
+  V.  The Character of the Earth's Surface.
+  Servetus and the charge of denying the fertility of Judea
+  Contrast between the theological and the religious spirit in
+  their effects on science
+
+
+
+  CHAPTER III.
+
+  ASTRONOMY.
+
+  I.  The Old Sacred Theory of the Universe.
+  The early Church's conviction of the uselessness of astronomy
+  The growth of a sacred theory--Origen, the Gnostics, Philastrius,
+  Cosmas, Isidore
+  The geocentric, or Ptolemaic, theory, its origin, and its
+  acceptance by the Christian world
+  Development of the new sacred system of astronomy--the
+  pseudo-Dionysius, Peter Lombard, Thomas Aquinas
+  Its popularization by Dante
+  Its details
+  Its persistence to modern times
+
+  II.  The Heliocentric Theory.
+  Its rise among the Greeks--Pythagoras, Philolaus, Aristarchus
+  Its suppression by the charge of blasphemy
+  Its loss from sight for six hundred Years, then for a thousand
+  Its revival by Nicholas de Cusa and Nicholas Copernicus
+  Its toleration as a hypothesis
+  Its prohibition as soon as Galileo teaches it as a truth
+  Consequent timidity of scholars--Acosta, Apian
+  Protestantism not less zealous in opposition than
+  Catholicism--Luther Melanchthon, Calvin, Turretin
+  This opposition especially persistent in England--Hutchinson,
+  Pike, Horne, Horsley, Forbes, Owen, Wesley
+  Resulting interferences with freedom of teaching
+  Giordano Bruno's boldness and his fate
+  The truth demonstrated by the telescope of Galileo
+
+  III.  The War upon Galileo.
+  Concentration of the war on this new champion
+  The first attack
+  Fresh attacks--Elci, Busaeus, Caccini, Lorini, Bellarmin
+  Use of epithets
+  Attempts to entrap Galileo
+  His summons before the Inquisition at Rome
+  The injunction to silence, and the condemnation of the theory of
+  the earth's motion
+  The work of Copernicus placed on the Index
+  Galileo's seclusion
+  Renewed attacks upon Galileo--Inchofer, Fromundus
+
+  IV.  Victory of the Church over Galileo
+  Publication of his Dialogo
+  Hostility of Pope Urban VIII
+  Galileo's second trial by the Inquisition
+  His abjuration
+  Later persecution of him
+  Measures to complete the destruction of the Copernican theory
+  Persecution of Galileo's memory
+  Protestant hostility to the new astronomy and its champions
+
+  V.  Results of the Victory over Galileo.
+  Rejoicings of churchmen over the victory
+  The silencing of Descartes
+  Persecution of Campanella and of Kepler
+  Persistence and victory of science
+  Dilemma of the theologians
+  Vain attempts to postpone the surrender
+
+  VI.  The Retreat of the Church after its Victory over Galileo.
+  The easy path for the Protestant theologians
+  The difficulties of the older Church.--The papal infallibility
+  fully committed against the Copernican theory
+  Attempts at evasion--first plea: that Galileo was condemned not
+  for affirming the earth's motion, but for supporting it from
+  Scripture
+  Its easy refutation
+  Second plea: that he was condemned not for heresy, but for
+  contumacy
+  Folly of this assertion
+  Third plea: that it was all a quarrel between Aristotelian
+  professors and those favouring the experimental method
+  Fourth plea: that the condemnation of Galileo was "provisory"
+  Fifth plea: that he was no more a victim of Catholics than of
+  Protestants
+  Efforts to blacken Galileo's character
+  Efforts to suppress the documents of his trial
+  Their fruitlessness
+  Sixth plea: that the popes as popes had never condemned his
+  theory
+  Its confutation from their own mouths
+  Abandonment of the contention by honest Catholics
+  Two efforts at compromise--Newman, De Bonald
+  Effect of all this on thinking men
+  The fault not in Catholicism more than in Protestantism--not in
+  religion, but in theology
+
+
+
+  CHAPTER IV.
+
+  FROM "SIGNS AND WONDERS" TO LAW IN THE HEAVENS.
+
+  I.  The Theological View.
+  Early beliefs as to comets, meteors, and eclipses
+  Their inheritance by Jews and Christians
+  The belief regarding comets especially harmful as a source of
+  superstitious terror
+  Its transmission through the Middle Ages
+  Its culmination under Pope Calixtus III
+  Beginnings of scepticism--Copernicus, Paracelsus, Scaliger
+  Firmness of theologians, Catholic and Protestant, in its support
+
+  II.  Theological Efforts to crush the Scientific View.
+  The effort through the universities.--The effort through the
+  pulpits
+  Heerbrand at Tubingen and Dieterich at Marburg
+  Maestlin at Heidelberg
+  Buttner, Vossius, Torreblanca, Fromundus
+  Father Augustin de Angelis at Rome
+  Reinzer at Linz
+  Celichius at Magdeburg
+  Conrad Dieterich's sermon at Ulm
+  Erni and others in Switzerland
+  Comet doggerel
+  Echoes from New England--Danforth, Morton, Increase Mather
+
+  III.  The Invasion of Scepticism.
+  Rationalism of Cotton Mather, and its cause
+  Blaise de Vigenere
+  Erastus
+  Bekker, Lubienitzky, Pierre Petit
+  Bayle
+  Fontenelle
+  The scientific movement beneath all this
+
+  IV.  Theological Efforts at Compromise.--The Final Victory of
+  Science.
+  The admission that some comets are supralunar
+  Difference between scientific and theological reasoning
+  Development of the reasoning of Tycho and Kepler--Cassini, Hevel,
+  Doerfel, Bernouilli, Newton
+  Completion of the victory by Halley and Clairaut
+  Survivals of the superstition--Joseph de Maistre, Forster Arago's
+  statistics
+  The theories of Whiston and Burnet, and their influence in
+  Germany
+  The superstition ended in America by the lectures of Winthrop
+  Helpful influence of John Wesley
+  Effects of the victory
+
+
+
+  CHAPTER V.
+
+  FROM GENESIS TO GEOLOGY.
+
+  I.  Growth of Theological Explanations
+  Germs of geological truth among the Greeks and Romans
+  Attitude of the Church toward science
+  Geological theories of the early theologians
+  Attitude of the schoolmen
+  Contributions of the Arabian schools
+  Theories of the earlier Protestants
+  Influence of the revival of learning
+
+  II.  Efforts to Suppress the Scientific View.
+  Revival of scientific methods
+  Buffon and the Sorbonne
+  Beringer's treatise on fossils
+  Protestant opposition to the new geology---the works of Burnet,
+  Whiston, Wesley, Clark,
+  Watson, Arnold, Cockburn, and others
+
+  III.  The First Great Effort of Compromise, based on the Flood of
+  Noah.
+  The theory that fossils were produced by the Deluge
+  Its acceptance by both Catholics and Protestants--Luther, Calmet
+  Burnet, Whiston, Woodward, Mazurier, Torrubia, Increase Mather
+  Scheuchzer
+  Voltaire's theory of fossils
+  Vain efforts of enlightened churchmen in behalf of the scientific
+  view
+  Steady progress of science--the work of Cuvier and Brongniart
+  Granvile Penn's opposition
+  The defection of Buckland and Lyell to the scientific side
+  Surrender of the theologians
+  Remnants of the old belief
+  Death-blow given to the traditional theory of the Deluge by the
+  discovery of the Chaldean accounts
+  Results of the theological opposition to science
+
+  IV.  Final Efforts at Compromise--The Victory of Science
+  complete.
+  Efforts of Carl von Raumer, Wagner, and others
+  The new testimony of the caves and beds of drift as to the
+  antiquity of man
+  Gosse's effort to save the literal interpretation of Genesis
+  Efforts of Continental theologians
+  Gladstone's attempt at a compromise
+  Its demolition by Huxley
+  By Canon Driver
+  Dean Stanley on the reconciliation of Science and Scripture
+
+
+
+  CHAPTER VI.
+
+  THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN, EGYPTOLOGY, AND ASSYRIOLOGY.
+
+  I.  The Sacred Chronology.
+  Two fields in which Science has gained a definite victory over
+  Theology
+  Opinions of the Church fathers on the antiquity of man
+  The chronology of Isidore
+  Of Bede
+  Of the medieval Jewish scholars
+  The views of the Reformers on the antiquity of man
+  Of the Roman Church
+  Of Archbishop Usher
+  Influence of Egyptology on the belief in man's antiquity
+  La Peyrere's theory of the Pre-Adamites
+  Opposition in England to the new chronology
+
+  II.  The New Chronology.
+  Influence of the new science of Egyptology on biblical chronology
+
+  Manetho's history of Egypt and the new chronology derived from it
+  Evidence of the antiquity of man furnished by the monuments of
+  Egypt
+  By her art
+  By her science
+  By other elements of civilization
+  By the remains found in the bed of the Nile
+  Evidence furnished by the study of Assyriology
+
+
+  CHAPTER VII.
+
+  THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN AND PREHISTORIC ARCHAEOLOGY.
+  I.  The Thunder-stones.
+  Early beliefs regarding "thunder-stones"
+  Theories of Mercati and Tollius regarding them
+  Their identification with the implements of prehistoric man
+  Remains of man found in caverns
+  Unfavourable influence on scientific activity of the political
+  conditions of the early part of the nineteenth century
+  Change effected by the French Revolution of to {??}
+  Rallying of the reactionary clerical influence against science
+
+  II.  The Flint Weapons and Implements.
+  Boucher de Perthes's contributions to the knowledge of
+  prehistoric man
+  His conclusions confirmed by Lyell and others
+  Cave explorations of Lartet and Christy
+  Evidence of man's existence furnished by rude carvings
+  Cave explorations in the British Islands
+  Evidence of man's existence in the Drift period
+  In the early Quaternary and in the Tertiary periods
+
+
+
+  CHAPTER VIII.
+
+  THE "FALL OF MAN" AND ANTHROPOLOGY.
+
+  The two antagonistic views regarding the life of man on the
+  earth
+  The theory of "the Fall" among ancient peoples
+  Inheritance of this view by the Christian Church
+  Appearance among the Greeks and Romans of the theory of a rise of
+  man
+  Its disappearance during the Middle Ages
+  Its development since the seventeenth century
+  The first blow at the doctrine of "the Fall" comes from geology
+  Influence of anthropology on the belief in this doctrine
+  The finding of human skulls in Quaternary deposits
+  Their significance
+  Results obtained from the comparative study of the remains of
+  human handiwork
+  Discovery of human remains in shell-heaps on the shores of the
+  Baltic Sea
+  In peat-beds
+  The lake-dwellers
+  Indications of the upward direction of man's development
+  Mr. Southall's attack on the theory of man's antiquity
+  An answer to it
+  Discovery of prehistoric human remains in Egypt
+  Hamard's attack on the new scientific conclusions
+  The survival of prehistoric implements in religious rites
+  Strength of the argument against the theory of "the Fall of Man"
+
+
+
+  CHAPTER IX.
+
+  THE "FALL OF MAN" AND ETHNOLOGY.
+
+  The beginnings of the science of Comparative Ethnology
+  Its testimony to the upward tendency of man from low beginning
+  Theological efforts to break its force--De Maistre and DeBonald
+  Whately's attempt
+  The attempt of the Duke of Argyll
+  Evidence of man's upward tendency derived from Comparative
+  Philology
+  From Comparative Literature and Folklore
+  From Comparative Ethnography
+  From Biology
+
+
+
+  CHAPTER X.
+
+  THE "FALL OF MAN" AND HISTORY.
+
+  Proof of progress given by the history of art
+  Proofs from general history
+  Development of civilization even under unfavourable circumstances
+  Advancement even through catastrophes and the decay of
+  civilizations
+  Progress not confined to man's material condition
+  Theological struggle against the new scientific view
+  Persecution of Prof. Winchell
+  Of Dr. Woodrow
+  Other interferences with freedom of teaching
+  The great harm thus done to religion
+  Rise of a better spirit
+  The service rendered to religion by Anthropology
+
+
+
+  CHAPTER XI.
+
+  FROM "THE PRINCE OF THE POWER OF THE AIR" TO METEOROLOGY.
+
+  I.  Growth of a Theological Theory.
+  The beliefs of classical antiquity regarding storms, thunder, and
+  lightning
+  Development of a sacred science of meteorology by the fathers of
+  the Church
+  Theories of Cosmas Indicopleustes
+  Of Isidore
+  Of Seville
+  Of Bede
+  Of Rabanus Maurus
+  Rational views of Honorius of Autun
+  Orthodox theories of John of San Geminiano
+  Attempt of Albert the Great to reconcile the speculations of
+  Aristotle with the theological views
+  The monkish encyclopedists
+  Theories regarding the rainbow and the causes of storms
+  Meteorological phenomena attributed to the Almighty
+
+  II.  Diabolical Agency in Storms.
+  Meteorological phenomena attributed to the devil--"the prince of
+  the power of the air"
+  Propagation of this belief by the medieval theologians
+  Its transmission to both Catholics and Protestants--Eck, Luther
+  The great work of Delrio
+  Guacci's Compendium
+  The employment of prayer against "the powers of the air"
+  Of exorcisms
+  Of fetiches and processions
+  Of consecrated church bells
+
+  III.  The Agency of Witches.
+  The fearful results of the witch superstition
+  Its growth out of the doctrine of evil agency in atmospheric
+  phenomena
+  Archbishop Agobard's futile attempt to dispel it
+  Its sanction by the popes
+  Its support by confessions extracted by torture
+  Part taken in the persecution by Dominicans and Jesuits
+  Opponents of the witch theory--Pomponatius, Paracelsus, Agrippa
+  of Nettesheim
+  Jean Bodin's defence of the superstition
+  Fate of Cornelius Loos
+  Of Dietrich Flade
+  Efforts of Spee to stem the persecution
+  His posthumous influence
+  Upholders of the orthodox view--Bishop Binsfeld, Remigius
+  Vain protests of Wier
+  Persecution of Bekker for opposing the popular belief
+  Effect of the Reformation in deepening the superstition
+  The persecution in Great Britain and America
+  Development of a scientific view of the heavens
+  Final efforts to revive the old belief
+
+  IV.  Franklin's Lightning-Rod.
+  Franklin's experiments with the kite
+  Their effect on the old belief
+  Efforts at compromise between the scientific and theological
+  theories
+  Successful use of the lightning-rod
+  Religious scruples against it in America
+  In England
+  In Austria
+  In Italy
+  Victory of the scientific theory
+  This victory exemplified in the case of the church of the
+  monastery of Lerins
+  In the case of Dr. Moorhouse
+  In the case of the Missouri droughts
+
+
+
+  CHAPTER XII.
+
+  FROM MAGIC TO CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS.
+
+  I.  The Supremacy of Magic.
+  Primitive tendency to belief in magic
+  The Greek conception of natural laws
+  Influence of Plato and Aristotle on the growth of science
+  Effect of the establishment of Christianity on the development of
+  the physical sciences
+  The revival of thought in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries
+  Albert the Great
+  Vincent of Beauvais
+  Thomas Aquinas
+  Roger Bacon's beginning of the experimental method brought to
+  nought
+  The belief that science is futile gives place to the belief that
+  it is dangerous
+  The two kinds of magic
+  Rarity of persecution for magic before the Christian era
+  The Christian theory of devils
+  Constantine's laws against magic
+  Increasing terror of magic and witchcraft
+  Papal enactments against them
+  Persistence of the belief in magic
+  Its effect on the development of science
+  Roger Bacon
+  Opposition of secular rulers to science
+  John Baptist Porta
+  The opposition to scientific societies in Italy
+  In England
+  The effort to turn all thought from science to religion
+  The development of mystic theology
+  Its harmful influence on science
+  Mixture of theological with scientific speculation
+  This shown in the case of Melanchthon
+  In that of Francis Bacon
+  Theological theory of gases
+  Growth of a scientific theory
+  Basil Valentine and his contributions to chemistry
+  Triumph of the scientific theory
+
+  II.  The Triumph of Chemistry and Physics.
+  New epoch in chemistry begun by Boyle
+  Attitude of the mob toward science
+  Effect on science of the reaction following the French
+  Revolution:  {?}
+  Development of chemistry since the middle of the nineteenth
+  century
+  Development of physics
+  Modern opposition to science in Catholic countries
+  Attack of scientific education in France
+  In England
+  In Prussia
+  Revolt against the subordination of education to science
+  Effect of the International Exhibition of ii {?} at London
+  Of the endowment of State colleges in America by the Morrill
+  Act of 1862
+  The results to religion
+
+
+
+  CHAPTER XIII.
+
+  FROM MIRACLES TO MEDICINE.
+
+  I.  THE EARLY AND SACRED THEORIES OF DISEASE.
+  Naturalness of the idea of supernatural intervention in causing
+  and curing disease
+  Prevalence of this idea in ancient civilizations
+  Beginnings of a scientific theory of medicine
+  The twofold influence of Christianity on the healing art
+
+  II.  GROWTH OF LEGENDS OF HEALING.--THE LIFE OF XAVIER AS A
+  TYPICAL EXAMPLE.
+  Growth of legends of miracles about the lives of great
+  benefactors of humanity
+  Sketch of Xavier's career
+  Absence of miraculous accounts in his writings and those of his
+  contemporaries
+  Direct evidence that Xavier wrought no miracles
+  Growth of legends of miracles as shown in the early biographies
+  of him
+  As shown in the canonization proceedings
+  Naturalness of these legends
+
+  III.  THE MEDIAEVAL MIRACLES OF HEALING CHECK MEDICAL SCIENCE.
+  Character of the testimony regarding miracles
+  Connection of mediaeval with pagan miracles
+  Their basis of fact
+  Various kinds of miraculous cures
+  Atmosphere of supernaturalism thrown about all cures
+  Influence of this atmosphere on medical science
+
+  IV.  THE ATTRIBUTION OF DISEASE TO SATANIC INFLUENCE.--"PASTORAL
+  MEDICINE" CHECKS SCIENTIFIC EFFORT.
+  Theological theory as to the cause of disease
+  Influence of self-interest on "pastoral medicine"
+  Development of fetichism at Cologne and elsewhere
+  Other developments of fetich cure
+
+  V.  THEOLOGICAL OPPOSITION TO ANATOMICAL STUDIES.
+  Medieval belief in the unlawfulness of meddling with the bodies
+  of the dead
+  Dissection objected to on the ground that "the Church abhors the
+  shedding of blood"
+  The decree of Boniface VIII and its results
+
+  VI.  NEW BEGINNINGS OF MEDICAL SCIENCE.
+  Galen
+  Scanty development of medical science in the Church
+  Among Jews and Mohammedans
+  Promotion of medical science by various Christian laymen of the
+  Middle Ages
+  By rare men of science
+  By various ecclesiastics
+
+  VII.  THEOLOGICAL DISCOURAGEMENT OF MEDICINE.
+  Opposition to seeking cure from disease by natural means
+  Requirement of ecclesiastical advice before undertaking medical
+  treatment
+  Charge of magic and Mohammedanism against men of science
+  Effect of ecclesiastical opposition to medicine
+  The doctrine of signatures
+  The doctrine of exorcism
+  Theological opposition to surgery
+  Development of miracle and fetich cures
+  Fashion in pious cures
+  Medicinal properties of sacred places
+  Theological argument in favour of miraculous cures
+  Prejudice against Jewish physicians
+
+  VIII.  FETICH CURES UNDER PROTESTANTISM.--THE ROYAL TOUCH.
+  Luther's theory of disease
+  The royal touch
+  Cures wrought by Charles II
+  By James II
+  By William III
+  By Queen Anne
+  By Louis XIV
+  Universal acceptance of these miracles
+
+  IX.  THE SCIENTIFIC STRUGGLE FOR ANATOMY.
+  Occasional encouragement of medical science in the Middle Ages
+  New impulse given by the revival of learning and the age of
+  discovery
+  Paracelsus and Mundinus
+  Vesalius, the founder of the modern science of anatomy.--His
+  career and fate
+
+  X.  THEOLOGICAL OPPOSITION TO INOCULATION, VACCINATION, AND THE
+  USE OF ANAESTHETICS.
+  Theological opposition to inoculation in Europe
+  In America
+  Theological opposition to vaccination
+  Recent hostility to vaccination in England
+  In Canada, during the smallpox epidemic
+  Theological opposition to the use of cocaine
+  To the use of quinine
+  Theological opposition to the use of anesthetics
+
+  XI.  FINAL BREAKING AWAY OF THE THEOLOGICAL THEORY IN MEDICINE.
+  Changes incorporated in the American Book of Common Prayer
+  Effect on the theological view of the growing knowledge of the
+  relation between imagination and medicine
+  Effect of the discoveries in hypnotism
+  In bacteriology
+  Relation between ascertained truth and the "ages of faith"
+
+
+
+  CHAPTER XIV.
+
+  FROM FETICH TO HYGIENE.
+
+  I.  THE THEOLOGICAL VIEW OF EPIDEMICS AND SANITATION.
+  The recurrence of great pestilences
+  Their early ascription to the wrath or malice of unseen powers
+  Their real cause want of hygienic precaution
+  Theological apotheosis of filth
+  Sanction given to the sacred theory of pestilence by Pope Gregory
+  the Great
+  Modes of propitiating the higher powers
+  Modes of thwarting the powers of evil
+  Persecution of the Jews as Satan's emissaries
+  Persecution of witches as Satan's emissaries
+  Case of the Untori at Milan
+  New developments of fetichism.--The blood of St. Januarius at
+  Naples
+  Appearance of better methods in Italy.--In Spain
+
+  II.  GRADUAL DECAY OF THEOLOGICAL VIEWS REGARDING SANITATION.
+  Comparative freedom of England from persecutions for
+  plague-bringing, in spite of her wretched sanitary condition
+  Aid sought mainly through church services
+  Effects of the great fire in London
+  The jail fever
+  The work of John Howard
+  Plagues in the American colonies
+  In France.--The great plague at Marseilles
+  Persistence of the old methods in Austria
+  In Scotland
+
+  III.  THE TRIUMPH OF SANITARY SCIENCE.
+  Difficulty of reconciling the theological theory of pestilences
+  with accumulating facts
+  Curious approaches to a right theory
+  The law governing the relation of theology to disease
+  Recent victories of hygiene in all countries
+  In England.---Chadwick and his fellows
+  In France
+
+  IV.  THE RELATION OF SANITARY SCIENCE TO RELIGION.
+  The process of sanitary science not at the cost of religion
+  Illustration from the policy of Napoleon III in France
+  Effect of proper sanitation on epidemics in the United States
+  Change in the attitude of the Church toward the cause and cure of
+  pestilence
+
+
+  CHAPTER XV.
+
+  FROM "DEMONIACAL POSSESSION" TO INSANITY.
+
+  I.  THEOLOGICAL IDEAS OF LUNACY AND ITS TREATMENT.
+  The struggle for the scientific treatment of the insane
+  The primitive ascription of insanity to evil spirits
+  Better Greek and Roman theories--madness a disease
+  The Christian Church accepts the demoniacal theory of insanity
+  Yet for a time uses mild methods for the insane
+  Growth of the practice of punishing the indwelling demon
+  Two sources whence better things might have been hoped.--The
+  reasons of their futility
+  The growth of exorcism
+  Use of whipping and torture
+  The part of art and literature in making vivid to the common mind
+  the idea of diabolic activity
+  The effects of religious processions as a cure for mental disease
+  Exorcism of animals possessed of demons
+  Belief in the transformation of human beings into animals
+  The doctrine of demoniacal possession in the Reformed Church
+
+  II.  BEGINNINGS OF A HEALTHFUL SCEPTICISM.
+  Rivalry between Catholics and Protestants in the casting out of
+  devils
+  Increased belief in witchcraft during the period following the
+  Reformation
+  Increase of insanity during the witch persecutions   II  {?}
+  Attitude of physicians toward witchcraft    I
+  Religious hallucinations of the insane    I
+  Theories as to the modes of diabolic entrance into the possessed
+  Influence of monastic life on the development of insanity
+  Protests against the theological view of insanity--Wier,
+  Montaigue Bekker
+  Last struggles of the old superstition
+
+  III.  THE FINAL STRUGGLE AND VICTORY OF SCIENCE.--PINEL AND TUKE.
+  Influence of French philosophy on the belief in demoniacal
+  possession
+  Reactionary influence of John Wesley
+  Progress of scientific ideas in Prussia
+  In Austria
+  In America
+  In South Germany
+  General indifference toward the sufferings of madmen
+  The beginnings of a more humane treatment
+  Jean Baptiste Pinel
+  Improvement in the treatment of the insane in England.--William
+  Tuke
+  The place of Pinel and Tuke in history
+
+
+
+  CHAPTER XVI.
+
+  FROM DIABOLISM TO HYSTERIA.
+
+  I.  THE EPIDEMICS OF "POSSESSION."
+  Survival of the belief in diabolic activity as the cause of such
+  epidemics
+  Epidemics of hysteria in classical times
+  In the Middle Ages
+  The dancing mania
+  Inability of science during the fifteenth century to cope with
+  such diseases
+  Cases of possession brought within the scope of medical research
+  during the sixteenth century
+  Dying-out of this form of mental disease in northern Europe
+  In Italy
+  Epidemics of hysteria in the convents
+  The case of Martha Brossier
+  Revival in France of belief in diabolic influence
+  The Ursulines of Loudun and Urbain Grandier
+  Possession among the Huguenots
+  In New England.--The Salem witch persecution
+  At Paris.--Alleged miracles at the grave of Archdeacon Paris
+  In Germany.--Case of Maria Renata Sanger
+  More recent outbreaks
+
+  II.  BEGINNINGS OF HELPFUL SCEPTICISM.
+  Outbreaks of hysteria in factories and hospitals
+  In places of religious excitement
+  The case at Morzine
+  Similar cases among Protestants and in Africa
+
+  III.  THEOLOGICAL "RESTATEMENTS."--FINAL TRIUMPH OF THE
+  SCIENTIFIC VIEW AND METHODS.
+  Successful dealings of medical science with mental diseases
+  Attempts to give a scientific turn to the theory of diabolic
+  agency in disease
+  Last great demonstration of the old belief in England
+  Final triumph of science in the latter half of the present
+  century
+  Last echoes of the old belief
+
+
+
+  CHAPTER XVII.
+
+  FROM BABEL TO COMPARATIVE PHILOLOGY.
+
+  I.  THE SACRED THEORY IN ITS FIRST FORM.
+  Difference of the history of Comparative Philology from that of
+  other sciences as regards the attitude of theologians
+  Curiosity of early man regarding the origin, the primitive form,
+  and the diversity of language
+  The Hebrew answer to these questions
+  The legend of the Tower of Babel
+  The real reason for the building of towers by the Chaldeans and
+  the causes of their ruin
+  Other legends of a confusion of tongues
+  Influence upon Christendom of the Hebrew legends
+  Lucretius's theory of the origin of language
+  The teachings of the Church fathers on this subject
+  The controversy as to the divine origin of the Hebrew vowel
+  points
+  Attitude of the reformers toward this question
+  Of Catholic scholars.--Marini Capellus and his adversaries
+  The treatise of Danzius
+
+  II.  THE SACRED THEORY OF LANGUAGE IN ITS SECOND FORM.
+  Theological theory that Hebrew was the primitive tongue, divinely
+  revealed
+  This theory supported by all Christian scholars until the
+  beginning of the eighteenth century
+  Dissent of Prideaux and Cotton Mather
+  Apparent strength of the sacred theory of language
+
+  III.  BREAKING DOWN OF THE THEOLOGICAL VIEW.
+  Reason for the Church's ready acceptance of the conclusions of
+  comparative philology
+  Beginnings of a scientific theory of language
+  Hottinger
+  Leibnitz
+  The collections of Catharine the Great, of Hervas, and of Adelung
+  Chaotic period in philology between Leibnitz and the beginning of
+  the study of Sanskrit
+  Illustration from the successive editions of the Encyclopaedia
+  Britannica
+
+  IV.  TRIUMPH OF THE NEW SCIENCE.
+  Effect of the discovery of Sanskrit on the old theory
+  Attempts to discredit the new learning
+  General acceptance of the new theory
+  Destruction of the belief that all created things were first
+  named by Adam
+  Of the belief in the divine origin of letters
+  Attempts in England to support the old theory of language
+  Progress of philological science in France
+  In Germany
+  In Great Britain
+  Recent absurd attempts to prove Hebrew the primitive tongue
+
+  V.  SUMMARY.
+  Gradual disappearance of the old theories regarding the origin of
+  speech and writing
+  Full acceptance of the new theories by all Christian scholars
+  The result to religion, and to the Bible
+
+
+
+  CHAPTER XVIII.
+  FROM THE DEAD SEA LEGENDS TO COMPARATIVE MYTHOLOGY,
+
+  I.  THE GROWTH OF EXPLANATORY TRANSFORMATION MYTHS.
+  Growth of myths to account for remarkable appearances in
+  Nature--mountains, rocks, curiously marked stones, fossils,
+  products of volcanic action
+  Myths of the transformation of living beings into natural objects
+  Development of the science of Comparative Mythology
+
+  II.  MEDIAEVAL GROWTH OF THE DEAD SEA LEGENDS.
+  Description of the Dead Sea
+  Impression made by its peculiar features on the early dwellers in
+  Palestine
+  Reasons for selecting the Dead Sea myths for study
+  Naturalness of the growth of legend regarding the salt region of
+  Usdum
+  Universal belief in these legends
+  Concurrent testimony of early and mediaeval writers, Jewish and
+  Christian, respecting the existence of Lot's wife as a "pillar of
+  salt," and of the other wonders of the Dead Sea
+  Discrepancies in the various accounts and theological
+  explanations of them
+  Theological arguments respecting the statue of Lot's wife
+  Growth of the legend in the sixteenth century
+
+  III.  POST-REFORMATION CULMINATION OF THE DEAD SEA
+  LEGENDS.--BEGINNINGS OF A HEALTHFUL SCEPTICISM.
+  Popularization of the older legends at the Reformation
+  Growth of new myths among scholars
+  Signs of scepticism among travellers near the end of the
+  sixteenth century
+  Effort of Quaresmio to check this tendency
+  Of Eugene Roger
+  Of Wedelius
+  Influence of these teachings
+  Renewed scepticism--the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
+  Efforts of Briemle and Masius in support of the old myths
+  Their influence
+  The travels of Mariti and of Volney
+  Influence of scientific thought on the Dead Sea legends during
+  the eighteenth century
+  Reactionary efforts of Chateaubriand
+  Investigations of the naturalist Seetzen
+  Of Dr. Robinson
+  The expedition of Lieutenant Lynch
+  The investigations of De Saulcy
+  Of the Duc de Luynes.--Lartet's report
+  Summary of the investigations of the nineteenth
+  century.--Ritter's verdict
+
+
+  IV.  THEOLOGICAL EFFORTS AT COMPROMISE.--TRIUMPH OF THE
+  SCIENTIFIC VIEW.
+  Attempts to reconcile scientific facts with the Dead Sea legends
+  Van de Velde's investigations of the Dead Sea region
+  Canon Tristram's
+  Mgr.  Mislin's protests against the growing rationalism
+  The work of Schaff and Osborn
+  Acceptance of the scientific view by leaders in the Church
+  Dr. Geikie's ascription of the myths to the Arabs
+  Mgr. Haussmann de Wandelburg and his rejection of the scientific
+  view
+  Service of theologians to religion in accepting the conclusions
+  of silence in this field
+
+
+
+  CHAPTER XIX.
+
+  FROM LEVITICUS TO POLITICAL ECONOMY
+
+  I.  ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF HOSTILITY TO LOANS AT INTEREST.
+  Universal belief in the sin of loaning money at interest
+  The taking of interest among the Greeks and Romans
+  Opposition of leaders of thought, especially Aristotle
+  Condemnation of the practice by the Old and New Testaments
+  By the Church fathers
+  In ecclesiastical and secular legislation
+  Exception sometimes made in behalf of the Jews
+  Hostility of the pulpit
+  Of the canon law
+  Evil results of the prohibition of loans at interest
+  Efforts to induce the Church to change her position
+  Theological evasions of the rule
+  Attitude of the Reformers toward the taking of interest
+  Struggle in England for recognition of the right to accept
+  interest
+  Invention of a distinction between usury and interest
+
+  II.  RETREAT OF THE CHURCH, PROTESTANT AND CATHOLIC.
+  Sir Robert Filmer's attack on the old doctrine
+  Retreat of the Protestant Church in Holland
+  In Germany and America
+  Difficulties in the way of compromise in the Catholic Church
+  Failure of such attempts in France
+  Theoretical condemnation of usury in Italy
+  Disregard of all restrictions in practice
+  Attempts of Escobar and Liguori to reconcile the taking of
+  interest with the teachings of the Church
+  Montesquieu's attack on the old theory
+  Encyclical of Benedict XIV permitting the taking of interest
+  Similar decision of the Inquisition at Rome
+  Final retreat of the Catholic Church
+  Curious dealings of theology with public economy in other fields
+
+
+
+  CHAPTER XX.
+
+  FROM THE DIVINE ORACLES TO THE HIGHER CRITICISM.
+
+
+  I.  THE OLDER INTERPRETATION.
+  Character of the great sacred
+  books of the world
+  General laws governing the development and influence of sacred
+  literature.--The law of its origin
+  Legends concerning the Septuagint
+  The law of wills and causes
+  The law of inerrancy
+  Hostility to the revision of King James's translation of the
+  Bible
+  The law of unity
+  Working of these laws seen in the great rabbinical schools
+  The law of allegorical interpretation
+  Philo
+  Judaeus
+  Justin Martyr and Clement of Alexandria
+  Occult significance of numbers
+  Origen
+  Hilary of Poitiers and Jerome
+  Augustine
+  Gregory the Great
+  Vain attempts to check the flood of allegorical interpretations
+  Bede.--Savonarola
+  Methods of modern criticism for the first time employed by
+  Lorenzo Valla
+  Erasmus
+  Influence of the Reformation on the belief in the infallibility
+  of the sacred books.--Luther and Melanchthon
+  Development of scholasticism in the Reformed Church
+  Catholic belief in the inspiration of the Vulgate
+  Opposition in Russia to the revision of the Slavonic Scriptures
+  Sir Isaac Newton as a commentator
+  Scriptural interpretation at the beginning of the eighteenth
+  century
+
+  II.  BEGINNINGS OF SCIENTIFIC INTERPRETATION.
+  Theological beliefs regarding the Pentateuch
+  The book of Genesis
+  Doubt thrown on the sacred theory by Aben Ezra
+  By Carlstadt and Maes
+  Influence of the discovery that the Isidorian
+  Decretals were forgeries
+  That the writings ascribed to Dionysius the Areopagite were
+  serious
+  Hobbes and La Peyrere
+  Spinoza
+  Progress of biblical criticism in France.--Richard Simon
+  LeClerc
+  Bishop Lowth
+  Astruc
+  Eichhorn's application of the "higher criticism" to biblical
+  research
+  Isenbiehl
+  Herder
+  Alexander Geddes
+  Opposition to the higher criticism in Germany
+  Hupfeld
+  Vatke and Reuss
+  Kuenen
+  Wellhausen
+
+  III.  THE CONTINUED GROWTH OF SCIENTIFIC INTERPRETATION.
+  Progress of the higher criticism in Germany and Holland
+  Opposition to it in England
+  At the University of Oxford
+  Pusey
+  Bentley
+  Wolf
+  Niebuhr and Arnold
+  Milman
+  Thirlwall and Grote
+  The publication of Essays and Reviews, and the storm raised by
+  book
+
+  IV.  THE CLOSING STRUGGLE.
+  Colenso's work on the Pentateuch
+  The persecution of him
+  Bishop Wilberforce's part in it
+  Dean Stanley's
+  Bishop Thirlwall's
+  Results of Colenso's work
+  Sanday's Bampton Lectures
+  Keble College and Lux
+  Mundi
+  Progress of biblical criticism among the dissenters
+  In France.--Renan
+  In the Roman Catholic Church
+  The encyclical letter of Pope Leo XIII
+  In America.--Theodore Parker
+  Apparent strength of the old theory of inspiration
+  Real strength of the new movement
+
+  V.  VICTORY OF THE SCIENTIFIC AND LITERARY METHODS.
+  Confirmation of the conclusions of the higher criticism by
+  Assyriology and Egyptology
+  Light thrown upon Hebrew religion by the translation of the
+  sacred books of the East
+  The influence of Persian thought.--The work of the Rev. Dr. Mills
+  The influence of Indian thought.--Light thrown by the study of
+  Brahmanism and Buddhism
+  The work of Fathers Huc and Gabet
+  Discovery that Buddha himself had been canonized as a Christian
+  saint
+  Similarity between the ideas and legends of Buddhism and those of
+  Christianity
+  The application of the higher criticism to the New Testament
+  The English "Revised Version" of Studies on the formation of the
+  canon of Scripture
+  Recognition of the laws governing its development
+  Change in the spirit of the controversy over the higher criticism
+
+  VI.  RECONSTRUCTIVE FORCE OF SCIENTIFIC CRITICISM.
+  Development of a scientific atmosphere during the last three
+  centuries
+  Action of modern science in reconstruction of religious truth
+
+  Change wrought by it in the conception of a sacred literature
+
+  Of the Divine Power.--Of man.---Of the world at large
+  Of our Bible
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.  FROM CREATION TO EVOLUTION.
+
+
+
+
+I. THE VISIBLE UNIVERSE.
+
+
+Among those masses of cathedral sculpture which preserve so much of
+medieval theology, one frequently recurring group is noteworthy for
+its presentment of a time-honoured doctrine regarding the origin of the
+universe.
+
+The Almighty, in human form, sits benignly, making the sun, moon, and
+stars, and hanging them from the solid firmament which supports the
+"heaven above" and overarches the "earth beneath."
+
+The furrows of thought on the Creator's brow show that in this work he
+is obliged to contrive; the knotted muscles upon his arms show that he
+is obliged to toil; naturally, then, the sculptors and painters of
+the medieval and early modern period frequently represented him as the
+writers whose conceptions they embodied had done--as, on the seventh
+day, weary after thought and toil, enjoying well-earned repose and the
+plaudits of the hosts of heaven.
+
+In these thought-fossils of the cathedrals, and in other revelations of
+the same idea through sculpture, painting, glass-staining, mosaic work,
+and engraving, during the Middle Ages and the two centuries following,
+culminated a belief which had been developed through thousands of years,
+and which has determined the world's thought until our own time.
+
+Its beginnings lie far back in human history; we find them among the
+early records of nearly all the great civilizations, and they hold a
+most prominent place in the various sacred books of the world. In nearly
+all of them is revealed the conception of a Creator of whom man is an
+imperfect image, and who literally and directly created the visible
+universe with his hands and fingers.
+
+Among these theories, of especial interest to us are those which
+controlled theological thought in Chaldea. The Assyrian inscriptions
+which have been recently recovered and given to the English-speaking
+peoples by Layard, George Smith, Sayce, and others, show that in the
+ancient religions of Chaldea and Babylonia there was elaborated a
+narrative of the creation which, in its most important features, must
+have been the source of that in our own sacred books. It has now become
+perfectly clear that from the same sources which inspired the accounts
+of the creation of the universe among the Chaldeo-Babylonian, the
+Assyrian, the Phoenician, and other ancient civilizations came the ideas
+which hold so prominent a place in the sacred books of the Hebrews. In
+the two accounts imperfectly fused together in Genesis, and also in
+the account of which we have indications in the book of Job and in the
+Proverbs, there, is presented, often with the greatest sublimity,
+the same early conception of the Creator and of the creation--the
+conception, so natural in the childhood of civilization, of a Creator
+who is an enlarged human being working literally with his own hands,
+and of a creation which is "the work of his fingers." To supplement this
+view there was developed the belief in this Creator as one who, having
+
+
+... "from his ample palm Launched forth the rolling planets into space."
+
+sits on high, enthroned "upon the circle of the heavens," perpetually
+controlling and directing them.
+
+From this idea of creation was evolved in time a somewhat nobler view.
+Ancient thinkers, and especially, as is now found, in Egypt, suggested
+that the main agency in creation was not the hands and fingers of the
+Creator, but his VOICE. Hence was mingled with the earlier, cruder
+belief regarding the origin of the earth and heavenly bodies by
+the Almighty the more impressive idea that "he spake and they were
+made"--that they were brought into existence by his WORD.(1)
+
+
+     (1) Among the many mediaeval representations of the creation of the
+universe, I especially recall from personal observation those sculptured
+above the portals of the cathedrals of Freiburg and Upsala, the
+paintings on the walls of the Campo Santo at Pisa, and most striking of
+all, the mosaics of the Cathedral of Monreale and those in the Capella
+Palatina at Palermo. Among peculiarities showing the simplicity of the
+earlier conception the representation of the response of the Almighty
+on the seventh day is very striking. He is shown as seated in almost the
+exact attitude of the "Weary Mercury" of classic sculpture--bent, and
+with a very marked expression of fatigue upon his countenance and in the
+whole disposition of his body.
+
+The Monreale mosaics are pictured in the great work of Gravina, and in
+the Pisa frescoes in Didron's Iconographie, Paris, 1843, p. 598. For
+an exact statement of the resemblances which have settled the question
+among the most eminent scholars in favour of the derivation of the
+Hebrew cosmogony from that of Assyria, see Jensen, Die Kosmologie
+der Babylonier, Strassburg, 1890, pp. 304,306; also Franz Lukas, Die
+Grundbegriffe in den Kosmographien der alten Volker, Leipsic, 1893,
+pp. 35-46; also George Smith's Chaldean Genesis, especially the German
+translation with additions by Delitzsch, Leipsic, 1876, and Schrader,
+Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament, Giessen, 1883, pp. 1-54,
+etc. See also Renan, Histoire du peuple d'Israel, vol. i, chap i,
+L'antique influence babylonienne. For Egyptian views regarding creation,
+and especially for the transition from the idea of creation by the hands
+and fingers of the Creator to creation by his VOICE and his "word," see
+Maspero and Sayce, The Dawn of Civilization, pp. 145-146.
+
+
+Among the early fathers of the Church this general view of creation
+became fundamental; they impressed upon Christendom more and more
+strongly the belief that the universe was created in a perfectly literal
+sense by the hands or voice of God. Here and there sundry theologians of
+larger mind attempted to give a more spiritual view regarding some parts
+of the creative work, and of these were St. Gregory of Nyssa and St.
+Augustine. Ready as they were to accept the literal text of Scripture,
+they revolted against the conception of an actual creation of the
+universe by the hands and fingers of a Supreme Being, and in this
+they were followed by Bede and a few others; but the more material
+conceptions prevailed, and we find these taking shape not only in the
+sculptures and mosaics and stained glass of cathedrals, and in the
+illuminations of missals and psalters, but later, at the close of the
+Middle Ages, in the pictured Bibles and in general literature.
+
+Into the Anglo-Saxon mind this ancient material conception of the
+creation was riveted by two poets whose works appealed especially to the
+deeper religious feelings. In the seventh century Caedmon paraphrased
+the account given in Genesis, bringing out this material conception in
+the most literal form; and a thousand years later Milton developed out
+of the various statements in the Old Testament, mingled with a theology
+regarding "the creative Word" which had been drawn from the New, his
+description of the creation by the second person in the Trinity, than
+which nothing could be more literal and material:
+
+     "He took the golden compasses, prepared
+     In God's eternal store, to circumscribe
+     This universe and all created things.
+     One foot he centred, and the other turned
+     Round through the vast profundity obscure,
+     And said, 'Thus far extend, thus far thy bounds:
+     This be thy just circumference, O world!'"(2)
+
+
+
+     (2) For Gregory of Nyssa, Augustine, and the general subject of the
+development of an evolution theory among the Greeks, see the excellent
+work by Dr. Osborn, From the Greeks to Darwin, pp.33 and following; for
+Caedmon, see any edition--I have used Bouterwek's, Gutersloh, 1854; for
+Milton, see Paradise Lost, book vii, lines 225-231.
+
+
+So much for the orthodox view of the MANNER of creation.
+
+The next point developed in this theologic evolution had reference to
+the MATTER of which the universe was made, and it was decided by an
+overwhelming majority that no material substance existed before the
+creation of the material universe--that "God created everything out of
+nothing." Some venturesome thinkers, basing their reasoning upon the
+first verses of Genesis, hinted at a different view--namely, that the
+mass, "without form and void," existed before the universe; but this
+doctrine was soon swept out of sight. The vast majority of the fathers
+were explicit on this point. Tertullian especially was very severe
+against those who took any other view than that generally accepted as
+orthodox: he declared that, if there had been any pre-existing matter
+out of which the world was formed, Scripture would have mentioned it;
+that by not mentioning it God has given us a clear proof that there
+was no such thing; and, after a manner not unknown in other theological
+controversies, he threatens Hermogenes, who takes the opposite view,
+with the woe which impends on all who add to or take away from the
+written word.
+
+St. Augustine, who showed signs of a belief in a pre-existence of
+matter, made his peace with the prevailing belief by the simple
+reasoning that, "although the world has been made of some material, that
+very same material must have been made out of nothing."
+
+In the wake of these great men the universal Church steadily followed.
+The Fourth Lateran Council declared that God created everything out
+of nothing; and at the present hour the vast majority of the
+faithful--whether Catholic or Protestant--are taught the same doctrine;
+on this point the syllabus of Pius IX and the Westminster Catechism
+fully agree.(3)
+
+
+
+     (3) For Tertullian, see Tertullian against Hermogenes, chaps. xx and
+xxii; for St. Augustine regarding "creation from nothing," see the De
+Genesi contra Manichaeos, lib, i, cap. vi; for St. Ambrose, see the
+Hexameron, lib, i, cap iv; for the decree of the Fourth Lateran Council,
+and the view received in the Church to-day, see the article Creation in
+Addis and Arnold's Catholic Dictionary.
+
+
+Having thus disposed of the manner and matter of creation, the next
+subject taken up by theologians was the TIME required for the great
+work.
+
+Here came a difficulty. The first of the two accounts given in Genesis
+extended the creative operation through six days, each of an evening
+and a morning, with much explicit detail regarding the progress made in
+each. But the second account spoke of "THE DAY" in which "the Lord God
+made the earth and the heavens." The explicitness of the first account
+and its naturalness to the minds of the great mass of early theologians
+gave it at first a decided advantage; but Jewish thinkers, like Philo,
+and Christian thinkers, like Origen, forming higher conceptions of
+the Creator and his work, were not content with this, and by them was
+launched upon the troubled sea of Christian theology the idea that the
+creation was instantaneous, this idea being strengthened not only by the
+second of the Genesis legends, but by the great text, "He spake, and
+it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast"--or, as it appears in
+the Vulgate and in most translations, "He spake, and they were made; he
+commanded, and they were created."
+
+As a result, it began to be held that the safe and proper course was to
+believe literally BOTH statements; that in some mysterious manner God
+created the universe in six days, and yet brought it all into existence
+in a moment. In spite of the outcries of sundry great theologians,
+like Ephrem Syrus, that the universe was created in exactly six days of
+twenty-four hours each, this compromise was promoted by St. Athanasius
+and St. Basil in the East, and by St. Augustine and St. Hilary in the
+West.
+
+Serious difficulties were found in reconciling these two views, which
+to the natural mind seem absolutely contradictory; but by ingenious
+manipulation of texts, by dexterous play upon phrases, and by the
+abundant use of metaphysics to dissolve away facts, a reconciliation
+was effected, and men came at least to believe that they believed in
+a creation of the universe instantaneous and at the same time extended
+through six days.(4)
+
+
+     (4) For Origen, see his Contra Celsum, cap xxxvi, xxxvii; also his
+De Principibus, cap. v; for St. Augustine, see his De Genesi conta
+Manichaeos and De Genesi ad Litteram, passim; for Athanasius, see his
+Discourses against the Arians, ii, 48,49.
+
+
+Some of the efforts to reconcile these two accounts were so fruitful as
+to deserve especial record. The fathers, Eastern and Western, developed
+out of the double account in Genesis, and the indications in the Psalms,
+the Proverbs, and the book of Job, a vast mass of sacred science bearing
+upon this point. As regards the whole work of creation, stress was laid
+upon certain occult powers in numerals. Philo Judaeus, while believing
+in an instantaneous creation, had also declared that the world was
+created in six days because "of all numbers six is the most productive";
+he had explained the creation of the heavenly bodies on the fourth day
+by "the harmony of the number four"; of the animals on the fifth day
+by the five senses; of man on the sixth day by the same virtues in the
+number six which had caused it to be set as a limit to the creative
+work; and, greatest of all, the rest on the seventh day by the vast mass
+of mysterious virtues in the number seven.
+
+St. Jerome held that the reason why God did not pronounce the work of
+the second day "good" is to be found in the fact that there is something
+essentially evil in the number two, and this was echoed centuries
+afterward, afar off in Britain, by Bede.
+
+St. Augustine brought this view to bear upon the Church in the following
+statement: "There are three classes of numbers--the more than perfect,
+the perfect, and the less than perfect, according as the sum of them
+is greater than, equal to, or less than the original number. Six is the
+first perfect number: wherefore we must not say that six is a perfect
+number because God finished all his works in six days, but that God
+finished all his works in six days because six is a perfect number."
+
+Reasoning of this sort echoed along through the mediaeval Church until
+a year after the discovery of America, when the Nuremberg Chronicle
+re-echoed it as follows: "The creation of things is explained by the
+number six, the parts of which, one, two, and three, assume the form of
+a triangle."
+
+This view of the creation of the universe as instantaneous and also as
+in six days, each made up of an evening and a morning, became virtually
+universal. Peter Lombard and Hugo of St. Victor, authorities of vast
+weight, gave it their sanction in the twelfth century, and impressed it
+for ages upon the mind of the Church.
+
+Both these lines of speculation--as to the creation of everything out
+of nothing, and the reconciling of the instantaneous creation of the
+universe with its creation in six days--were still further developed by
+other great thinkers of the Middle Ages.
+
+St. Hilary of Poictiers reconciled the two conceptions as follows: "For,
+although according to Moses there is an appearance of regular order
+in the fixing of the firmament, the laying bare of the dry land, the
+gathering together of the waters, the formation of the heavenly bodies,
+and the arising of living things from land and water, yet the creation
+of the heavens, earth, and other elements is seen to be the work of a
+single moment."
+
+St. Thomas Aquinas drew from St. Augustine a subtle distinction which
+for ages eased the difficulties in the case: he taught in effect that
+God created the substance of things in a moment, but gave to the work of
+separating, shaping, and adorning this creation, six days.(5)
+
+
+     (5) For Philo Judaeus, see his Creation of the World, chap. iii; for
+St. Augustine on the powers of numbers in creation, see his De Genesi ad
+Litteram iv, chap. ii; for Peter Lombard, see the Sententiae, lib. ii,
+dist. xv, 5; and for Hugo of St. Victor, see De Sacrementis, lib i, pars
+i; also, Annotat, Elucidat in Pentateuchum, cap. v, vi, vii; for St.
+Hilary, see De Trinitate, lib. xii; for St. Thomas Aquinas, see his
+Summa Theologica, quest lxxxiv, arts. i and ii; the passage in the
+Nuremberg Chronicle, 1493, is in fol. iii; for Vousset, see his Discours
+sur l'Histoire Universelle; for the sacredness of the number seven among
+the Babylonians, see especially Schrader, Die Keilinschriften und das
+Alte Testament, pp. 21,22; also George Smith et al.; for general ideas
+on the occult powers of various numbers, especially the number seven,
+and the influence of these ideas on theology and science, see my chapter
+on astronomy. As to medieaval ideas on the same subject, see Detzel,
+Christliche Ikonographie, Frieburg, 1894, pp. 44 and following.
+
+
+The early reformers accepted and developed the same view, and Luther
+especially showed himself equal to the occasion. With his usual boldness
+he declared, first, that Moses "spoke properly and plainly, and neither
+allegorically nor figuratively," and that therefore "the world with all
+creatures was created in six days." And he then goes on to show how, by
+a great miracle, the whole creation was also instantaneous.
+
+Melanchthon also insisted that the universe was created out of nothing
+and in a mysterious way, both in an instant and in six days, citing the
+text: "He spake, and they were made."
+
+Calvin opposed the idea of an instantaneous creation, and laid especial
+stress on the creation in six days: having called attention to the
+fact that the biblical chronology shows the world to be not quite
+six thousand years old and that it is now near its end, he says that
+"creation was extended through six days that it might not be tedious for
+us to occupy the whole of life in the consideration of it."
+
+Peter Martyr clinched the matter by declaring: "So important is it to
+comprehend the work of creation that we see the creed of the Church take
+this as its starting point. Were this article taken away there would be
+no original sin, the promise of Christ would become void, and all the
+vital force of our religion would be destroyed." The Westminster divines
+in drawing up their Confession of Faith specially laid it down as
+necessary to believe that all things visible and invisible were created
+not only out of nothing but in exactly six days.
+
+Nor were the Roman divines less strenuous than the Protestant reformers
+regarding the necessity of holding closely to the so-called Mosaic
+account of creation. As late as the middle of the eighteenth century,
+when Buffon attempted to state simple geological truths, the theological
+faculty of the Sorbonne forced him to make and to publish a most
+ignominious recantation which ended with these words: "I abandon
+everything in my book respecting the formation of the earth, and
+generally all which may be contrary to the narrative of Moses."
+
+Theologians, having thus settled the manner of the creation, the matter
+used in it, and the time required for it, now exerted themselves to fix
+its DATE.
+
+The long series of efforts by the greatest minds in the Church, from
+Eusebius to Archbishop Usher, to settle this point are presented in
+another chapter. Suffice it here that the general conclusion arrived
+at by an overwhelming majority of the most competent students of the
+biblical accounts was that the date of creation was, in round numbers,
+four thousand years before our era; and in the seventeenth century, in
+his great work, Dr. John Lightfoot, Vice-Chancellor of the University
+of Cambridge, and one of the most eminent Hebrew scholars of his time,
+declared, as the result of his most profound and exhaustive study of
+the Scriptures, that "heaven and earth, centre and circumference, were
+created all together, in the same instant, and clouds full of water,"
+and that "this work took place and man was created by the Trinity on
+October 23, 4004 B. C., at nine o'clock in the morning."
+
+Here was, indeed, a triumph of Lactantius's method, the result of
+hundreds of years of biblical study and theological thought since Bede
+in the eighth century, and Vincent of Beauvais in the thirteenth, had
+declared that creation must have taken place in the spring. Yet, alas!
+within two centuries after Lightfoot's great biblical demonstration as
+to the exact hour of creation, it was discovered that at that hour
+an exceedingly cultivated people, enjoying all the fruits of a highly
+developed civilization, had long been swarming in the great cities of
+Egypt, and that other nations hardly less advanced had at that time
+reached a high development in Asia.(6)
+
+
+     (6) For Luther, see his Commentary on Genesis, 1545, introduction,
+and his comments on chap. i, verse 12; the quotations from Luther's
+commentary are taken mainly from the translation by Henry Cole, D.D.,
+Edinburgh, 1858; for Melanchthon, see Loci Theologici, in Melanchthon,
+Opera, ed. Bretschneider, vol. xxi, pp. 269, 270, also pp. 637, 638--in
+quoting the text (Ps. xxiii, 9) I have used, as does Melanchthon
+himself, the form of the Vulgate; for the citations from Calvin, see his
+Commentary on Genesis (Opera omnia, Amsterdam, 1671, tom. i, cap. ii, p.
+8); also in the Institutes, Allen's translation, London, 1838, vol.
+i, chap. xv, pp. 126,127; for the Peter Martyr, see his Commentary
+on Genesis, cited by Zockler, vol. i, p. 690; for articles in the
+Westminster Confession of Faith, see chap. iv; for Buffon's recantation,
+see Lyell, Principles of Geology, chap iii, p. 57. For Lightfoot's
+declaration, see his works, edited by Pitman, London, 1822.
+
+
+But, strange as it may seem, even after theologians had thus settled the
+manner of creation, the matter employed in it, the time required for it,
+and the exact date of it, there remained virtually unsettled the
+first and greatest question of all; and this was nothing less than the
+question, WHO actually created the universe?
+
+Various theories more or less nebulous, but all centred in texts of
+Scripture, had swept through the mind of the Church. By some theologians
+it was held virtually that the actual creative agent was the third
+person of the Trinity, who, in the opening words of our sublime creation
+poem, "moved upon the face of the waters." By others it was held that
+the actual Creator was the second person of the Trinity, in behalf of
+whose agency many texts were cited from the New Testament. Others held
+that the actual Creator was the first person, and this view was embodied
+in the two great formulas known as the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds,
+which explicitly assigned the work to "God the Father Almighty, Maker of
+heaven and earth." Others, finding a deep meaning in the words "Let US
+make," ascribed in Genesis to the Creator, held that the entire Trinity
+directly created all things; and still others, by curious metaphysical
+processes, seemed to arrive at the idea that peculiar combinations of
+two persons of the Trinity achieved the creation.
+
+In all this there would seem to be considerable courage in view of the
+fearful condemnations launched in the Athanasian Creed against all who
+should "confound the persons" or "divide the substance of the Trinity."
+
+These various stages in the evolution of scholastic theology were
+also embodied in sacred art, and especially in cathedral sculpture, in
+glass-staining, in mosaic working, and in missal painting.
+
+The creative Being is thus represented sometimes as the third person of
+the Trinity, in the form of a dove brooding over chaos; sometimes as the
+second person, and therefore a youth; sometimes as the first person,
+and therefore fatherly and venerable; sometimes as the first and second
+persons, one being venerable and the other youthful; and sometimes
+as three persons, one venerable and one youthful, both wearing papal
+crowns, and each holding in his lips a tip of the wing of the dove,
+which thus seems to proceed from both and to be suspended between them.
+
+Nor was this the most complete development of the medieval idea. The
+Creator was sometimes represented with a single body, but with three
+faces, thus showing that Christian belief had in some pious minds gone
+through substantially the same cycle which an earlier form of belief had
+made ages before in India, when the Supreme Being was represented with
+one body but with the three faces of Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva.
+
+But at the beginning of the modern period the older view in its
+primitive Jewish form was impressed upon Christians by the most mighty
+genius in art the world has known; for in 1512, after four years of
+Titanic labour, Michael Angelo uncovered his frescoes within the vault
+of the Sistine Chapel.
+
+They had been executed by the command and under the sanction of the
+ruling Pope, Julius II, to represent the conception of Christian
+theology then dominant, and they remain to-day in all their majesty
+to show the highest point ever attained by the older thought upon the
+origin of the visible universe.
+
+In the midst of the expanse of heaven the Almighty Father--the first
+person of the Trinity--in human form, august and venerable, attended by
+angels and upborne by mighty winds, sweeps over the abyss, and, moving
+through successive compartments of the great vault, accomplishes the
+work of the creative days. With a simple gesture he divides the light
+from the darkness, rears on high the solid firmament, gathers together
+beneath it the seas, or summons into existence the sun, moon, and
+planets, and sets them circling about the earth.
+
+In this sublime work culminated the thought of thousands of years; the
+strongest minds accepted it or pretended to accept it, and nearly two
+centuries later this conception, in accordance with the first of the
+two accounts given in Genesis, was especially enforced by Bossuet,
+and received a new lease of life in the Church, both Catholic and
+Protestant.(7)
+
+
+     (7) For strange representations of the Creator and of the creation by
+one, two, or three persons of the Trinity, see Didron, Iconographie
+Chretienne, pp. 35, 178, 224, 483, 567-580, and elsewhere; also Detzel
+as already cited. The most naive of all survivals of the mediaeval idea
+of creation which the present writer has ever seen was exhibited in
+1894 on the banner of one of the guilds at the celebration of the
+four-hundredth anniversary of the founding of the Munich Cathedral.
+Jesus of Nazareth, as a beautiful boy and with a nimbus encircling his
+head, was shown turning and shaping the globe on a lathe, which he keeps
+in motion with his foot. The emblems of the Passion are about him,
+God the Father looking approvingly upon him from a cloud, and the dove
+hovering between the two. The date upon the banner was 1727.
+
+
+But to these discussions was added yet another, which, beginning in the
+early days of the Church, was handed down the ages until it had died out
+among the theologians of our own time.
+
+In the first of the biblical accounts light is created and the
+distinction between day and night thereby made on the first day,
+while the sun and moon are not created until the fourth day. Masses of
+profound theological and pseudo-scientific reasoning have been developed
+to account for this--masses so great that for ages they have obscured
+the simple fact that the original text is a precious revelation to us of
+one of the most ancient of recorded beliefs--the belief that light and
+darkness are entities independent of the heavenly bodies, and that the
+sun, moon, and stars exist not merely to increase light but to "divide
+the day from the night, to be for signs and for seasons, and for days
+and for years," and "to rule the day and the night."
+
+Of this belief we find survivals among the early fathers, and especially
+in St. Ambrose. In his work on creation he tells us: "We must remember
+that the light of day is one thing and the light of the sun, moon,
+and stars another--the sun by his rays appearing to add lustre to
+the daylight. For before sunrise the day dawns, but is not in full
+refulgence, for the sun adds still further to its splendour." This
+idea became one of the "treasures of sacred knowledge committed to the
+Church," and was faithfully received by the Middle Ages. The medieval
+mysteries and miracle plays give curious evidences of this: In a
+performance of the creation, when God separates light from darkness, the
+stage direction is, "Now a painted cloth is to be exhibited, one half
+black and the other half white." It was also given more permanent form.
+In the mosaics of San Marco at Venice, in the frescoes of the Baptistery
+at Florence and of the Church of St. Francis at Assisi, and in the altar
+carving at Salerno, we find a striking realization of it--the Creator
+placing in the heavens two disks or living figures of equal size, each
+suitably coloured or inscribed to show that one represents light and the
+other darkness. This conception was without doubt that of the person or
+persons who compiled from the Chaldean and other earlier statements the
+accounts of the creation in the first of our sacred books.(8)
+
+
+     (8) For scriptural indications of the independent existence of light and
+darkness, compare with the first verses of the chapter of Genesis such
+passages as Job xxxviii, 19,24; for the general prevalence of this early
+view, see Lukas, Kosmogonie, pp. 31, 33, 41, 74, and passim; for the
+view of St. Ambrose regarding the creation of light and of the sun, see
+his Hexameron, lib. 4, cap. iii; for an excellent general statement,
+see Huxley, Mr. Gladstone and Genesis, in the Nineteenth Century, 1886,
+reprinted in his Essays on Controverted Questions, London, 1892,
+note, pp. 126 et seq.; for the acceptance in the miracle plays of the
+scriptural idea of light and darkness as independent creations, see
+Wright, Essays on Archeological Subjects, vol. ii, p.178; for an
+account, with illustrations, of the mosaics, etc., representing this
+idea, see Tikkanen, Die Genesis-mosaiken von San Marco, Helsingfors,
+1889, p. 14 and 16 of the text and Plates I and II. Very naively the
+Salerno carver, not wishing to colour the ivory which he wrought, has
+inscribed on one disk the word "LUX" and on the other "NOX." See also
+Didron, Iconographie, p. 482.
+
+
+Thus, down to a period almost within living memory, it was held,
+virtually "always, everywhere, and by all," that the universe, as we now
+see it, was created literally and directly by the voice or hands of the
+Almighty, or by both--out of nothing--in an instant or in six days, or
+in both--about four thousand years before the Christian era--and for the
+convenience of the dwellers upon the earth, which was at the base and
+foundation of the whole structure.
+
+But there had been implanted along through the ages germs of another
+growth in human thinking, some of them even as early as the
+Babylonian period. In the Assyrian inscriptions we find recorded the
+Chaldeo-Babylonian idea of AN EVOLUTION of the universe out of the
+primeval flood or "great deep," and of the animal creation out of the
+earth and sea. This idea, recast, partially at least, into monotheistic
+form, passed naturally into the sacred books of the neighbours and
+pupils of the Chaldeans--the Hebrews; but its growth in Christendom
+afterward was checked, as we shall hereafter find, by the more powerful
+influence of other inherited statements which appealed more intelligibly
+to the mind of the Church.
+
+Striking, also, was the effect of this idea as rewrought by the early
+Ionian philosophers, to whom it was probably transmitted from the
+Chaldeans through the Phoenicians. In the minds of Ionians like
+Anaximander and Anaximenes it was most clearly developed: the first of
+these conceiving of the visible universe as the result of processes of
+evolution, and the latter pressing further the same mode of reasoning,
+and dwelling on agencies in cosmic development recognised in modern
+science.
+
+This general idea of evolution in Nature thus took strong hold upon
+Greek thought and was developed in many ways, some ingenious, some
+perverse. Plato, indeed, withstood it; but Aristotle sometimes developed
+it in a manner which reminds us of modern views.
+
+Among the Romans Lucretius caught much from it, extending the
+evolutionary process virtually to all things.
+
+In the early Church, as we have seen, the idea of a creation direct,
+material, and by means like those used by man, was all-powerful for the
+exclusion of conceptions based on evolution. From the more simple and
+crude of the views of creation given in the Babylonian legends, and
+thence incorporated into Genesis, rose the stream of orthodox thought
+on the subject, which grew into a flood and swept on through the Middle
+Ages and into modern times. Yet here and there in the midst of this
+flood were high grounds of thought held by strong men. Scotus Erigena
+and Duns Scotus, among the schoolmen, bewildered though they were,
+had caught some rays of this ancient light, and passed on to their
+successors, in modified form, doctrines of an evolutionary process in
+the universe.
+
+In the latter half of the sixteenth century these evolutionary theories
+seemed to take more definite form in the mind of Giordano Bruno, who
+evidently divined the fundamental idea of what is now known as the
+"nebular hypothesis"; but with his murder by the Inquisition at Rome
+this idea seemed utterly to disappear--dissipated by the flames which in
+1600 consumed his body on the Campo dei Fiori.
+
+Yet within the two centuries divided by Bruno's death the world was led
+into a new realm of thought in which an evolution theory of the visible
+universe was sure to be rapidly developed. For there came, one after
+the other, five of the greatest men our race has produced--Copernicus,
+Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, and Newton--and when their work was done
+the old theological conception of the universe was gone. "The spacious
+firmament on high"--"the crystalline spheres"--the Almighty enthroned
+upon "the circle of the heavens," and with his own lands, or with angels
+as his agents, keeping sun, moon, and planets in motion for the benefit
+of the earth, opening and closing the "windows of heaven," letting down
+upon the earth the "waters above the firmament," "setting his bow in the
+cloud," hanging out "signs and wonders," hurling comets, "casting forth
+lightnings" to scare the wicked, and "shaking the earth" in his wrath:
+all this had disappeared.
+
+These five men had given a new divine revelation to the world; and
+through the last, Newton, had come a vast new conception, destined to
+be fatal to the old theory of creation, for he had shown throughout the
+universe, in place of almighty caprice, all-pervading law. The bitter
+opposition of theology to the first four of these men is well known;
+but the fact is not so widely known that Newton, in spite of his deeply
+religious spirit, was also strongly opposed. It was vigorously urged
+against him that by his statement of the law of gravitation he "took
+from God that direct action on his works so constantly ascribed to him
+in Scripture and transferred it to material mechanism," and that he
+"substituted gravitation for Providence."
+
+But, more than this, these men gave a new basis for the theory of
+evolution as distinguished from the theory of creation.
+
+Especially worthy of note is it that the great work of Descartes,
+erroneous as many of its deductions were, and, in view of the lack of
+physical knowledge in his time, must be, had done much to weaken the
+old conception. His theory of a universe brought out of all-pervading
+matter, wrought into orderly arrangement by movements in accordance with
+physical laws--though it was but a provisional hypothesis--had done much
+to draw men's minds from the old theological view of creation; it was an
+example of intellectual honesty arriving at errors, but thereby aiding
+the advent of truths. Crippled though Descartes was by his almost
+morbid fear of the Church, this part of his work was no small factor
+in bringing in that attitude of mind which led to a reception of the
+thoughts of more unfettered thinkers.
+
+Thirty years later came, in England, an effort of a different sort, but
+with a similar result. In 1678 Ralph Cudworth published his Intellectual
+System of the Universe. To this day he remains, in breadth of
+scholarship, in strength of thought, in tolerance, and in honesty, one
+of the greatest glories of the English Church, and his work was
+worthy of him. He purposed to build a fortress which should protect
+Christianity against all dangerous theories of the universe, ancient
+or modern. The foundations of the structure were laid with old thoughts
+thrown often into new and striking forms; but, as the superstructure
+arose more and more into view, while genius marked every part of it,
+features appeared which gave the rigidly orthodox serious misgivings.
+From the old theories of direct personal action on the universe by the
+Almighty he broke utterly. He dwelt on the action of law, rejected the
+continuous exercise of miraculous intervention, pointed out the fact
+that in the natural world there are "errors" and "bungles," and argued
+vigorously in favour of the origin and maintenance of the universe as
+a slow and gradual development of Nature in obedience to an inward
+principle. The Balaks of seventeenth-century orthodoxy might well
+condemn this honest Balaam.
+
+Toward the end of the next century a still more profound genius,
+Immanuel Kant, presented the nebular theory, giving it, in the light of
+Newton's great utterances, a consistency which it never before had; and
+about the same time Laplace gave it yet greater strength by mathematical
+reasonings of wonderful power and extent, thus implanting firmly in
+modern thought the idea that our own solar system and others--suns,
+planets, satellites, and their various movements, distances, and
+magnitudes--necessarily result from the obedience of nebulous masses to
+natural laws.
+
+Throughout the theological world there was an outcry at once against
+"atheism," and war raged fiercely. Herschel and others pointed out
+many nebulous patches apparently gaseous. They showed by physical and
+mathematical demonstrations that the hypothesis accounted for the great
+body of facts, and, despite clamour, were gaining ground, when the
+improved telescopes resolved some of the patches of nebulous matter
+into multitudes of stars. The opponents of the nebular hypothesis were
+overjoyed; they now sang paeans to astronomy, because, as they said,
+it had proved the truth of Scripture. They had jumped to the conclusion
+that all nebula must be alike; that, if SOME are made up of systems of
+stars, ALL must be so made up; that none can be masses of attenuated
+gaseous matter, because some are not.
+
+Science halted for a time. The accepted doctrine became this: that the
+only reason why all the nebula are not resolved into distinct stars is
+that our telescopes are not sufficiently powerful. But in time came
+the discovery of the spectroscope and spectrum analysis, and thence
+Fraunhofer's discovery that the spectrum of an ignited gaseous body is
+non-continuous, with interrupting lines; and Draper's discovery that the
+spectrum of an ignited solid is continuous, with no interrupting lines.
+And now the spectroscope was turned upon the nebula, and many of them
+were found to be gaseous. Here, then, was ground for the inference
+that in these nebulous masses at different stages of condensation--some
+apparently mere pitches of mist, some with luminous centres--we have the
+process of development actually going on, and observations like those of
+Lord Rosse and Arrest gave yet further confirmation to this view. Then
+came the great contribution of the nineteenth century to physics, aiding
+to explain important parts of the vast process by the mechanical theory
+of heat.
+
+Again the nebular hypothesis came forth stronger than ever, and about
+1850 the beautiful experiment of Plateau on the rotation of a fluid
+globe came in apparently to illustrate if not to confirm it. Even so
+determined a defender of orthodoxy as Mr. Gladstone at last acknowledged
+some form of a nebular hypothesis as probably true.
+
+Here, too, was exhibited that form of surrendering theological views
+to science under the claim that science concurs with theology, which we
+have seen in so many other fields; and, as typical, an example may
+be given, which, however restricted in its scope, throws light on the
+process by which such surrenders are obtained. A few years since one of
+the most noted professors of chemistry in the city of New York, under
+the auspices of one of its most fashionable churches, gave a lecture
+which, as was claimed in the public prints and in placards posted in the
+streets, was to show that science supports the theory of creation given
+in the sacred books ascribed to Moses. A large audience assembled, and
+a brilliant series of elementary experiments with oxygen, hydrogen,
+and carbonic acid was concluded by the Plateau demonstration. It was
+beautifully made. As the coloured globule of oil, representing the
+earth, was revolved in a transparent medium of equal density, as it
+became flattened at the poles, as rings then broke forth from it and
+revolved about it, and, finally, as some of these rings broke into
+satellites, which for a moment continued to circle about the central
+mass, the audience, as well they might, rose and burst into rapturous
+applause.
+
+Thereupon a well-to-do citizen arose and moved the thanks of the
+audience to the eminent professor for "this perfect demonstration of the
+exact and literal conformity of the statements given in Holy Scripture
+with the latest results of science." The motion was carried unanimously
+and with applause, and the audience dispersed, feeling that a great
+service had been rendered to orthodoxy. Sancta simplicitas!
+
+What this incident exhibited on a small scale has been seen elsewhere
+with more distinguished actors and on a broader stage. Scores of
+theologians, chief among whom of late, in zeal if not in knowledge, has
+been Mr. Gladstone, have endeavoured to "reconcile" the two accounts in
+Genesis with each other and with the truths regarding the origin of
+the universe gained by astronomy, geology, geography, physics, and
+chemistry. The result has been recently stated by an eminent theologian,
+the Hulsean Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge.
+He declares, "No attempt at reconciling genesis with the exacting
+requirements of modern sciences has ever been known to succeed without
+entailing a degree of special pleading or forced interpretation to
+which, in such a question, we should be wise to have no recourse."(9)
+
+
+     (9) For an interesting reference to the outcry against Newton, see
+McCosh, The Religious Aspect of Evolution, New York, 1890, pp. 103,
+104; for germs of an evolutionary view among the Babylonians, see George
+Smith, Chaldean Account of Genesis, New York, 1876, pp. 74, 75; for a
+germ of the same thought in Lucretius, see his De Natura Rerum, lib.
+v, pp.187-194, 447-454; for Bruno's conjecture (in 1591), see Jevons,
+Principles of Science, London, 1874, vol. ii, p. 36; for Kant's
+statement, see his Naturgeschichte des Himmels; for his part in the
+nebular hypothesis, see Lange, Geschichte des Materialismus, vol. i,
+p.266; for the value of Plateau's beautiful experiment, very cautiously
+estimated, see Jevons, vol. ii, p. 36; also Elisee Reclus, The Earth,
+translated by Woodward, vol. i, pp. 14-18, for an estimate still more
+careful; for a general account of discoveries of the nature of nebulae
+by spectroscope, see Draper, Conflict between Religion and Science; for
+a careful discussion regarding the spectra of solid, liquid, and gaseous
+bodies, see Schellen, Spectrum Analysis, pp. 100 et seq.; for a very
+thorough discussion of the bearings of discoveries made by spectrum
+analysis upon the nebular hypothesis, ibid., pp. 532-537; for a
+presentation of the difficulties yet unsolved, see an article by Plummer
+in the London Popular Science Review for January, 1875; for an excellent
+short summary of recent observations and thoughts on this subject, see
+T. Sterry Hunt, Address at the Priestley Centennial, pp. 7, 8; for an
+interesting modification of this hypothesis, see Proctor's writings; for
+a still more recent view see Lockyer's two articles on The Sun's Place
+in Nature for February 14 and 25, 1895.
+
+
+The revelations of another group of sciences, though sometimes bitterly
+opposed and sometimes "reconciled" by theologians, have finally set
+the whole question at rest. First, there have come the biblical
+critics--earnest Christian scholars, working for the sake of truth--and
+these have revealed beyond the shadow of a reasonable doubt the
+existence of at least two distinct accounts of creation in our book of
+Genesis, which can sometimes be forced to agree, but which are generally
+absolutely at variance with each other. These scholars have further
+shown the two accounts to be not the cunningly devised fables of
+priestcraft, but evidently fragments of earlier legends, myths, and
+theologies, accepted in good faith and brought together for the noblest
+of purposes by those who put in order the first of our sacred books.
+
+Next have come the archaeologists and philologists, the devoted students
+of ancient monuments and records; of these are such as Rawlinson, George
+Smith, Sayce, Oppert, Jensen, Schrader, Delitzsch, and a phalanx of
+similarly devoted scholars, who have deciphered a multitude of ancient
+texts, especially the inscriptions found in the great library of
+Assurbanipal at Nineveh, and have discovered therein an account of the
+origin of the world identical in its most important features with the
+later accounts in our own book of Genesis.
+
+These men have had the courage to point out these facts and to connect
+them with the truth that these Chaldean and Babylonian myths, legends,
+and theories were far earlier than those of the Hebrews, which so
+strikingly resemble them, and which we have in our sacred books; and
+they have also shown us how natural it was that the Jewish accounts of
+the creation should have been obtained at that remote period when the
+earliest Hebrews were among the Chaldeans, and how the great Hebrew
+poetic accounts of creation were drawn either from the sacred traditions
+of these earlier peoples or from antecedent sources common to various
+ancient nations.
+
+In a summary which for profound thought and fearless integrity does
+honour not only to himself but to the great position which he holds,
+the Rev. Dr. Driver, Professor of Hebrew and Canon of Christ Church at
+Oxford, has recently stated the case fully and fairly. Having pointed
+out the fact that the Hebrews were one people out of many who thought
+upon the origin of the universe, he says that they "framed theories to
+account for the beginnings of the earth and man"; that "they either did
+this for themselves or borrowed those of their neighbours"; that "of the
+theories current in Assyria and Phoenicia fragments have been preserved,
+and these exhibit points of resemblance with the biblical narrative
+sufficient to warrant the inference that both are derived from the same
+cycle of tradition."
+
+After giving some extracts from the Chaldean creation tablets he says:
+"In the light of these facts it is difficult to resist the conclusion
+that the biblical narrative is drawn from the same source as these other
+records. The biblical historians, it is plain, derived their materials
+from the best human sources available.... The materials which with other
+nations were combined into the crudest physical theories or associated
+with a grotesque polytheism were vivified and transformed by the
+inspired genius of the Hebrew historians, and adapted to become the
+vehicle of profound religious truth."
+
+Not less honourable to the sister university and to himself is the
+statement recently made by the Rev. Dr. Ryle, Hulsean Professor of
+Divinity at Cambridge. He says that to suppose that a Christian "must
+either renounce his confidence in the achievements of scientific
+research or abandon his faith in Scripture is a monstrous perversion of
+Christian freedom." He declares: "The old position is no longer tenable;
+a new position has to be taken up at once, prayerfully chosen, and
+hopefully held." He then goes on to compare the Hebrew story of creation
+with the earlier stories developed among kindred peoples, and especially
+with the pre-existing Assyro-Babylonian cosmogony, and shows that they
+are from the same source. He points out that any attempt to explain
+particular features of the story into harmony with the modern scientific
+ideas necessitates "a non-natural" interpretation; but he says that, if
+we adopt a natural interpretation, "we shall consider that the Hebrew
+description of the visible universe is unscientific as judged by modern
+standards, and that it shares the limitations of the imperfect knowledge
+of the age at which it was committed to writing." Regarding the account
+in Genesis of man's physical origin, he says that it "is expressed
+in the simple terms of prehistoric legend, of unscientific pictorial
+description."
+
+In these statements and in a multitude of others made by eminent
+Christian investigators in other countries is indicated what the victory
+is which has now been fully won over the older theology.
+
+Thus, from the Assyrian researches as well as from other sources, it
+has come to be acknowledged by the most eminent scholars at the leading
+seats of Christian learning that the accounts of creation with which
+for nearly two thousand years all scientific discoveries have had to
+be "reconciled"--the accounts which blocked the way of Copernicus, and
+Galileo, and Newton, and Laplace--were simply transcribed or evolved
+from a mass of myths and legends largely derived by the Hebrews from
+their ancient relations with Chaldea, rewrought in a monotheistic sense,
+imperfectly welded together, and then thrown into poetic forms in the
+sacred books which we have inherited.
+
+On one hand, then, we have the various groups of men devoted to the
+physical sciences all converging toward the proofs that the universe,
+as we at present know it, is the result of an evolutionary process--that
+is, of the gradual working of physical laws upon an early condition of
+matter; on the other hand, we have other great groups of men devoted to
+historical, philological, and archaeological science whose researches
+all converge toward the conclusion that our sacred accounts of creation
+were the result of an evolution from an early chaos of rude opinion.
+
+The great body of theologians who have so long resisted the conclusions
+of the men of science have claimed to be fighting especially for "the
+truth of Scripture," and their final answer to the simple conclusions
+of science regarding the evolution of the material universe has been the
+cry, "The Bible is true." And they are right--though in a sense nobler
+than they have dreamed. Science, while conquering them, has found in our
+Scriptures a far nobler truth than that literal historical exactness for
+which theologians have so long and so vainly contended. More and more
+as we consider the results of the long struggle in this field we are
+brought to the conclusion that the inestimable value of the great sacred
+books of the world is found in their revelation of the steady striving
+of our race after higher conceptions, beliefs, and aspirations, both
+in morals and religion. Unfolding and exhibiting this long-continued
+effort, each of the great sacred books of the world is precious, and
+all, in the highest sense, are true. Not one of them, indeed, conforms
+to the measure of what mankind has now reached in historical and
+scientific truth; to make a claim to such conformity is folly, for it
+simply exposes those who make it and the books for which it is made to
+loss of their just influence.
+
+That to which the great sacred books of the world conform, and our own
+most of all, is the evolution of the highest conceptions, beliefs,
+and aspirations of our race from its childhood through the great
+turning-points in its history. Herein lies the truth of all bibles, and
+especially of our own. Of vast value they indeed often are as a record
+of historical outward fact; recent researches in the East are constantly
+increasing this value; but it is not for this that we prize them most:
+they are eminently precious, not as a record of outward fact, but as
+a mirror of the evolving heart, mind, and soul of man. They are true
+because they have been developed in accordance with the laws governing
+the evolution of truth in human history, and because in poem, chronicle,
+code, legend, myth, apologue, or parable they reflect this development
+of what is best in the onward march of humanity. To say that they are
+not true is as if one should say that a flower or a tree or a planet is
+not true; to scoff at them is to scoff at the law of the universe. In
+welding together into noble form, whether in the book of Genesis, or in
+the Psalms, or in the book of Job, or elsewhere, the great conceptions
+of men acting under earlier inspiration, whether in Egypt, or Chaldea,
+or India, or Persia, the compilers of our sacred books have given to
+humanity a possession ever becoming more and more precious; and modern
+science, in substituting a new heaven and a new earth for the old--the
+reign of law for the reign of caprice, and the idea of evolution for
+that of creation--has added and is steadily adding a new revelation
+divinely inspired.
+
+In the light of these two evolutions, then--one of the visible universe,
+the other of a sacred creation-legend--science and theology, if the
+master minds in both are wise, may at last be reconciled. A great
+step in this reconciliation was recently seen at the main centre
+of theological thought among English-speaking people, when, in the
+collection of essays entitled Lux Mundi, emanating from the college
+established in these latter days as a fortress of orthodoxy at Oxford,
+the legendary character of the creation accounts in our sacred books was
+acknowledged, and when the Archbishop of Canterbury asked, "May not the
+Holy Spirit at times have made use of myth and legend?"(10)
+
+
+     (10) For the first citations above made, see The Cosmogony of Genesis,
+by the Rev. S. R. Driver, D.D., Canon of Christ Church and Regius
+Professor of Hebrew at Oxford, in the Expositor for January, 1886; for
+the second series of citations, see the Early Narratives of Genesis, by
+Herbert Edward Ryle, Hulsean Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, London,
+1892. For evidence that even the stiffest of Scotch Presbyterians have
+come to discard the old literal biblical narrative of creation and
+to regard the declaration of the Westminster Confession thereon as
+a "disproved theory of creation," see Principal John Tulloch,
+in Contemporary Review, March, 1877, on Religious Thought in
+Scotland--especially page 550.
+
+
+
+
+II. THEOLOGICAL TEACHINGS REGARDING THE ANIMALS AND MAN.
+
+In one of the windows of the cathedral at Ulm a mediaeval glass-stainer
+has represented the Almighty as busily engaged in creating the animals,
+and there has just left the divine hands an elephant fully
+accoutred, with armour, harness, and housings, ready-for war. Similar
+representations appear in illuminated manuscripts and even in early
+printed books, and, as the culmination of the whole, the Almighty is
+shown as fashioning the first man from a hillock of clay and extracting
+from his side, with evident effort, the first woman.
+
+This view of the general process of creation had come from far,
+appearing under varying forms in various ancient cosmogonies. In
+the Egyptian temples at Philae and Denderah may still be seen
+representations of the Nile gods modelling lumps of clay into men, and
+a similar work is ascribed in the Assyrian tablets to the gods of
+Babylonia. Passing into our own sacred books, these ideas became the
+starting point of a vast new development of theology.(11)
+
+
+     (11) For representations of Egyptian gods creating men out of lumps
+of clay, see Maspero and Sayce, The Dawn of History, p. 156; for the
+Chaldean legends of the creation of men and animals, see ibid., p. 543;
+see also George Smith, Chaldean Accounts of Genesis, Sayce's edition,
+pp. 36, 72, and 93; also for similar legends in other ancient nations,
+Lenormant, Origines de l'Histoire, pp. 17 et seq.; for mediaeval
+representations of the creation of man and woman, see Didron,
+Iconographie, pp. 35, 178, 224, 537.
+
+
+The fathers of the Church generally received each of the two conflicting
+creation legends in Genesis literally, and then, having done their best
+to reconcile them with each other and to mould them together, made them
+the final test of thought upon the universe and all things therein. At
+the beginning of the fourth century Lactantius struck the key-note of
+this mode of subordinating all other things in the study of creation to
+the literal text of Scripture, and he enforces his view of the creation
+of man by a bit of philology, saying the final being created "is called
+man because he is made from the ground--homo ex humo."
+
+In the second half of the same century this view as to the literal
+acceptance of the sacred text was reasserted by St. Ambrose, who, in his
+work on the creation, declared that "Moses opened his mouth and poured
+forth what God had said to him." But a greater than either of them
+fastened this idea into the Christian theologies. St. Augustine,
+preparing his Commentary on the Book of Genesis, laid down in one famous
+sentence the law which has lasted in the Church until our own time:
+"Nothing is to be accepted save on the authority of Scripture, since
+greater is that authority than all the powers of the human mind." The
+vigour of the sentence in its original Latin carried it ringing down the
+centuries: "Major est Scripturae auctoritas quam omnis humani ingenii
+capacitas."
+
+Through the mediaeval period, in spite of a revolt led by no other
+than St. Augustine himself, and followed by a series of influential
+churchmen, contending, as we shall hereafter see, for a modification of
+the accepted view of creation, this phrase held the minds of men firmly.
+The great Dominican encyclopaedist, Vincent of Beauvais, in his Mirror
+of Nature, while mixing ideas brought from Aristotle with a theory
+drawn from the Bible, stood firmly by the first of the accounts given in
+Genesis, and assigned the special virtue of the number six as a reason
+why all things were created in six days; and in the later Middle Ages
+that eminent authority, Cardinal d' Ailly, accepted everything regarding
+creation in the sacred books literally. Only a faint dissent is seen
+in Gregory Reisch, another authority of this later period, who, while
+giving, in his book on the beginning of things, a full length woodcut
+showing the Almighty in the act of extracting Eve from Adam's side,
+with all the rest of new-formed Nature in the background, leans in his
+writings, like St. Augustine, toward a belief in the pre-existence of
+matter.
+
+At the Reformation the vast authority of Luther was thrown in favour
+of the literal acceptance of Scripture as the main source of natural
+science. The allegorical and mystical interpretations of earlier
+theologians he utterly rejected. "Why," he asks, "should Moses use
+allegory when he is not speaking of allegorical creatures or of an
+allegorical world, but of real creatures and of a visible world, which
+can be seen, felt, and grasped? Moses calls things by their right names,
+as we ought to do.... I hold that the animals took their being at once
+upon the word of God, as did also the fishes in the sea."
+
+Not less explicit in his adherence to the literal account of creation
+given in Genesis was Calvin. He warns those who, by taking another view
+than his own, "basely insult the Creator, to expect a judge who will
+annihilate them." He insists that all species of animals were created
+in six days, each made up of an evening and a morning, and that no new
+species has ever appeared since. He dwells on the production of birds
+from the water as resting upon certain warrant of Scripture, but adds,
+"If the question is to be argued on physical grounds, we know that
+water is more akin to air than the earth is." As to difficulties in the
+scriptural account of creation, he tells us that God "wished by these to
+give proofs of his power which should fill us with astonishment."
+
+The controlling minds in the Roman Church steadfastly held this view. In
+the seventeenth century Bossuet threw his vast authority in its favour,
+and in his Discourse on Universal History, which has remained the
+foundation not only of theological but of general historical teaching
+in France down to the present republic, we find him calling attention to
+what he regards as the culminating act of creation, and asserting that,
+literally, for the creation of man earth was used, and "the finger of
+God applied to corruptible matter."
+
+The Protestant world held this idea no less persistently. In the
+seventeenth century Dr. John Lightfoot, Vice-Chancellor of the
+University of Cambridge, the great rabbinical scholar of his time,
+attempted to reconcile the two main legends in Genesis by saying that of
+the "clean sort of beasts there were seven of every kind created, three
+couples for breeding and the odd one for Adam's sacrifice on his fall,
+which God foresaw"; and that of unclean beasts only one couple was
+created.
+
+So literal was this whole conception of the work of creation that in
+these days it can scarcely be imagined. The Almighty was represented
+in theological literature, in the pictured Bibles, and in works of art
+generally, as a sort of enlarged and venerable Nuremberg toymaker. At
+times the accounts in Genesis were illustrated with even more literal
+exactness; thus, in connection with a well-known passage in the sacred
+text, the Creator was shown as a tailor, seated, needle in hand,
+diligently sewing together skins of beasts into coats for Adam and Eve.
+Such representations presented no difficulties to the docile minds of
+the Middle Ages and the Reformation period; and in the same spirit, when
+the discovery of fossils began to provoke thought, these were declared
+to be "models of his works approved or rejected by the great Artificer,"
+"outlines of future creations," "sports of Nature," or "objects placed
+in the strata to bring to naught human curiosity"; and this kind of
+explanation lingered on until in our own time an eminent naturalist,
+in his anxiety to save the literal account in Genesis, has urged that
+Jehovah tilted and twisted the strata, scattered the fossils through
+them, scratched the glacial furrows upon them, spread over them
+the marks of erosion by water, and set Niagara pouring--all in an
+instant--thus mystifying the world "for some inscrutable purpose, but
+for his own glory."(12)
+
+
+     (12) For the citation from Lactantius, see Divin. Instit., lib. ii, cap.
+xi, in Migne, tome vi, pp. 311, 312; for St. Augustine's great phrase,
+see the De Genes. ad litt., ii, 5; for St. Ambrose, see lib. i, cap. ii;
+for Vincent of Beauvais, see the Speculum Naturale, lib. i, cap. ii, and
+lib. ii, cap. xv and xxx; also Bourgeat, Etudes sur Vincent de Beauvais,
+Paris, 1856, especially chaps. vii, xii, and xvi; for Cardinal d"ailly,
+see the Imago Mundi, and for Reisch, see the various editions of the
+Margarita Philosophica; for Luther's statements, see Luther's Schriften,
+ed. Walch, Halle, 1740, Commentary on Genesis, vol. i; for Calvin's view
+of the creation of the animals, including the immutability of Species,
+see the Comm. in Gen., tome i of his Opera omnia, Amst., 1671, cap. i,
+v, xx, p. 5, also cap. ii, v, ii, p. 8, and elsewhere; for Bossuet, see
+his Discours sur l'Histoire universelle (in his OEuvres, tome v, Paris,
+1846); for Lightfoot, see his works, edited by Pitman, London, 1822;
+for Bede, see the Hexaemeron, lib. i, in Migne, tome xci, p.21; for Mr.
+Gosse'smodern defence of the literal view, see his Omphalos, London,
+1857, passim.
+
+
+The next important development of theological reasoning had regard to
+the DIVISIONS of the animal kingdom.
+
+Naturally, one of the first divisions which struck the inquiring
+mind was that between useful and noxious creatures, and the question
+therefore occurred, How could a good God create tigers and serpents,
+thorns and thistles? The answer was found in theological considerations
+upon SIN. To man's first disobedience all woes were due. Great men
+for eighteen hundred years developed the theory that before Adam's
+disobedience there was no death, and therefore neither ferocity nor
+venom.
+
+Some typical utterances in the evolution of this doctrine are worthy of
+a passing glance. St. Augustine expressly confirmed and emphasized the
+view that the vegetable as well as the animal kingdom was cursed on
+account of man's sin. Two hundred years later this utterance had been
+echoed on from father to father of the Church until it was caught by
+Bede; he declared that before man's fall animals were harmless, but were
+made poisonous or hurtful by Adam's sin, and he said, "Thus fierce and
+poisonous animals were created for terrifying man (because God foresaw
+that he would sin), in order that he might be made aware of the final
+punishment of hell."
+
+In the twelfth century this view was incorporated by Peter Lombard into
+his great theological work, the Sentences, which became a text-book of
+theology through the middle ages. He affirmed that "no created things
+would have been hurtful to man had he not sinned; they became hurtful
+for the sake of terrifying and punishing vice or of proving and
+perfecting virtue; they were created harmless, and on account of sin
+became hurtful."
+
+This theological theory regarding animals was brought out in the
+eighteenth century with great force by John Wesley. He declared that
+before Adam's sin "none of these attempted to devour or in any wise hurt
+one another"; "the spider was as harmless as the fly, and did not lie
+in wait for blood." Not only Wesley, but the eminent Dr. Adam Clarke and
+Dr. Richard Watson, whose ideas had the very greatest weight among the
+English Dissenters, and even among leading thinkers in the Established
+Church, held firmly to this theory; so that not until, in our own
+time, geology revealed the remains of vast multitudes of carnivorous
+creatures, many of them with half-digested remains of other animals in
+their stomachs, all extinct long ages before the appearance of man upon
+earth, was a victory won by science over theology in this field.
+
+A curious development of this doctrine was seen in the belief drawn
+by sundry old commentators from the condemnation of the serpent in
+Genesis--a belief, indeed, perfectly natural, since it was evidently
+that of the original writers of the account preserved in the first of
+our sacred books. This belief was that, until the tempting serpent was
+cursed by the Almighty, all serpents stood erect, walked, and talked.
+
+This belief was handed down the ages as part of "the sacred deposit of
+the faith" until Watson, the most prolific writer of the evangelical
+reform in the eighteenth century and the standard theologian of the
+evangelical party, declared: "We have no reason at all to believe
+that the animal had a serpentine form in any mode or degree until its
+transformation; that he was then degraded to a reptile to go upon his
+belly imports, on the contrary, an entire loss and alteration of the
+original form." Here, again, was a ripe result of the theologic method
+diligently pursued by the strongest thinkers in the Church during nearly
+two thousand years; but this "sacred deposit" also faded away when the
+geologists found abundant remains of fossil serpents dating from periods
+long before the appearance of man.
+
+Troublesome questions also arose among theologians regarding animals
+classed as "superfluous." St. Augustine was especially exercised
+thereby. He says: "I confess I am ignorant why mice and frogs were
+created, or flies and worms.... All creatures are either useful, hurtful,
+or superfluous to us.... As for the hurtful creatures, we are either
+punished, or disciplined, or terrified by them, so that we may not
+cherish and love this life." As to the "superfluous animals," he says,
+"Although they are not necessary for our service, yet the whole design
+of the universe is thereby completed and finished." Luther, who followed
+St. Augustine in so many other matters, declined to follow him fully in
+this. To him a fly was not merely superfluous, it was noxious--sent by
+the devil to vex him when reading.
+
+Another subject which gave rise to much searching of Scripture and long
+trains of theological reasoning was the difference between the creation
+of man and that of other living beings.
+
+Great stress was laid by theologians, from St. Basil and St. Augustine
+to St. Thomas Aquinas and Bossuet, and from Luther to Wesley, on the
+radical distinction indicated in Genesis, God having created man "in his
+own image." What this statement meant was seen in the light of the later
+biblical statement that "Adam begat Seth in his own likeness, after his
+image."
+
+In view of this and of well-known texts incorporated from older creation
+legends into the Hebrew sacred books it came to be widely held that,
+while man was directly moulded and fashioned separately by the Creator's
+hand, the animals generally were evoked in numbers from the earth and
+sea by the Creator's voice.
+
+A question now arose naturally as to the DISTINCTIONS OF SPECIES among
+animals. The vast majority of theologians agreed in representing all
+animals as created "in the beginning," and named by Adam, preserved in
+the ark, and continued ever afterward under exactly the same species.
+This belief ripened into a dogma. Like so many other dogmas in the
+Church, Catholic and Protestant, its real origins are to be found rather
+in pagan philosophy than in the Christian Scriptures; it came far more
+from Plato and Aristotle than from Moses and St. Paul. But this was not
+considered: more and more it became necessary to believe that each
+and every difference of species was impressed by the Creator "in the
+beginning," and that no change had taken place or could have taken place
+since.
+
+Some difficulties arose here and there as zoology progressed and
+revealed ever-increasing numbers of species; but through the Middle
+Ages, and indeed long after the Reformation, these difficulties were
+easily surmounted by making the ark of Noah larger and larger, and
+especially by holding that there had been a human error in regard to its
+measurement.(13)
+
+
+     (13) For St. Augustine, see De Genesis and De Trinitate, passim; for
+Bede, see Hexaemeron, lib. i, in Migne, tome xci, pp. 21, 36-38, 42; and
+De Sex Dierum Criatione, in Migne, tome xciii, p. 215; for Peter Lombard
+on "noxious animals," see his Sententiae, lib. ii, dist. xv, 3, Migne,
+tome cxcii, p. 682; for Wesley, Clarke, and Watson, see quotations from
+them and notes thereto in my chapter on Geology; for St. Augustine
+on "superfluous animals," see the De Genesi, lib. i, cap. xvi, 26; on
+Luther's view of flies, see the Table Talk and his famous utterance,
+"Odio muscas quia sunt imagines diaboli et hoereticorum"; for the agency
+of Aristotle and Plato in fastening the belief in the fixity of species
+into Christian theology, see Sachs, Geschichte der Botanik, Munchen,
+1875, p. 107 and note, also p. 113.
+
+
+But naturally there was developed among both ecclesiastics and laymen
+a human desire to go beyond these special points in the history of
+animated beings--a desire to know what the creation really IS.
+
+Current legends, stories, and travellers' observations, poor as they
+were, tended powerfully to stimulate curiosity in this field.
+
+Three centuries before the Christian era Aristotle had made the
+first really great attempt to satisfy this curiosity, and had begun
+a development of studies in natural history which remains one of the
+leading achievements in the story of our race.
+
+But the feeling which we have already seen so strong in the early
+Church--that all study of Nature was futile in view of the approaching
+end of the world--indicated so clearly in the New Testament and voiced
+so powerfully by Lactantius and St. Augustine--held back this current
+of thought for many centuries. Still, the better tendency in humanity
+continued to assert itself. There was, indeed, an influence coming from
+the Hebrew Scriptures themselves which wrought powerfully to this end;
+for, in spite of all that Lactantius or St. Augustine might say as to
+the futility of any study of Nature, the grand utterances in the Psalms
+regarding the beauties and wonders of creation, in all the glow of the
+truest poetry, ennobled the study even among those whom logic drew away
+from it.
+
+But, as a matter of course, in the early Church and throughout the
+Middle Ages all such studies were cast in a theologic mould. Without
+some purpose of biblical illustration or spiritual edification they were
+considered futile too much prying into the secrets of Nature was very
+generally held to be dangerous both to body and soul; only for showing
+forth God's glory and his purposes in the creation were such studies
+praiseworthy. The great work of Aristotle was under eclipse. The early
+Christian thinkers gave little attention to it, and that little was
+devoted to transforming it into something absolutely opposed to his
+whole spirit and method; in place of it they developed the Physiologus
+and the Bestiaries, mingling scriptural statements, legends of the
+saints, and fanciful inventions with pious intent and childlike
+simplicity. In place of research came authority--the authority of the
+Scriptures as interpreted by the Physio Cogus and the Bestiaries--and
+these remained the principal source of thought on animated Nature for
+over a thousand years.
+
+Occasionally, indeed, fear was shown among the rulers in the Church,
+even at such poor prying into the creation as this, and in the fifth
+century a synod under Pope Gelasius administered a rebuke to the
+Physiologus; but the interest in Nature was too strong: the great
+work on Creation by St. Basil had drawn from the Physiologus precious
+illustrations of Holy Writ, and the strongest of the early popes,
+Gregory the Great, virtually sanctioned it.
+
+Thus was developed a sacred science of creation and of the divine
+purpose in Nature, which went on developing from the fourth century to
+the nineteenth--from St. Basil to St. Isidore of Seville, from Isidore
+to Vincent of Beauvais, and from Vincent to Archdeacon Paley and the
+Bridgewater Treatises.
+
+Like all else in the Middle Ages, this sacred science was developed
+purely by theological methods. Neglecting the wonders which the
+dissection of the commonest animals would have afforded them, these
+naturalists attempted to throw light into Nature by ingenious use of
+scriptural texts, by research among the lives of the saints, and by the
+plentiful application of metaphysics. Hence even such strong men as
+St. Isidore of Seville treasured up accounts of the unicorn and dragons
+mentioned in the Scriptures and of the phoenix and basilisk in profane
+writings. Hence such contributions to knowledge as that the basilisk
+kills serpents by his breath and men by his glance, that the lion when
+pursued effaces his tracks with the end of his tail, that the pelican
+nourishes her young with her own blood, that serpents lay aside their
+venom before drinking, that the salamander quenches fire, that the hyena
+can talk with shepherds, that certain birds are born of the fruit of a
+certain tree when it happens to fall into the water, with other masses
+of science equally valuable.
+
+As to the method of bringing science to bear on Scripture, the
+Physiologus gives an example, illustrating the passage in the book of
+Job which speaks of the old lion perishing for lack of prey. Out of
+the attempt to explain an unusual Hebrew word in the text there came a
+curious development of error, until we find fully evolved an account of
+the "ant-lion," which, it gives us to understand, was the lion mentioned
+by Job, and it says: "As to the ant-lion, his father hath the shape of
+a lion, his mother that of an ant; the father liveth upon flesh and the
+mother upon herbs; these bring forth the ant-lion, a compound of both
+and in part like to either; for his fore part is like that of a lion and
+his hind part like that of an ant. Being thus composed, he is neither
+able to eat flesh like his father nor herbs like his mother, and so he
+perisheth."
+
+In the middle of the thirteenth century we have a triumph of this
+theological method in the great work of the English Franciscan
+Bartholomew on The Properties of Things. The theological method as
+applied to science consists largely in accepting tradition and in
+spinning arguments to fit it. In this field Bartholomew was a master.
+Having begun with the intent mainly to explain the allusions in
+Scripture to natural objects, he soon rises logically into a survey of
+all Nature. Discussing the "cockatrice" of Scripture, he tells us: "He
+drieth and burneth leaves with his touch, and he is of so great venom
+and perilous that he slayeth and wasteth him that nigheth him without
+tarrying; and yet the weasel overcometh him, for the biting of the
+weasel is death to the cockatrice. Nevertheless the biting of the
+cockatrice is death to the weasel if the weasel eat not rue before. And
+though the cockatrice be venomous without remedy while he is alive,
+yet he looseth all the malice when he is burnt to ashes. His ashes be
+accounted profitable in working of alchemy, and namely in turning and
+changing of metals."
+
+Bartholomew also enlightens us on the animals of Egypt, and says, "If
+the crocodile findeth a man by the water's brim he slayeth him, and then
+he weepeth over him and swalloweth him."
+
+Naturally this good Franciscan naturalist devotes much thought to the
+"dragons" mentioned in Scripture. He says: "The dragon is most greatest
+of all serpents, and oft he is drawn out of his den and riseth up into
+the air, and the air is moved by him, and also the sea swelleth against
+his venom, and he hath a crest, and reareth his tongue, and hath teeth
+like a saw, and hath strength, and not only in teeth but in tail, and
+grieveth with biting and with stinging. Whom he findeth he slayeth.
+Oft four or five of them fasten their tails together and rear up their
+heads, and sail over the sea to get good meat. Between elephants and
+dragons is everlasting fighting; for the dragon with his tail spanneth
+the elephant, and the elephant with his nose throweth down the
+dragon.... The cause why the dragon desireth his blood is the coldness
+thereof, by the which the dragon desireth to cool himself. Jerome saith
+that the dragon is a full thirsty beast, insomuch that he openeth his
+mouth against the wind to quench the burning of his thirst in that wise.
+Therefore, when he seeth ships in great wind he flieth against the sail
+to take the cold wind, and overthroweth the ship."
+
+These ideas of Friar Bartholomew spread far and struck deep into the
+popular mind. His book was translated into the principal languages of
+Europe, and was one of those most generally read during the Ages of
+Faith. It maintained its position nearly three hundred years; even after
+the invention of printing it held its own, and in the fifteenth century
+there were issued no less than ten editions of it in Latin, four in
+French, and various versions of it in Dutch, Spanish, and English.
+Preachers found it especially useful in illustrating the ways of God
+to man. It was only when the great voyages of discovery substituted
+ascertained fact for theological reasoning in this province that its
+authority was broken.
+
+The same sort of science flourished in the Bestiaries, which were used
+everywhere, and especially in the pulpits, for the edification of the
+faithful. In all of these, as in that compiled early in the thirteenth
+century by an ecclesiastic, William of Normandy, we have this lesson,
+borrowed from the Physiologus: "The lioness giveth birth to cubs which
+remain three days without life. Then cometh the lion, breatheth upon
+them, and bringeth them to life.... Thus it is that Jesus Christ
+during three days was deprived of life, but God the Father raised him
+gloriously."
+
+Pious use was constantly made of this science, especially by monkish
+preachers. The phoenix rising from his ashes proves the doctrine of the
+resurrection; the structure and mischief of monkeys proves the existence
+of demons; the fact that certain monkeys have no tails proves that Satan
+has been shorn of his glory; the weasel, which "constantly changes its
+place, is a type of the man estranged from the word of God, who findeth
+no rest."
+
+The moral treatises of the time often took the form of works on natural
+history, in order the more fully to exploit these religious teachings of
+Nature. Thus from the book On Bees, the Dominican Thomas of Cantimpre,
+we learn that "wasps persecute bees and make war on them out of natural
+hatred"; and these, he tells us, typify the demons who dwell in the
+air and with lightning and tempest assail and vex mankind--whereupon he
+fills a long chapter with anecdotes of such demonic warfare on mortals.
+In like manner his fellow-Dominican, the inquisitor Nider, in his book
+The Ant Hill, teaches us that the ants in Ethiopia, which are said to
+have horns and to grow so large as to look like dogs, are emblems of
+atrocious heretics, like Wyclif and the Hussites, who bark and bite
+against the truth; while the ants of India, which dig up gold out of
+the sand with their feet and hoard it, though they make no use of it,
+symbolize the fruitless toil with which the heretics dig out the gold of
+Holy Scripture and hoard it in their books to no purpose.
+
+This pious spirit not only pervaded science; it bloomed out in art, and
+especially in the cathedrals. In the gargoyles overhanging the walls, in
+the grotesques clambering about the towers or perched upon pinnacles, in
+the dragons prowling under archways or lurking in bosses of foliage, in
+the apocalyptic beasts carved upon the stalls of the choir, stained into
+the windows, wrought into the tapestries, illuminated in the letters
+and borders of psalters and missals, these marvels of creation suggested
+everywhere morals from the Physiologus, the Bestiaries, and the
+Exempla.(14)
+
+
+     (14) For the Physiologus, Bestiaries, etc., see Berger de Xivrey,
+Traditions Teratologiques; also Hippeau's edition of the Bestiare de
+Guillaume de Normandie, Caen, 1852, and such medieaval books of Exempla
+as the Lumen Naturae; also Hoefer, Histoire de la Zoologie; also
+Rambaud, Histoire de la Civilisation Francaise, Paris, 1885, vol i, pp.
+368, 369; also Cardinal Pitra, preface to the Spicilegium Solismense,
+Paris, 1885, passim; also Carus, Geschichte der Zoologie; and for
+an admirable summary, the article Physiologus in the Encyclopedia
+Britannica. In the illuminated manuscripts in the Library of Cornell
+University are some very striking examples of grotesques. For admirably
+illustrated articles on the Bestiaries, see Cahier and Martin, Melanges
+d'Archeologie, Paris, 1851, 1852, and 1856, vol. ii of the first series,
+pp. 85-232, and second series, volume on Curiosities Mysterieuses, pp.
+106-164; also J. R. Allen, Early Christian Symbolism in Great Britain
+and Ireland (London, 1887), lecture vi; for an exhaustive discussion of
+the subject, see Das Thierbuch des normannischen Dichters Guillaume le
+Clerc, herausgegeben von Reinisch, Leipsic, 1890; and for an Italian
+examlpe, Goldstaub and Wendriner, Ein Tosco-Venezianischer Bestiarius,
+Halle, 1892, where is given, on pp. 369-371, a very pious but very
+comical tradition regarding the beaver, hardly mentionable to ears
+polite. For Friar Bartholomew, see (besides his book itself) Medieval
+Lore, edited by Robert Steele, London, 1893, pp. 118-138.
+
+
+Here and there among men who were free from church control we have work
+of a better sort. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries Abd Allatif
+made observations upon the natural history of Egypt which showed a truly
+scientific spirit, and the Emperor Frederick II attempted to promote a
+more fruitful study of Nature; but one of these men was abhorred as a
+Mussulman and the other as an infidel. Far more in accordance with the
+spirit of the time was the ecclesiastic Giraldus Cambrensis, whose book
+on the topography of Ireland bestows much attention upon the animals
+of the island, and rarely fails to make each contribute an appropriate
+moral. For example, he says that in Ireland "eagles live for so many
+ages that they seem to contend with eternity itself; so also the saints,
+having put off the old man and put on the new, obtain the blessed fruit
+of everlasting life." Again, he tells us: "Eagles often fly so high that
+their wings are scorched by the sun; so those who in the Holy Scriptures
+strive to unravel the deep and hidden secrets of the heavenly mysteries,
+beyond what is allowed, fall below, as if the wings of the presumptuous
+imaginations on which they are borne were scorched."
+
+In one of the great men of the following century appeared a gleam of
+healthful criticism: Albert the Great, in his work on the animals,
+dissents from the widespread belief that certain birds spring from trees
+and are nourished by the sap, and also from the theory that some are
+generated in the sea from decaying wood.
+
+But it required many generations for such scepticism to produce much
+effect, and we find among the illustrations in an edition of Mandeville
+published just before the Reformation not only careful accounts but
+pictured representations both of birds and of beasts produced in the
+fruit of trees.(15)
+
+
+     (15) For Giraldus Cambrensis, see the edition in the Bohn Library,
+London, 1863, p. 30; for the Abd Allatif and Frederick II, see Hoefer,
+as above; for Albertus Magnus, see the De Animalibus, lib. xxiii; for
+the illustrations in Mandeville, see the Strasburg edition, 1484;
+for the history of the myth of the tree which produces birds, see Max
+Muller's lectures on the Science of Language, second series, lect. xii.
+
+
+This general employment of natural science for pious purposes went on
+after the Reformation. Luther frequently made this use of it, and his
+example controlled his followers. In 1612, Wolfgang Franz, Professor of
+Theology at Luther's university, gave to the world his sacred history of
+animals, which went through many editions. It contained a very ingenious
+classification, describing "natural dragons," which have three rows of
+teeth to each jaw, and he piously adds, "the principal dragon is the
+Devil."
+
+Near the end of the same century, Father Kircher, the great Jesuit
+professor at Rome, holds back the sceptical current, insists upon the
+orthodox view, and represents among the animals entering the ark sirens
+and griffins.
+
+Yet even among theologians we note here and there a sceptical spirit
+in natural science. Early in the same seventeenth century Eugene
+Roger published his Travels in Palestine. As regards the utterances
+of Scripture he is soundly orthodox: he prefaces his work with a map
+showing, among other important points referred to in biblical history,
+the place where Samson slew a thousand Philistines with the jawbone of
+an ass, the cavern which Adam and Eve inhabited after their expulsion
+from paradise, the spot where Balaam's ass spoke, the place where Jacob
+wrestled with the angel, the steep place down which the swine possessed
+of devils plunged into the sea, the position of the salt statue which
+was once Lot's wife, the place at sea where Jonah was swallowed by
+the whale, and "the exact spot where St. Peter caught one hundred and
+fifty-three fishes."
+
+As to natural history, he describes and discusses with great theological
+acuteness the basilisk. He tells us that the animal is about a foot and
+a half long, is shaped like a crocodile, and kills people with a single
+glance. The one which he saw was dead, fortunately for him, since in
+the time of Pope Leo IV--as he tells us--one appeared in Rome and killed
+many people by merely looking at them; but the Pope destroyed it with
+his prayers and the sign of the cross. He informs us that Providence
+has wisely and mercifully protected man by requiring the monster to cry
+aloud two or three times whenever it leaves its den, and that the divine
+wisdom in creation is also shown by the fact that the monster is obliged
+to look its victim in the eye, and at a certain fixed distance, before
+its glance can penetrate the victim's brain and so pass to his heart.
+He also gives a reason for supposing that the same divine mercy has
+provided that the crowing of a cock will kill the basilisk.
+
+Yet even in this good and credulous missionary we see the influence of
+Bacon and the dawn of experimental science; for, having been told many
+stories regarding the salamander, he secured one, placed it alive upon
+the burning coals, and reports to us that the legends concerning its
+power to live in the fire are untrue. He also tried experiments with
+the chameleon, and found that the stories told of it were to be received
+with much allowance: while, then, he locks up his judgment whenever he
+discusses the letter of Scripture, he uses his mind in other things much
+after the modern method.
+
+In the second half of the same century Hottinger, in his Theological
+Examination of the History of Creation, breaks from the belief in the
+phoenix; but his scepticism is carefully kept within the limits imposed
+by Scripture. He avows his doubts, first, "because God created the
+animals in couples, while the phoenix is represented as a single,
+unmated creature"; secondly, "because Noah, when he entered the ark,
+brought the animals in by sevens, while there were never so many
+individuals of the phoenix species"; thirdly, because "no man is known
+who dares assert that he has ever seen this bird"; fourthly, because
+"those who assert there is a phoenix differ among themselves."
+
+In view of these attacks on the salamander and the phoenix, we are not
+surprised to find, before the end of the century, scepticism regarding
+the basilisk: the eminent Prof. Kirchmaier, at the University of
+Wittenberg, treats phoenix and basilisk alike as old wives' fables. As
+to the phoenix, he denies its existence, not only because Noah took no
+such bird into the ark, but also because, as he pithily remarks, "birds
+come from eggs, not from ashes." But the unicorn he can not resign, nor
+will he even concede that the unicorn is a rhinoceros; he appeals to
+Job and to Marco Polo to prove that this animal, as usually conceived,
+really exists, and says, "Who would not fear to deny the existence of
+the unicorn, since Holy Scripture names him with distinct praises?"
+As to the other great animals mentioned in Scripture, he is so
+rationalistic as to admit that behemoth was an elephant and leviathan a
+whale.
+
+But these germs of a fruitful scepticism grew, and we soon find
+Dannhauer going a step further and declaring his disbelief even in the
+unicorn, insisting that it was a rhinoceros--only that and nothing more.
+Still, the main current continued strongly theological. In 1712 Samuel
+Bochart published his great work upon the animals of Holy Scripture. As
+showing its spirit we may take the titles of the chapters on the horse:
+
+"Chapter VI. Of the Hebrew Name of the Horse."
+
+"Chapter VII. Of the Colours of the Six Horses in Zechariah."
+
+"Chapter VIII. Of the Horses in Job."
+
+"Chapter IX. Of Solomon's Horses, and of the Texts wherein the Writers
+praise the Excellence of Horses."
+
+"Chapter X. Of the Consecrated Horses of the Sun."
+
+Among the other titles of chapters are such as: Of Balaam's Ass; Of the
+Thousand Philistines slain by Samson with the Jawbone of an Ass; Of
+the Golden Calves of Aaron and Jeroboam; Of the Bleating, Milk, Wool,
+External and Internal Parts of Sheep mentioned in Scripture; Of Notable
+Things told regarding Lions in Scripture; Of Noah's Dove and of the
+Dove which appeared at Christ's Baptism. Mixed up in the book, with
+the principal mass drawn from Scripture, were many facts and reasonings
+taken from investigations by naturalists; but all were permeated by the
+theological spirit.(16)
+
+
+     (16) For Franz and Kircher, see Perrier, La Philosophie Zoologique avant
+Darwin, 1884, p. 29; for Roger, see his La Terre Saincte, Paris, 1664,
+pp. 89-92, 130, 218, etc.; for Hottinger, see his Historiae
+Creatonis Examen theologico-philologicum, Heidelberg, 1659, lib.
+vi, quaest lxxxiii; for Kirchmaier, see his Disputationes Zoologicae
+(published collectively after his death), Jena, 1736; for Dannhauer, see
+his Disputationes Theologicae, Leipsic, 1707, p. 14; for Bochart, see
+his Hierozoikon, sive De Animalibus Sacre Scripturae, Leyden, 1712.
+
+
+The inquiry into Nature having thus been pursued nearly two thousand
+years theologically, we find by the middle of the sixteenth century some
+promising beginnings of a different method--the method of inquiry into
+Nature scientifically--the method which seeks not plausibilities but
+facts. At that time Edward Wotton led the way in England and Conrad
+Gesner on the Continent, by observations widely extended, carefully
+noted, and thoughtfully classified.
+
+This better method of interrogating Nature soon led to the formation of
+societies for the same purpose. In 1560 was founded an Academy for the
+Study of Nature at Naples, but theologians, becoming alarmed, suppressed
+it, and for nearly one hundred years there was no new combined effort
+of that sort, until in 1645 began the meetings in London of what was
+afterward the Royal Society. Then came the Academy of Sciences in
+France, and the Accademia del Cimento in Italy; others followed in all
+parts of the world, and a great new movement was begun.
+
+Theologians soon saw a danger in this movement. In Italy, Prince Leopold
+de' Medici, a protector of the Florentine Academy, was bribed with a
+cardinal's hat to neglect it, and from the days of Urban VIII to Pius
+IX a similar spirit was there shown. In France, there were frequent
+ecclesiastical interferences, of which Buffon's humiliation for stating
+a simple scientific truth was a noted example. In England, Protestantism
+was at first hardly more favourable toward the Royal Society, and the
+great Dr. South denounced it in his sermons as irreligious.
+
+Fortunately, one thing prevented an open breach between theology and
+science: while new investigators had mainly given up the medieval method
+so dear to the Church, they had very generally retained the conception
+of direct creation and of design throughout creation--a design having
+as its main purpose the profit, instruction, enjoyment, and amusement of
+man.
+
+On this the naturally opposing tendencies of theology and science were
+compromised. Science, while somewhat freed from its old limitations,
+became the handmaid of theology in illustrating the doctrine of creative
+design, and always with apparent deference to the Chaldean and other
+ancient myths and legends embodied in the Hebrew sacred books.
+
+About the middle of the seventeenth century came a great victory of
+the scientific over the theologic method. At that time Francesco Redi
+published the results of his inquiries into the doctrine of spontaneous
+generation. For ages a widely accepted doctrine had been that water,
+filth, and carrion had received power from the Creator to generate
+worms, insects, and a multitude of the smaller animals; and this
+doctrine had been especially welcomed by St. Augustine and many of the
+fathers, since it relieved the Almighty of making, Adam of naming, and
+Noah of living in the ark with these innumerable despised species.
+But to this fallacy Redi put an end. By researches which could not be
+gainsaid, he showed that every one of these animals came from an egg;
+each, therefore, must be the lineal descendant of an animal created,
+named, and preserved from "the beginning."
+
+Similar work went on in England, but under more distinctly theological
+limitations. In the same seventeenth century a very famous and popular
+English book was published by the naturalist John Ray, a fellow of the
+Royal Society, who produced a number of works on plants, fishes, and
+birds; but the most widely read of all was entitled The Wisdom of God
+manifested in the Works of Creation. Between the years 1691 and 1827 it
+passed through nearly twenty editions.
+
+Ray argued the goodness and wisdom of God from the adaptation of the
+animals not only to man's uses but to their own lives and surroundings.
+
+In the first years of the eighteenth century Dr. Nehemiah Grew, of the
+Royal Society, published his Cosmologia Sacra to refute anti-scriptural
+opinions by producing evidences of creative design. Discussing "the ends
+of Providence," he says, "A crane, which is scurvy meat, lays but two
+eggs in the year, but a pheasant and partridge, both excellent meat, lay
+and hatch fifteen or twenty." He points to the fact that "those of value
+which lay few at a time sit the oftener, as the woodcock and the dove."
+He breaks decidedly from the doctrine that noxious things in Nature are
+caused by sin, and shows that they, too, are useful; that, "if nettles
+sting, it is to secure an excellent medicine for children and cattle";
+that, "if the bramble hurts man, it makes all the better hedge"; and
+that, "if it chances to prick the owner, it tears the thief." "Weasels,
+kites, and other hurtful animals induce us to watchfulness; thistles and
+moles, to good husbandry; lice oblige us to cleanliness in our
+bodies, spiders in our houses, and the moth in our clothes." This very
+optimistic view, triumphing over the theological theory of noxious
+animals and plants as effects of sin, which prevailed with so much force
+from St. Augustine to Wesley, was developed into nobler form during the
+century by various thinkers, and especially by Archdeacon Paley, whose
+Natural Theology exercised a powerful influence down to recent
+times. The same tendency appeared in other countries, though various
+philosophers showed weak points in the argument, and Goethe made sport
+of it in a noted verse, praising the forethought of the Creator in
+foreordaining the cork tree to furnish stoppers for wine-bottles.
+
+Shortly before the middle of the nineteenth century the main movement
+culminated in the Bridgewater Treatises. Pursuant to the will of the
+eighth Earl of Bridgewater, the President of the Royal Society selected
+eight persons, each to receive a thousand pounds sterling for writing
+and publishing a treatise on the "power, wisdom, and goodness of God, as
+manifested in the creation." Of these, the leading essays in regard
+to animated Nature were those of Thomas Chalmers, on The Adaptation of
+External Nature to the Moral and Intellectual Condition of Man; of Sir
+Charles Bell, on The Hand as evincing Design; of Roget, on Animal and
+Vegetable Physiology with reference to Natural Theology; and of Kirby,
+on The Habits and Instincts of Animals with reference to Natural
+Theology.
+
+Besides these there were treatises by Whewell, Buckland, Kidd, and
+Prout. The work was well done. It was a marked advance on all that had
+appeared before, in matter, method, and spirit. Looking back upon it
+now we can see that it was provisional, but that it was none the less
+fruitful in truth, and we may well remember Darwin's remark on
+the stimulating effect of mistaken THEORIES, as compared with the
+sterilizing effect of mistaken OBSERVATIONS: mistaken observations lead
+men astray, mistaken theories suggest true theories.
+
+An effort made in so noble a spirit certainly does not deserve the
+ridicule that, in our own day, has sometimes been lavished upon it.
+Curiously, indeed, one of the most contemptuous of these criticisms has
+been recently made by one of the most strenuous defenders of orthodoxy.
+No less eminent a standard-bearer of the faith than the Rev. Prof.
+Zoeckler says of this movement to demonstrate creative purpose and
+design, and of the men who took part in it, "The earth appeared in their
+representation of it like a great clothing shop and soup kitchen, and
+God as a glorified rationalistic professor." Such a statement as this
+is far from just to the conceptions of such men as Butler, Paley,
+and Chalmers, no matter how fully the thinking world has now outlived
+them.(17)
+
+
+     (17) For a very valuable and interesting study on the old idea of the
+generation of insects from carrion, see Osten-Sacken, on the Oxen-born
+Bees of the Ancients, Heidelberg, 1894; for Ray, see the work cited,
+London, 1827, p. 153; for Grew, see Cosmologia Sacra, or a Discourse on
+the Universe, as it is the Creature and Kingdom of God; chiefly written
+to demonstrate the Truth and Excellency of the Bible, by Dr. Nehemiah
+Grew, Fellow of the College of Physicians and of the Royal Society of
+London, 1701; for Paley and the Bridgewater Treatises, see the usual
+editions; also Lange, History of Rationalism. Goethe's couplet ran as
+follows:
+
+"Welche Verehrung verdient der Weltenerschopfer, der Gnadig, Als er den
+Korkbaum erschuf, gleich auch die Stopfel erfand."
+
+For the quotation from Zoeckler, see his work already cited, vol. ii,
+pp. 74, 440.
+
+
+But, noble as the work of these men was, the foundation of fact on which
+they reared it became evidently more and more insecure. For as far
+back as the seventeenth century acute theologians had begun to discern
+difficulties more serious than any that had before confronted them.
+More and more it was seen that the number of different species was far
+greater than the world had hitherto imagined. Greater and greater had
+become the old difficulty in conceiving that, of these innumerable
+species, each had been specially created by the Almighty hand; that each
+had been brought before Adam by the Almighty to be named; and that each,
+in couples or in sevens, had been gathered by Noah into the ark. But the
+difficulties thus suggested were as nothing compared to those raised by
+the DISTRIBUTION of animals.
+
+Even in the first days of the Church this had aroused serious thought,
+and above all in the great mind of St. Augustine. In his City of God he
+had stated the difficulty as follows: "But there is a question about all
+these kinds of beasts, which are neither tamed by man, nor spring from
+the earth like frogs, such as wolves and others of that sort,.... as
+to how they could find their way to the islands after that flood which
+destroyed every living thing not preserved in the ark.... Some, indeed,
+might be thought to reach islands by swimming, in case these were very
+near; but some islands are so remote from continental lands that it does
+not seem possible that any creature could reach them by swimming. It
+is not an incredible thing, either, that some animals may have been
+captured by men and taken with them to those lands which they intended
+to inhabit, in order that they might have the pleasure of hunting;
+and it can not be denied that the transfer may have been accomplished
+through the agency of angels, commanded or allowed to perform this
+labour by God."
+
+But this difficulty had now assumed a magnitude of which St. Augustine
+never dreamed. Most powerful of all agencies to increase it were the
+voyages of Columbus, Vasco da Gama, Magellan, Amerigo Vespucci, and
+other navigators of the period of discovery. Still more serious did it
+become as the great islands of the southern seas were explored. Every
+navigator brought home tidings of new species of animals and of races of
+men living in parts of the world where the theologians, relying on the
+statement of St. Paul that the gospel had gone into all lands, had for
+ages declared there could be none; until finally it overtaxed even
+the theological imagination to conceive of angels, in obedience to
+the divine command, distributing the various animals over the earth,
+dropping the megatherium in South America, the archeopteryx in Europe,
+the ornithorhynchus in Australia, and the opossum in North America.
+
+The first striking evidence of this new difficulty was shown by the
+eminent Jesuit missionary, Joseph Acosta. In his Natural and Moral
+History of the Indies, published in 1590, he proved himself honest and
+lucid. Though entangled in most of the older scriptural views, he broke
+away from many; but the distribution of animals gave him great trouble.
+Having shown the futility of St. Augustine's other explanations, he
+quaintly asks: "Who can imagine that in so long a voyage men woulde
+take the paines to carrie Foxes to Peru, especially that kinde they call
+'Acias,' which is the filthiest I have seene? Who woulde likewise say
+that they have carried Tygers and Lyons? Truly it were a thing worthy
+the laughing at to thinke so. It was sufficient, yea, very much, for
+men driven against their willes by tempest, in so long and unknowne a
+voyage, to escape with their owne lives, without busying themselves to
+carrie Woolves and Foxes, and to nourish them at sea."
+
+It was under the impression made by this new array of facts that in 1667
+Abraham Milius published at Geneva his book on The Origin of Animals
+and the Migration of Peoples. This book shows, like that of Acosta,
+the shock and strain to which the discovery of America subjected the
+received theological scheme of things. It was issued with the special
+approbation of the Bishop of Salzburg, and it indicates the possibility
+that a solution of the whole trouble may be found in the text, "Let the
+earth bring forth the living creature after his kind." Milius goes on to
+show that the ancient philosophers agree with Moses, and that "the earth
+and the waters, and especially the heat of the sun and of the genial
+sky, together with that slimy and putrid quality which seems to be
+inherent in the soil, may furnish the origin for fishes, terrestrial
+animals, and birds." On the other hand, he is very severe against those
+who imagine that man can have had the same origin with animals. But the
+subject with which Milius especially grapples is the DISTRIBUTION of
+animals. He is greatly exercised by the many species found in America
+and in remote islands of the ocean--species entirely unknown in the
+other continents--and of course he is especially troubled by the fact
+that these species existing in those exceedingly remote parts of the
+earth do not exist in the neighbourhood of Mount Ararat. He confesses
+that to explain the distribution of animals is the most difficult part
+of the problem. If it be urged that birds could reach America by flying
+and fishes by swimming, he asks, "What of the beasts which neither fly
+nor swim?" Yet even as to the birds he asks, "Is there not an infinite
+variety of winged creatures who fly so slowly and heavily, and have such
+a horror of the water, that they would not even dare trust themselves to
+fly over a wide river?" As to fishes, he says, "They are very averse
+to wandering from their native waters," and he shows that there are
+now reported many species of American and East Indian fishes entirely
+unknown on the other continents, whose presence, therefore, can not be
+explained by any theory of natural dispersion.
+
+Of those who suggest that land animals may have been dispersed over the
+earth by the direct agency of man for his use or pleasure he asks: "Who
+would like to get different sorts of lions, bears, tigers, and other
+ferocious and noxious creatures on board ship? who would trust himself
+with them? and who would wish to plant colonies of such creatures in
+new, desirable lands?"
+
+His conclusion is that plants and animals take their origin in the lands
+wherein they are found; an opinion which he supports by quoting from the
+two narrations in Genesis passages which imply generative force in earth
+and water.
+
+But in the eighteenth century matters had become even worse for the
+theological view. To meet the difficulty the eminent Benedictine, Dom
+Calmet, in his Commentary, expressed the belief that all the species of
+a genus had originally formed one species, and he dwelt on this view
+as one which enabled him to explain the possibility of gathering all
+animals into the ark. This idea, dangerous as it was to the fabric of
+orthodoxy, and involving a profound separation from the general doctrine
+of the Church, seems to have been abroad among thinking men, for we
+find in the latter half of the same century even Linnaeus inclining to
+consider it. It was time, indeed, that some new theological theory be
+evolved; the great Linnaeus himself, in spite of his famous declaration
+favouring the fixity of species, had dealt a death-blow to the
+old theory. In his Systema Naturae, published in the middle of the
+eighteenth century, he had enumerated four thousand species of animals,
+and the difficulties involved in the naming of each of them by Adam and
+in bringing them together in the ark appeared to all thinking men more
+and more insurmountable.
+
+What was more embarrassing, the number of distinct species went on
+increasing rapidly, indeed enormously, until, as an eminent zoological
+authority of our own time has declared, "for every one of the species
+enumerated by Linnaeus, more than fifty kinds are known to the
+naturalist of to-day, and the number of species still unknown doubtless
+far exceeds the list of those recorded."
+
+Already there were premonitions of the strain made upon Scripture by
+requiring a hundred and sixty distinct miraculous interventions of the
+Creator to produce the hundred and sixty species of land shells found
+in the little island of Madeira alone, and fourteen hundred distinct
+interventions to produce the actual number of distinct species of a
+single well-known shell.
+
+Ever more and more difficult, too, became the question of the
+geographical distribution of animals. As new explorations were made in
+various parts of the world, this danger to the theological view went on
+increasing. The sloths in South America suggested painful questions: How
+could animals so sluggish have got away from the neighbourhood of Mount
+Ararat so completely and have travelled so far?
+
+The explorations in Australia and neighbouring islands made matters
+still worse, for there was found in those regions a whole realm of
+animals differing widely from those of other parts of the earth.
+
+The problem before the strict theologians became, for example, how to
+explain the fact that the kangaroo can have been in the ark and be now
+only found in Australia: his saltatory powers are indeed great, but
+how could he by any series of leaps have sprung across the intervening
+mountains, plains, and oceans to that remote continent? and, if the
+theory were adopted that at some period a causeway extended across the
+vast chasm separating Australia from the nearest mainland, why did not
+lions, tigers, camels, and camelopards force or find their way across
+it?
+
+The theological theory, therefore, had by the end of the eighteenth
+century gone to pieces. The wiser theologians waited; the unwise
+indulged in exhortations to "root out the wicked heart of unbelief," in
+denunciation of "science falsely so called," and in frantic declarations
+that "the Bible is true"--by which they meant that the limited
+understanding of it which they had happened to inherit is true.
+
+By the middle of the nineteenth century the whole theological theory
+of creation--though still preached everywhere as a matter of form--was
+clearly seen by all thinking men to be hopelessly lost: such strong men
+as Cardinal Wiseman in the Roman Church, Dean Buckland in the Anglican,
+and Hugh Miller in the Scottish Church, made heroic efforts to save
+something from it, but all to no purpose. That sturdy Teutonic and
+Anglo-Saxon honesty, which is the best legacy of the Middle Ages to
+Christendom, asserted itself in the old strongholds of theological
+thought, the universities. Neither the powerful logic of Bishop Butler
+nor the nimble reasoning of Archdeacon Paley availed. Just as the line
+of astronomical thinkers from Copernicus to Newton had destroyed the old
+astronomy, in which the earth was the centre, and the Almighty sitting
+above the firmament the agent in moving the heavenly bodies about it
+with his own hands, so now a race of biological thinkers had destroyed
+the old idea of a Creator minutely contriving and fashioning all animals
+to suit the needs and purposes of man. They had developed a system of a
+very different sort, and this we shall next consider.(18)
+
+
+     (18) For Acosta, see his Historia Natural y moral de las Indias,
+Seville, 1590--the quaint English translation is of London, 1604; for
+Abraham Milius, see his De Origine Animalium et Migratione Popularum,
+Geneva, 1667; also Kosmos, 1877, H. I, S. 36; for Linnaeus's declaration
+regarding species, see the Philosophia Botanica, 99, 157; for Calmet and
+Linnaeus, see Zoeckler, vol. ii, p. 237. As to the enormously increasing
+numbers of species in zoology and botany, see President D. S. Jordan,
+Science Sketches, pp. 176, 177; also for pithy statement, Laing's
+Problems of the Future, chap. vi.
+
+
+
+
+III. THEOLOGICAL AND SCIENTIFIC THEORIES, OF AN EVOLUTION IN ANIMATED
+NATURE.
+
+
+We have seen, thus far, how there came into the thinking of mankind
+upon the visible universe and its inhabitants the idea of a creation
+virtually instantaneous and complete, and of a Creator in human form
+with human attributes, who spoke matter into existence literally by the
+exercise of his throat and lips, or shaped and placed it with his hands
+and fingers.
+
+We have seen that this view came from far; that it existed in the
+Chaldaeo-Babylonian and Egyptian civilizations, and probably in others
+of the earliest date known to us; that its main features passed thence
+into the sacred books of the Hebrews and then into the early Christian
+Church, by whose theologians it was developed through the Middle Ages
+and maintained during the modern period.
+
+But, while this idea was thus developed by a succession of noble and
+thoughtful men through thousands of years, another conception, to all
+appearance equally ancient, was developed, sometimes in antagonism to
+it, sometimes mingled with it--the conception of all living beings as
+wholly or in part the result of a growth process--of an evolution.
+
+This idea, in various forms, became a powerful factor in nearly all the
+greater ancient theologies and philosophies. For very widespread among
+the early peoples who attained to much thinking power was a conception
+that, in obedience to the divine fiat, a watery chaos produced the
+earth, and that the sea and land gave birth to their inhabitants.
+
+This is clearly seen in those records of Chaldaeo-Babylonian thought
+deciphered in these latter years, to which reference has already been
+made. In these we have a watery chaos which, under divine action, brings
+forth the earth and its inhabitants; first the sea animals and then the
+land animals--the latter being separated into three kinds, substantially
+as recorded afterward in the Hebrew accounts. At the various stages in
+the work the Chaldean Creator pronounces it "beautiful," just as the
+Hebrew Creator in our own later account pronounces it "good."
+
+In both accounts there is placed over the whole creation a solid,
+concave firmament; in both, light is created first, and the heavenly
+bodies are afterward placed "for signs and for seasons"; in both, the
+number seven is especially sacred, giving rise to a sacred division of
+time and to much else. It may be added that, with many other features in
+the Hebrew legends evidently drawn from the Chaldean, the account of the
+creation in each is followed by a legend regarding "the fall of man" and
+a deluge, many details of which clearly passed in slightly modified form
+from the Chaldean into the Hebrew accounts.
+
+It would have been a miracle indeed if these primitive conceptions,
+wrought out with so much poetic vigour in that earlier civilization
+on the Tigris and Euphrates, had failed to influence the Hebrews, who
+during the most plastic periods of their development were under the
+tutelage of their Chaldean neighbours. Since the researches of Layard,
+George Smith, Oppert, Schrader, Jensen, Sayce, and their compeers, there
+is no longer a reasonable doubt that this ancient view of the world,
+elaborated if not originated in that earlier civilization, came thence
+as a legacy to the Hebrews, who wrought it in a somewhat disjointed but
+mainly monotheistic form into the poetic whole which forms one of the
+most precious treasures of ancient thought preserved in the book of
+Genesis.
+
+Thus it was that, while the idea of a simple material creation literally
+by the hands and fingers or voice of the Creator became, as we have
+seen, the starting-point of a powerful stream of theological thought,
+and while this stream was swollen from age to age by contributions from
+the fathers, doctors, and learned divines of the Church, Catholic
+and Protestant, there was poured into it this lesser current, always
+discernible and at times clearly separated from it--a current of belief
+in a process of evolution.
+
+The Rev. Prof. Sayce, of Oxford, than whom no English-speaking scholar
+carries more weight in a matter of this kind, has recently declared his
+belief that the Chaldaeo-Babylonian theory was the undoubted source of
+the similar theory propounded by the Ionic philosopher Anaximander--the
+Greek thinkers deriving this view from the Babylonians through the
+Phoenicians; he also allows that from the same source its main features
+were adopted into both the accounts given in the first of our
+sacred books, and in this general view the most eminent Christian
+Assyriologists concur.
+
+It is true that these sacred accounts of ours contradict each other. In
+that part of the first or Elohistic account given in the first chapter
+of Genesis the WATERS bring forth fishes, marine animals, and birds
+(Genesis, i, 20); but in that part of the second or Jehovistic account
+given in the second chapter of Genesis both the land animals and birds
+are declared to have been created not out of the water, but "OUT OF THE
+GROUND" (Genesis, ii, 19).
+
+The dialectic skill of the fathers was easily equal to explaining away
+this contradiction; but the old current of thought, strengthened by both
+these legends, arrested their attention, and, passing through the
+minds of a succession of the greatest men of the Church, influenced
+theological opinion deeply, if not widely, for ages, in favour of an
+evolution theory.
+
+But there was still another ancient source of evolution ideas.
+Thoughtful men of the early civilizations which were developed along the
+great rivers in the warmer regions of the earth noted how the sun-god as
+he rose in his fullest might caused the water and the rich soil to teem
+with the lesser forms of life. In Egypt, especially, men saw how
+under this divine power the Nile slime brought forth "creeping things
+innumerable." Hence mainly this ancient belief that the animals and
+man were produced by lifeless matter at the divine command, "in the
+beginning," was supplemented by the idea that some of the lesser
+animals, especially the insects, were produced by a later evolution,
+being evoked after the original creation from various sources, but
+chiefly from matter in a state of decay.
+
+This crude, early view aided doubtless in giving germs of a better
+evolution theory to the early Greeks. Anaximander, Empedocles,
+Anaxagoras, and, greatest of all, Aristotle, as we have seen, developed
+them, making their way at times by guesses toward truths since
+established by observation. Aristotle especially, both by speculation
+and observation, arrived at some results which, had Greek freedom
+of thought continued, might have brought the world long since to its
+present plane of biological knowledge; for he reached something like the
+modern idea of a succession of higher organizations from lower, and made
+the fruitful suggestion of "a perfecting principle" in Nature.
+
+With the coming in of Christian theology this tendency toward a yet
+truer theory of evolution was mainly stopped, but the old crude view
+remained, and as a typical example of it we may note the opinion of St.
+Basil the Great in the fourth century. Discussing the work of creation,
+he declares that, at the command of God, "the waters were gifted with
+productive power"; "from slime and muddy places frogs, flies, and gnats
+came into being"; and he finally declares that the same voice which gave
+this energy and quality of productiveness to earth and water shall be
+similarly efficacious until the end of the world. St. Gregory of Nyssa
+held a similar view.
+
+This idea of these great fathers of the Eastern Church took even
+stronger hold on the great father of the Western Church. For St.
+Augustine, so fettered usually by the letter of the sacred text, broke
+from his own famous doctrine as to the acceptance of Scripture and
+spurned the generally received belief of a creative process like that by
+which a toymaker brings into existence a box of playthings. In his great
+treatise on Genesis he says: "To suppose that God formed man from the
+dust with bodily hands is very childish.... God neither formed man with
+bodily hands nor did he breathe upon him with throat and lips."
+
+St. Augustine then suggests the adoption of the old emanation or
+evolution theory, shows that "certain very small animals may not have
+been created on the fifth and sixth days, but may have originated later
+from putrefying matter," argues that, even if this be so, God is still
+their creator, dwells upon such a potential creation as involved in the
+actual creation, and speaks of animals "whose numbers the after-time
+unfolded."
+
+In his great treatise on the Trinity--the work to which he devoted the
+best thirty years of his life--we find the full growth of this opinion.
+He develops at length the view that in the creation of living beings
+there was something like a growth--that God is the ultimate author,
+but works through secondary causes; and finally argues that certain
+substances are endowed by God with the power of producing certain
+classes of plants and animals.(19)
+
+
+     (19) For the Chaldean view of creation, see George Smith, Chaldean
+Account of Genesis, New York, 1876, pp. 14,15, and 64-86; also Lukas, as
+above; also Sayce, Religion of the Ancient Babylonians, Hibbert Lectures
+for 1887, pp. 371 and elsewhere; as to the fall of man, Tower of Babel,
+sacredness of the number seven, etc., see also Delitzsch, appendix to
+the German translation of Smith, pp. 305 et seq.; as to the almost exact
+adoption of the Chaldean legends into the Hebrew sacred account, see
+all these, as also Schrader, Die Keilinschriften und das Alte
+Testament, Giessen, 1883, early chapters; also article Babylonia in
+the Encyclopedia Britannica; as to similar approval of creation by the
+Creator in both accounts, see George Smith, p. 73; as to the migration
+of the Babylonian legends to the Hebrews, see Schrader, Whitehouse's
+translation, pp. 44,45; as to the Chaldaean belief ina solid firmament,
+while Schrader in 1883 thought it not proved, Jensen in 1890 has found
+it clearly expresses--see his Kosmologie der Babylonier, pp.9 et seq.,
+also pp. 304-306, and elsewhere. Dr. Lukas in 1893 also fully accepts
+this view of a Chaldean record of a "firmament"--see Kosmologie, pp.
+43, etc.; see also Maspero and Sayce, the Dawn of Civilization, and for
+crude early ideas of evolution in Egypt, see ibid., pp. 156 et seq.
+
+For the seven-day week among the Chaldeans and rest on the seventh day,
+and the proof that even the name "Sabbath" is of Chaldean origin, see
+Delitzsch, Beiga-ben zu Smith's Chald. Genesis, pp. 300 and 306; also
+Schrader; for St. Basil, see Hexaemeron and Homilies vii-ix; but for the
+steadfastness of Basil's view in regard to the immutability of species,
+see a Catholic writer on evolution and Faith in the Dublin Review for
+July, 1871, p. 13; for citations of St. Augustine on Genesis, see the De
+Genesi contra Manichoeos, lib. ii, cap. 14, in Migne, xxxiv, 188,--lib.
+v, cap. 5 and cap. 23,--and lib vii, cap I; for the citations from his
+work on the Trinity, see his De Trinitate, lib. iii, cap. 8 and 9, in
+Migne, xlii, 877, 878; for the general subject very fully and adequately
+presented, see Osborn, From the Greeks to Darwin, New York, 1894, chaps.
+ii and iii.
+
+
+This idea of a development by secondary causes apart from the original
+creation was helped in its growth by a theological exigency. More and
+more, as the organic world was observed, the vast multitude of petty
+animals, winged creatures, and "creeping things" was felt to be a
+strain upon the sacred narrative. More and more it became difficult to
+reconcile the dignity of the Almighty with his work in bringing each
+of these creatures before Adam to be named; or to reconcile the human
+limitations of Adam with his work in naming "every living creature"; or
+to reconcile the dimensions of Noah's ark with the space required for
+preserving all of them, and the food of all sorts necessary for their
+sustenance, whether they were admitted by twos, as stated in one
+scriptural account, or by sevens, as stated in the other.
+
+The inadequate size of the ark gave especial trouble. Origen had dealt
+with it by suggesting that the cubit was six times greater than had been
+supposed. Bede explained Noah's ability to complete so large a vessel by
+supposing that he worked upon it during a hundred years; and, as to the
+provision of food taken into it, he declared that there was no need of
+a supply for more than one day, since God could throw the animals into
+a deep sleep or otherwise miraculously make one day's supply sufficient;
+he also lessened the strain on faith still more by diminishing
+the number of animals taken into the ark--supporting his view upon
+Augustine's theory of the later development of insects out of carrion.
+
+Doubtless this theological necessity was among the main reasons which
+led St. Isidore of Seville, in the seventh century, to incorporate
+this theory, supported by St. Basil and St. Augustine, into his great
+encyclopedic work which gave materials for thought on God and Nature to
+so many generations. He familiarized the theological world still further
+with the doctrine of secondary creation, giving such examples of it as
+that "bees are generated from decomposed veal, beetles from horseflesh,
+grasshoppers from mules, scorpions from crabs," and, in order to give
+still stronger force to the idea of such transformations, he dwells
+on the biblical account of Nebuchadnezzar, which appears to have taken
+strong hold upon medieval thought in science, and he declares that
+other human beings had been changed into animals, especially into swine,
+wolves, and owls.
+
+This doctrine of after-creations went on gathering strength until, in
+the twelfth century, Peter Lombard, in his theological summary, The
+Sentences, so powerful in moulding the thought of the Church, emphasized
+the distinction between animals which spring from carrion and those
+which are created from earth and water; the former he holds to have been
+created "potentially" the latter "actually."
+
+In the century following, this idea was taken up by St. Thomas Aquinas
+and virtually received from him its final form. In the Summa, which
+remains the greatest work of medieval thought, he accepts the idea that
+certain animals spring from the decaying bodies of plants and animals,
+and declares that they are produced by the creative word of God either
+actually or virtually. He develops this view by saying, "Nothing was
+made by God, after the six days of creation, absolutely new, but it was
+in some sense included in the work of the six days"; and that "even
+new species, if any appear, have existed before in certain native
+properties, just as animals are produced from putrefaction."
+
+The distinction thus developed between creation "causally" or
+"potentially," and "materially" or "formally," was made much of by
+commentators afterward. Cornelius a Lapide spread it by saying that
+certain animals were created not "absolutely," but only "derivatively,"
+and this thought was still further developed three centuries later by
+Augustinus Eugubinus, who tells us that, after the first creative energy
+had called forth land and water, light was made by the Almighty, the
+instrument of all future creation, and that the light called everything
+into existence.
+
+All this "science falsely so called," so sedulously developed by the
+master minds of the Church, and yet so futile that we might almost
+suppose that the great apostle, in a glow of prophetic vision, had
+foreseen it in his famous condemnation, seems at this distance very
+harmless indeed; yet, to many guardians of the "sacred deposit of
+doctrine" in the Church, even so slight a departure from the main
+current of thought seemed dangerous. It appeared to them like pressing
+the doctrine of secondary causes to a perilous extent; and about the
+beginning of the seventeenth century we have the eminent Spanish Jesuit
+and theologian Suarez denouncing it, and declaring St. Augustine a
+heretic for his share in it.
+
+But there was little danger to the older idea just then; the main
+theological tendency was so strong that the world kept on as of old.
+Biblical theology continued to spin its own webs out of its own bowels,
+and all the lesser theological flies continued to be entangled in them;
+yet here and there stronger thinkers broke loose from this entanglement
+and helped somewhat to disentangle others.(20)
+
+
+     (20) For Bede's view of the ark and the origin of insects, see his
+Hexaemeron, i and ii; for Isidore, see the Etymologiae, xi, 4, and xiii,
+22; for Peter Lombard, see Sent., lib. ii, dist. xv, 4 (in Migne,
+cxcii, 682); for St. Thomas Aquinas as to the laws of Nature, see Summae
+Theologica, i, Quaest. lxvii, art. iv; for his discussion on Avicenna's
+theory of the origin of animals, see ibid., i Quaest. lxxi, vol. i,
+pp. 1184 and 1185, of Migne's edit.; for his idea as to the word of God
+being the active producing principle, see ibid., i, Quaest. lxxi, art.
+i; for his remarks on species, see ibid, i, Quaest. lxxii, art. i;
+for his ideas on the necessity of the procreation of man, see ibid, i,
+Quaest. lxxii, art. i; for the origin of animals from putrefaction,
+see ibid, i, Quaest. lxxix, art. i, 3; for Cornelius a Lapide on the
+derivative creation of animals, see his In Genesim Comment., cap. i,
+cited by Mivart, Genesis of Species, p. 282; for a reference to Suarez's
+denunciation of the view of St. Augustine, see Huxley's Essays.
+
+
+At the close of the Middle Ages, in spite of the devotion of the
+Reformed Church to the letter of Scripture, the revival of learning and
+the great voyages gave an atmosphere in which better thinking on the
+problems of Nature began to gain strength. On all sides, in every field,
+men were making discoveries which caused the general theological view to
+appear more and more inadequate.
+
+First of those who should be mentioned with reverence as beginning to
+develop again that current of Greek thought which the system drawn
+from our sacred books by the fathers and doctors of the Church had
+interrupted for more than a thousand years, was Giordano Bruno. His
+utterances were indeed vague and enigmatical, but this fault may well be
+forgiven him, for he saw but too clearly what must be his reward for
+any more open statements. His reward indeed came--even for his faulty
+utterances--when, toward the end of the nineteenth century, thoughtful
+men from all parts of the world united in erecting his statue on the
+spot where he had been burned by the Roman Inquisition nearly three
+hundred years before.
+
+After Bruno's death, during the first half of the seventeenth century,
+Descartes seemed about to take the leadership of human thought: his
+theories, however superseded now, gave a great impulse to investigation
+then. His genius in promoting an evolution doctrine as regards the
+mechanical formation of the solar system was great, and his mode of
+thought strengthened the current of evolutionary doctrine generally; but
+his constant dread of persecution, both from Catholics and Protestants,
+led him steadily to veil his thoughts and even to suppress them. The
+execution of Bruno had occurred in his childhood, and in the midst of
+his career he had watched the Galileo struggle in all its stages. He had
+seen his own works condemned by university after university under the
+direction of theologians, and placed upon the Roman Index. Although
+he gave new and striking arguments to prove the existence of God, and
+humbled himself before the Jesuits, he was condemned by Catholics and
+Protestants alike. Since Roger Bacon, perhaps, no great thinker had been
+so completely abased and thwarted by theological oppression.
+
+Near the close of the same century another great thinker, Leibnitz,
+though not propounding any full doctrine on evolution, gave it an
+impulse by suggesting a view contrary to the sacrosanct belief in the
+immutability of species--that is, to the pious doctrine that every
+species in the animal kingdom now exists as it left the hands of the
+Creator, the naming process by Adam, and the door of Noah's ark.
+
+His punishment at the hands of the Church came a few years later, when,
+in 1712, the Jesuits defeated his attempt to found an Academy of Science
+at Vienna. The imperial authorities covered him with honours, but the
+priests--ruling in the confessionals and pulpits--would not allow
+him the privilege of aiding his fellow-men to ascertain God's truths
+revealed in Nature.
+
+Spinoza, Hume, and Kant may also be mentioned as among those whose
+thinking, even when mistaken, might have done much to aid in the
+development of a truer theory had not the theologic atmosphere of their
+times been so unpropitious; but a few years after Leibnitz's death came
+in France a thinker in natural science of much less influence than any
+of these, who made a decided step forward.
+
+Early in the eighteenth century Benoist de Maillet, a man of the world,
+but a wide observer and close thinker upon Nature, began meditating
+especially upon the origin of animal forms, and was led into the idea of
+the transformation of species and so into a theory of evolution, which
+in some important respects anticipated modern ideas. He definitely,
+though at times absurdly, conceived the production of existing species
+by the modification of their predecessors, and he plainly accepted one
+of the fundamental maxims of modern geology--that the structure of the
+globe must be studied in the light of the present course of Nature.
+
+But he fell between two ranks of adversaries. On one side, the Church
+authorities denounced him as a freethinker; on the other, Voltaire
+ridiculed him as a devotee. Feeling that his greatest danger was from
+the orthodox theologians, De Maillet endeavoured to protect himself
+by disguising his name in the title of his book, and by so wording its
+preface and dedication that, if persecuted, he could declare it a mere
+sport of fancy; he therefore announced it as the reverie of a Hindu sage
+imparted to a Christian missionary. But this strategy availed nothing:
+he had allowed his Hindu sage to suggest that the days of creation named
+in Genesis might be long periods of time; and this, with other ideas of
+equally fearful import, was fatal. Though the book was in type in 1735,
+it was not published till 1748--three years after his death.
+
+On the other hand, the heterodox theology of Voltaire was also aroused;
+and, as De Maillet had seen in the presence of fossils on high mountains
+a proof that these mountains were once below the sea, Voltaire,
+recognising in this an argument for the deluge of Noah, ridiculed the
+new thinker without mercy. Unfortunately, some of De Maillet's vagaries
+lent themselves admirably to Voltaire's sarcasm; better material for it
+could hardly be conceived than the theory, seriously proposed, that the
+first human being was born of a mermaid.
+
+Hence it was that, between these two extremes of theology, De Maillet
+received no recognition until, very recently, the greatest men of
+science in England and France have united in giving him his due. But
+his work was not lost, even in his own day; Robinet and Bonnet pushed
+forward victoriously on helpful lines.
+
+In the second half of the eighteenth century a great barrier was thrown
+across this current--the authority of Linnaeus. He was the most eminent
+naturalist of his time, a wide observer, a close thinker; but the
+atmosphere in which he lived and moved and had his being was saturated
+with biblical theology, and this permeated all his thinking.
+
+He who visits the tomb of Linnaeus to-day, entering the beautiful
+cathedral of Upsala by its southern porch, sees above it, wrought in
+stone, the Hebrew legend of creation. In a series of medallions, the
+Almighty--in human form--accomplishes the work of each creative day. In
+due order he puts in place the solid firmament with the waters above it,
+the sun, moon, and stars within it, the beasts, birds, and plants below
+it, and finishes his task by taking man out of a little hillock of "the
+earth beneath," and woman out of man's side. Doubtless Linnaeus, as he
+went to his devotions, often smiled at this childlike portrayal. Yet
+he was never able to break away from the idea it embodied. At times, in
+face of the difficulties which beset the orthodox theory, he ventured
+to favour some slight concessions. Toward the end of his life he timidly
+advanced the hypothesis that all the species of one genus constituted
+at the creation one species; and from the last edition of his Systema
+Naturae he quietly left out the strongly orthodox statement of the
+fixity of each species, which he had insisted upon in his earlier works.
+But he made no adequate declaration. What he might expect if he openly
+and decidedly sanctioned a newer view he learned to his cost; warnings
+came speedily both from the Catholic and Protestant sides.
+
+At a time when eminent prelates of the older Church were eulogizing
+debauched princes like Louis XV, and using the unspeakably obscene
+casuistry of the Jesuit Sanchez in the education of the priesthood as to
+the relations of men to women, the modesty of the Church authorities was
+so shocked by Linnaeus's proofs of a sexual system in plants that for
+many years his writings were prohibited in the Papal States and in
+various other parts of Europe where clerical authority was strong enough
+to resist the new scientific current. Not until 1773 did one of the
+more broad-minded cardinals--Zelanda--succeed in gaining permission that
+Prof. Minasi should discuss the Linnaean system at Rome.
+
+And Protestantism was quite as oppressive. In a letter to Eloius,
+Linnaeus tells of the rebuke given to science by one of the great
+Lutheran prelates of Sweden, Bishop Svedberg. From various parts of
+Europe detailed statements had been sent to the Royal Academy of Science
+that water had been turned into blood, and well-meaning ecclesiastics
+had seen in this an indication of the wrath of God, certainly against
+the regions in which these miracles had occurred and possibly against
+the whole world. A miracle of this sort appearing in Sweden, Linnaeus
+looked into it carefully and found that the reddening of the water
+was caused by dense masses of minute insects. News of this explanation
+having reached the bishop, he took the field against it; he denounced
+this scientific discovery as "a Satanic abyss" (abyssum Satanae), and
+declared "The reddening of the water is NOT natural," and "when God
+allows such a miracle to take place Satan endeavours, and so do his
+ungodly, self-reliant, self-sufficient, and worldly tools, to make it
+signify nothing." In face of this onslaught Linnaeus retreated; he tells
+his correspondent that "it is difficult to say anything in this matter,"
+and shields himself under the statement "It is certainly a miracle that
+so many millions of creatures can be so suddenly propagated," and "it
+shows undoubtedly the all-wise power of the Infinite."
+
+The great naturalist, grown old and worn with labours for science, could
+no longer resist the contemporary theology; he settled into obedience
+to it, and while the modification of his early orthodox view was, as we
+have seen, quietly imbedded in the final edition of his great work, he
+made no special effort to impress it upon the world. To all appearance
+he continued to adhere to the doctrine that all existing species had
+been created by the Almighty "in the beginning," and that since "the
+beginning" no new species had appeared.
+
+Yet even his great authority could not arrest the swelling tide;
+more and more vast became the number of species, more and more
+incomprehensible under the old theory became the newly ascertained
+facts in geographical distribution, more and more it was felt that the
+universe and animated beings had come into existence by some process
+other than a special creation "in the beginning," and the question was
+constantly pressing, "By WHAT process?"
+
+Throughout the whole of the eighteenth century one man was at work on
+natural history who might have contributed much toward an answer to this
+question: this man was Buffon. His powers of research and thought were
+remarkable, and his gift in presenting results of research and thought
+showed genius. He had caught the idea of an evolution in Nature by the
+variation of species, and was likely to make a great advance with it;
+but he, too, was made to feel the power of theology.
+
+As long as he gave pleasing descriptions of animals the Church petted
+him, but when he began to deduce truths of philosophical import the
+batteries of the Sorbonne were opened upon him; he was made to know that
+"the sacred deposit of truth committed to the Church" was, that "in the
+beginning God made the heavens and the earth" and that "all things were
+made at the beginning of the world." For his simple statement of truths
+in natural science which are to-day truisms, he was, as we have seen,
+dragged forth by the theological faculty, forced to recant publicly, and
+to print his recantation. In this he announced, "I abandon everything in
+my book respecting the formation of the earth, and generally all which
+may be contrary to the narrative of Moses."(21)
+
+
+     (21) For Descartes and his relation to the Copernican theory, see
+Saisset, Descartes et ses Precurseurs; also Fouillee, Descartes, Paris,
+1893, chaps. ii and iii; also other authorities cited in my chapter
+on Astronomy; for his relation to the theory of evolution, see the
+Principes de Philosophie, 3eme partie, S 45. For de Maillet, see
+Quatrefages, Darwin et ses Precurseurs francais, chap i, citing
+D'Archiac, Paleontologie, Stratigraphie, vol. i; also, Perrier, La
+Philosophie zoologique avant Darwin, chap. vi; also the admirable
+article Evolution, by Huxley, in Ency. Brit. The title of De Maillet's
+book is Telliamed, ou Entretiens d'un Philosophe indien avec un
+Missionaire francais sur la Diminution de la Mer, 1748, 1756. For
+Buffon, see the authorities previously given, also the chapter on
+Geology in this work. For the resistance of both Catholic and Protestant
+authorities to the Linnaean system and ideas, see Alberg, Life of
+Linnaeus, London, 1888, pp. 143-147, and 237. As to the creation
+medallions at the Cathedral of Upsala, it is a somewhat curious
+coincidence that the present writer came upon them while visiting that
+edifice during the preparation of this chapter.
+
+
+But all this triumph of the Chaldeo-Babylonian creation legends which
+the Church had inherited availed but little.
+
+For about the end of the eighteenth century fruitful suggestions and
+even clear presentations of this or that part of a large evolutionary
+doctrine came thick and fast, and from the most divergent quarters.
+Especially remarkable were those which came from Erasmus Darwin in
+England, from Maupertuis in France, from Oken in Switzerland, and from
+Herder, and, most brilliantly of all, from Goethe in Germany.
+
+Two men among these thinkers must be especially mentioned--Treviranus in
+Germany and Lamarck in France; each independently of the other drew the
+world more completely than ever before in this direction.
+
+From Treviranus came, in 1802, his work on biology, and in this he gave
+forth the idea that from forms of life originally simple had arisen all
+higher organizations by gradual development; that every living feature
+has a capacity for receiving modifications of its structure from
+external influences; and that no species had become really extinct, but
+that each had passed into some other species. From Lamarck came
+about the same time his Researches, and a little later his Zoological
+Philosophy, which introduced a new factor into the process of
+evolution--the action of the animal itself in its efforts toward a
+development to suit new needs--and he gave as his principal conclusions
+the following:
+
+1. Life tends to increase the volume of each living body and of all its
+parts up to a limit determined by its own necessities.
+
+2. New wants in animals give rise to new organs.
+
+3. The development of these organs is in proportion to their employment.
+
+4. New developments may be transmitted to offspring.
+
+His well-known examples to illustrate these views, such as that of
+successive generations of giraffes lengthening their necks by stretching
+them to gather high-growing foliage, and of successive generations of
+kangaroos lengthening and strengthening their hind legs by the necessity
+of keeping themselves erect while jumping, provoked laughter, but
+the very comicality of these illustrations aided to fasten his main
+conclusion in men's memories.
+
+In both these statements, imperfect as they were, great truths were
+embodied--truths which were sure to grow.
+
+Lamarck's declaration, especially, that the development of organs is in
+ratio to their employment, and his indications of the reproduction
+in progeny of what is gained or lost in parents by the influence of
+circumstances, entered as a most effective force into the development of
+the evolution theory.
+
+The next great successor in the apostolate of this idea of the universe
+was Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire. As early as 1795 he had begun to form a
+theory that species are various modifications of the same type, and this
+theory he developed, testing it at various stages as Nature was more
+and more displayed to him. It fell to his lot to bear the brunt in a
+struggle against heavy odds which lasted many years.
+
+For the man who now took up the warfare, avowedly for science
+but unconsciously for theology, was the foremost naturalist then
+living--Cuvier. His scientific eminence was deserved; the highest
+honours of his own and other countries were given him, and he bore
+them worthily. An Imperial Councillor under Napoleon; President of the
+Council of Public Instruction and Chancellor of the University under
+the restored Bourbons; Grand Officer of the Legion of Honour, a Peer of
+France, Minister of the Interior, and President of the Council of State
+under Louis Philippe; he was eminent in all these capacities, and yet
+the dignity given by such high administrative positions was as nothing
+compared to his leadership in natural science. Science throughout the
+world acknowledged in him its chief contemporary ornament, and to this
+hour his fame rightly continues. But there was in him, as in Linnaeus,
+a survival of certain theological ways of looking at the universe and
+certain theological conceptions of a plan of creation; it must be said,
+too, that while his temperament made him distrust new hypotheses, of
+which he had seen so many born and die, his environment as a great
+functionary of state, honoured, admired, almost adored by the greatest,
+not only in the state but in the Church, his solicitude lest science
+should receive some detriment by openly resisting the Church, which
+had recaptured Europe after the French Revolution, and had made of its
+enemies its footstool--all these considerations led him to oppose the
+new theory. Amid the plaudits, then, of the foremost church-men he
+threw across the path of the evolution doctrines the whole mass of
+his authority in favour of the old theory of catastrophic changes and
+special creations.
+
+Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire stoutly withstood him, braving non-recognition,
+ill-treatment, and ridicule. Treviranus, afar off in his mathematical
+lecture-room at Bremen, seemed simply forgotten.
+
+But the current of evolutionary thought could not thus be checked:
+dammed up for a time, it broke out in new channels and in ways and
+places least expected; turned away from France, it appeared especially
+in England, where great paleontologists and geologists arose whose work
+culminated in that of Lyell. Specialists throughout all the world now
+became more vigorous than ever, gathering facts and thinking upon them
+in a way which caused the special creation theory to shrink more and
+more. Broader and more full became these various rivulets, soon to unite
+in one great stream of thought.
+
+In 1813 Dr. Wells developed a theory of evolution by natural selection
+to account for varieties in the human race. About 1820 Dean Herbert,
+eminent as an authority in horticulture, avowed his conviction that
+species are but fixed varieties. In 1831 Patrick Matthews stumbled upon
+and stated the main doctrine of natural selection in evolution; and
+others here and there, in Europe and America, caught an inkling of it.
+
+But no one outside of a circle apparently uninfluential cared for
+these things: the Church was serene: on the Continent it had obtained
+reactionary control of courts, cabinets, and universities; in England,
+Dean Cockburn was denouncing Mary Somerville and the geologists to the
+delight of churchmen; and the Rev. Mellor Brown was doing the same thing
+for the edification of dissenters.
+
+In America the mild suggestions of Silliman and his compeers were met
+by the protestations of the Andover theologians headed by Moses Stuart.
+Neither of the great English universities, as a rule, took any notice of
+the innovators save by sneers.
+
+To this current of thought there was joined a new element when, in
+1844, Robert Chambers published his Vestiges of Creation. The book was
+attractive and was widely read. In Chambers's view the several series of
+animated beings, from the simplest and oldest up to the highest and most
+recent, were the result of two distinct impulses, each given once and
+for all time by the Creator. The first of these was an impulse imparted
+to forms of life, lifting them gradually through higher grades; the
+second was an impulse tending to modify organic substances in accordance
+with external circumstances; in fact, the doctrine of the book was
+evolution tempered by miracle--a stretching out of the creative act
+through all time--a pious version of Lamarck.
+
+Two results followed, one mirth-provoking, the other leading to serious
+thought. The amusing result was that the theologians were greatly
+alarmed by the book: it was loudly insisted that it promoted atheism.
+Looking back along the line of thought which has since been developed,
+one feels that the older theologians ought to have put up thanksgivings
+for Chambers's theory, and prayers that it might prove true. The
+more serious result was that it accustomed men's minds to a belief in
+evolution as in some form possible or even probable. In this way it was
+provisionally of service.
+
+Eight years later Herbert Spencer published an essay contrasting the
+theories of creation and evolution--reasoning with great force in favour
+of the latter, showing that species had undoubtedly been modified by
+circumstances; but still only few and chosen men saw the significance
+of all these lines of reasoning which had been converging during so many
+years toward one conclusion.
+
+On July 1, 1858, there were read before the Linnaean Society at London
+two papers--one presented by Charles Darwin, the other by Alfred Russel
+Wallace--and with the reading of these papers the doctrine of evolution
+by natural selection was born. Then and there a fatal breach was made in
+the great theological barrier of the continued fixity of species since
+the creation.
+
+The story of these papers the scientific world knows by heart: how
+Charles Darwin, having been sent to the University of Cambridge to
+fit him for the Anglican priesthood, left it in 1831 to go upon the
+scientific expedition of the Beagle; how for five years he studied with
+wonderful vigour and acuteness the problems of life as revealed on
+land and at sea--among volcanoes and coral reefs, in forests and on the
+sands, from the tropics to the arctic regions; how, in the Cape Verde
+and the Galapagos Islands, and in Brazil, Patagonia, and Australia
+he interrogated Nature with matchless persistency and skill; how he
+returned unheralded, quietly settled down to his work, and soon set the
+world thinking over its first published results, such as his book on
+Coral Reefs, and the monograph on the Cirripedia; and, finally, how he
+presented his paper, and followed it up with treatises which made him
+one of the great leaders in the history of human thought.
+
+The scientific world realizes, too, more and more, the power of
+character shown by Darwin in all this great career; the faculty of
+silence, the reserve of strength seen in keeping his great thought--his
+idea of evolution by natural selection--under silent study and
+meditation for nearly twenty years, giving no hint of it to the world
+at large, but working in every field to secure proofs or disproofs,
+and accumulating masses of precious material for the solution of the
+questions involved.
+
+To one man only did he reveal his thought--to Dr. Joseph Hooker, to
+whom in 1844, under the seal of secrecy, he gave a summary of his
+conclusions. Not until fourteen years later occurred the event which
+showed him that the fulness of time had come--the letter from Alfred
+Russel Wallace, to whom, in brilliant researches during the decade from
+1848 to 1858, in Brazil and in the Malay Archipelago, the same truth of
+evolution by natural selection had been revealed. Among the proofs that
+scientific study does no injury to the more delicate shades of sentiment
+is the well-known story of this letter. With it Wallace sent Darwin a
+memoir, asking him to present it to the Linnaean Society: on examining
+it, Darwin found that Wallace had independently arrived at conclusions
+similar to his own--possibly had deprived him of fame; but Darwin was
+loyal to his friend, and his friend remained ever loyal to him. He
+publicly presented the paper from Wallace, with his own conclusions; and
+the date of this presentation--July 1, 1858--separates two epochs in the
+history, not merely of natural science, but of human thought.
+
+In the following year, 1859, came the first instalment of his work in
+its fuller development--his book on The Origin of Species. In this
+book one at least of the main secrets at the heart of the evolutionary
+process, which had baffled the long line of investigators and
+philosophers from the days of Aristotle, was more broadly revealed. The
+effective mechanism of evolution was shown at work in three ascertained
+facts: in the struggle for existence among organized beings; in the
+survival of the fittest; and in heredity. These facts were presented
+with such minute research, wide observation, patient collation,
+transparent honesty, and judicial fairness, that they at once commanded
+the world's attention. It was the outcome of thirty years' work and
+thought by a worker and thinker of genius, but it was yet more than
+that--it was the outcome, also, of the work and thought of another man
+of genius fifty years before. The book of Malthus on the Principle
+of Population, mainly founded on the fact that animals increase in a
+geometrical ratio, and therefore, if unchecked, must encumber the earth,
+had been generally forgotten, and was only recalled with a sneer. But
+the genius of Darwin recognised in it a deeper meaning, and now the
+thought of Malthus was joined to the new current. Meditating upon it in
+connection with his own observations of the luxuriance of Nature, Darwin
+had arrived at his doctrine of natural selection and survival of the
+fittest.
+
+As the great dogmatic barrier between the old and new views of the
+universe was broken down, the flood of new thought pouring over the
+world stimulated and nourished strong growths in every field of research
+and reasoning: edition after edition of the book was called for; it
+was translated even into Japanese and Hindustani; the stagnation of
+scientific thought, which Buckle, only a few years before, had so deeply
+lamented, gave place to a widespread and fruitful activity; masses of
+accumulated observations, which had seemed stale and unprofitable,
+were made alive; facts formerly without meaning now found their
+interpretation. Under this new influence an army of young men took
+up every promising line of scientific investigation in every land.
+Epoch-making books appeared in all the great nations. Spencer, Wallace,
+Huxley, Galton, Tyndall, Tylor, Lubbock, Bagehot, Lewes, in England,
+and a phalanx of strong men in Germany, Italy, France, and America gave
+forth works which became authoritative in every department of biology.
+If some of the older men in France held back, overawed perhaps by the
+authority of Cuvier, the younger and more vigorous pressed on.
+
+One source of opposition deserves to be especially mentioned--Louis
+Agassiz.
+
+A great investigator, an inspired and inspiring teacher, a noble man, he
+had received and elaborated a theory of animated creation which he could
+not readily change. In his heart and mind still prevailed the atmosphere
+of the little Swiss parsonage in which he was born, and his religious
+and moral nature, so beautiful to all who knew him, was especially
+repelled by sundry evolutionists, who, in their zeal as neophytes, made
+proclamations seeming to have a decidedly irreligious if not immoral
+bearing. In addition to this was the direction his thinking had received
+from Cuvier. Both these influences combined to prevent his acceptance of
+the new view.
+
+He was the third great man who had thrown his influence as a barrier
+across the current of evolutionary thought. Linnaeus in the second half
+of the eighteenth century, Cuvier in the first half, and Agassiz in the
+second half of the nineteenth--all made the same effort. Each remains
+great; but not all of them together could arrest the current. Agassiz's
+strong efforts throughout the United States, and indeed throughout
+Europe, to check it, really promoted it. From the great museum he had
+founded at Cambridge, from his summer school at Penikese, from his
+lecture rooms at Harvard and Cornell, his disciples went forth full of
+love and admiration for him, full of enthusiasm which he had stirred
+and into fields which he had indicated; but their powers, which he had
+aroused and strengthened, were devoted to developing the truth he failed
+to recognise; Shaler, Verrill, Packard, Hartt, Wilder, Jordan, with a
+multitude of others, and especially the son who bore his honoured name,
+did justice to his memory by applying what they had received from him to
+research under inspiration of the new revelation.
+
+Still another man deserves especial gratitude and honour in this
+progress--Edward Livingston Youmans. He was perhaps the first in America
+to recognise the vast bearings of the truths presented by Darwin,
+Wallace, and Spencer. He became the apostle of these truths, sacrificing
+the brilliant career on which he had entered as a public lecturer,
+subordinating himself to the three leaders, and giving himself to
+editorial drudgery in the stimulation of research and the announcement
+of results.
+
+In support of the new doctrine came a world of new proofs; those which
+Darwin himself added in regard to the cross-fertilization of plants,
+and which he had adopted from embryology, led the way, and these were
+followed by the discoveries of Wallace, Bates, Huxley, Marsh, Cope,
+Leidy, Haeckel, Muller, Gaudry, and a multitude of others in all
+lands.(22)
+
+
+     (22) For Agassiz's opposition to evolution, see the Essay on
+Classification, vol. i, 1857, as regards Lamark, and vol. iii, as
+regards Darwin; also Silliman's Journal, July 1860; also the Atlantic
+Monthly, January 1874; also his Life and Correspondence, vol. ii, p.
+647; also Asa Gray, Scientific Papers, vol. ii, p. 484. A reminiscence
+of my own enables me to appreciate his deep ethical and religious
+feeling. I was passing the day with him at Nahant in 1868, consulting
+him regarding candidates for various scientific chairs at the newly
+established Cornell University, in which he took a deep interest. As we
+discussed one after another of the candidates, he suddenly said: "Who is
+to be your Professor of Moral Philosophy? That is a far more important
+position than all the others."
+
+
+
+
+IV. THE FINAL EFFORT OF THEOLOGY.
+
+Darwin's Origin of Species had come into the theological world like
+a plough into an ant-hill. Everywhere those thus rudely awakened from
+their old comfort and repose had swarmed forth angry and confused.
+Reviews, sermons, books light and heavy, came flying at the new thinker
+from all sides.
+
+The keynote was struck at once in the Quarterly Review by Wilberforce,
+Bishop of Oxford. He declared that Darwin was guilty of "a tendency to
+limit God's glory in creation"; that "the principle of natural selection
+is absolutely incompatible with the word of God"; that it "contradicts
+the revealed relations of creation to its Creator"; that it is
+"inconsistent with the fulness of his glory"; that it is "a dishonouring
+view of Nature"; and that there is "a simpler explanation of the
+presence of these strange forms among the works of God": that
+explanation being--"the fall of Adam." Nor did the bishop's efforts end
+here; at the meeting of the British Association for the Advancement
+of Science he again disported himself in the tide of popular applause.
+Referring to the ideas of Darwin, who was absent on account of illness,
+he congratulated himself in a public speech that he was not descended
+from a monkey. The reply came from Huxley, who said in substance: "If
+I had to choose, I would prefer to be a descendant of a humble monkey
+rather than of a man who employs his knowledge and eloquence in
+misrepresenting those who are wearing out their lives in the search for
+truth."
+
+This shot reverberated through England, and indeed through other
+countries.
+
+The utterances of this the most brilliant prelate of the Anglican Church
+received a sort of antiphonal response from the leaders of the English
+Catholics. In an address before the "Academia," which had been organized
+to combat "science falsely so called," Cardinal Manning declared his
+abhorrence of the new view of Nature, and described it as "a brutal
+philosophy--to wit, there is no God, and the ape is our Adam."
+
+These attacks from such eminent sources set the clerical fashion for
+several years. One distinguished clerical reviewer, in spite of Darwin's
+thirty years of quiet labour, and in spite of the powerful summing up
+of his book, prefaced a diatribe by saying that Darwin "might have been
+more modest had he given some slight reason for dissenting from
+the views generally entertained." Another distinguished clergyman,
+vice-president of a Protestant institute to combat "dangerous" science,
+declared Darwinism "an attempt to dethrone God." Another critic spoke of
+persons accepting the Darwinian views as "under the frenzied inspiration
+of the inhaler of mephitic gas," and of Darwin's argument as "a jungle
+of fanciful assumption." Another spoke of Darwin's views as suggesting
+that "God is dead," and declared that Darwin's work "does open violence
+to everything which the Creator himself has told us in the Scriptures
+of the methods and results of his work." Still another theological
+authority asserted: "If the Darwinian theory is true, Genesis is a
+lie, the whole framework of the book of life falls to pieces, and the
+revelation of God to man, as we Christians know it, is a delusion and
+a snare." Another, who had shown excellent qualities as an observing
+naturalist, declared the Darwinian view "a huge imposture from the
+beginning."
+
+Echoes came from America. One review, the organ of the most widespread
+of American religious sects, declared that Darwin was "attempting to
+befog and to pettifog the whole question"; another denounced Darwin's
+views as "infidelity"; another, representing the American branch of
+the Anglican Church, poured contempt over Darwin as "sophistical and
+illogical," and then plunged into an exceedingly dangerous line of
+argument in the following words: "If this hypothesis be true, then is
+the Bible an unbearable fiction;... then have Christians for nearly two
+thousand years been duped by a monstrous lie.... Darwin requires us to
+disbelieve the authoritative word of the Creator." A leading journal
+representing the same church took pains to show the evolution theory to
+be as contrary to the explicit declarations of the New Testament as to
+those of the Old, and said: "If we have all, men and monkeys, oysters
+and eagles, developed from an original germ, then is St. Paul's grand
+deliverance--'All flesh is not the same flesh; there is one kind of
+flesh of men, another of beasts, another of fishes, and another of
+birds'--untrue."
+
+Another echo came from Australia, where Dr. Perry, Lord Bishop of
+Melbourne, in a most bitter book on Science and the Bible, declared that
+the obvious object of Chambers, Darwin, and Huxley is "to produce in
+their readers a disbelief of the Bible."
+
+Nor was the older branch of the Church to be left behind in this chorus.
+Bayma, in the Catholic World, declared, "Mr. Darwin is, we have reason
+to believe, the mouthpiece or chief trumpeter of that infidel clique
+whose well-known object is to do away with all idea of a God."
+
+Worthy of especial note as showing the determination of the theological
+side at that period was the foundation of sacro-scientific organizations
+to combat the new ideas. First to be noted is the "Academia," planned by
+Cardinal Wiseman. In a circular letter the cardinal, usually so moderate
+and just, sounded an alarm and summed up by saying, "Now it is for the
+Church, which alone possesses divine certainty and divine discernment,
+to place itself at once in the front of a movement which threatens even
+the fragmentary remains of Christian belief in England." The necessary
+permission was obtained from Rome, the Academia was founded, and the
+"divine discernment" of the Church was seen in the utterances which
+came from it, such as those of Cardinal Manning, which every thoughtful
+Catholic would now desire to recall, and in the diatribes of Dr. Laing,
+which only aroused laughter on all sides. A similar effort was seen in
+Protestant quarters; the "Victoria institute" was created, and perhaps
+the most noted utterance which ever came from it was the declaration of
+its vice-president, the Rev. Walter Mitchell, that "Darwinism endeavours
+to dethrone God."(23)
+
+
+     (23) For Wilberforce's article, see Quarterly Review, July, 1860. For
+the reply of Huxley to the bishop's speech I have relied on the account
+given in Quatrefages, who had it from Carpenter; a somewhat different
+version is given in the Life and Letters of Darwin. For Cardinal
+Manning's attack, see Essays on Religion and Literature, London, 1865.
+For the review articles, see the Quarterly already cited, and that
+for July, 1874; also the North British Review, May 1860; also, F. O.
+Morris's letter in the Record, reprinted at Glasgow, 1870; also the
+Addresses of Rev. Walter Mitchell before the Victoria Institute, London,
+1867; also Rev. B. G. Johns, Moses not Darwin, a Sermon, March 31, 1871.
+For the earlier American attacks, see Methodist Quarterly Review, April
+1871; The American Church Review, July and October, 1865, and January,
+1866. For the Australian attack, see Science and the Bible, by the Right
+Reverend Charles Perry, D. D., Bishop of Melbourne, London, 1869. For
+Bayma, see the Catholic World, vol. xxvi, p.782. For the Academia, see
+Essays edited by Cardinal Manning, above cited; and for the Victoria
+Institute, see Scientia Scientarum, by a member of the Victoria
+Institute, London, 1865.
+
+
+In France the attack was even more violent. Fabre d'Envieu brought
+out the heavy artillery of theology, and in a long series of elaborate
+propositions demonstrated that any other doctrine than that of the
+fixity and persistence of species is absolutely contrary to Scripture.
+The Abbe Desorges, a former Professor of Theology, stigmatized Darwin as
+a "pedant," and evolution as "gloomy". Monseigneur Segur, referring
+to Darwin and his followers, went into hysterics and shrieked: "These
+infamous doctrines have for their only support the most abject
+passions. Their father is pride, their mother impurity, their offspring
+revolutions. They come from hell and return thither, taking with them
+the gross creatures who blush not to proclaim and accept them."
+
+In Germany the attack, if less declamatory, was no less severe. Catholic
+theologians vied with Protestants in bitterness. Prof. Michelis declared
+Darwin's theory "a caricature of creation." Dr. Hagermann asserted that
+it "turned the Creator out of doors."
+
+Dr. Schund insisted that "every idea of the Holy Scriptures, from
+the first to the last page, stands in diametrical opposition to
+the Darwinian theory"; and, "if Darwin be right in his view of the
+development of man out of a brutal condition, then the Bible teaching in
+regard to man is utterly annihilated." Rougemont in Switzerland called
+for a crusade against the obnoxious doctrine. Luthardt, Professor of
+Theology at Leipsic, declared: "The idea of creation belongs to religion
+and not to natural science; the whole superstructure of personal
+religion is built upon the doctrine of creation"; and he showed the
+evolution theory to be in direct contradiction to Holy Writ.
+
+But in 1863 came an event which brought serious confusion to the
+theological camp: Sir Charles Lyell, the most eminent of living
+geologists, a man of deeply Christian feeling and of exceedingly
+cautious temper, who had opposed the evolution theory of Lamarck
+and declared his adherence to the idea of successive creations, then
+published his work on the Antiquity of Man, and in this and other
+utterances showed himself a complete though unwilling convert to the
+fundamental ideas of Darwin. The blow was serious in many ways, and
+especially so in two--first, as withdrawing all foundation in fact from
+the scriptural chronology, and secondly, as discrediting the creation
+theory. The blow was not unexpected; in various review articles against
+the Darwinian theory there had been appeals to Lyell, at times almost
+piteous, "not to flinch from the truths he had formerly proclaimed." But
+Lyell, like the honest man he was, yielded unreservedly to the mass of
+new proofs arrayed on the side of evolution against that of creation.
+
+At the same time came Huxley's Man's Place in Nature, giving new and
+most cogent arguments in favour of evolution by natural selection.
+
+In 1871 was published Darwin's Descent of Man. Its doctrine had been
+anticipated by critics of his previous books, but it made, none the
+less, a great stir; again the opposing army trooped forth, though
+evidently with much less heart than before. A few were very violent.
+The Dublin University Magazine, after the traditional Hibernian fashion,
+charged Mr. Darwin with seeking "to displace God by the unerring action
+of vagary," and with being "resolved to hunt God out of the world." But
+most notable from the side of the older Church was the elaborate
+answer to Darwin's book by the eminent French Catholic physician, Dr.
+Constantin James. In his work, On Darwinism, or the Man-Ape, published
+at Paris in 1877, Dr. James not only refuted Darwin scientifically but
+poured contempt on his book, calling it "a fairy tale," and insisted
+that a work "so fantastic and so burlesque" was, doubtless, only a huge
+joke, like Erasmus's Praise of Folly, or Montesquieu's Persian Letters.
+The princes of the Church were delighted. The Cardinal Archbishop
+of Paris assured the author that the book had become his "spiritual
+reading," and begged him to send a copy to the Pope himself. His
+Holiness, Pope Pius IX, acknowledged the gift in a remarkable letter. He
+thanked his dear son, the writer, for the book in which he "refutes
+so well the aberrations of Darwinism." "A system," His Holiness adds,
+"which is repugnant at once to history, to the tradition of all peoples,
+to exact science, to observed facts, and even to Reason herself, would
+seem to need no refutation, did not alienation from God and the leaning
+toward materialism, due to depravity, eagerly seek a support in all this
+tissue of fables.... And, in fact, pride, after rejecting the Creator of
+all things and proclaiming man independent, wishing him to be his own
+king, his own priest, and his own God--pride goes so far as to degrade
+man himself to the level of the unreasoning brutes, perhaps even of
+lifeless matter, thus unconsciously confirming the Divine declaration,
+WHEN PRIDE COMETH, THEN COMETH SHAME. But the corruption of this age,
+the machinations of the perverse, the danger of the simple, demand that
+such fancies, altogether absurd though they are, should--since they
+borrow the mask of science--be refuted by true science." Wherefore the
+Pope thanked Dr. James for his book, "so opportune and so perfectly
+appropriate to the exigencies of our time," and bestowed on him the
+apostolic benediction. Nor was this brief all. With it there came
+a second, creating the author an officer of the Papal Order of St.
+Sylvester. The cardinal archbishop assured the delighted physician that
+such a double honour of brief and brevet was perhaps unprecedented, and
+suggested only that in a new edition of his book he should "insist a
+little more on the relation existing between the narratives of Genesis
+and the discoveries of modern science, in such fashion as to convince
+the most incredulous of their perfect agreement." The prelate urged also
+a more dignified title. The proofs of this new edition were accordingly
+all submitted to His Eminence, and in 1882 it appeared as Moses and
+Darwin: the Man of Genesis compared with the Man-Ape, or Religious
+Education opposed to Atheistic. No wonder the cardinal embraced the
+author, thanking him in the name of science and religion. "We have at
+last," he declared, "a handbook which we can safely put into the hands
+of youth."
+
+Scarcely less vigorous were the champions of English Protestant
+orthodoxy. In an address at Liverpool, Mr. Gladstone remarked: "Upon
+the grounds of what is termed evolution God is relieved of the labour
+of creation; in the name of unchangeable laws he is discharged from
+governing the world"; and, when Herbert Spencer called his attention
+to the fact that Newton with the doctrine of gravitation and with the
+science of physical astronomy is open to the same charge, Mr. Gladstone
+retreated in the Contemporary Review under one of his characteristic
+clouds of words. The Rev. Dr. Coles, in the British and Foreign
+Evangelical Review, declared that the God of evolution is not the
+Christian's God. Burgon, Dean of Chichester, in a sermon preached before
+the University of Oxford, pathetically warned the students that "those
+who refuse to accept the history of the creation of our first parents
+according to its obvious literal intention, and are for substituting the
+modern dream of evolution in its place, cause the entire scheme of man's
+salvation to collapse." Dr. Pusey also came into the fray with most
+earnest appeals against the new doctrine, and the Rev. Gavin Carlyle
+was perfervid on the same side. The Society for Promoting Christian
+Knowledge published a book by the Rev. Mr. Birks, in which the evolution
+doctrine was declared to be "flatly opposed to the fundamental doctrine
+of creation." Even the London Times admitted a review stigmatizing
+Darwin's Descent of Man as an "utterly unsupported hypothesis," full of
+"unsubstantiated premises, cursory investigations, and disintegrating
+speculations," and Darwin himself as "reckless and unscientific."(24)
+
+
+     (24) For the French theological opposition to the Darwinian theory, see
+Pozzy, La Terre at le Recit Biblique de la Creation, 1874, especially
+pp. 353, 363; also Felix Ducane, Etudes sur la Transformisme, 1876,
+especially pp. 107 to 119. As to Fabre d'Envieu, see especially
+his Proposition xliii. For the Abbe Desogres, "former Professor of
+Philosophy and Theology," see his Erreurs Modernes, Paris, 1878, pp. 677
+and 595 to 598. For Monseigneur Segur, see his La Foi devant la Science
+Moderne, sixth ed., Paris, 1874, pp. 23, 34, etc. For Herbert Spencer's
+reply to Mr. Gladstone, see his study of Sociology; for the passage in
+the Dublin Review, see the issue for July, 1871. For the Review in the
+London Times, see Nature for April 20, 1871. For Gavin Carlyle, see The
+Battle of Unbelief, 1870, pp. 86 and 171. For the attacks by Michelis
+and Hagermann, see Natur und Offenbarung, Munster, 1861 to 1869. For
+Schund, see his Darwin's Hypothese und ihr Verhaaltniss zu Religion
+und Moral, Stuttgart, 1869. For Luthardt, see Fundamental Truths of
+Christianity, translated by Sophia Taylor, second ed., Edinburgh, 1869.
+For Rougemont, see his L'Homme et le Singe, Neuchatel, 1863 (also
+in German trans.). For Constantin James, see his Mes Entretiens avec
+l'Empereur Don Pedro sur la Darwinisme, Paris, 1888, where the papal
+briefs are printed in full. For the English attacks on Darwin's Descent
+of Man, see the Edinburgh Review July, 1871 and elsewhere; the Dublin
+Review, July, 1871; the British and Foreign Evangelical Review, April,
+1886. See also The Scripture Doctrine of Creation, by the Rev. T.
+R. Birks, London, 1873, published by the S. P. C. K. For Dr. Pusey's
+attack, see his Unscience, not Science, adverse to Faith, 1878; also
+Darwin's Life and Letters, vol. ii, pp. 411, 412.
+
+
+But it was noted that this second series of attacks, on the Descent
+of Man, differed in one remarkable respect--so far as England was
+concerned--from those which had been made over ten years before on the
+Origin of Species. While everything was done to discredit Darwin, to
+pour contempt upon him, and even, of all things in the world, to make
+him--the gentlest of mankind, only occupied with the scientific side of
+the problem--"a persecutor of Christianity," while his followers were
+represented more and more as charlatans or dupes, there began to be in
+the most influential quarters careful avoidance of the old argument that
+evolution--even by natural selection--contradicts Scripture.
+
+It began to be felt that this was dangerous ground. The defection of
+Lyell had, perhaps, more than anything else, started the question among
+theologians who had preserved some equanimity, "WHAT IF, AFTER ALL, THE
+DARWINIAN THEORY SHOULD PROVE TO BE TRUE?" Recollections of the position
+in which the Roman Church found itself after the establishment of the
+doctrines of Copernicus and Galileo naturally came into the minds of
+the more thoughtful. In Germany this consideration does not seem to
+have occurred at quite so early a day. One eminent Lutheran clergyman at
+Magdeburg called on his hearers to choose between Darwin and religion;
+Delitszch, in his new commentary on Genesis, attempted to bring science
+back to recognise human sin as an important factor in creation; Prof.
+Heinrich Ewald, while carefully avoiding any sharp conflict between the
+scriptural doctrine and evolution, comforted himself by covering Darwin
+and his followers with contempt; Christlieb, in his address before the
+Evangelical Alliance at New York in 1873, simply took the view that
+the tendencies of the Darwinian theory were "toward infidelity," but
+declined to make any serious battle on biblical grounds; the Jesuit,
+Father Pesch, in Holland, drew up in Latin, after the old scholastic
+manner, a sort of general indictment of evolution, of which one may say
+that it was interesting--as interesting as the display of a troop in
+chain armour and with cross-bows on a nineteenth-century battlefield.
+
+From America there came new echoes. Among the myriad attacks on the
+Darwinian theory by Protestants and Catholics two should be especially
+mentioned. The first of these was by Dr. Noah Porter, President of
+Yale College, an excellent scholar, an interesting writer, a noble
+man, broadly tolerant, combining in his thinking a curious mixture
+of radicalism and conservatism. While giving great latitude to the
+evolutionary teaching in the university under his care, he felt it his
+duty upon one occasion to avow his disbelief in it; but he was too wise
+a man to suggest any necessary antagonism between it and the Scriptures.
+He confined himself mainly to pointing out the tendency of the evolution
+doctrine in this form toward agnosticism and pantheism.
+
+To those who knew and loved him, and had noted the genial way in which
+by wise neglect he had allowed scientific studies to flourish at Yale,
+there was an amusing side to all this. Within a stone's throw of his
+college rooms was the Museum of Paleontology, in which Prof. Marsh
+had laid side by side, among other evidences of the new truth, that
+wonderful series of specimens showing the evolution of the horse from
+the earliest form of the animal, "not larger than a fox, with five
+toes," through the whole series up to his present form and size--that
+series which Huxley declared an absolute proof of the existence of
+natural selection as an agent in evolution. In spite of the veneration
+and love which all Yale men felt for President Porter, it was hardly
+to be expected that these particular arguments of his would have much
+permanent effect upon them when there was constantly before their eyes
+so convincing a refutation.
+
+But a far more determined opponent was the Rev. Dr. Hodge, of Princeton;
+his anger toward the evolution doctrine was bitter: he denounced it as
+thoroughly "atheistic"; he insisted that Christians "have a right to
+protest against the arraying of probabilities against the clear evidence
+of the Scriptures"; he even censured so orthodox a writer as the Duke of
+Argyll, and declared that the Darwinian theory of natural selection is
+"utterly inconsistent with the Scriptures," and that "an absent God, who
+does nothing, is to us no God"; that "to ignore design as manifested in
+God's creation is to dethrone God"; that "a denial of design in Nature
+is virtually a denial of God"; and that "no teleologist can be a
+Darwinian." Even more uncompromising was another of the leading
+authorities at the same university--the Rev. Dr. Duffield. He declared
+war not only against Darwin but even against men like Asa Gray, Le
+Conte, and others, who had attempted to reconcile the new theory with
+the Bible: he insisted that "evolutionism and the scriptural account of
+the origin of man are irreconcilable"--that the Darwinian theory is
+"in direct conflict with the teaching of the apostle, 'All scripture
+is given by inspiration of God'"; he pointed out, in his opposition to
+Darwin's Descent of Man and Lyell's Antiquity of Man, that in the Bible
+"the genealogical links which connect the Israelites in Egypt with
+Adam and Eve in Eden are explicitly given." These utterances of Prof.
+Duffield culminated in a declaration which deserves to be cited as
+showing that a Presbyterian minister can "deal damnation round the land"
+ex cathedra in a fashion quite equal to that of popes and bishops. It is
+as follows: "If the development theory of the origin of man," wrote
+Dr. Duffield in the Princeton Review, "shall in a little while take
+its place--as doubtless it will--with other exploded scientific
+speculations, then they who accept it with its proper logical
+consequences will in the life to come have their portion with those who
+in this life 'know not God and obey not the gospel of his Son.'"
+
+Fortunately, at about the time when Darwin's Descent of Man was
+published, there had come into Princeton University "deus ex machina"
+in the person of Dr. James McCosh. Called to the presidency, he at once
+took his stand against teachings so dangerous to Christianity as those
+of Drs. Hodge, Duffield, and their associates. In one of his personal
+confidences he has let us into the secret of this matter. With that hard
+Scotch sense which Thackeray had applauded in his well-known verses, he
+saw that the most dangerous thing which could be done to Christianity
+at Princeton was to reiterate in the university pulpit, week after week,
+solemn declarations that if evolution by natural selection, or indeed
+evolution at all, be true, the Scriptures are false. He tells us that he
+saw that this was the certain way to make the students unbelievers;
+he therefore not only checked this dangerous preaching but preached an
+opposite doctrine. With him began the inevitable compromise, and, in
+spite of mutterings against him as a Darwinian, he carried the day.
+Whatever may be thought of his general system of philosophy, no one can
+deny his great service in neutralizing the teachings of his predecessors
+and colleagues--so dangerous to all that is essential in Christianity.
+
+Other divines of strong sense in other parts of the country began to
+take similar ground--namely, that men could be Christians and at the
+same time Darwinians. There appeared, indeed, here and there, curious
+discrepancies: thus in 1873 the Monthly Religious Magazine of Boston
+congratulated its readers that the Rev. Mr. Burr had "demolished the
+evolution theory, knocking the breath of life out of it and throwing it
+to the dogs." This amazing performance by the Rev. Mr. Burr was repeated
+in a very striking way by Bishop Keener before the Oecumenical Council
+of Methodism at Washington in 1891. In what the newspapers described
+as an "admirable speech," he refuted evolution doctrines by saying that
+evolutionists had "only to make a journey of twelve hours from the place
+where he was then standing to find together the bones of the muskrat,
+the opossum, the coprolite, and the ichthyosaurus." He asserted that
+Agassiz--whom the good bishop, like so many others, seemed to think
+an evolutionist--when he visited these beds near Charleston, declared:
+"These old beds have set me crazy; they have destroyed the work of a
+lifetime." And the Methodist prelate ended by saying: "Now, gentlemen,
+brethren, take these facts home with you; get down and look at them.
+This is the watch that was under the steam hammer--the doctrine of
+evolution; and this steam hammer is the wonderful deposit of the Ashley
+beds." Exhibitions like these availed little. While the good bishop amid
+vociferous applause thus made comically evident his belief that Agassiz
+was a Darwinian and a coprolite an animal, scientific men were recording
+in all parts of the world facts confirming the dreaded theory of an
+evolution by natural selection. While the Rev. Mr. Burr was so loudly
+praised for "throwing Darwinism to the dogs," Marsh was completing his
+series leading from the five-toed ungulates to the horse. While Dr.
+Tayler Lewis at Union, and Drs. Hodge and Duffield at Princeton, were
+showing that if evolution be true the biblical accounts must be false,
+the indefatigable Yale professor was showing his cretaceous birds, and
+among them Hesperornis and Ichthyornis with teeth. While in Germany
+Luthardt, Schund, and their compeers were demonstrating that Scripture
+requires a belief in special and separate creations, the Archaeopteryx,
+showing a most remarkable connection between birds and reptiles, was
+discovered.
+
+While in France Monseigneur Segur and others were indulging in diatribes
+against "a certain Darwin," Gaudry and Filhol were discovering a
+striking series of "missing links" among the carnivora. In view of the
+proofs accumulating in favour of the new evolutionary hypothesis, the
+change in the tone of controlling theologians was now rapid. From all
+sides came evidences of desire to compromise with the theory. Strict
+adherents of the biblical text pointed significantly to the verses in
+Genesis in which the earth and sea were made to bring forth birds and
+fishes, and man was created out of the dust of the ground. Men of larger
+mind like Kingsley and Farrar, with English and American broad churchmen
+generally, took ground directly in Darwin's favour. Even Whewell took
+pains to show that there might be such a thing as a Darwinian argument
+for design in Nature; and the Rev. Samuel Houghton, of the Royal
+Society, gave interesting suggestions of a divine design in evolution.
+
+Both the great English universities received the new teaching as a
+leaven: at Oxford, in the very front of the High Church party at Keble
+College, was elaborated a statement that the evolution doctrine is "an
+advance in our theological thinking." And Temple, Bishop of London,
+perhaps the most influential thinker then in the Anglican episcopate,
+accepted the new revelation in the following words: "It seems something
+more majestic, more befitting him to whom a thousand years are as one
+day, thus to impress his will once for all on his creation, and provide
+for all the countless varieties by this one original impress, than
+by special acts of creation to be perpetually modifying what he had
+previously made."
+
+In Scotland the Duke of Argyll, head and front of the orthodox party,
+dissenting in many respects from Darwin's full conclusions, made
+concessions which badly shook the old position.
+
+Curiously enough, from the Roman Catholic Church, bitter as some of its
+writers had been, now came argument to prove that the Catholic faith
+does not prevent any one from holding the Darwinian theory, and
+especially a declaration from an authority eminent among American
+Catholics--a declaration which has a very curious sound, but which it
+would be ungracious to find fault with--that "the doctrine of evolution
+is no more in opposition to the doctrine of the Catholic Church than is
+the Copernican theory or that of Galileo."
+
+Here and there, indeed, men of science like Dawson, Mivart, and Wigand,
+in view of theological considerations, sought to make conditions; but
+the current was too strong, and eminent theologians in every country
+accepted natural selection as at least a very important part in the
+mechanism of evolution.
+
+At the death of Darwin it was felt that there was but one place in
+England where his body should be laid, and that this place was next the
+grave of Sir Isaac Newton in Westminster Abbey. The noble address of
+Canon Farrar at his funeral was echoed from many pulpits in Europe and
+America, and theological opposition as such was ended. Occasionally
+appeared, it is true, a survival of the old feeling: the Rev. Dr. Laing
+referred to the burial of Darwin in Westminster Abbey as "a proof that
+England is no longer a Christian country," and added that this burial
+was a desecration--that this honour was given him because he had been
+"the chief promoter of the mock doctrine of evolution of the species and
+the ape descent of man."
+
+Still another of these belated prophets was, of all men, Thomas Carlyle.
+Soured and embittered, in the same spirit which led him to find more
+heroism in a marauding Viking or in one of Frederick the Great's
+generals than in Washington, or Lincoln, or Grant, and which caused him
+to see in the American civil war only the burning out of a foul chimney,
+he, with the petulance natural to a dyspeptic eunuch, railed at Darwin
+as an "apostle of dirt worship."
+
+The last echoes of these utterances reverberated between Scotland and
+America. In the former country, in 1885, the Rev. Dr. Lee issued a
+volume declaring that, if the Darwinian view be true, "there is no place
+for God"; that "by no method of interpretation can the language of Holy
+Scripture be made wide enough to re-echo the orang-outang theory of
+man's natural history"; that "Darwinism reverses the revelation of God"
+and "implies utter blasphemy against the divine and human character of
+our Incarnate Lord"; and he was pleased to call Darwin and his followers
+"gospellers of the gutter." In one of the intellectual centres
+of America the editor of a periodical called The Christian urged
+frantically that "the battle be set in array, and that men find out
+who is on the Lord's side and who is on the side of the devil and the
+monkeys."
+
+To the honour of the Church of England it should be recorded that a
+considerable number of her truest men opposed such utterances as these,
+and that one of them--Farrar, Archdeacon of Westminster--made a protest
+worthy to be held in perpetual remembrance. While confessing his own
+inability to accept fully the new scientific belief, he said: "We should
+consider it disgraceful and humiliating to try to shake it by an
+ad captandum argument, or by a clap-trap platform appeal to the
+unfathomable ignorance and unlimited arrogance of a prejudiced assembly.
+We should blush to meet it with an anathema or a sneer."
+
+All opposition had availed nothing; Darwin's work and fame were secure.
+As men looked back over his beautiful life--simple, honest, tolerant,
+kindly--and thought upon his great labours in the search for truth, all
+the attacks faded into nothingness.
+
+There were indeed some dark spots, which as time goes on appear darker.
+At Trinity College, Cambridge, Whewell, the "omniscient," author of the
+History of the Inductive Sciences, refused to allow a copy of the Origin
+of Species to be placed in the library. At multitudes of institutions
+under theological control--Protestant as well as Catholic--attempts were
+made to stamp out or to stifle evolutionary teaching. Especially was
+this true for a time in America, and the case of the American College
+at Beyrout, where nearly all the younger professors were dismissed for
+adhering to Darwin's views, is worthy of remembrance. The treatment of
+Dr. Winchell at the Vanderbilt University in Tennessee showed the same
+spirit; one of the truest of men, devoted to science but of deeply
+Christian feeling, he was driven forth for views which centred in the
+Darwinian theory.
+
+Still more striking was the case of Dr. Woodrow. He had, about 1857,
+been appointed to a professorship of Natural Science as connected with
+Revealed Religion, in the Presbyterian Seminary at Columbia, South
+Carolina. He was a devoted Christian man, and his training had led him
+to accept the Presbyterian standards of faith. With great gifts
+for scientific study he visited Europe, made a most conscientious
+examination of the main questions under discussion, and adopted the
+chief points in the doctrine of evolution by natural selection. A
+struggle soon began. A movement hostile to him grew more and more
+determined, and at last, in spite of the efforts made in his behalf by
+the directors of the seminary and by a large and broad-minded minority
+in the representative bodies controlling it, an orthodox storm, raised
+by the delegates from various Presbyterian bodies, drove him from
+his post. Fortunately, he was received into a professorship at the
+University of South Carolina, where he has since taught with more power
+than ever before.
+
+This testimony to the faith by American provincial Protestantism was
+very properly echoed from Spanish provincial Catholicism. In the year
+1878 a Spanish colonial man of science, Dr. Chil y Marango, published a
+work on the Canary Islands. But Dr. Chil had the imprudence to sketch,
+in his introduction, the modern hypothesis of evolution, and to exhibit
+some proofs, found in the Canary Islands, of the barbarism of primitive
+man. The ecclesiastical authorities, under the lead of Bishop Urquinaona
+y Bidot, at once grappled with this new idea. By a solemn act they
+declared it "falsa, impia, scandalosa"; all persons possessing copies
+of the work were ordered to surrender them at once to the
+proper ecclesiastics, and the author was placed under the major
+excommunication.
+
+But all this opposition may be reckoned among the last expiring
+convulsions of the old theologic theory. Even from the new Catholic
+University at Washington has come an utterance in favour of the new
+doctrine, and in other universities in the Old World and in the New the
+doctrine of evolution by natural selection has asserted its right to
+full and honest consideration. More than this, it is clearly evident
+that the stronger men in the Church have, in these latter days, not
+only relinquished the struggle against science in this field, but have
+determined frankly and manfully to make an alliance with it. In two
+very remarkable lectures given in 1892 at the parish church of Rochdale,
+Wilson, Archdeacon of Manchester, not only accepted Darwinism as true,
+but wrought it with great argumentative power into a higher view of
+Christianity; and what is of great significance, these sermons were
+published by the same Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge
+which only a few years before had published the most bitter attacks
+against the Darwinian theory. So, too, during the year 1893, Prof. Henry
+Drummond, whose praise is in all the dissenting churches, developed a
+similar view most brilliantly in a series of lectures delivered before
+the American Chautauqua schools, and published in one of the most
+widespread of English orthodox newspapers.
+
+Whatever additional factors may be added to natural selection--and
+Darwin himself fully admitted that there might be others--the theory of
+an evolution process in the formation of the universe and of animated
+nature is established, and the old theory of direct creation is gone
+forever. In place of it science has given us conceptions far more noble,
+and opened the way to an argument for design infinitely more beautiful
+than any ever developed by theology.(24)
+
+
+     (24) For the causes of bitterness shown regarding the Darwinian
+hypothesis, see Reusch, Bibel und Natur, vol. ii, pp. 46 et seq. For
+hostility in the United States regarding the Darwinian theory, see,
+among a multitude of writers, the following: Dr. Charles Hodge, of
+Princeton, monograph, What is Darwinism? New York, 1874; also his
+Systematic Theology, New York, 1872, vol. ii, part 2, Anthropology; also
+The Light by which we see Light, or Nature and the Scriptures, Vedder
+Lectures, 1875, Rutgers College, New York, 1875; also Positivism and
+Evolutionism, in the American Catholic Quarterly, October 1877, pp. 607,
+619; and in the same number, Professor Huxley and Evolution, by Rev. A.
+M. Kirsch, pp. 662, 664; The Logic of Evolution, by Prof. Edward F. X.
+McSweeney, D. D., July, 1879, p. 561; Das Hexaemeron und die Geologie,
+von P. Eirich, Pastor in Albany, N. Y., Lutherischer Concordia-Verlag,
+St. Louis, Mo., 1878, pp. 81, 82, 84, 92-94; Evolutionism respecting
+Man and the Bible, by John T. Duffield, of Princeton, January, 1878,
+Princeton Review, pp. 151, 153, 154, 158, 159, 160, 188; a Lecture on
+Evolution, before the Nineteenth Century Club of New York, May 25, 1886,
+by ex-President Noah Porter, pp. 4, 26-29. For the laudatory notice of
+the Rev. E. F. Burr's demolition of evolution in his book Pater Mundi,
+see Monthly Religious Magazine, Boston, May, 1873, p. 492. Concerning
+the removal of Dr. James Woodrow, Professor of Natural Science in the
+Columbia Theological Seminary, see Evolution or Not, in the New York
+Weekly Sun, October 24, 1888. For the dealings of Spanish
+ecclesiastics with Dr. Chil and his Darwinian exposition, see the Revue
+d'Anthropologie, cited in the Academy for April 6, 1878; see also the
+Catholic World, xix, 433, A Discussion with an Infidel, directed against
+Dr. Louis Buchner and his Kraft und Stoff; also Mind and Matter, by Rev.
+james Tait, of Canada, p. 66 (in the third edition the author bemoans
+the "horrible plaudits" that "have accompanied every effort to establish
+man's brutal descent"); also The Church Journal, New York, May 28, 1874.
+For the effort in favour of a teleological evolution, see Rev. Samuel
+Houghton, F. R. S., Principles of Animal Mechanics, London, 1873,
+preface and p. 156 and elsewhere. For the details of the persecutions
+of Drs. Winchell and Woodrow, and of the Beyrout professors, with
+authorities cited, see my chapter on The Fall of Man and Anthropology.
+For more liberal views among religious thinkers regarding the Darwinian
+theory, and for efforts to mitigate and adapt it to theological
+views, see, among the great mass of utterances, the following: Charles
+Kingsley's letters to Darwin, November 18, 1859, in Darwin's Life and
+Letters, vol. ii, p. 82; Adam Sedgwick to Charles Darwin, December 24,
+1859, see ibid., vol. ii, pp. 356-359; the same to Miss Gerard, January
+2, 1860, see Sedgewick's Life and Letters, vol. ii, pp. 359, 360; the
+same in The Spectator, London, March 24, 1860; The Rambler, March 1860,
+cited by Mivart, Genesis of Species, p. 30; The Dublin Review, May,
+1860; The Christian Examiner, May, 1860; Charles Kingsley to F. D.
+Maurice in 1863, in Kingsley's Life, vol. ii, p. 171; Adam Sedgwick
+to Livingstone (the explorer), March 16, 1865, in Life and Letters of
+Sedgwick, vol. ii, pp. 410-412; the Duke of Argyll, The Reign of Law,
+New York, pp. 16, 18, 31, 116, 117, 120, 159; Joseph P. Thompson, D. D.,
+LL.D., Man in Genesis and Geology, New York, 1870, pp. 48, 49, 82; Canon
+H. P. Liddon, Sermons preached before the University of Oxford,
+1871, Sermon III; St. George Mivart, Evolution and its Consequences,
+Contemporary Review, Jan. 1872; British and Foreign Evangelical Review,
+1872, article on The Theory of Evolution; The Lutheran Quarterly,
+Gettysburg, Pa., April, 1872, article by Rev. Cyrus Thomas, Assistant
+United States Geological Survey on The Descent of Man, pp. 214, 239,
+372-376; The Lutheran Quarterly, July, 1873, article on Some Assumptions
+against Christianity, by Rev. C. A. Stork, Baltimore, Md., pp. 325, 326;
+also, in the same number, see a review of Dr. Burr's Pater Mundi, pp.
+474, 475, and contrast with the review in the Andover Review of that
+period; an article in the Religious Magazine and Monthly Review, Boston,
+on Religion and Evolution, by Rev. S. R. Calthrop, September, 1873,
+p. 200; The Popular Science Monthly, January, 1874, article Genesis,
+Geology, and Evolution; article by Asa Gray, Nature, London, June 4,
+1874; Materialism, by Rev. W. Streissguth, Lutheran Quarterly, July,
+1875, originally written in German, and translated by J. G. Morris,
+D. D., pp. 406, 408; Darwinismus und Christenthum, von R. Steck, Ref.
+Pfarrer in Dresden, Berlin, 1875, pp. 5,6, and 26, reprinted from
+the Protestantische Kirchenzeitung, and issued as a tract by the
+Protestantenverein; Rev. W. E. Adams, article in the Lutheran Quarterly,
+April, 1879, on Evolution: Shall it be Atheistic? John Wood, Bible
+Anticipations of Modern Science, 1880, pp. 18, 19, 22; Lutheran
+Quarterly, January, 1881, Some Postulates of the New Ethics, by Rev.
+C. A. Stork, D. D.; Lutheran Quarterly, January, 1882, The Religion of
+Evolution as against the Religion of Jesus, by Prof. W. H. Wynn, Iowa
+State Agricultural College--this article was republished as a pamphlet;
+Canon Liddon, prefatory note to sermon on The Recovery of St. Thomas,
+pp. 4, 11, 12, 13, and 26, preached in St. Paul's Cathedral, April 23,
+1882; Lutheran Quarterly, January 1882, Evolution and the Scripture, by
+Rev. John A. Earnest, pp. 101, 105; Glimpses in the Twilight, by Rev.
+F. G. Lee, D. D., Edinburgh, 1885, especially pp. 18 and 19; the Hibbert
+Lectures for 1883, by Rev. Charles Beard, pp. 392, 393, et seq.; F.
+W. Farrar, D. D., Canon of Westminster, The History of Interpretation,
+being the Bampton Lectures for 1885, pp. 426, 427; Bishop Temple,
+Bampton Lectures, pp. 184-186; article Evolution in the Dictionary
+of Religion, edited by Rev. William Benham, 1887; Prof. Huxley, An
+Episcopal Trilogy, Nineteenth Century, November, 1887--this article
+discusses three sermons delivered by the bishops of Carlisle, Bedford,
+and Manchester, in Manchester Cathedral, during the meeting of the
+British Association, September, 1887--these sermons were afterward
+published in pamphlet form under the title The Advance of Science; John
+Fiske, Darwinism, and Other Essays, Boston, 1888; Harriet Mackenzie,
+Evolution illuminating the Bible, London, 1891, dedicated to Prof.
+Huxley; H. E. Rye, Hulsean Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, The Early
+Narratives of Genesis, London, 1892, preface, pp. vii-ix, pp. 7, 9, 11;
+Rev. G. M. Searle, of the Catholic University, Washington, article in
+the Catholic World, November, 1892, pp. 223, 227, 229, 231; for the
+statement from Keble College, see Rev. Mr. Illingworth, in Lux Mundi.
+For Bishop Temple, see citation in Laing. For a complete and admirable
+acceptance of the evolutionary theory as lifting Christian doctrine and
+practice to a higher plane, with suggestions for a new theology, see two
+Sermons by Archdeacon Wilson, of Manchester, S. P. C. K.. London,
+and Young & Co., New York, 1893; and for a characteristically lucid
+statement of the most recent development of evolution doctrines, and the
+relations of Spencer, Weismann, Galton, and others to them, see Lester
+F. Ward's Address as President of the Biological Society, Washington,
+1891; also, recent articles in the leading English reviews. For a
+brilliant glorification of evolution by natural selection as a doctrine
+necessary to then highest and truest view of Christianity, see Prof.
+Drummond's Chautauqua Lectures, published in the British Weekly, London,
+from April 20 to May 11, 1893.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.  GEOGRAPHY.
+
+
+
+
+I. THE FORM OF THE EARTH.
+
+Among various rude tribes we find survivals of a primitive idea that the
+earth is a flat table or disk, ceiled, domed, or canopied by the sky,
+and that the sky rests upon the mountains as pillars. Such a belief is
+entirely natural; it conforms to the appearance of things, and hence at
+a very early period entered into various theologies.
+
+In the civilizations of Chaldea and Egypt it was very fully developed.
+The Assyrian inscriptions deciphered in these latter years represent the
+god Marduk as in the beginning creating the heavens and the earth: the
+earth rests upon the waters; within it is the realm of the dead; above
+it is spread "the firmament"--a solid dome coming down to the horizon on
+all sides and resting upon foundations laid in the "great waters" which
+extend around the earth.
+
+On the east and west sides of this domed firmament are doors, through
+which the sun enters in the morning and departs at night; above it
+extends another ocean, which goes down to the ocean surrounding the
+earth at the horizon on all sides, and which is supported and kept away
+from the earth by the firmament. Above the firmament and the upper ocean
+which it supports is the interior of heaven.
+
+The Egyptians considered the earth as a table, flat and oblong, the sky
+being its ceiling--a huge "firmament" of metal. At the four corners of
+the earth were the pillars supporting this firmament, and on this solid
+sky were the "waters above the heavens." They believed that, when chaos
+was taking form, one of the gods by main force raised the waters on high
+and spread them out over the firmament; that on the under side of this
+solid vault, or ceiling, or firmament, the stars were suspended to light
+the earth, and that the rains were caused by the letting down of the
+waters through its windows. This idea and others connected with it seem
+to have taken strong hold of the Egyptian priestly caste, entering
+into their theology and sacred science: ceilings of great temples, with
+stars, constellations, planets, and signs of the zodiac figured upon
+them, remain to-day as striking evidences of this.
+
+In Persia we have theories of geography based upon similar conceptions
+and embalmed in sacred texts.
+
+From these and doubtless from earlier sources common to them all came
+geographical legacies to the Hebrews. Various passages in their sacred
+books, many of them noble in conception and beautiful in form, regarding
+"the foundation of the earth upon the waters," "the fountains of the
+great deep," "the compass upon the face of the depth," the "firmament,"
+the "corners of the earth," the "pillars of heaven," the "waters above
+the firmament," the "windows of heaven," and "doors of heaven," point us
+back to both these ancient springs of thought.(25)
+
+
+     (25) For survivals of the early idea, among the Eskimos, of the sky as
+supported by mountains, and, among sundry Pacific islanders, of the sky
+as a firmament or vault of stone, see Tylor, Early History of Mankind,
+second edition, London, 1870, chap. xi; Spencer, Sociology, vol. i, chap
+vii, also Andrew Lang, La Mythologie, Paris, 1886, pp. 68-73. For the
+Babylonian theories, see George Smith's Chaldean Genesis, and especially
+the German translation by Delitzsch, Leipsic, 1876; also, Jensen, Die
+Kosmogonien der Babylonier, Strasburg, 1890; see especially in the
+appendices, pp. 9 and 10, a drawing representing the whole Babylonian
+scheme so closely followed in the Hebrew book Genesis. See also Lukas,
+Die Grundbegriffe in den Kosmogonien der alten Volker, Leipsic, 1893,
+for a most thorough summing up of the whole subject, with texts showing
+the development of Hebrew out of Chaldean and Egyptian conceptions, pp.
+44, etc.; also pp. 127 et seq. For the early view in India and
+Persia, see citations from the Vedas and the Zend-Avesta in Lethaby,
+Architecture, Mysticism, and Myth, chap. i. For the Egyptian view, see
+Champollion; also Lenormant, Histoire Ancienne, Maspero, and others. As
+to the figures of the heavens upon the ceilings of Egyptian temples,
+see Maspero, Archeologie Egyptienne, Paris, 1890; and for engravings of
+them, see Lepsius, Denkmaler, vol. i, Bl. 41, and vol. ix, Abth. iv, Bl.
+35; also the Description de l'Egypte, published by order of Napoleon,
+tome ii, Pl. 14; also Prisse d'Avennes, Art Egyptien, Atlas, tome i, Pl.
+35; and especially for a survival at the Temple of Denderah, see Denon,
+Voyage en Egypte, Planches 129, 130. For the Egyptian idea of "pillars
+of heaven," as alluded to on the stele of victory of Thotmes III,in the
+Cairo Museum, see Ebers, Uarda, vol. ii, p. 175, note, Leipsic, 1877. For
+a similar Babylonian belief, see Sayce's Herodotus, Appendix, p. 403.
+For the belief of Hebrew scriptural writers in a solid "firmament,"
+see especially Job, xxxviii, 18; also Smith's Bible Dictionary. For
+engravings showing the earth and heaven above it as conceived by
+Egyptians and Chaldeans, with "pillars of heaven" and "firmament," see
+Maspero and Sayce, Dawn of Civilization, London, 1894, pp. 17 and 543.
+
+
+But, as civilization was developed, there were evolved, especially among
+the Greeks, ideas of the earth's sphericity. The Pythagoreans, Plato,
+and Aristotle especially cherished them. These ideas were vague, they
+were mixed with absurdities, but they were germ ideas, and even amid the
+luxuriant growth of theology in the early Christian Church these germs
+began struggling into life in the minds of a few thinking men, and these
+men renewed the suggestion that the earth is a globe.(26)
+
+
+     (26) The agency of the Pythagoreans in first spreading the doctrine of
+the earth's sphericity is generally acknowledged, but the first full and
+clear utterance of it to the world was by Aristotle. Very fruitful, too,
+was the statement of the new theory given by Plato in the Timaeus; see
+Jowett's translation, 62, c. Also the Phaedo, pp.449 et seq. See also
+Grote on Plato's doctrine on the sphericity of the earth; also Sir G. C.
+Lewis's Astronomy of the Ancients, London, 1862, chap. iii, section i,
+and note. Cicero's mention of the antipodes, and his reference to the
+passage in the Timaeus, are even more remarkable than the latter, in
+that they much more clearly foreshadow the modern doctrine. See his
+Academic Questions, ii; also Tusc. Quest., i and v, 24. For a very full
+summary of the views of the ancients on the sphericity of the earth,
+see Kretschmer, Die physische Erkunde im christlichen Mittelalter,
+Wien, 1889, pp. 35 et seq.; also Eiken, Geschichte der mittelalterlichen
+Weltanschauung, Stuttgart, 1887, Dritter Theil, chap. vi. For citations
+and summaries, see Whewell, Hist. Induct. Sciences, vol. i, p. 189, and
+St. Martin, Hist. de la Geog., Paris, 1873, p. 96; also Leopardi, Saggio
+sopra gli errori popolari degli antichi, Firenze, 1851, chap. xii, pp.
+184 et seq.
+
+
+A few of the larger-minded fathers of the Church, influenced possibly
+by Pythagorean traditions, but certainly by Aristotle and Plato, were
+willing to accept this view, but the majority of them took fright at
+once. To them it seemed fraught with dangers to Scripture, by which, of
+course, they meant their interpretation of Scripture. Among the first
+who took up arms against it was Eusebius. In view of the New Testament
+texts indicating the immediately approaching, end of the world, he
+endeavoured to turn off this idea by bringing scientific studies
+into contempt. Speaking of investigators, he said, "It is not through
+ignorance of the things admired by them, but through contempt of their
+useless labour, that we think little of these matters, turning our
+souls to better things." Basil of Caesarea declared it "a matter of no
+interest to us whether the earth is a sphere or a cylinder or a disk, or
+concave in the middle like a fan." Lactantius referred to the ideas
+of those studying astronomy as "bad and senseless," and opposed the
+doctrine of the earth's sphericity both from Scripture and reason.
+St. John Chrysostom also exerted his influence against this scientific
+belief; and Ephraem Syrus, the greatest man of the old Syrian Church,
+widely known as the "lute of the Holy Ghost," opposed it no less
+earnestly.
+
+But the strictly biblical men of science, such eminent fathers and
+bishops as Theophilus of Antioch in the second century, and Clement of
+Alexandria in the third, with others in centuries following, were not
+content with merely opposing what they stigmatized as an old heathen
+theory; they drew from their Bibles a new Christian theory, to which
+one Church authority added one idea and another, until it was fully
+developed. Taking the survival of various early traditions, given in
+the seventh verse of the first chapter of Genesis, they insisted on the
+clear declarations of Scripture that the earth was, at creation, arched
+over with a solid vault, "a firmament," and to this they added the
+passages from Isaiah and the Psalms, in which it declared that the
+heavens are stretched out "like a curtain," and again "like a tent to
+dwell in." The universe, then, is like a house: the earth is its ground
+floor, the firmament its ceiling, under which the Almighty hangs out
+the sun to rule the day and the moon and stars to rule the night. This
+ceiling is also the floor of the apartment above, and in this is a
+cistern, shaped, as one of the authorities says, "like a bathing-tank,"
+and containing "the waters which are above the firmament." These waters
+are let down upon the earth by the Almighty and his angels through the
+"windows of heaven." As to the movement of the sun, there was a citation
+of various passages in Genesis, mixed with metaphysics in various
+proportions, and this was thought to give ample proofs from the Bible
+that the earth could not be a sphere.(27)
+
+
+     (27) For Eusebius, see the Proep. Ev., xv, 61. For Basil, see the
+Hexaemeron, Hom. ix. For Lactantius, see his Inst. Div., lib. iii, cap.
+3; also citations in Whewell, Hist. Induct. Sciences, London, 1857, vol.
+i, p. 194, and in St. Martin, Histoire de la Geographie, pp. 216, 217.
+For the views of St. John Chrysostom, Ephraem Syrus, and other great
+churchmen, see Kretschmer as above, chap i.
+
+
+In the sixth century this development culminated in what was nothing
+less than a complete and detailed system of the universe, claiming to
+be based upon Scripture, its author being the Egyptian monk Cosmas
+Indicopleustes. Egypt was a great treasure-house of theologic thought
+to various religions of antiquity, and Cosmas appears to have urged upon
+the early Church this Egyptian idea of the construction of the world,
+just as another Egyptian ecclesiastic, Athanasius, urged upon the Church
+the Egyptian idea of a triune deity ruling the world. According to
+Cosmas, the earth is a parallelogram, flat, and surrounded by four seas.
+It is four hundred days' journey long and two hundred broad. At the
+outer edges of these four seas arise massive walls closing in the whole
+structure and supporting the firmament or vault of the heavens, whose
+edges are cemented to the walls. These walls inclose the earth and all
+the heavenly bodies.
+
+The whole of this theologico-scientific structure was built most
+carefully and, as was then thought, most scripturally. Starting with the
+expression applied in the ninth chapter of Hebrews to the tabernacle in
+the desert, Cosmas insists, with other interpreters of his time, that it
+gives the key to the whole construction of the world. The universe
+is, therefore, made on the plan of the Jewish tabernacle--boxlike and
+oblong. Going into details, he quotes the sublime words of Isaiah: "It
+is He that sitteth upon the circle of the earth;... that stretcheth out
+the heavens like a curtain, and spreadeth them out like a tent to dwell
+in"; and the passage in Job which speaks of the "pillars of heaven." He
+works all this into his system, and reveals, as he thinks, treasures of
+science.
+
+This vast box is divided into two compartments, one above the other. In
+the first of these, men live and stars move; and it extends up to the
+first solid vault, or firmament, above which live the angels, a main
+part of whose business it is to push and pull the sun and planets to and
+fro. Next, he takes the text, "Let there be a firmament in the midst
+of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters," and other
+texts from Genesis; to these he adds the text from the Psalms, "Praise
+him, ye heaven of heavens, and ye waters that be above the heavens"
+then casts all, and these growths of thought into his crucible together,
+finally brings out the theory that over this first vault is a vast
+cistern containing "the waters." He then takes the expression in Genesis
+regarding the "windows of heaven" and establishes a doctrine regarding
+the regulation of the rain, to the effect that the angels not only push
+and pull the heavenly bodies to light the earth, but also open and close
+the heavenly windows to water it.
+
+To understand the surface of the earth, Cosmas, following the methods
+of interpretation which Origen and other early fathers of the Church had
+established, studies the table of shew-bread in the Jewish tabernacle.
+The surface of this table proves to him that the earth is flat, and
+its dimensions prove that the earth is twice as long as broad; its four
+corners symbolize the four seasons; the twelve loaves of bread,
+the twelve months; the hollow about the table proves that the ocean
+surrounds the earth. To account for the movement of the sun, Cosmas
+suggests that at the north of the earth is a great mountain, and that
+at night the sun is carried behind this; but some of the commentators
+ventured to express a doubt here: they thought that the sun was pushed
+into a pit at night and pulled out in the morning.
+
+Nothing can be more touching in its simplicity than Cosmas's summing up
+of his great argument, He declares, "We say therefore with Isaiah that
+the heaven embracing the universe is a vault, with Job that it is joined
+to the earth, and with Moses that the length of the earth is greater
+than its breadth." The treatise closes with rapturous assertions that
+not only Moses and the prophets, but also angels and apostles, agree to
+the truth of his doctrine, and that at the last day God will condemn all
+who do not accept it.
+
+Although this theory was drawn from Scripture, it was also, as we have
+seen, the result of an evolution of theological thought begun long
+before the scriptural texts on which it rested were written. It was not
+at all strange that Cosmas, Egyptian as he was, should have received
+this old Nile-born doctrine, as we see it indicated to-day in the
+structure of Egyptian temples, and that he should have developed it by
+the aid of the Jewish Scriptures; but the theological world knew nothing
+of this more remote evolution from pagan germs; it was received as
+virtually inspired, and was soon regarded as a fortress of scriptural
+truth. Some of the foremost men in the Church devoted themselves to
+buttressing it with new texts and throwing about it new outworks of
+theological reasoning; the great body of the faithful considered it a
+direct gift from the Almighty. Even in the later centuries of the Middle
+Ages John of San Geminiano made a desperate attempt to save it. Like
+Cosmas, he takes the Jewish tabernacle as his starting-point, and shows
+how all the newer ideas can be reconciled with the biblical accounts of
+its shape, dimensions, and furniture.(28)
+
+
+     (28) For a notice of the views of Cosmas in connection with those of
+Lactantius, Augustine, St. John Chrysostom, and others, see Schoell,
+Histoire de la Litterature Grecque, vol. vii, p. 37. The main scriptural
+passages referred to are as follows: (1) Isaiah xi, 22; (2) Genesis
+i, 6; (3) Genesis vii, 11; (4) Exodus xxiv, 10; (5) Job xxvi, 11, and
+xxxvii, 18 (6) Psalm cxlviii, 4, and civ, 9; (7) Ezekiel i, 22-26. For
+Cosmas's theory, see Montfaucon, Collectio Nova Patrum, Paris, 1706,
+vol. ii, p.188; also pp. 298, 299. The text is illustrated with
+engravings showing walls and solid vault (firmament), with the whole
+apparatus of "fountains of the great deep," "windows of heaven," angels,
+and the mountain behind which the sun is drawn. For reduction of one of
+them, see Peschel, Gesschichte der Erdkunds, p. 98; also article
+Maps, in Knight's Dictionary of Mechanics, New York, 1875. For curious
+drawings showing Cosmas's scheme in a different way from that given by
+Montfaucon, see extracts from a Vatican codex of the ninth century in
+Garucci, Storia de l'Arte Christiana, vol. iii, pp. 70 et seq. For
+a good discussion of Cosmas's ideas, see Santarem, Hist. de la
+Cosmographie, vol. ii, pp. 8 et seq., and for a very thorough discussion
+of its details, Kretschmer, as above. For still another theory, very
+droll, and thought out on similar principles, see Mungo Park, cited
+in De Morgan, Paradoxes, p. 309. For Cosmas's joyful summing up, see
+Montfaucon, Collectio Nova Patrum, vol. ii, p. 255. For the curious
+survival in the thirteenth century of the old idea of the "waters above
+the heavens," see the story in Gervase of Tilbury, how in his time some
+people coming out of church in England found an anchor let down by a
+rope out of the heavens, how there came voices from sailors above trying
+to loose the anchor, and, finally, how a sailor came down the rope,
+who, on reaching the earth, died as if drowned in water. See Gervase of
+Tilbury, Otia Imperialia, edit. Liebrecht, Hanover, 1856, Prima Decisio,
+cap. xiii. The work was written about 1211. For John of San Germiniano,
+see his Summa de Exemplis, lib. ix, cap. 43. For the Egyptian
+Trinitarian views, see Sharpe, History of Egypt, vol. i, pp. 94, 102.
+
+
+From this old conception of the universe as a sort of house, with heaven
+as its upper story and the earth as its ground floor, flowed important
+theological ideas into heathen, Jewish, and Christian mythologies.
+Common to them all are legends regarding attempts of mortals to invade
+the upper apartment from the lower. Of such are the Greek legends of
+the Aloidae, who sought to reach heaven by piling up mountains, and were
+cast down; the Chaldean and Hebrew legends of the wicked who at Babel
+sought to build "a tower whose top may reach heaven," which Jehovah
+went down from heaven to see, and which he brought to naught by the
+"confusion of tongues"; the Hindu legend of the tree which sought to
+grow into heaven and which Brahma blasted; and the Mexican legend of the
+giants who sought to reach heaven by building the Pyramid of Cholula,
+and who were overthrown by fire from above.
+
+Myths having this geographical idea as their germ developed in
+luxuriance through thousands of years. Ascensions to heaven and descents
+from it, "translations," "assumptions," "annunciations," mortals "caught
+up" into it and returning, angels flying between it and the earth,
+thunderbolts hurled down from it, mighty winds issuing from its corners,
+voices speaking from the upper floor to men on the lower, temporary
+openings of the floor of heaven to reveal the blessedness of the good,
+"signs and wonders" hung out from it to warn the wicked, interventions
+of every kind--from the heathen gods coming down on every sort of
+errand, and Jehovah coming down to walk in Eden in the cool of the day,
+to St. Mark swooping down into the market-place of Venice to break the
+shackles of a slave--all these are but features in a vast evolution of
+myths arising largely from this geographical germ.
+
+Nor did this evolution end here. Naturally, in this view of things, if
+heaven was a loft, hell was a cellar; and if there were ascensions
+into one, there were descents into the other. Hell being so near,
+interferences by its occupants with the dwellers of the earth just above
+were constant, and form a vast chapter in medieval literature. Dante
+made this conception of the location of hell still more vivid, and we
+find some forms of it serious barriers to geographical investigation.
+Many a bold navigator, who was quite ready to brave pirates and
+tempests, trembled at the thought of tumbling with his ship into one of
+the openings into hell which a widespread belief placed in the Atlantic
+at some unknown distance from Europe. This terror among sailors was one
+of the main obstacles in the great voyage of Columbus. In a medieval
+text-book, giving science the form of a dialogue, occur the following
+question and answer: "Why is the sun so red in the evening?" "Because he
+looketh down upon hell."
+
+But the ancient germ of scientific truth in geography--the idea of the
+earth's sphericity--still lived. Although the great majority of the
+early fathers of the Church, and especially Lactantius, had sought to
+crush it beneath the utterances attributed to Isaiah, David, and
+St. Paul, the better opinion of Eudoxus and Aristotle could not be
+forgotten. Clement of Alexandria and Origen had even supported it.
+Ambrose and Augustine had tolerated it, and, after Cosmas had held sway
+a hundred years, it received new life from a great churchman of southern
+Europe, Isidore of Seville, who, however fettered by the dominant
+theology in many other things, braved it in this. In the eighth century
+a similar declaration was made in the north of Europe by another great
+Church authority, Bede. Against the new life thus given to the old
+truth, the sacred theory struggled long and vigorously but in vain.
+Eminent authorities in later ages, like Albert the Great, St. Thomas
+Aquinas, Dante, and Vincent of Beauvais, felt obliged to accept the
+doctrine of the earth's sphericity, and as we approach the modern period
+we find its truth acknowledged by the vast majority of thinking men. The
+Reformation did not at first yield fully to this better theory. Luther,
+Melanchthon, and Calvin were very strict in their adherence to the exact
+letter of Scripture. Even Zwingli, broad as his views generally were,
+was closely bound down in this matter, and held to the opinion of the
+fathers that a great firmament, or floor, separated the heavens from the
+earth; that above it were the waters and angels, and below it the earth
+and man.
+
+The main scope given to independent thought on this general subject
+among the Reformers was in a few minor speculations regarding the
+universe which encompassed Eden, the exact character of the conversation
+of the serpent with Eve, and the like.
+
+In the times immediately following the Reformation matters were even
+worse. The interpretations of Scripture by Luther and Calvin became as
+sacred to their followers as the Scripture itself. When Calixt ventured,
+in interpreting the Psalms, to question the accepted belief that "the
+waters above the heavens" were contained in a vast receptacle upheld by
+a solid vault, he was bitterly denounced as heretical.
+
+In the latter part of the sixteenth century Musaeus interpreted the
+accounts in Genesis to mean that first God made the heavens for the roof
+or vault, and left it there on high swinging until three days later he
+put the earth under it. But the new scientific thought as to the earth's
+form had gained the day. The most sturdy believers were obliged to
+adjust their, biblical theories to it as best they could.(29)
+
+
+     (29) For a discussion of the geographical views of Isidore and Bede, see
+Santarem, Cosmographie, vol i, pp. 22-24. For the gradual acceptance
+of the idea of the earth's sphericity after the eighth century, see
+Kretschmer, pp. 51 et seq., where citations from a multitude of authors
+are given. For the views of the Reformers, see Zockler, vol. i, pp. 679
+and 693. For Calixt, Musaeus, and others, ibid., pp. 673-677 and 761.
+
+
+
+
+
+II. THE DELINEATION OF THE EARTH.
+
+
+Every great people of antiquity, as a rule, regarded its own central
+city or most holy place as necessarily the centre of the earth.
+
+The Chaldeans held that their "holy house of the gods" was the centre.
+The Egyptians sketched the world under the form of a human figure,
+in which Egypt was the heart, and the centre of it Thebes. For the
+Assyrians, it was Babylon; for the Hindus, it was Mount Meru; for the
+Greeks, so far as the civilized world was concerned, Olympus or the
+temple at Delphi; for the modern Mohammedans, it is Mecca and its sacred
+stone; the Chinese, to this day, speak of their empire as the "middle
+kingdom." It was in accordance, then, with a simple tendency of human
+thought that the Jews believed the centre of the world to be Jerusalem.
+
+The book of Ezekiel speaks of Jerusalem as in the middle of the earth,
+and all other parts of the world as set around the holy city. Throughout
+the "ages of faith" this was very generally accepted as a direct
+revelation from the Almighty regarding the earth's form. St. Jerome, the
+greatest authority of the early Church upon the Bible, declared, on
+the strength of this utterance of the prophet, that Jerusalem could
+be nowhere but at the earth's centre; in the ninth century Archbishop
+Rabanus Maurus reiterated the same argument; in the eleventh
+century Hugh of St. Victor gave to the doctrine another scriptural
+demonstration; and Pope Urban, in his great sermon at Clermont urging
+the Franks to the crusade, declared, "Jerusalem is the middle point of
+the earth"; in the thirteenth century an ecclesiastical writer much in
+vogue, the monk Caesarius of Heisterbach, declared, "As the heart in
+the midst of the body, so is Jerusalem situated in the midst of our
+inhabited earth,"--"so it was that Christ was crucified at the centre
+of the earth." Dante accepted this view of Jerusalem as a certainty,
+wedding it to immortal verse; and in the pious book of travels ascribed
+to Sir John Mandeville, so widely read in the Middle Ages, it is
+declared that Jerusalem is at the centre of the world, and that a spear
+standing erect at the Holy Sepulchre casts no shadow at the equinox.
+
+Ezekiel's statement thus became the standard of orthodoxy to early
+map-makers. The map of the world at Hereford Cathedral, the maps of
+Andrea Bianco, Marino Sanuto, and a multitude of others fixed this view
+in men's minds, and doubtless discouraged during many generations any
+scientific statements tending to unbalance this geographical centre
+revealed in Scripture.(30)
+
+
+     (30) For beliefs of various nations of antiquity that the earth's center
+was in their most sacred place, see citations from Maspero, Charton,
+Sayce, and others in Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism, and Myth, chap.
+iv. As to the Greeks, we have typical statements in the Eumenides of
+Aeschylus, where the stone in the altar at Delphi is repeatedly called
+"the earth's navel"--which is precisely the expression used regarding
+Jerusalem in the Septuagint translation of Ezekiel (see below). The
+proof texts on which the mediaeval geographers mainly relied as to the
+form of the earth were Ezekiel v, 5, and xxxviii, 12. The progress
+of geographical knowledge evidently caused them to be softened down
+somewhat in our King James's version; but the first of them reads, in
+the Vulgate, "Ista est Hierusalem, in medio gentium posui eam et in
+circuitu ejus terrae"; and the second reads, in the Vulgate, "in medio
+terrae," and in the Septuagint, [Greek]. That the literal centre of the
+earth was understood, see proof in St. Jerome, Commentat. in Ezekiel,
+lib. ii; and for general proof, see Leopardi, Saggio sopra gli errori
+popolari degli antichi, pp. 207, 208. For Rabanus Maurus, see his De
+Universo, lib. xii, cap. 4, in Migne, tome cxi, p. 339. For Hugh of
+St. Victor, se his De Situ Terrarum, cap. ii. For Dante's belief, see
+Inferno, canto xxxiv, 112-115:
+
+"E se' or sotto l'emisperio giunto,  Ch' e opposito a quel che la gran secca
+Coverchia, e sotto il cui colmo consunto  Fu l'uom che nacque e visse senza pecca."
+
+For orthodox geography in the Middle Ages, see Wright's Essays on
+Archaeology, vol. ii, chapter on the map of the world in Hereford
+Cathedral; also the rude maps in Cardinal d'Ailly's Ymago Mundi; also
+copies of maps of Marino Sanuto and others in Peschel, Erdkunde, p. 210;
+also Munster, Fac Simile dell' Atlante di Andrea Bianco, Venezia, 1869.
+And for discussions of the whole subject, see Satarem, vol. ii, p. 295,
+vol. iii, pp. 71, 183, 184, and elsewhere. For a brief summary with
+citations, see Eiken, Geschichte, etc., pp. 622, 623.
+
+
+Nor did medieval thinkers rest with this conception. In accordance with
+the dominant view that physical truth must be sought by theological
+reasoning, the doctrine was evolved that not only the site of the cross
+on Calvary marked the geographical centre of the world, but that on this
+very spot had stood the tree which bore the forbidden fruit in Eden.
+Thus was geography made to reconcile all parts of the great theologic
+plan. This doctrine was hailed with joy by multitudes; and we find in
+the works of medieval pilgrims to Palestine, again and again, evidence
+that this had become precious truth to them, both in theology and
+geography. Even as late as 1664 the eminent French priest Eugene Roger,
+in his published travels in Palestine, dwelt upon the thirty-eighth
+chapter of Ezekiel, coupled with a text from Isaiah, to prove that the
+exact centre of the earth is a spot marked on the pavement of the Church
+of the Holy Sepulchre, and that on this spot once stood the tree which
+bore the forbidden fruit and the cross of Christ.(31)
+
+
+     (31) For the site of the cross on Calvary, as the point where stood "the
+tree of the knowledge of good and evil" in Eden, at the centre of the
+earth, see various Eastern travellers cited in Tobler; but especially
+the travels of Bishop Arculf in the Holy Land, in Wright's Early Travels
+in Palestine, p. 8; also Travels of Saewulf, ibid, p. 38; also Sir John
+Mandeville, ibid., pp. 166, 167. For Roger, see his La Terre Saincte,
+Paris, 1664, pp. 89-217, etc.; see also Quaresmio, Terrae Sanctae
+Elucidatio, 1639, for similar view; and, for one narrative in which the
+idea was developed into an amazing mass of pious myths, see Pilgrimage
+of the Russian Abbot Daniel, edited by Sir C. W. Wilson, London, 1885,
+p. 14. (The passage deserves to be quoted as an example of myth-making;
+it is as follows: "At the time of our Lord's crucifixion, when he gave
+up the ghost on the cross, the veil of the temple was rent, and the rock
+above Adam's skull opened, and the blood and water which flowed from
+Christ's side ran down through the fissure upon the skull, thus washing
+away the sins of men.")
+
+
+Nor was this the only misconception which forced its way from our sacred
+writings into medieval map-making: two others were almost as marked.
+First of these was the vague terror inspired by Gog and Magog. Few
+passages in the Old Testament are more sublime than the denunciation
+of these great enemies by Ezekiel; and the well-known statement in the
+Apocalypse fastened the Hebrew feeling regarding them with a new meaning
+into the mind of the early Church: hence it was that the medieval
+map-makers took great pains to delineate these monsters and their
+habitations on the maps. For centuries no map was considered orthodox
+which did not show them.
+
+The second conception was derived from the mention in our sacred books
+of the "four winds." Hence came a vivid belief in their real existence,
+and their delineation on the maps, generally as colossal heads with
+distended cheeks, blowing vigorously toward Jerusalem.
+
+After these conceptions had mainly disappeared we find here and there
+evidences of the difficulty men found in giving up the scriptural idea
+of direct personal interference by agents of Heaven in the ordinary
+phenomena of Nature: thus, in a noted map of the sixteenth century
+representing the earth as a sphere, there is at each pole a crank, with
+an angel laboriously turning the earth by means of it; and, in another
+map, the hand of the Almighty, thrust forth from the clouds, holds the
+earth suspended by a rope and spins it with his thumb and fingers.
+Even as late as the middle of the seventeenth century Heylin, the most
+authoritative English geographer of the time, shows a like tendency to
+mix science and theology. He warps each to help the other, as follows:
+"Water, making but one globe with the earth, is yet higher than it.
+This appears, first, because it is a body not so heavy; secondly, it is
+observed by sailors that their ships move faster to the shore than from
+it, whereof no reason can be given but the height of the water above the
+land; thirdly, to such as stand on the shore the sea seems to swell into
+the form of a round hill till it puts a bound upon our sight. Now that
+the sea, hovering thus over and above the earth, doth not overwhelm
+it, can be ascribed only to his Providence who 'hath made the waters to
+stand on an heap that they turn not again to cover the earth.'"(32)
+
+
+     (32) For Gog and Magog, see Ezekiel xxxviii and xxxix, and Rev. xx,
+8; and for the general subject, Toy, Judaism and Christianity, Boston,
+1891, pp. 373, 374. For maps showing these two great terrors, and for
+geographical discussion regarding them, see Lelewel, Geog. du Moyen
+Age, Bruxelles, 1850, Atlas; also Ruge, Gesch. des Zeitalters der
+Entdeckungen, Berlin, 1881, pp. 78, 79; also Peschel's Abhandlungen,
+pp.28-35, and Gesch. der Erdkunde, p. 210. For representations on maps
+of the "Four Winds," see Charton, Voyageurs, tome ii, p. 11; also Ruge,
+as above, pp. 324, 325; also for a curious mixture of the scriptural
+winds issuing from the bags of Aeolus, see a map of the twelfth century
+in Leon Gautier, La Chevalerie, p. 153; and for maps showing additional
+winds, see various editions of Ptolemy. For a map with angels turning
+the earth by means of cranks at the poles, see Grynaeus, Novus Orbis,
+Basileae, 1537. For the globe kept spinning by the Almighty, see J.
+Hondius's map, 1589; and for Heylin, his first folio, 1652, p. 27.
+
+
+
+
+III. THE INHABITANTS OF THE EARTH.
+
+
+Even while the doctrine of the sphericity of the earth was undecided,
+another question had been suggested which theologians finally came to
+consider of far greater importance. The doctrine of the sphericity
+of the earth naturally led to thought regarding its inhabitants, and
+another ancient germ was warmed into life--the idea of antipodes: of
+human beings on the earth's opposite sides.
+
+In the Greek and Roman world this idea had found supporters and
+opponents, Cicero and Pliny being among the former, and Epicurus,
+Lucretius, and Plutarch among the latter. Thus the problem came into the
+early Church unsolved.
+
+Among the first churchmen to take it up was, in the East, St. Gregory
+Nazianzen, who showed that to sail beyond Gibraltar was impossible; and,
+in the West, Lactantius, who asked: "Is there any one so senseless as
+to believe that there are men whose footsteps are higher than their
+heads?... that the crops and trees grow downward?... that the rains and
+snow and hail fall upward toward the earth?... I am at a loss what to
+say of those who, when they have once erred, steadily persevere in their
+folly and defend one vain thing by another."
+
+In all this contention by Gregory and Lactantius there was nothing to be
+especially regretted, for, whatever their motive, they simply supported
+their inherited belief on grounds of natural law and probability.
+
+Unfortunately, the discussion was not long allowed to rest on these
+scientific and philosophical grounds; other Christian thinkers followed,
+who in their ardour adduced texts of Scripture, and soon the question
+had become theological; hostility to the belief in antipodes became
+dogmatic. The universal Church was arrayed against it, and in front of
+the vast phalanx stood, to a man, the fathers.
+
+To all of them this idea seemed dangerous; to most of them it seemed
+damnable. St. Basil and St. Ambrose were tolerant enough to allow that
+a man might be saved who thought the earth inhabited on its opposite
+sides; but the great majority of the fathers doubted the possibility of
+salvation to such misbelievers. The great champion of the orthodox view
+was St. Augustine. Though he seemed inclined to yield a little in regard
+to the sphericity of the earth, he fought the idea that men exist on the
+other side of it, saying that "Scripture speaks of no such descendants
+of Adam," he insists that men could not be allowed by the Almighty to
+live there, since if they did they could not see Christ at His second
+coming descending through the air. But his most cogent appeal, one which
+we find echoed from theologian to theologian during a thousand years
+afterward, is to the nineteenth Psalm, and to its confirmation in the
+Epistle to the Romans; to the words, "Their line is gone out through
+all the earth, and their words to the end of the world." He dwells with
+great force on the fact that St. Paul based one of his most powerful
+arguments upon this declaration regarding the preachers of the gospel,
+and that he declared even more explicitly that "Verily, their sound
+went into all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the world."
+Thenceforth we find it constantly declared that, as those preachers
+did not go to the antipodes, no antipodes can exist; and hence that the
+supporters of this geographical doctrine "give the lie direct to King
+David and to St. Paul, and therefore to the Holy Ghost." Thus the great
+Bishop of Hippo taught the whole world for over a thousand years that,
+as there was no preaching of the gospel on the opposite side of the
+earth, there could be no human beings there.
+
+The great authority of Augustine, and the cogency of his scriptural
+argument, held the Church firmly against the doctrine of the antipodes;
+all schools of interpretation were now agreed--the followers of the
+allegorical tendencies of Alexandria, the strictly literal exegetes of
+Syria, the more eclectic theologians of the West. For over a thousand
+years it was held in the Church, "always, everywhere, and by all," that
+there could not be human beings on the opposite sides of the earth, even
+if the earth had opposite sides; and, when attacked by gainsayers, the
+great mass of true believers, from the fourth century to the fifteenth,
+simply used that opiate which had so soothing an effect on John Henry
+Newman in the nineteenth century--securus judicat orbis terrarum.
+
+Yet gainsayers still appeared. That the doctrine of the antipodes
+continued to have life, is shown by the fact that in the sixth century
+Procopius of Gaza attacks it with a tremendous argument. He declares
+that, if there be men on the other side of the earth, Christ must have
+gone there and suffered a second time to save them; and, therefore, that
+there must have been there, as necessary preliminaries to his coming, a
+duplicate Eden, Adam, serpent, and deluge.
+
+Cosmas Indicopleustes also attacked the doctrine with especial
+bitterness, citing a passage from St. Luke to prove that antipodes are
+theologically impossible.
+
+At the end of the sixth century came a man from whom much might be
+expected--St. Isidore of Seville. He had pondered over ancient thought
+in science, and, as we have seen, had dared proclaim his belief in the
+sphericity of the earth; but with that he stopped. As to the antipodes,
+the authority of the Psalmist, St. Paul, and St. Augustine silences him;
+he shuns the whole question as unlawful, subjects reason to faith, and
+declares that men can not and ought not to exist on opposite sides of
+the earth.(33)
+
+
+     (33)For the opinions of Basil, Ambrose, and others, see Lecky, History
+of Rationalism in Europe, New York, 1872, vol. i, p. 279. Also Letronne,
+in Revue des Deux Mondes, March, 1834. For Lactantius, see citations
+already given. For St. Augustine's opinion, see the De Civitate Dei,
+xvi, 9, where this great father of the church shows that the antipodes
+"nulla ratione credendum est." For the unanimity of the fathers against
+the antipodes, see Zockler, vol. 1, p. 127. For a very naive summary,
+see Joseph Acosta, Natural and Moral History of the Indies, Grimston's
+translation, republished by the Hakluyt Soc., chaps. vii and viii; also
+citations in Buckle's Posthumous Works, vol. ii, p. 645. For Procopius
+of Gaza, see Kretschmer, p. 55. See also, on the general subject,
+Peschel, Geschichte der Erdkunde, pp. 96-97. For Isidore, see citations
+already given. To understand the embarrassment caused by these
+utterances of the fathers to scientific men of a later period, see
+letter of Agricola to Joachim Vadianus in 1514. Agricola asks Vadianus
+to give his views regarding the antipodes, saying that he himself does
+not know what to do, between the fathers on the one side and the
+learned men of modern times on the other. On the other hand, for the
+embarrassment caused to the Church by this mistaken zeal of the
+fathers, see Kepler's references and Fromund's replies; also De Morgan,
+Paradoxes, p. 58. Kepler appears to have taken great delight in throwing
+the views of Lactantius into the teeth of his adversaries.
+
+
+Under such pressure this scientific truth seems to have disappeared for
+nearly two hundred years; but by the eighth century the sphericity
+of the earth had come to be generally accepted among the leaders of
+thought, and now the doctrine of the antipodes was again asserted by a
+bishop, Virgil of Salzburg.
+
+There then stood in Germany, in those first years of the eighth century,
+one of the greatest and noblest of men--St. Boniface. His learning was
+of the best then known. In labours he was a worthy successor of the
+apostles; his genius for Christian work made him unwillingly primate of
+Germany; his devotion to duty led him willingly to martyrdom. There sat,
+too, at that time, on the papal throne a great Christian statesman--Pope
+Zachary. Boniface immediately declared against the revival of such
+a heresy as the doctrine of the antipodes; he stigmatized it as an
+assertion that there are men beyond the reach of the appointed means of
+salvation; he attacked Virgil, and called on Pope Zachary for aid.
+
+The Pope, as the infallible teacher of Christendom, made a strong
+response. He cited passages from the book of Job and the Wisdom of
+Solomon against the doctrine of the antipodes; he declared it "perverse,
+iniquitous, and against Virgil's own soul," and indicated a purpose of
+driving him from his bishopric. Whether this purpose was carried out or
+not, the old theological view, by virtue of the Pope's divinely ordered
+and protected "inerrancy," was re-established, and the doctrine that
+the earth has inhabitants on but one of its sides became more than ever
+orthodox, and precious in the mind of the Church.(34)
+
+
+     (34) For Virgil of Salzburg, see Neander's History of the Christian
+Church, Torrey's translation, vol. iii, p. 63; also Herzog,
+Real-Encyklopadie, etc., recent edition by Prof. Hauck, s. v. Virgilius;
+also Kretschmer, pp. 56-58; also Whewell, vol. i, p. 197; also De
+Morgan, Budget of Paradoxes, pp. 24-26. For very full notes as to pagan
+and Christian advocates of the doctrine of the sphericity of the earth
+and of the antipodes, and for extract from Zachary's letter, see Migne,
+Patrologia, vol. vi, p. 426, and vol. xli, p. 487. For St. Boniface's
+part, see Bonifacii Epistolae, ed. Giles, i, 173. Berger de Xivrey,
+Traditions Teratologiques, pp. 186-188, makes a curious attempt to show
+that Pope Zachary denounced the wrong man; that the real offender was
+a Roman poet--in the sixth book of the Aeneid and the first book of the
+Georgics.
+
+
+This decision seems to have been regarded as final, and five centuries
+later the great encyclopedist of the Middle Ages, Vincent of Beauvais,
+though he accepts the sphericity of the earth, treats the doctrine
+of the antipodes as disproved, because contrary to Scripture. Yet the
+doctrine still lived. Just as it had been previously revived by William
+of Conches and then laid to rest, so now it is somewhat timidly brought
+out in the thirteenth century by no less a personage than Albert the
+Great, the most noted man of science in that time. But his utterances
+are perhaps purposely obscure. Again it disappears beneath the
+theological wave, and a hundred years later Nicolas d'Oresme, geographer
+of the King of France, a light of science, is forced to yield to the
+clear teaching of the Scripture as cited by St. Augustine.
+
+Nor was this the worst. In Italy, at the beginning of the fourteenth
+century, the Church thought it necessary to deal with questions of this
+sort by rack and fagot. In 1316 Peter of Abano, famous as a physician,
+having promulgated this with other obnoxious doctrines in science, only
+escaped the Inquisition by death; and in 1327 Cecco d'Ascoli, noted as
+an astronomer, was for this and other results of thought, which brought
+him under suspicion of sorcery, driven from his professorship at Bologna
+and burned alive at Florence. Nor was this all his punishment: Orcagna,
+whose terrible frescoes still exist on the walls of the Campo Santo at
+Pisa, immortalized Cecco by representing him in the flames of hell.(35)
+
+
+     (35) For Vincent of Beauvais and the antipode, see his Speculum
+Naturale, Book VII, with citations from St. Augustine, De Civitate
+Dei, cap. xvi. For Albert the Great's doctrine regarding the antipodes,
+compare Kretschmer, as above, with Eicken, Geschichte, etc., p. 621.
+Kretschmer finds that Albert supports the doctrine, and Eicken finds
+that he denies it--a fair proof that Albert was not inclined to state
+his views with dangerous clearness. For D'Oresme, see Santerem, Histoire
+de la Cosmographie, vol. i, p. 142. For Peter of Abano, or Apono, as he
+is often called, see Tiraboschi, also Guinguene, vol. ii, p. 293;
+also Naude, Histoire des Grands Hommes soupconnes de Magie. For Cecco
+d'Ascoli, see Montucla, Histoire de Mathematiques, i, 528; also Daunou,
+Etudes Historiques, vol. vi, p. 320; also Kretschmer, p. 59. Concerning
+Orcagna's representation of Cecco in the flames of hell, see Renan,
+Averroes et l'Averroisme, Paris, 1867, p. 328.
+
+
+Years rolled on, and there came in the fifteenth century one from
+whom the world had a right to expect much. Pierre d'Ailly, by force of
+thought and study, had risen to be Provost of the College of St. Die
+in Lorraine; his ability had made that little village a centre of
+scientific thought for all Europe, and finally made him Archbishop of
+Cambray and a cardinal. Toward the end of the fifteenth century was
+printed what Cardinal d'Ailly had written long before as a summing up
+of his best thought and research--the collection of essays known as the
+Ymago Mundi. It gives us one of the most striking examples in history
+of a great man in theological fetters. As he approaches this question
+he states it with such clearness that we expect to hear him assert the
+truth; but there stands the argument of St. Augustine; there, too, stand
+the biblical texts on which it is founded--the text from the Psalms and
+the explicit declaration of St. Paul to the Romans, "Their sound went
+into all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the world." D'Ailly
+attempts to reason, but he is overawed, and gives to the world virtually
+nothing.
+
+Still, the doctrine of the antipodes lived and moved: so much so that
+the eminent Spanish theologian Tostatus, even as late as the age of
+Columbus, felt called upon to protest against it as "unsafe." He had
+shaped the old missile of St. Augustine into the following syllogism:
+"The apostles were commanded to go into all the world and to preach the
+gospel to every creature; they did not go to any such part of the world
+as the antipodes; they did not preach to any creatures there: ergo, no
+antipodes exist."
+
+The warfare of Columbus the world knows well: how the Bishop of Ceuta
+worsted him in Portugal; how sundry wise men of Spain confronted him
+with the usual quotations from the Psalms, from St. Paul, and from St.
+Augustine; how, even after he was triumphant, and after his voyage had
+greatly strengthened the theory of the earth's sphericity, with which
+the theory of the antipodes was so closely connected, the Church by its
+highest authority solemnly stumbled and persisted in going astray. In
+1493 Pope Alexander VI, having been appealed to as an umpire between the
+claims of Spain and Portugal to the newly discovered parts of the earth,
+issued a bull laying down upon the earth's surface a line of demarcation
+between the two powers. This line was drawn from north to south a
+hundred leagues west of the Azores; and the Pope in the plenitude of his
+knowledge declared that all lands discovered east of this line should
+belong to the Portuguese, and all west of it should belong to the
+Spaniards. This was hailed as an exercise of divinely illuminated power
+by the Church; but difficulties arose, and in 1506 another attempt
+was made by Pope Julius II to draw the line three hundred and seventy
+leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands. This, again, was supposed to
+bring divine wisdom to settle the question; but, shortly, overwhelming
+difficulties arose; for the Portuguese claimed Brazil, and, of course,
+had no difficulty in showing that they could reach it by sailing to the
+east of the line, provided they sailed long enough. The lines laid down
+by Popes Alexander and Julius may still be found upon the maps of
+the period, but their bulls have quietly passed into the catalogue of
+ludicrous errors.
+
+Yet the theological barriers to this geographical truth yielded but
+slowly. Plain as it had become to scholars, they hesitated to declare
+it to the world at large. Eleven hundred years had passed since St.
+Augustine had proved its antagonism to Scripture, when Gregory Reysch
+gave forth his famous encyclopaedia, the Margarita Philosophica. Edition
+after edition was issued, and everywhere appeared in it the orthodox
+statements; but they were evidently strained to the breaking point; for
+while, in treating of the antipodes, Reysch refers respectfully to St.
+Augustine as objecting to the scientific doctrine, he is careful not to
+cite Scripture against it, and not less careful to suggest geographical
+reasoning in favour of it.
+
+But in 1519 science gains a crushing victory. Magellan makes his
+famous voyage. He proves the earth to be round, for his expedition
+circumnavigates it; he proves the doctrine of the antipodes, for his
+shipmates see the peoples of the antipodes. Yet even this does not end
+the war. Many conscientious men oppose the doctrine for two hundred
+years longer. Then the French astronomers make their measurements of
+degrees in equatorial and polar regions, and add to their proofs that
+of the lengthened pendulum. When this was done, when the deductions of
+science were seen to be established by the simple test of measurement,
+beautifully and perfectly, and when a long line of trustworthy
+explorers, including devoted missionaries, had sent home accounts of the
+antipodes, then, and then only, this war of twelve centuries ended.
+
+Such was the main result of this long war; but there were other results
+not so fortunate. The efforts of Eusebius, Basil, and Lactantius to
+deaden scientific thought; the efforts of Augustine to combat it; the
+efforts of Cosmas to crush it by dogmatism; the efforts of Boniface
+and Zachary to crush it by force, conscientious as they all were, had
+resulted simply in impressing upon many leading minds the conviction
+that science and religion are enemies.
+
+On the other hand, what was gained by the warriors of science for
+religion? Certainly a far more worthy conception of the world, and a far
+more ennobling conception of that power which pervades and directs
+it. Which is more consistent with a great religion, the cosmography
+of Cosmas or that of Isaac Newton? Which presents a nobler field for
+religious thought, the diatribes of Lactantius or the calm statements of
+Humboldt?(36)
+
+
+     (36) For D'Ailly's acceptance of St. Augustine's argument, see the Ymago
+Mundi, cap. vii. For Tostatus, see Zockler, vol. i, pp. 467, 468. He
+based his opposition on Romans x, 18. For Columbus, see Winsor,
+Fiske, and Adams; also Humboldt, Histoire de la Geographie du Nouveau
+Continent. For the bull of Alexander VI, see Daunou, Etudes Historiques,
+vol. ii, p. 417; also Peschel, Zeitalter der Entdeckungen, Book II,
+chap. iv. The text of the bull is given with an English translation
+in Arber's reprint of The First Three English Books on America, etc.,
+Birmingham, 1885, pp. 201-204; also especially Peschel, Die Theilung der
+Erde unter Papst Alexander VI and Julius II, Leipsic, 1871, pp. 14
+et seq. For remarks on the power under which the line was drawn by
+Alexander VI, see Mamiani, Del Papato nei Tre Ultimi Secoli, p. 170.
+For maps showing lines of division, see Kohl, Die beiden altesten
+General-Karten von Amerika, Weimar, 1860, where maps of 1527 and 1529
+are reproduced; also Mercator, Atlas, tenth edition, Amsterdam, 1628,
+pp. 70, 71. For latest discussion on The Demarcation Line of Alexander
+VI, see E. G. Bourne in Yale Review, May, 1892. For the Margarita
+Philosophica, see the editions of 1503, 1509, 1517, lib. vii, cap. 48.
+For the effect of Magellan's voyages, and the reluctance to yield to
+proof, see Henri Martin, Histoire de France, vol. xiv, p. 395; St.
+Martin's Histoire de la Geographie, p. 369; Peschel, Geschichte des
+Zeitalters der Entdeckungen, concluding chapters; and for an admirable
+summary, Draper, Hist. Int. Devel. of Europe, pp. 451-453; also an
+interesting passage in Sir Thomas Brown's Vulgar and Common Errors, Book
+I, chap. vi; also a striking passage in Acosta, chap. ii. For general
+statement as to supplementary proof by measurement of degrees and by
+pendulum, see Somerville, Phys. Geog., chap. i, par. 6, note; also
+Humboldt, Cosmos, vol. ii, p. 736, and vol. v, pp. 16, 32; also
+Montucla, iv, 138. As to the effect of travel, see Acosta's history
+above cited. The good missionary says, in Grimston's quaint translation,
+"Whatsoever Lactantius saith, wee that live now at Peru, and inhabite
+that parte of the worlde which is opposite to Asia and theire Antipodes,
+finde not ourselves to bee hanging in the aire, our heades downward and
+our feete on high."
+
+
+
+
+
+IV. THE SIZE OF THE EARTH.
+
+
+But at an early period another subject in geography had stirred the
+minds of thinking men--THE EARTH'S SIZE. Various ancient investigators
+had by different methods reached measurements more or less near the
+truth; these methods were continued into the Middle Ages, supplemented
+by new thought, and among the more striking results were those obtained
+by Roger Bacon and Gerbert, afterward Pope Sylvester II. They handed
+down to after-time the torch of knowledge, but, as their reward among
+their contemporaries, they fell under the charge of sorcery.
+
+Far more consonant with the theological spirit of the Middle Ages was a
+solution of the problem from Scripture, and this solution deserves to
+be given as an example of a very curious theological error, chancing to
+result in the establishment of a great truth. The second book of Esdras,
+which among Protestants is placed in the Apocrypha, was held by many of
+the foremost men of the ancient Church as fully inspired: though Jerome
+looked with suspicion on this book, it was regarded as prophetic
+by Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, and Ambrose, and the Church
+acquiesced in that view. In the Eastern Church it held an especially
+high place, and in the Western Church, before the Reformation, was
+generally considered by the most eminent authorities to be part of the
+sacred canon. In the sixth chapter of this book there is a summary of
+the works of creation, and in it occur the following verses:
+
+"Upon the third day thou didst command that the waters should be
+gathered in the seventh part of the earth; six parts hast thou dried up
+and kept them to the intent that of these some, being planted of God and
+tilled, might serve thee."
+
+"Upon the fifth day thou saidst unto the seventh part where the waters
+were gathered, that it should bring forth living creatures, fowls and
+fishes, and so it came to pass."
+
+These statements were reiterated in other verses, and were naturally
+considered as of controlling authority.
+
+Among the scholars who pondered on this as on all things likely to
+increase knowledge was Cardinal Pierre d'Ailly. As we have seen, this
+great man, while he denied the existence of the antipodes, as St.
+Augustine had done, believed firmly in the sphericity of the earth, and,
+interpreting these statements of the book of Esdras in connection with
+this belief, he held that, as only one seventh of the earth's surface
+was covered by water, the ocean between the west coast of Europe and the
+east coast of Asia could not be very wide. Knowing, as he thought, the
+extent of the land upon the globe, he felt that in view of this divinely
+authorized statement the globe must be much smaller, and the land of
+"Zipango," reached by Marco Polo, on the extreme east coast of Asia,
+much nearer than had been generally believed.
+
+On this point he laid stress in his great work, the Ymago Mundi, and
+an edition of it having been published in the days when Columbus
+was thinking most closely upon the problem of a westward voyage, it
+naturally exercised much influence upon his reasonings. Among the
+treasures of the library at Seville, there is nothing more interesting
+than a copy of this work annotated by Columbus himself: from this very
+copy it was that Columbus obtained confirmation of his belief that the
+passage across the ocean to Marco Polo's land of Zipango in Asia was
+short. But for this error, based upon a text supposed to be inspired, it
+is unlikely that Columbus could have secured the necessary support for
+his voyage. It is a curious fact that this single theological error thus
+promoted a series of voyages which completely destroyed not only
+this but every other conception of geography based upon the sacred
+writings.(37)
+
+
+     (37) For this error, so fruitful in discovery, see D'Ailly, Ymago Mundi;
+the passage referred to is fol. 12 verso. For the passage from Esdras,
+see chap. vi, verses 42, 47, 50, and 52; see also Zockler, Geschichte
+der Beziehungen zwischen Theologie und Naturweissenschaft, vol. i,
+p. 461. For one of the best recent statements, see Ruge, Gesch. des
+Zeitalters der Entdeckungen, Berlin, 1882, pp. 221 et seq. For a letter
+of Columbus acknowledging his indebtedness to this mistake in Esdras,
+see Navarrete, Viajes y Descubrimientos, Madrid, 1825, tome i, pp. 242,
+264; also Humboldt, Hist. de la Geographie du Nouveau Continent, vol. i,
+pp. 68, 69.
+
+
+
+
+
+V. THE CHARACTER OF THE EARTH'S SURFACE.
+
+It would be hardly just to dismiss the struggle for geographical truth
+without referring to one passage more in the history of the Protestant
+Church, for it shows clearly the difficulties in the way of the simplest
+statement of geographical truth which conflicted with the words of the
+sacred books.
+
+In the year 1553 Michael Servetus was on trial for his life at Geneva
+on the charge of Arianism. Servetus had rendered many services
+to scientific truth, and one of these was an edition of Ptolemy's
+Geography, in which Judea was spoken of, not as "a land flowing with
+milk and honey," but, in strict accordance with the truth, as, in
+the main, meagre, barren, and inhospitable. In his trial this simple
+statement of geographical fact was used against him by his arch-enemy
+John Calvin with fearful power. In vain did Servetus plead that he had
+simply drawn the words from a previous edition of Ptolemy; in vain did
+he declare that this statement was a simple geographical truth of which
+there were ample proofs: it was answered that such language "necessarily
+inculpated Moses, and grievously outraged the Holy Ghost."(38)
+
+
+     (38) For Servetus's geographical offense, see Rilliet, Relation du
+Proces criminel contre Michel Servet d'apres les Documents originaux,
+Geneva, 1844, pp. 42,43; also Willis, Servetus and Calvin, London, 1877,
+p. 325. The passage condemned is in the Ptolemy of 1535, fol. 41. It was
+discreetly retrenched in a reprint of the same edition.
+
+
+In summing up the action of the Church upon geography, we must say,
+then, that the dogmas developed in strict adherence to Scripture and
+the conceptions held in the Church during many centuries "always, every
+where, and by all," were, on the whole, steadily hostile to truth; but
+it is only just to make a distinction here between the religious and the
+theological spirit. To the religious spirit are largely due several
+of the noblest among the great voyages of discovery. A deep longing to
+extend the realms of Christianity influenced the minds of Prince John
+of Portugal, in his great series of efforts along the African coast;
+of Vasco da Gama, in his circumnavigation of the Cape of Good Hope; of
+Magellan, in his voyage around the world; and doubtless found a place
+among the more worldly motives of Columbus.(39)
+
+
+     (39) As to the earlier mixture in the motives of Columbus, it may be
+well to compare with the earlier biographies the recent ones by Dr.
+Winsor and President Adams.
+
+
+Thus, in this field, from the supremacy accorded to theology, we find
+resulting that tendency to dogmatism which has shown itself in all
+ages the deadly foe not only of scientific inquiry but of the higher
+religious spirit itself, while from the love of truth for truth's sake,
+which has been the inspiration of all fruitful work in science, nothing
+but advantage has ever resulted to religion.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.  ASTRONOMY.
+
+
+
+
+I. THE OLD SACRED THEORY OF THE UNIVERSE.
+
+
+The next great series of battles was fought over the relations of the
+visible heavens to the earth.
+
+In the early Church, in view of the doctrine so prominent in the New
+Testament, that the earth was soon to be destroyed, and that there were
+to be "new heavens and a new earth," astronomy, like other branches of
+science, was generally looked upon as futile. Why study the old heavens
+and the old earth, when they were so soon to be replaced with something
+infinitely better? This feeling appears in St. Augustine's famous
+utterance, "What concern is it to me whether the heavens as a sphere
+inclose the earth in the middle of the world or overhang it on either
+side?"
+
+As to the heavenly bodies, theologians looked on them as at best only
+objects of pious speculation. Regarding their nature the fathers of the
+Church were divided. Origen, and others with him, thought them living
+beings possessed of souls, and this belief was mainly based upon the
+scriptural vision of the morning stars. singing together, and upon
+the beautiful appeal to the "stars and light" in the song of the three
+children--the Benedicite--which the Anglican communion has so wisely
+retained in its Liturgy.
+
+Other fathers thought the stars abiding-places of the angels, and that
+stars were moved by angels. The Gnostics thought the stars spiritual
+beings governed by angels, and appointed not to cause earthly events but
+to indicate them.
+
+As to the heavens in general, the prevailing view in the Church
+was based upon the scriptural declarations that a solid vault--a
+"firmament"--was extended above the earth, and that the heavenly
+bodies were simply lights hung within it. This was for a time held
+very tenaciously. St. Philastrius, in his famous treatise on heresies,
+pronounced it a heresy to deny that the stars are brought out by God
+from his treasure-house and hung in the sky every evening; any other
+view he declared "false to the Catholic faith." This view also survived
+in the sacred theory established so firmly by Cosmas in the sixth
+century. Having established his plan of the universe upon various texts
+in the Old and New Testaments, and having made it a vast oblong box,
+covered by the solid "firmament," he brought in additional texts from
+Scripture to account for the planetary movements, and developed at
+length the theory that the sun and planets are moved and the "windows of
+heaven" opened and shut by angels appointed for that purpose.
+
+How intensely real this way of looking at the universe was, we find in
+the writings of St. Isidore, the greatest leader of orthodox thought
+in the seventh century. He affirms that since the fall of man, and
+on account of it, the sun and moon shine with a feebler light; but he
+proves from a text in Isaiah that when the world shall be fully redeemed
+these "great lights" will shine again in all their early splendour.
+But, despite these authorities and their theological finalities, the
+evolution of scientific thought continued, its main germ being the
+geocentric doctrine--the doctrine that the earth is the centre, and that
+the sun and planets revolve about it.(40)
+
+
+     (40) For passage cited from Clement of Alexandria, see English
+translation, Edinburgh, 1869, vol. ii, p. 368; also the Miscellanies,
+Book V, cap. vi. For typical statements by St. Augustine, see De Genesi,
+ii, cap. ix, in Migne, Patr. Lat., tome xxiv, pp. 270-271. For Origen's
+view, see the De Principiis, lib. i, cap. vii; see also Leopardi's
+Errori Populari, cap. xi; also Wilson's Selections from the Prophetic
+Scriptures in Ante-Nicene Library, p. 132. For Philo Judaeus, see On the
+Creation of the World, chaps. xviii and xix, and On Monarchy, chap. i.
+For St. Isidore, see the De Ordine Creaturarum, cap v, in Migne, Patr.
+Lat., lxxxiii, pp. 923-925; also 1000, 1001. For Philastrius, see the
+De Hoeresibus, chap. cxxxiii, in Migne, tome xii, p. 1264. For Cosmas's
+view, see his Topographia Christiana, in Montfaucon, Col. Nov. Patrum,
+ii, p. 150, and elsewhere as cited in my chapter on Geography.
+
+
+This doctrine was of the highest respectability: it had been developed
+at a very early period, and had been elaborated until it accounted
+well for the apparent movements of the heavenly bodies; its final name,
+"Ptolemaic theory," carried weight; and, having thus come from antiquity
+into the Christian world, St. Clement of Alexandria demonstrated that
+the altar in the Jewish tabernacle was "a symbol of the earth placed
+in the middle of the universe": nothing more was needed; the geocentric
+theory was fully adopted by the Church and universally held to agree
+with the letter and spirit of Scripture.(41)
+
+
+     (41) As to the respectibility of the geocentric theory, etc., see
+Grote's Plato, vol. iii, p. 257; also Sir G. C. Lewis's Astronomy of the
+Ancients, chap. iii, sec. 1, for a very thoughtful statement of Plato's
+view, and differing from ancient statements. For plausible elaboration
+of it, and for supposed agreement of the Scripture with it, see
+Fromundus, Anti-Aristarchus, Antwerp, 1631; also Melanchthon's Initia
+Doctrinae Physicae. For an admirable statement of the theological view
+of the geocentric theory, antipodes, etc., see Eicken, Geschichte und
+System der mittelalterlichen Weltanschauung, pp. 618 et seq.
+
+
+Wrought into this foundation, and based upon it, there was developed
+in the Middle Ages, mainly out of fragments of Chaldean and other early
+theories preserved in the Hebrew Scriptures, a new sacred system of
+astronomy, which became one of the great treasures of the universal
+Church--the last word of revelation.
+
+Three great men mainly reared this structure. First was the unknown who
+gave to the world the treatises ascribed to Dionysius the Areopagite.
+It was unhesitatingly believed that these were the work of St. Paul's
+Athenian convert, and therefore virtually of St. Paul himself. Though
+now known to be spurious, they were then considered a treasure of
+inspiration, and an emperor of the East sent them to an emperor of the
+West as the most worthy of gifts. In the ninth century they were widely
+circulated in western Europe, and became a fruitful source of thought,
+especially on the whole celestial hierarchy. Thus the old ideas of
+astronomy were vastly developed, and the heavenly hosts were classed
+and named in accordance with indications scattered through the sacred
+Scriptures.
+
+The next of these three great theologians was Peter Lombard, professor
+at the University of Paris. About the middle of the twelfth century he
+gave forth his collection of Sentences, or Statements by the Fathers,
+and this remained until the end of the Middle Ages the universal manual
+of theology. In it was especially developed the theological view of
+man's relation to the universe. The author tells the world: "Just as
+man is made for the sake of God--that is, that he may serve Him,--so the
+universe is made for the sake of man--that is, that it may serve HIM;
+therefore is man placed at the middle point of the universe, that he may
+both serve and be served."
+
+The vast significance of this view, and its power in resisting any real
+astronomical science, we shall see, especially in the time of Galileo.
+
+The great triad of thinkers culminated in St. Thomas Aquinas--the
+sainted theologian, the glory of the mediaeval Church, the "Angelic
+Doctor," the most marvellous intellect between Aristotle and Newton; he
+to whom it was believed that an image of the Crucified had spoken words
+praising his writings. Large of mind, strong, acute, yet just--even more
+than just--to his opponents, he gave forth, in the latter half of the
+thirteenth century, his Cyclopaedia of Theology, the Summa Theologica.
+In this he carried the sacred theory of the universe to its full
+development. With great power and clearness he brought the whole vast
+system, material and spiritual, into its relations to God and man.(42)
+
+
+     (42) For the beliefs of Chaldean astronomers in revolving spheres
+carrying sun, moon, and planets, in a solid firmament supporting the
+celestial waters, and in angels as giving motion to the planets, see
+Lenormant; also Lethaby, 13-21; also Schroeder, Jensen, Lukas, et al.
+For the contribution of the pseudo-Dionysius to mediaeval cosmology, see
+Dion. Areopagita, De Coelesti Hierarchia, vers. Joan. Scoti, in Migne,
+Patr. Lat., cxxii. For the contribution of Peter Lombard, see Pet.
+Lomb., Libr. Sent., II, i, 8,-IV, i, 6, 7, in Migne, tome 192. For the
+citations from St. Thomas Aquinas, see the Summa, ed. Migne, especially
+Pars I, Qu. 70, (tome i, pp. 1174-1184); also Quaestio 47, Art. iii. For
+good general statement, see Milman, Latin Christianity, iv, 191 et seq.;
+and for relation of Cosmas to these theologians of western Europe, see
+Milman, as above, viii, 228, note.
+
+
+Thus was the vast system developed by these three leaders of mediaeval
+thought; and now came the man who wrought it yet more deeply into
+European belief, the poet divinely inspired who made the system part
+of the world's LIFE. Pictured by Dante, the empyrean and the concentric
+heavens, paradise, purgatory, and hell, were seen of all men; the God
+Triune, seated on his throne upon the circle of the heavens, as real as
+the Pope seated in the chair of St. Peter; the seraphim, cherubim, and
+thrones, surrounding the Almighty, as real as the cardinals surrounding
+the Pope; the three great orders of angels in heaven, as real as the
+three great orders, bishops, priests, and deacons, on earth; and the
+whole system of spheres, each revolving within the one above it, and
+all moving about the earth, subject to the primum mobile, as real as the
+feudal system of western Europe, subject to the Emperor.(43)
+
+
+     (43) For the central sun, hierarchy of angels, and concentric circles,
+see Dante, Paradiso, canto xxviii. For the words of St. Thomas Aquinas,
+showing to Virgil and Dante the great theologians of the Middle Ages,
+see canto x, and in Dean Plumptre's translation, vol. ii, pp. 56 et
+seq.; also Botta, Dante, pp. 350, 351. As to Dante's deep religious
+feeling and belief in his own divine mission, see J. R. Lowell, Among
+my Books, vol. i, p. 36. For a remarkable series of coloured engravings,
+showing Dante's whole cosmology, see La Materia della Divina Comedia di
+Dante dichiriata in vi tavole, da Michelangelo Caetani, published by the
+monks of Monte Cassino, to whose kindness I am indebted for my copy.
+
+
+Let us look into this vast creation--the highest achievement of
+theology--somewhat more closely.
+
+Its first feature shows a development out of earlier theological ideas.
+The earth is no longer a flat plain inclosed by four walls and solidly
+vaulted above, as theologians of previous centuries had believed it,
+under the inspiration of Cosmas; it is no longer a mere flat disk, with
+sun, moon, and stars hung up to give it light, as the earlier cathedral
+sculptors had figured it; it has become a globe at the centre of the
+universe. Encompassing it are successive transparent spheres, rotated
+by angels about the earth, and each carrying one or more of the heavenly
+bodies with it: that nearest the earth carrying the moon; the next,
+Mercury; the next, Venus; the next, the Sun; the next three, Mars,
+Jupiter, and Saturn; the eighth carrying the fixed stars. The ninth was
+the primum mobile, and inclosing all was the tenth heaven--the Empyrean.
+This was immovable--the boundary between creation and the great outer
+void; and here, in a light which no one can enter, the Triune God sat
+enthroned, the "music of the spheres" rising to Him as they moved. Thus
+was the old heathen doctrine of the spheres made Christian.
+
+In attendance upon the Divine Majesty, thus enthroned, are vast hosts
+of angels, who are divided into three hierarchies, one serving in the
+empyrean, one in the heavens, between the empyrean and the earth, and
+one on the earth.
+
+Each of these hierarchies is divided into three choirs, or orders; the
+first, into the orders of Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones; and the main
+occupation of these is to chant incessantly--to "continually cry" the
+divine praises.
+
+The order of Thrones conveys God's will to the second hierarchy, which
+serves in the movable heavens. This second hierarchy is also made up of
+three orders. The first of these, the order of Dominions, receives the
+divine commands; the second, the order of Powers, moves the heavens,
+sun, moon, planets, and stars, opens and shuts the "windows of heaven,"
+and brings to pass all other celestial phenomena; the third, the order
+of Empire, guards the others.
+
+The third and lowest hierarchy is also made up of three orders. First
+of these are the Principalities, the guardian spirits of nations and
+kingdoms. Next come Archangels; these protect religion, and bear the
+prayers of the saints to the foot of God's throne. Finally come Angels;
+these care for earthly affairs in general, one being appointed to each
+mortal, and others taking charge of the qualities of plants, metals,
+stones, and the like. Throughout the whole system, from the great Triune
+God to the lowest group of angels, we see at work the mystic power
+attached to the triangle and sacred number three--the same which gave
+the triune idea to ancient Hindu theology, which developed the triune
+deities in Egypt, and which transmitted this theological gift to the
+Christian world, especially through the Egyptian Athanasius.
+
+Below the earth is hell. This is tenanted by the angels who rebelled
+under the lead of Lucifer, prince of the seraphim--the former favourite
+of the Trinity; but, of these rebellious angels, some still rove among
+the planetary spheres, and give trouble to the good angels; others
+pervade the atmosphere about the earth, carrying lightning, storm,
+drought, and hail; others infest earthly society, tempting men to sin;
+but Peter Lombard and St. Thomas Aquinas take pains to show that the
+work of these devils is, after all, but to discipline man or to mete out
+deserved punishment.
+
+All this vast scheme had been so riveted into the Ptolemaic view by
+the use of biblical texts and theological reasonings that the resultant
+system of the universe was considered impregnable and final. To attack
+it was blasphemy.
+
+It stood for centuries. Great theological men of science, like Vincent
+of Beauvais and Cardinal d'Ailly, devoted themselves to showing not only
+that it was supported by Scripture, but that it supported Scripture.
+Thus was the geocentric theory embedded in the beliefs and aspirations,
+in the hopes and fears, of Christendom down to the middle of the
+sixteenth century.(44)
+
+
+     (44) For the earlier cosmology of Cosmas, with citations from
+Montfaucon, see the chapter on Geography in this work. For the views
+of mediaeval theologians, see foregoing notes in this chapter. For the
+passages of Scripture on which the theological part of this structure
+was developed, see especially Romans viii, 38; Ephesians i, 21;
+Colossians i, 16 and ii, 15; and innumerable passages in the Old
+Testament. As to the music of the spheres, see Dean Plumptre's Dante,
+vol. ii, p. 4, note. For an admirable summing up of the mediaeval
+cosmology in its relation to thought in general, see Rydberg, Magic of
+the Middle Ages, chap. i, whose summary I have followed in the main. For
+striking woodcuts showing the view taken of the successive heavens with
+their choirs of angels, the earth being at the centre with the spheres
+about it, and the Almighty on his throne above all, see the Neuremberg
+Chronicle, ff. iv and v; its date is 1493. For charts showing the
+continuance of this general view down to the beginning of the sixteenth
+century, see the various editions of the Margarita Philosophica, from
+that of 1503 onward, astronomical part. For interesting statements
+regarding the Trinities of gods in ancient Egypt, see Sharpe, History of
+Egypt, vol. i, pp. 94 and 101. The present writer once heard a lecture
+in Cairo, from an eminent Scotch Doctor of Medicine, to account for the
+ancient Hindu and Egyptian sacred threes and trinities. The lecturer's
+theory was that, when Jehovah came down into the Garden of Eden and
+walked with Adam in "the cool of the day," he explained his triune
+character to Adam, and that from Adam it was spread abroad to the
+various ancient nations.
+
+
+
+
+II. THE HELIOCENTRIC THEORY.
+
+
+But, on the other hand, there had been planted, long before, the
+germs of a heliocentric theory. In the sixth century before our era,
+Pythagoras, and after him Philolaus, had suggested the movement of the
+earth and planets about a central fire; and, three centuries later,
+Aristarchus had restated the main truth with striking precision. Here
+comes in a proof that the antagonism between theological and scientific
+methods is not confined to Christianity; for this statement brought
+upon Aristarchus the charge of blasphemy, and drew after it a cloud of
+prejudice which hid the truth for six hundred years. Not until the fifth
+century of our era did it timidly appear in the thoughts of Martianus
+Capella: then it was again lost to sight for a thousand years, until
+in the fifteenth century, distorted and imperfect, it appeared in the
+writings of Cardinal Nicholas de Cusa.
+
+But in the shade cast by the vast system which had grown from the minds
+of the great theologians and from the heart of the great poet there had
+come to this truth neither bloom nor fruitage.
+
+Quietly, however, the soil was receiving enrichment and the air warmth.
+The processes of mathematics were constantly improved, the heavenly
+bodies were steadily observed, and at length appeared, far from the
+centres of thought, on the borders of Poland, a plain, simple-minded
+scholar, who first fairly uttered to the modern world the truth--now so
+commonplace, then so astounding--that the sun and planets do not revolve
+about the earth, but that the earth and planets revolve about the sun:
+this man was Nicholas Copernicus.
+
+Copernicus had been a professor at Rome, and even as early as 1500
+had announced his doctrine there, but more in the way of a scientific
+curiosity or paradox, as it had been previously held by Cardinal de
+Cusa, than as the statement of a system representing a great fact in
+Nature. About thirty years later one of his disciples, Widmanstadt, had
+explained it to Clement VII; but it still remained a mere hypothesis,
+and soon, like so many others, disappeared from the public view. But
+to Copernicus, steadily studying the subject, it became more and more
+a reality, and as this truth grew within him he seemed to feel that at
+Rome he was no longer safe. To announce his discovery there as a theory
+or a paradox might amuse the papal court, but to announce it as a
+truth--as THE truth--was a far different matter. He therefore returned
+to his little town in Poland.
+
+To publish his thought as it had now developed was evidently dangerous
+even there, and for more than thirty years it lay slumbering in the mind
+of Copernicus and of the friends to whom he had privately intrusted it.
+
+At last he prepared his great work on the Revolutions of the Heavenly
+Bodies, and dedicated it to the Pope himself. He next sought a place of
+publication. He dared not send it to Rome, for there were the rulers of
+the older Church ready to seize it; he dared not send it to Wittenberg,
+for there were the leaders of Protestantism no less hostile; he
+therefore intrusted it to Osiander, at Nuremberg.(45)
+
+
+     (45) For the germs of heliocentric theory planted long before, see Sir
+G. C. Lewis; and for a succinct statement of the claims of Pythagoras,
+Philolaus, Aristarchus, and Martianus Capella, see Hoefer, Histoire de
+l'Astronomie, 1873, p. 107 et seq.; also Heller, Geschichte der Physik,
+Stuttgart, 1882, vol. i, pp. 12, 13; also pp. 99 et seq. For germs among
+thinkers of India, see Whewell, vol. i, p. 277; also Whitney, Oriental
+and Linguistic Studies, New York, 1874; Essay on the Lunar Zodiac, p.
+345. For the views of Vincent of Beauvais, see his Speculum Naturale,
+lib. xvi, cap. 21. For Cardinal d'Ailly's view, see his treatise De
+Concordia Astronomicae Veritatis cum Theologia (in his Ymago Mundi
+and separately). For general statement of De Cusa's work, see Draper,
+Intellectual Development of Europe, p. 512. For skilful use of De Cusa's
+view in order to mitigate censure upon the Church for its treatment
+of Copernicus's discovery, see an article in the Catholic World for
+January, 1869. For a very exact statement, in the spirit of judicial
+fairness, see Whewell, History of the Inductive Sciences, p. 275, and
+pp. 379, 380. In the latter, Whewell cites the exact words of De Cusa
+in the De Docta Ignorantia, and sums up in these words: "This train
+of thought might be a preparation for the reception of the Copernican
+system; but it is very different from the doctrine that the sun is the
+centre of the planetary system." Whewell says: "De Cusa propounded the
+doctrine of the motion of the earth more as a paradox than as a reality.
+We can not consider this as any distinct anticipation of a profound and
+consistent view of the truth." On De Cusa, see also Heller, vol. i, p.
+216. For Aristotle's views, and their elaboration by St. Thomas Aquinas,
+see the De Coelo et Mundo, sec. xx, and elsewhere in the latter. It is
+curious to see how even such a biographer as Archbishop Vaughan slurs
+over the angelic Doctor's errors. See Vaughan's Life and Labours of St.
+Thomas of Aquin, pp. 459, 460.
+
+As to Copernicus's danger at Rome, the Catholic World for January, 1869,
+cites a speech of the Archbishop of Mechlin before the University of
+Louvain, to the effect that Copernicus defended his theory at Rome, in
+1500, before two thousand scholars; also, that another professor taught
+the system in 1528, and was made apostolic notary by Clement VIII. All
+this, even if the doctrines taught were identical with Copernicus as
+finally developed--which is simply not the case--avails nothing
+against the overwhelming testimony that Copernicus felt himself in
+danger--testimony which the after-history of the Copernican theory
+renders invincible. The very title of Fromundus's book, already cited,
+published within a few miles of the archbishop's own cathedral, and
+sanctioned expressly by the theological faculty of that same University
+of Louvain in 1630, utterly refutes the archbishop's idea that the
+Church was inclined to treat Copernicus kindly. The title is as
+follows: Ant-Aristarchus sive Orbis-Terrae Immobilis, in quo decretum
+S. Congregationis S. R. E. Cardinal. an. M.DC.XVI adversus
+Pythagorico-Copernicanos editum defenditur, Antverpiae, MDCXXI.
+L'Epinois, Galilee, Paris, 1867, lays stress, p. 14, on the broaching of
+the doctrine by De Cusa in 1435, and by Widmanstadt in 1533, and their
+kind treatment by Eugenius IV and Clement VII; but this is absolutely
+worthless in denying the papal policy afterward. Lange, Geschichte des
+Materialismus, vol. i, pp. 217, 218, while admitting that De Cusa
+and Widmanstadt sustained this theory and received honors from
+their respective popes, shows that, when the Church gave it serious
+consideration, it was condemned. There is nothing in this view
+unreasonable. It would be a parallel case to that of Leo X, at first
+inclined toward Luther and others, in their "squabbles with the envious
+friars," and afterward forced to oppose them. That Copernicus felt
+the danger, is evident, among other things, by the expression in the
+preface: "Statim me explodendum cum tali opinione clamitant." For
+dangers at Wittenberg, see Lange, as above, vol. i, p. 217.
+
+
+But Osiander's courage failed him: he dared not launch the new thought
+boldly. He wrote a grovelling preface, endeavouring to excuse Copernicus
+for his novel idea, and in this he inserted the apologetic lie that
+Copernicus had propounded the doctrine of the earth's movement not as
+a fact, but as a hypothesis. He declared that it was lawful for an
+astronomer to indulge his imagination, and that this was what Copernicus
+had done.
+
+Thus was the greatest and most ennobling, perhaps, of scientific
+truths--a truth not less ennobling to religion than to science--forced,
+in coming before the world, to sneak and crawl.(46)
+
+
+     (46) Osiander, in a letter to Copernicus, dated April 20, 1541, had
+endeavored to reconcile him to such a procedure, and ends by saying,
+"Sic enim placidiores reddideris peripatheticos et theologos quos
+contradicturos metuis." See Apologia Tychonis in Kepler's Opera Omnia,
+Frisch's edition, vol. i, p. 246. Kepler holds Osiander entirely
+responsible for this preface. Bertrand, in his Fondateurs de
+l'astronomie moderne, gives its text, and thinks it possible that
+Copernicus may have yielded "in pure condescension toward his disciple."
+But this idea is utterly at variance with expressions in Copernicus's
+own dedicatory letter to the Pope, which follows the preface. For a good
+summary of the argument, see Figuier, Savants de la Renaissance, pp.
+378, 379; see also citation from Gassendi's Life of Copernicus, in
+Flammarion, Vie de Copernic, p. 124. Mr. John Fiske, accurate as
+he usually is, in his Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy appears to have
+followed Laplace, Delambre, and Petit into the error of supposing that
+Copernicus, and not Osiander, is responsible for the preface. For the
+latest proofs, see Menzer's translation of Copernicus's work, Thorn,
+1879, notes on pp. 3 and 4 of the appendix.
+
+
+On the 24th of May, 1543, the newly printed book arrived at the house of
+Copernicus. It was put into his hands; but he was on his deathbed. A few
+hours later he was beyond the reach of the conscientious men who would
+have blotted his reputation and perhaps have destroyed his life.
+
+Yet not wholly beyond their reach. Even death could not be trusted to
+shield him. There seems to have been fear of vengeance upon his corpse,
+for on his tombstone was placed no record of his lifelong labours, no
+mention of his great discovery; but there was graven upon it simply a
+prayer: "I ask not the grace accorded to Paul; not that given to Peter;
+give me only the favour which Thou didst show to the thief on the
+cross."
+
+Not till thirty years after did a friend dare write on his tombstone a
+memorial of his discovery.(47)
+
+
+     (47) See Flammarion, Vie de Copernic, p. 190.
+
+
+The preface of Osiander, pretending that the book of Copernicus
+suggested a hypothesis instead of announcing a truth, served its purpose
+well. During nearly seventy years the Church authorities evidently
+thought it best not to stir the matter, and in some cases professors
+like Calganini were allowed to present the new view purely as a
+hypothesis. There were, indeed, mutterings from time to time on the
+theological side, but there was no great demonstration against the
+system until 1616. Then, when the Copernican doctrine was upheld by
+Galileo as a TRUTH, and proved to be a truth by his telescope, the book
+was taken in hand by the Roman curia. The statements of Copernicus
+were condemned, "until they should be corrected"; and the corrections
+required were simply such as would substitute for his conclusions the
+old Ptolemaic theory.
+
+That this was their purpose was seen in that year when Galileo was
+forbidden to teach or discuss the Copernican theory, and when were
+forbidden "all books which affirm the motion of the earth." Henceforth
+to read the work of Copernicus was to risk damnation, and the world
+accepted the decree.(48) The strongest minds were thus held fast. If
+they could not believe the old system, they must PRETEND that they
+believed it;--and this, even after the great circumnavigation of the
+globe had done so much to open the eyes of the world! Very striking is
+the case of the eminent Jesuit missionary Joseph Acosta, whose great
+work on the Natural and Moral History of the Indies, published in the
+last quarter of the sixteenth century, exploded so many astronomical and
+geographical errors. Though at times curiously credulous, he told the
+truth as far as he dared; but as to the movement of the heavenly bodies
+he remained orthodox--declaring, "I have seen the two poles, whereon the
+heavens turn as upon their axletrees."
+
+
+     (48) The authorities deciding this matter in accordance with the wishes
+of Pope V and Cardinal Bellarmine were the Congregation of the Index,
+or cardinals having charge of the Index Librorum Prohibitorum. Recent
+desperate attempts to fasten the responsibility on them as individuals
+seem ridiculous in view of the simple fact that their work was
+sanctioned by the highest Church authority, and required to be
+universally accepted by the Church. Eleven different editions of the
+Index in my own possession prove this. Nearly all of these declare on
+their title-pages that they are issued by order of the pontiff of the
+period, and each is preface by a special papal bull or letter. See
+especially the Index of 1664, issued under order of Alexander VII,
+and that of 1761, under Benedict XIV. Copernicus's statements were
+prohibited in the Index "donec corrigantur." Kepler said that it ought
+to be worded "donec explicetur." See Bertand, Fondateurs de l'Astronomie
+moderne, p. 57. De Morgan, pp. 57-60, gives the corrections required by
+the Index of 1620. Their main aim seems to be to reduce Copernicus
+to the grovelling level of Osiander, making his discovery a mere
+hypothesis; but occasionally they require a virtual giving up of the
+whole Copernican doctrine--e.g., "correction" insisted upon for chap.
+viii, p. 6. For a scholarly account of the relation between Prohibitory
+and Expurgatory Indexes to each other, see Mendham, Literary Policy
+of the Church of Rome; also Reusch, Index der verbotenen Bucher, Bonn,
+1855, vol. ii, chaps i and ii. For a brief but very careful statement,
+see Gebler, Galileo Galilei, English translation, London, 1879, chap. i;
+see also Addis and Arnold's Catholic Dictionary, article Galileo, p.8.
+
+
+There was, indeed, in Europe one man who might have done much to check
+this current of unreason which was to sweep away so many thoughtful men
+on the one hand from scientific knowledge, and so many on the other from
+Christianity. This was Peter Apian. He was one of the great mathematical
+and astronomical scholars of the time. His brilliant abilities had
+made him the astronomical teacher of the Emperor Charles V. His work on
+geography had brought him a world-wide reputation; his work on astronomy
+brought him a patent of nobility; his improvements in mathematical
+processes and astronomical instruments brought him the praise of Kepler
+and a place in the history of science: never had a true man better
+opportunity to do a great deed. When Copernicus's work appeared, Apian
+was at the height of his reputation and power: a quiet, earnest
+plea from him, even if it had been only for ordinary fairness and a
+suspension of judgment, must have carried much weight. His devoted
+pupil, Charles V, who sat on the thrones of Germany and Spain, must at
+least have given a hearing to such a plea. But, unfortunately, Apian
+was a professor in an institution of learning under the strictest Church
+control--the University of Ingolstadt. His foremost duty was to teach
+SAFE science--to keep science within the line of scriptural truth as
+interpreted by theological professors. His great opportunity was lost.
+Apian continued to maunder over the Ptolemaic theory and astrology
+in his lecture-room. The attack on the Copernican theory he neither
+supported nor opposed; he was silent; and the cause of his silence
+should never be forgotten so long as any Church asserts its title to
+control university instruction.(49)
+
+
+     (49) For Joseph Acosta's statement, see the translation of his History,
+published by the Hakluyt Society, chap. ii. For Peter Apian, see Madler,
+Geschichte der Astronomie, Braunschweig, 1873, vol. i, p. 141. For
+evidences of the special favour of Charles V, see Delambre, Histoire
+de l'Astronomie au Moyen Age, p. 390; also Bruhns, in the Allgemeine
+deutsche Biographie. For an attempted apology for him, see Gunther,
+Peter and Philipp Apian, Prag, 1822, p. 62.
+
+
+Doubtless many will exclaim against the Roman Catholic Church for this;
+but the simple truth is that Protestantism was no less zealous
+against the new scientific doctrine. All branches of the Protestant
+Church--Lutheran, Calvinist, Anglican--vied with each other in
+denouncing the Copernican doctrine as contrary to Scripture; and, at a
+later period, the Puritans showed the same tendency.
+
+Said Martin Luther: "People gave ear to an upstart astrologer who strove
+to show that the earth revolves, not the heavens or the firmament, the
+sun and the moon. Whoever wishes to appear clever must devise some
+new system, which of all systems is of course the very best. This fool
+wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy; but sacred Scripture
+tells us that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and not the
+earth." Melanchthon, mild as he was, was not behind Luther in condemning
+Copernicus. In his treatise on the Elements of Physics, published six
+years after Copernicus's death, he says: "The eyes are witnesses that
+the heavens revolve in the space of twenty-four hours. But certain men,
+either from the love of novelty, or to make a display of ingenuity,
+have concluded that the earth moves; and they maintain that neither the
+eighth sphere nor the sun revolves.... Now, it is a want of honesty and
+decency to assert such notions publicly, and the example is pernicious.
+It is the part of a good mind to accept the truth as revealed by God and
+to acquiesce in it." Melanchthon then cites the passages in the Psalms
+and Ecclesiastes, which he declares assert positively and clearly that
+the earth stands fast and that the sun moves around it, and adds eight
+other proofs of his proposition that "the earth can be nowhere if not
+in the centre of the universe." So earnest does this mildest of the
+Reformers become, that he suggests severe measures to restrain such
+impious teachings as those of Copernicus.(50)
+
+
+     (50) See the Tischreden in the Walsch edition of Luther's Works, 1743,
+vol. xxii, p. 2260; also Melanchthon's Initia Doctrinae Physicae.
+This treatise is cited under a mistaken title by the Catholic World,
+September, 1870. The correct title is as given above; it will be found
+in the Corpus Reformatorum, vol. xiii (ed. Bretschneider, Halle, 1846),
+pp. 216, 217. See also Madler, vol. i, p. 176; also Lange, Geschichte
+des Materialismus, vol. i, p. 217; also Prowe, Ueber die Abhangigkeit
+des Copernicus, Thorn, 1865, p. 4; also note, pp. 5, 6, where text is
+given in full.
+
+
+While Lutheranism was thus condemning the theory of the earth's
+movement, other branches of the Protestant Church did not remain behind.
+Calvin took the lead, in his Commentary on Genesis, by condemning all
+who asserted that the earth is not at the centre of the universe. He
+clinched the matter by the usual reference to the first verse of the
+ninety-third Psalm, and asked, "Who will venture to place the authority
+of Copernicus above that of the Holy Spirit?" Turretin, Calvin's famous
+successor, even after Kepler and Newton had virtually completed the
+theory of Copernicus and Galileo, put forth his compendium of theology,
+in which he proved, from a multitude of scriptural texts, that the
+heavens, sun, and moon move about the earth, which stands still in the
+centre. In England we see similar theological efforts, even after they
+had become evidently futile. Hutchinson's Moses's Principia, Dr. Samuel
+Pike's Sacred Philosophy, the writings of Horne, Bishop Horsley, and
+President Forbes contain most earnest attacks upon the ideas of Newton,
+such attacks being based upon Scripture. Dr. John Owen, so famous in
+the annals of Puritanism, declared the Copernican system a "delusive
+and arbitrary hypothesis, contrary to Scripture"; and even John Wesley
+declared the new ideas to "tend toward infidelity."(51)
+
+
+     (51) On the teachings on Protestantism as regards the Copernican theory,
+see citations in Canon Farrar's History of Interpretation, preface,
+xviii; also Rev. Dr. Shields, of Princeton, The Final Philosophy, pp.
+60, 61.
+
+
+And Protestant peoples were not a whit behind Catholic in following out
+such teachings. The people of Elbing made themselves merry over a farce
+in which Copernicus was the main object of ridicule. The people of
+Nuremberg, a Protestant stronghold, caused a medal to be struck with
+inscriptions ridiculing the philosopher and his theory.
+
+Why the people at large took this view is easily understood when we note
+the attitude of the guardians of learning, both Catholic and Protestant,
+in that age. It throws great light upon sundry claims by modern
+theologians to take charge of public instruction and of the evolution
+of science. So important was it thought to have "sound learning" guarded
+and "safe science" taught, that in many of the universities, as late as
+the end of the seventeenth century, professors were forced to take an
+oath not to hold the "Pythagorean"--that is, the Copernican--idea as to
+the movement of the heavenly bodies. As the contest went on, professors
+were forbidden to make known to students the facts revealed by
+the telescope. Special orders to this effect were issued by the
+ecclesiastical authorities to the universities and colleges of Pisa,
+Innspruck, Louvain, Douay, Salamanca, and others. During generations we
+find the authorities of these Universities boasting that these godless
+doctrines were kept away from their students. It is touching to hear
+such boasts made then, just as it is touching now to hear sundry
+excellent university authorities boast that they discourage the reading
+of Mill, Spencer, and Darwin. Nor were such attempts to keep the truth
+from students confined to the Roman Catholic institutions of learning.
+Strange as it may seem, nowhere were the facts confirming the Copernican
+theory more carefully kept out of sight than at Wittenberg--the
+university of Luther and Melanchthon. About the middle of the sixteenth
+century there were at that centre of Protestant instruction two
+astronomers of a very high order, Rheticus and Reinhold; both of these,
+after thorough study, had convinced themselves that the Copernican
+system was true, but neither of them was allowed to tell this truth to
+his students. Neither in his lecture announcements nor in his published
+works did Rheticus venture to make the new system known, and he at
+last gave up his professorship and left Wittenberg, that he might have
+freedom to seek and tell the truth. Reinhold was even more wretchedly
+humiliated. Convinced of the truth of the new theory, he was obliged to
+advocate the old; if he mentioned the Copernican ideas, he was compelled
+to overlay them with the Ptolemaic. Even this was not thought safe
+enough, and in 1571 the subject was intrusted to Peucer. He was
+eminently "sound," and denounced the Copernican theory in his lectures
+as "absurd, and unfit to be introduced into the schools."
+
+To clinch anti-scientific ideas more firmly into German Protestant
+teaching, Rector Hensel wrote a text-book for schools entitled The
+Restored Mosaic System of the World, which showed the Copernican
+astronomy to be unscriptural.
+
+Doubtless this has a far-off sound; yet its echo comes very near modern
+Protestantism in the expulsion of Dr. Woodrow by the Presbyterian
+authorities in South Carolina; the expulsion of Prof. Winchell by the
+Methodist Episcopal authorities in Tennessee; the expulsion of Prof. Toy
+by Baptist authorities in Kentucky; the expulsion of the professors at
+Beyrout under authority of American Protestant divines--all for holding
+the doctrines of modern science, and in the last years of the nineteenth
+century.(52)
+
+
+     (52) For treatment of Copernican ideas by the people, see The Catholic
+World, as above; also Melanchthon, ubi supra; also Prowe, Copernicus,
+Berlin, 1883, vol. i, p. 269, note; also pp. 279, 280; also Madler, i,
+p.167. For Rector Hensel, see Rev. Dr. Shield's Final Philosophy, p. 60.
+For details of recent Protestant efforts against evolution doctrines,
+see the chapter on the Fall of Man and Anthropology in this work.
+
+
+But the new truth could not be concealed; it could neither be laughed
+down nor frowned down. Many minds had received it, but within the
+hearing of the papacy only one tongue appears to have dared to utter it
+clearly. This new warrior was that strange mortal, Giordano Bruno. He
+was hunted from land to land, until at last he turned on his pursuers
+with fearful invectives. For this he was entrapped at Venice, imprisoned
+during six years in the dungeons of the Inquisition at Rome, then burned
+alive, and his ashes scattered to the winds. Still, the new truth lived
+on.
+
+Ten years after the martyrdom of Bruno the truth of Copernicus's
+doctrine was established by the telescope of Galileo.(53)
+
+
+     (53) For Bruno, see Bartholmess, Vie de Jordano Bruno, Paris, 1846,
+vol. i, p.121 and pp. 212 et seq.; also Berti, Vita di Giordano Bruno,
+Firenze, 1868, chap. xvi; also Whewell, vol. i, pp. 272, 273. That
+Whewell is somewhat hasty in attributing Bruno's punishment entirely
+to the Spaccio della Bestia Trionfante will be evident, in spite
+of Montucla, to anyone who reads the account of the persecution in
+Bartholmess or Berti; and even if Whewell be right, the Spaccio would
+never have been written but for Bruno's indignation at ecclesiastical
+oppression. See Tiraboschi, vol. vii, pp. 466 et seq.
+
+
+Herein was fulfilled one of the most touching of prophecies. Years
+before, the opponents of Copernicus had said to him, "If your doctrines
+were true, Venus would show phases like the moon." Copernicus answered:
+"You are right; I know not what to say; but God is good, and will in
+time find an answer to this objection." The God-given answer came when,
+in 1611, the rude telescope of Galileo showed the phases of Venus.(54)
+
+
+     (54) For the relation of these discoveries to Copernicus's work, see
+Delambre, Histoire de l'Astronomie moderne, discours preliminaire,
+p. xiv; also Laplace, Systeme du Monde, vol. i, p. 326; and for more
+careful statements, Kepler's Opera Omnia, edit. Frisch, tome ii, p. 464.
+For Copernicus's prophecy, see Cantu, Histoire Univerelle, vol. xv, p.
+473. (Cantu was an eminent Roman Catholic.)
+
+
+
+
+III. THE WAR UPON GALILEO.
+
+
+On this new champion, Galileo, the whole war was at last concentrated.
+His discoveries had clearly taken the Copernican theory out of the list
+of hypotheses, and had placed it before the world as a truth. Against
+him, then, the war was long and bitter. The supporters of what was
+called "sound learning" declared his discoveries deceptions and his
+announcements blasphemy. Semi-scientific professors, endeavouring to
+curry favour with the Church, attacked him with sham science;
+earnest preachers attacked him with perverted Scripture; theologians,
+inquisitors, congregations of cardinals, and at last two popes
+dealt with him, and, as was supposed, silenced his impious doctrine
+forever.(55)
+
+
+     (55) A very curious example of this sham science employed by theologians
+is seen in the argument, frequently used at that time, that, if the
+earth really moved, a stone falling from a height would fall back of a
+point immediately below its point of starting. This is used by Fromundus
+with great effect. It appears never to have occurred to him to test the
+matter by dropping a stone from the topmast of a ship. Bezenburg has
+mathematically demonstrated just such an aberration in falling bodies,
+as is mathematically required by the diurnal motion of the earth. See
+Jevons, Principles of Science, pp. 388, 389, second edition, 1877.
+
+
+I shall present this warfare at some length because, so far as I can
+find, no careful summary of it has been given in our language, since the
+whole history was placed in a new light by the revelations of the trial
+documents in the Vatican Library, honestly published for the first
+time by L'Epinois in 1867, and since that by Gebler, Berti, Favaro, and
+others.
+
+The first important attack on Galileo began in 1610, when he announced
+that his telescope had revealed the moons of the planet Jupiter. The
+enemy saw that this took the Copernican theory out of the realm of
+hypothesis, and they gave battle immediately. They denounced both
+his method and its results as absurd and impious. As to his method,
+professors bred in the "safe science" favoured by the Church argued that
+the divinely appointed way of arriving at the truth in astronomy was
+by theological reasoning on texts of Scripture; and, as to his
+results, they insisted, first, that Aristotle knew nothing of these new
+revelations; and, next, that the Bible showed by all applicable types
+that there could be only seven planets; that this was proved by the
+seven golden candlesticks of the Apocalypse, by the seven-branched
+candlestick of the tabernacle, and by the seven churches of Asia; that
+from Galileo's doctrine consequences must logically result destructive
+to Christian truth. Bishops and priests therefore warned their flocks,
+and multitudes of the faithful besought the Inquisition to deal speedily
+and sharply with the heretic.(56)
+
+
+
+     (56) See Delambre on the discovery of the satellites of Jupiter as
+the turning-point with the heliocentric doctrine. As to its effects
+on Bacon, see Jevons, p. 638, as above. For argument drawn from the
+candlestick and the seven churches, see Delambre, p. 20.
+
+
+In vain did Galileo try to prove the existence of satellites by showing
+them to the doubters through his telescope: they either declared it
+impious to look, or, if they did look, denounced the satellites as
+illusions from the devil. Good Father Clavius declared that "to see
+satellites of Jupiter, men had to make an instrument which would
+create them." In vain did Galileo try to save the great truths he
+had discovered by his letters to the Benedictine Castelli and the
+Grand-Duchess Christine, in which he argued that literal biblical
+interpretation should not be applied to science; it was answered that
+such an argument only made his heresy more detestable; that he was
+"worse than Luther or Calvin."
+
+The war on the Copernican theory, which up to that time had been carried
+on quietly, now flamed forth. It was declared that the doctrine was
+proved false by the standing still of the sun for Joshua, by the
+declarations that "the foundations of the earth are fixed so firm that
+they can not be moved," and that the sun "runneth about from one end of
+the heavens to the other."(57)
+
+
+     (57) For principle points as given, see Libri, Histoire des Sciences
+mathematiques en Italie, vol. iv, p. 211; De Morgan, Paradoxes, p. 26,
+for account of Father Clavius. It is interesting to know that Clavius,
+in his last years, acknowledged that "the whole system of the heavens is
+broken down, and must be mended," Cantu, Histoire Universelle, vol.
+xv, p. 478. See Th. Martin, Galilee, pp. 34, 208, and 266; also Heller,
+Geschichte der Physik, Stuttgart, 1882, vol. i, p. 366. For the original
+documents, see L'Epinois, pp.34 and 36; or better, Gebler's careful
+edition of the trial (Die Acten des Galileischen Processes, Stuttgart,
+1877), pp. 47 et seq. Martin's translation seems somewhat too free. See
+also Gebler, Galileo Galilei, English translation, London, 1879, pp.
+76-78; also Reusch, Der Process Galilei's und die Jesuiten, Bonn, 1879,
+chaps. ix, x, xi.
+
+
+But the little telescope of Galileo still swept the heavens, and another
+revelation was announced--the mountains and valleys in the moon. This
+brought on another attack. It was declared that this, and the statement
+that the moon shines by light reflected from the sun, directly
+contradict the statement in Genesis that the moon is "a great light."
+To make the matter worse, a painter, placing the moon in a religious
+picture in its usual position beneath the feet of the Blessed Virgin,
+outlined on its surface mountains and valleys; this was denounced as a
+sacrilege logically resulting from the astronomer's heresy.
+
+Still another struggle was aroused when the hated telescope revealed
+spots upon the sun, and their motion indicating the sun's rotation.
+Monsignor Elci, head of the University of Pisa, forbade the astronomer
+Castelli to mention these spots to his students. Father Busaeus, at the
+University of Innspruck, forbade the astronomer Scheiner, who had also
+discovered the spots and proposed a SAFE explanation of them, to allow
+the new discovery to be known there. At the College of Douay and the
+University of Louvain this discovery was expressly placed under the ban,
+and this became the general rule among the Catholic universities and
+colleges of Europe. The Spanish universities were especially intolerant
+of this and similar ideas, and up to a recent period their presentation
+was strictly forbidden in the most important university of all--that of
+Salamanca.(58)
+
+
+     (58) See Ticknor, History of Spanish Literature, vol. iii.
+
+
+Such are the consequences of placing the instruction of men's minds in
+the hands of those mainly absorbed in saving men's souls. Nothing
+could be more in accordance with the idea recently put forth by sundry
+ecclesiastics, Catholic and Protestant, that the Church alone
+is empowered to promulgate scientific truth or direct university
+instruction. But science gained a victory here also. Observations of
+the solar spots were reported not only from Galileo in Italy, but from
+Fabricius in Holland. Father Scheiner then endeavoured to make the
+usual compromise between theology and science. He promulgated a
+pseudo-scientific theory, which only provoked derision.
+
+The war became more and more bitter. The Dominican Father Caccini
+preached a sermon from the text, "Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing
+up into heaven?" and this wretched pun upon the great astronomer's name
+ushered in sharper weapons; for, before Caccini ended, he insisted that
+"geometry is of the devil," and that "mathematicians should be banished
+as the authors of all heresies." The Church authorities gave Caccini
+promotion.
+
+Father Lorini proved that Galileo's doctrine was not only heretical but
+"atheistic," and besought the Inquisition to intervene. The Bishop
+of Fiesole screamed in rage against the Copernican system, publicly
+insulted Galileo, and denounced him to the Grand-Duke. The Archbishop
+of Pisa secretly sought to entrap Galileo and deliver him to the
+Inquisition at Rome. The Archbishop of Florence solemnly condemned the
+new doctrines as unscriptural; and Paul V, while petting Galileo, and
+inviting him as the greatest astronomer of the world to visit Rome, was
+secretly moving the Archbishop of Pisa to pick up evidence against the
+astronomer.
+
+But by far the most terrible champion who now appeared was Cardinal
+Bellarmin, one of the greatest theologians the world has known. He was
+earnest, sincere, and learned, but insisted on making science conform to
+Scripture. The weapons which men of Bellarmin's stamp used were purely
+theological. They held up before the world the dreadful consequences
+which must result to Christian theology were the heavenly bodies proved
+to revolve about the sun and not about the earth. Their most tremendous
+dogmatic engine was the statement that "his pretended discovery vitiates
+the whole Christian plan of salvation." Father Lecazre declared "it
+casts suspicion on the doctrine of the incarnation." Others declared,
+"It upsets the whole basis of theology. If the earth is a planet, and
+only one among several planets, it can not be that any such great things
+have been done specially for it as the Christian doctrine teaches. If
+there are other planets, since God makes nothing in vain, they must be
+inhabited; but how can their inhabitants be descended from Adam? How
+can they trace back their origin to Noah's ark? How can they have
+been redeemed by the Saviour?" Nor was this argument confined to the
+theologians of the Roman Church; Melanchthon, Protestant as he was, had
+already used it in his attacks on Copernicus and his school.
+
+In addition to this prodigious theological engine of war there was kept
+up a fire of smaller artillery in the shape of texts and scriptural
+extracts.
+
+But the war grew still more bitter, and some weapons used in it are
+worth examining. They are very easily examined, for they are to be found
+on all the battlefields of science; but on that field they were used
+with more effect than on almost any other. These weapons are the
+epithets "infidel" and "atheist." They have been used against almost
+every man who has ever done anything new for his fellow-men. The list of
+those who have been denounced as "infidel" and "atheist" includes
+almost all great men of science, general scholars, inventors, and
+philanthropists.
+
+The purest Christian life, the noblest Christian character, have not
+availed to shield combatants. Christians like Isaac Newton, Pascal,
+Locke, Milton, and even Fenelon and Howard, have had this weapon
+hurled against them. Of all proofs of the existence of a God, those of
+Descartes have been wrought most thoroughly into the minds of modern
+men; yet the Protestant theologians of Holland sought to bring him to
+torture and to death by the charge of atheism, and the Roman Catholic
+theologians of France thwarted him during his life and prevented any due
+honours to him after his death.(59)
+
+
+     (59) For various objectors and objections to Galileo by his
+contemporaries, see Libri, Histoire des Sciences mathematiques en
+Italie, vol. iv, p. 233, 234; also Martin, Vie de Galilee. For Father
+Lecazre's argument, see Flammarion, Mondes imaginaires et mondes reels,
+6th ed., pp. 315, 316. For Melanchthon's argument, see his Initia in
+Opera, vol. iii, Halle, 1846.
+
+
+These epithets can hardly be classed with civilized weapons. They are
+burning arrows; they set fire to masses of popular prejudice, always
+obscuring the real question, sometimes destroying the attacking party.
+They are poisoned weapons. They pierce the hearts of loving women; they
+alienate dear children; they injure a man after life is ended, for they
+leave poisoned wounds in the hearts of those who loved him best--fears
+for his eternal salvation, dread of the Divine wrath upon him. Of
+course, in these days these weapons, though often effective in vexing
+good men and in scaring good women, are somewhat blunted; indeed, they
+not infrequently injure the assailants more than the assailed. So it was
+not in the days of Galileo; they were then in all their sharpness and
+venom.(60)
+
+
+     (60) For curious exemplification of the way in which these weapons
+have been hurled, see lists of persons charged with "infidelity" and
+"atheism," in the Dictionnaire des Athees., Paris, (1800); also Lecky,
+History of Rationalism, vol. ii, p. 50. For the case of Descartes, see
+Saisset, Descartes et ses Precurseurs, pp. 103, 110. For the facility
+with which the term "atheist" has been applied from the early Aryans
+down to believers in evolution, see Tylor, Primitive Culture, vol. i, p.
+420.
+
+
+Yet a baser warfare was waged by the Archbishop of Pisa. This man, whose
+cathedral derives its most enduring fame from Galileo's deduction of a
+great natural law from the swinging lamp before its altar, was not an
+archbishop after the noble mould of Borromeo and Fenelon and Cheverus.
+Sadly enough for the Church and humanity, he was simply a zealot and
+intriguer: he perfected the plan for entrapping the great astronomer.
+
+Galileo, after his discoveries had been denounced, had written to his
+friend Castelli and to the Grand-Duchess Christine two letters to show
+that his discoveries might be reconciled with Scripture. On a hint from
+the Inquisition at Rome, the archbishop sought to get hold of these
+letters and exhibit them as proofs that Galileo had uttered heretical
+views of theology and of Scripture, and thus to bring him into the
+clutch of the Inquisition. The archbishop begs Castelli, therefore, to
+let him see the original letter in the handwriting of Galileo. Castelli
+declines. The archbishop then, while, as is now revealed, writing
+constantly and bitterly to the Inquisition against Galileo, professes
+to Castelli the greatest admiration of Galileo's genius and a sincere
+desire to know more of his discoveries. This not succeeding, the
+archbishop at last throws off the mask and resorts to open attack.
+
+The whole struggle to crush Galileo and to save him would be
+amusing were it not so fraught with evil. There were intrigues and
+counter-intrigues, plots and counter-plots, lying and spying; and in
+the thickest of this seething, squabbling, screaming mass of priests,
+bishops, archbishops, and cardinals, appear two popes, Paul V and Urban
+VIII. It is most suggestive to see in this crisis of the Church, at the
+tomb of the prince of the apostles, on the eve of the greatest errors
+in Church policy the world has known, in all the intrigues and
+deliberations of these consecrated leaders of the Church, no more
+evidence of the guidance or presence of the Holy Spirit than in a caucus
+of New York politicians at Tammany Hall.
+
+But the opposing powers were too strong. In 1615 Galileo was summoned
+before the Inquisition at Rome, and the mine which had been so long
+preparing was sprung. Sundry theologians of the Inquisition having
+been ordered to examine two propositions which had been extracted from
+Galileo's letters on the solar spots, solemnly considered these points
+during about a month and rendered their unanimous decision as follows:
+"THE FIRST PROPOSITION, THAT THE SUN IS THE CENTRE AND DOES NOT REVOLVE
+ABOUT THE EARTH, IS FOOLISH, ABSURD, FALSE IN THEOLOGY, AND HERETICAL,
+BECAUSE EXPRESSLY CONTRARY TO HOLY SCRIPTURE"; AND "THE SECOND
+PROPOSITION, THAT THE EARTH IS NOT THE CENTRE BUT REVOLVES ABOUT THE
+SUN, IS ABSURD, FALSE IN PHILOSOPHY, AND, FROM A THEOLOGICAL POINT OF
+VIEW AT LEAST, OPPOSED TO THE TRUE FAITH."
+
+The Pope himself, Paul V, now intervened again: he ordered that Galileo
+be brought before the Inquisition. Then the greatest man of science in
+that age was brought face to face with the greatest theologian--Galileo
+was confronted by Bellarmin. Bellarmin shows Galileo the error of his
+opinion and orders him to renounce it. De Lauda, fortified by a letter
+from the Pope, gives orders that the astronomer be placed in the
+dungeons of the Inquisition should he refuse to yield. Bellarmin now
+commands Galileo, "in the name of His Holiness the Pope and the whole
+Congregation of the Holy Office, to relinquish altogether the opinion
+that the sun is the centre of the world and immovable, and that the
+earth moves, nor henceforth to hold, teach, or defend it in any way
+whatsoever, verbally or in writing." This injunction Galileo acquiesces
+in and promises to obey.(61)
+
+
+     (61) I am aware that the theory proposed by Wohwill and developed by
+Gebler denied that this promise was ever made by Galileo, and holds that
+the passage was a forgery devised later by the Church rulers to justify
+the proceedings of 1632 and 1644. This would make the conduct of the
+Church worse, but authorities as eminent consider the charge not proved.
+A careful examination of the documents seems to disprove it.
+
+
+This was on the 26th of February, 1616. About a fortnight later the
+Congregation of the Index, moved thereto, as the letters and documents
+now brought to light show, by Pope Paul V, solemnly rendered a decree
+that "THE DOCTRINE OF THE DOUBLE MOTION OF THE EARTH ABOUT ITS AXIS AND
+ABOUT THE SUN IS FALSE, AND ENTIRELY CONTRARY TO HOLY SCRIPTURE"; and
+that this opinion must neither be taught nor advocated. The same decree
+condemned all writings of Copernicus and "ALL WRITINGS WHICH AFFIRM THE
+MOTION OF THE EARTH." The great work of Copernicus was interdicted until
+corrected in accordance with the views of the Inquisition; and the works
+of Galileo and Kepler, though not mentioned by name at that time, were
+included among those implicitly condemned as "affirming the motion of
+the earth."
+
+The condemnations were inscribed upon the Index; and, finally, the
+papacy committed itself as an infallible judge and teacher to the world
+by prefixing to the Index the usual papal bull giving its monitions the
+most solemn papal sanction. To teach or even read the works denounced or
+passages condemned was to risk persecution in this world and damnation
+in the next. Science had apparently lost the decisive battle.
+
+For a time after this judgment Galileo remained in Rome, apparently
+hoping to find some way out of this difficulty; but he soon discovered
+the hollowness of the protestations made to him by ecclesiastics, and,
+being recalled to Florence, remained in his hermitage near the city in
+silence, working steadily, indeed, but not publishing anything save by
+private letters to friends in various parts of Europe.
+
+But at last a better vista seemed to open for him. Cardinal Barberini,
+who had seemed liberal and friendly, became pope under the name of Urban
+VIII. Galileo at this conceived new hopes, and allowed his continued
+allegiance to the Copernican system to be known. New troubles ensued.
+Galileo was induced to visit Rome again, and Pope Urban tried to cajole
+him into silence, personally taking the trouble to show him his errors
+by argument. Other opponents were less considerate, for works appeared
+attacking his ideas--works all the more unmanly, since their authors
+knew that Galileo was restrained by force from defending himself. Then,
+too, as if to accumulate proofs of the unfitness of the Church to
+take charge of advanced instruction, his salary as a professor at the
+University of Pisa was taken from him, and sapping and mining began.
+Just as the Archbishop of Pisa some years before had tried to betray him
+with honeyed words to the Inquisition, so now Father Grassi tried
+it, and, after various attempts to draw him out by flattery, suddenly
+denounced his scientific ideas as "leading to a denial of the Real
+Presence in the Eucharist."
+
+For the final assault upon him a park of heavy artillery was at last
+wheeled into place. It may be seen on all the scientific battlefields.
+It consists of general denunciation; and in 1631 Father Melchior
+Inchofer, of the Jesuits, brought his artillery to bear upon Galileo
+with this declaration: "The opinion of the earth's motion is of all
+heresies the most abominable, the most pernicious, the most scandalous;
+the immovability of the earth is thrice sacred; argument against the
+immortality of the soul, the existence of God, and the incarnation,
+should be tolerated sooner than an argument to prove that the earth
+moves." From the other end of Europe came a powerful echo.
+
+From the shadow of the Cathedral of Antwerp, the noted theologian
+Fromundus gave forth his famous treatise, the Ant-Aristarclius. Its very
+title-page was a contemptuous insult to the memory of Copernicus, since
+it paraded the assumption that the new truth was only an exploded theory
+of a pagan astronomer. Fromundus declares that "sacred Scripture fights
+against the Copernicans." To prove that the sun revolves about the
+earth, he cites the passage in the Psalms which speaks of the sun "which
+cometh forth as a bridegroom out of his chamber." To prove that the
+earth stands still, he quotes a passage from Ecclesiastes, "The earth
+standeth fast forever." To show the utter futility of the Copernican
+theory, he declares that, if it were true, "the wind would constantly
+blow from the east"; and that "buildings and the earth itself would fly
+off with such a rapid motion that men would have to be provided with
+claws like cats to enable them to hold fast to the earth's surface."
+Greatest weapon of all, he works up, by the use of Aristotle and St.
+Thomas Aquinas, a demonstration from theology and science combined, that
+the earth MUST stand in the centre, and that the sun MUST revolve about
+it.(62) Nor was it merely fanatics who opposed the truth revealed by
+Copernicus; such strong men as Jean Bodin, in France, and Sir Thomas
+Browne, in England, declared against it as evidently contrary to Holy
+Scripture.
+
+
+     (62) For Father Inchofer's attack, see his Tractatus Syllepticus, cited
+in Galileo's letter to Deodati, July 28, 1634. For Fromundus's more
+famous attack, see his Ant-Aristarchus, already cited, passim, but
+especially the heading of chap. vi, and the argument in chapters x and
+xi. A copy of this work may be found in the Astor Library at New York,
+and another in the White Library at Cornell University. For interesting
+references to one of Fromundus's arguments, showing, by a mixture of
+mathematics and theology, that the earth is the centre of the universe,
+see Quetelet, Histoire des Sciences mathematiques et physiques,
+Bruxelles, 1864, p. 170; also Madler, Geschichte der Astronomie, vol.
+i, p. 274. For Bodin's opposition to the Copernican theory, see Hallam,
+Literature of Europe; also Lecky. For Sir Thomas Brown, see his Vulgar
+and Common Errors, book iv, chap. v; and as to the real reason for his
+disbelief in the Copernican view, see Dr. Johnson's preface to his Life
+of Browne, vol. i, p. xix, of his collected works.
+
+
+
+
+IV. VICTORY OF THE CHURCH OVER GALILEO.
+
+
+While news of triumphant attacks upon him and upon the truth he had
+established were coming in from all parts of Europe, Galileo prepared a
+careful treatise in the form of a dialogue, exhibiting the arguments for
+and against the Copernican and Ptolemaic systems, and offered to submit
+to any conditions that the Church tribunals might impose, if they
+would allow it to be printed. At last, after discussions which extended
+through eight years, they consented, imposing a humiliating condition--a
+preface written in accordance with the ideas of Father Ricciardi, Master
+of the Sacred Palace, and signed by Galileo, in which the Copernican
+theory was virtually exhibited as a play of the imagination, and not
+at all as opposed to the Ptolemaic doctrine reasserted in 1616 by the
+Inquisition under the direction of Pope Paul V.
+
+This new work of Galileo--the Dialogo--appeared in 1632, and met with
+prodigious success. It put new weapons into the hands of the supporters
+of the Copernican theory. The pious preface was laughed at from one end
+of Europe to the other. This roused the enemy; the Jesuits, Dominicans,
+and the great majority of the clergy returned to the attack more violent
+than ever, and in the midst of them stood Pope Urban VIII, most bitter
+of all. His whole power was now thrown against Galileo. He was touched
+in two points: first, in his personal vanity, for Galileo had put the
+Pope's arguments into the mouth of one of the persons in the dialogue
+and their refutation into the mouth of another; but, above all, he was
+touched in his religious feelings. Again and again His Holiness
+insisted to all comers on the absolute and specific declarations of Holy
+Scripture, which prove that the sun and heavenly bodies revolve about
+the earth, and declared that to gainsay them is simply to dispute
+revelation. Certainly, if one ecclesiastic more than another ever seemed
+NOT under the care of the Spirit of Truth, it was Urban VIII in all this
+matter.
+
+Herein was one of the greatest pieces of ill fortune that has ever
+befallen the older Church. Had Pope Urban been broad-minded and tolerant
+like Benedict XIV, or had he been taught moderation by adversity like
+Pius VII, or had he possessed the large scholarly qualities of Leo XIII,
+now reigning, the vast scandal of the Galileo case would never have
+burdened the Church: instead of devising endless quibbles and special
+pleadings to escape responsibility for this colossal blunder, its
+defenders could have claimed forever for the Church the glory of
+fearlessly initiating a great epoch in human thought.
+
+But it was not so to be. Urban was not merely Pope; he was also a prince
+of the house of Barberini, and therefore doubly angry that his arguments
+had been publicly controverted.
+
+The opening strategy of Galileo's enemies was to forbid the sale of his
+work; but this was soon seen to be unavailing, for the first edition had
+already been spread throughout Europe. Urban now became more angry than
+ever, and both Galileo and his works were placed in the hands of the
+Inquisition. In vain did the good Benedictine Castelli urge that Galileo
+was entirely respectful to the Church; in vain did he insist that
+"nothing that can be done can now hinder the earth from revolving."
+He was dismissed in disgrace, and Galileo was forced to appear in the
+presence of the dread tribunal without defender or adviser. There, as
+was so long concealed, but as is now fully revealed, he was menaced with
+torture again and again by express order of Pope Urban, and, as is also
+thoroughly established from the trial documents themselves, forced to
+abjure under threats, and subjected to imprisonment by command of
+the Pope; the Inquisition deferring in this whole matter to the papal
+authority. All the long series of attempts made in the supposed interest
+of the Church to mystify these transactions have at last failed. The
+world knows now that Galileo was subjected certainly to indignity, to
+imprisonment, and to threats equivalent to torture, and was at last
+forced to pronounce publicly and on his knees his recantation, as
+follows:
+
+"I, Galileo, being in my seventieth year, being a prisoner and on my
+knees, and before your Eminences, having before my eyes the Holy Gospel,
+which I touch with my hands, abjure, curse, and detest the error and the
+heresy of the movement of the earth."(63)
+
+
+     (63) For various utterances of Pope Urban against the Copernican theory
+at this period, see extracts from the original documents given by
+Gebler. For punishment of those who had shown some favor to Galileo,
+see various citations, and especially those from the Vatican manuscript,
+Gebler, p. 216. As to the text of the abjuration, see L'Epinois; also
+Polacco, Anticopernicus, etc., Venice, 1644; and for a discussion
+regarding its publication, see Favaro, Miscellanea Galileana, p. 804. It
+is not probable that torture in the ordinary sense was administered to
+Galileo, though it was threatened. See Th. Martin, Vie de Galilee, for a
+fair summing up of the case.
+
+
+He was vanquished indeed, for he had been forced, in the face of all
+coming ages, to perjure himself. To complete his dishonour, he was
+obliged to swear that he would denounce to the Inquisition any other man
+of science whom he should discover to be supporting the "heresy of the
+motion of the earth."
+
+Many have wondered at this abjuration, and on account of it have denied
+to Galileo the title of martyr. But let such gainsayers consider the
+circumstances. Here was an old man--one who had reached the allotted
+threescore years and ten--broken with disappointments, worn out with
+labours and cares, dragged from Florence to Rome, with the threat from
+the Pope himself that if he delayed he should be "brought in chains";
+sick in body and mind, given over to his oppressors by the Grand-Duke
+who ought to have protected him, and on his arrival in Rome threatened
+with torture. What the Inquisition was he knew well. He could remember
+as but of yesterday the burning of Giordano Bruno in that same city for
+scientific and philosophic heresy; he could remember, too, that only
+eight years before this very time De Dominis, Archbishop of Spalatro,
+having been seized by the Inquisition for scientific and other heresies,
+had died in a dungeon, and that his body and his writings had been
+publicly burned.
+
+To the end of his life--nay, after his life was ended--the persecution
+of Galileo was continued. He was kept in exile from his family, from his
+friends, from his noble employments, and was held rigidly to his
+promise not to speak of his theory. When, in the midst of intense bodily
+sufferings from disease, and mental sufferings from calamities in his
+family, he besought some little liberty, he was met with threats of
+committal to a dungeon. When, at last, a special commission had reported
+to the ecclesiastical authorities that he had become blind and wasted
+with disease and sorrow, he was allowed a little more liberty, but
+that little was hampered by close surveillance. He was forced to bear
+contemptible attacks on himself and on his works in silence; to see the
+men who had befriended him severely punished; Father Castelli banished;
+Ricciardi, the Master of the Sacred Palace, and Ciampoli, the papal
+secretary, thrown out of their positions by Pope Urban, and the
+Inquisitor at Florence reprimanded for having given permission to print
+Galileo's work. He lived to see the truths he had established carefully
+weeded out from all the Church colleges and universities in Europe; and,
+when in a scientific work he happened to be spoken of as "renowned," the
+Inquisition ordered the substitution of the word "notorious."(64)
+
+
+     (64) For the substitution of the word "notorious" for "renowned" by
+order of the Inquisition, see Martin, p.227.
+
+
+And now measures were taken to complete the destruction of the
+Copernican theory, with Galileo's proofs of it. On the 16th of June,
+1633, the Holy Congregation, with the permission of the reigning Pope,
+ordered the sentence upon Galileo, and his recantation, to be sent to
+all the papal nuncios throughout Europe, as well as to all archbishops,
+bishops, and inquisitors in Italy and this document gave orders that the
+sentence and abjuration be made known "to your vicars, that you and all
+professors of philosophy and mathematics may have knowledge of it, that
+they may know why we proceeded against the said Galileo, and recognise
+the gravity of his error, in order that they may avoid it, and thus not
+incur the penalties which they would have to suffer in case they fell
+into the same."(65)
+
+
+     (65) For a copy of this document, see Gebler, p. 269. As to the
+spread of this and similar documents notifying Europe of Galileo's
+condemnation, see Favaro, pp. 804, 805.
+
+
+As a consequence, the processors of mathematics and astronomy in various
+universities of Europe were assembled and these documents were read to
+them. To the theological authorities this gave great satisfaction. The
+Rector of the University of Douay, referring to the opinion of Galileo,
+wrote to the papal nuncio at Brussels: "The professors of our university
+are so opposed to this fanatical opinion that they have always held that
+it must be banished from the schools. In our English college at Douay
+this paradox has never been approved and never will be."
+
+Still another step was taken: the Inquisitors were ordered, especially
+in Italy, not to permit the publication of a new edition of any
+of Galileo's works, or of any similar writings. On the other hand,
+theologians were urged, now that Copernicus and Galileo and Kepler were
+silenced, to reply to them with tongue and pen. Europe was flooded with
+these theological refutations of the Copernican system.
+
+To make all complete, there was prefixed to the Index of the Church,
+forbidding "all writings which affirm the motion of the earth," a bull
+signed by the reigning Pope, which, by virtue of his infallibility as
+a divinely guided teacher in matters of faith and morals, clinched this
+condemnation into the consciences of the whole Christian world.
+
+From the mass of books which appeared under the auspices of the Church
+immediately after the condemnation of Galileo, for the purpose of
+rooting out every vestige of the hated Copernican theory from the mind
+of the world, two may be taken as typical. The first of these was a
+work by Scipio Chiaramonti, dedicated to Cardinal Barberini. Among
+his arguments against the double motion of the earth may be cited the
+following:
+
+"Animals, which move, have limbs and muscles; the earth has no limbs
+or muscles, therefore it does not move. It is angels who make Saturn,
+Jupiter, the sun, etc., turn round. If the earth revolves, it must also
+have an angel in the centre to set it in motion; but only devils live
+there; it would therefore be a devil who would impart motion to the
+earth....
+
+"The planets, the sun, the fixed stars, all belong to one
+species--namely, that of stars. It seems, therefore, to be a grievous
+wrong to place the earth, which is a sink of impurity, among these
+heavenly bodies, which are pure and divine things."
+
+The next, which I select from the mass of similar works, is the
+Anticopernicus Catholicus of Polacco. It was intended to deal a
+finishing stroke at Galileo's heresy. In this it is declared:
+
+"The Scripture always represents the earth as at rest, and the sun and
+moon as in motion; or, if these latter bodies are ever represented as at
+rest, Scripture represents this as the result of a great miracle....
+
+"These writings must be prohibited, because they teach certain
+principles about the position and motion of the terrestrial globe
+repugnant to Holy Scripture and to the Catholic interpretation of it,
+not as hypotheses but as established facts...."
+
+Speaking of Galileo's book, Polacco says that it "smacked of
+Copernicanism," and that, "when this was shown to the Inquisition,
+Galileo was thrown into prison and was compelled to utterly abjure the
+baseness of this erroneous dogma."
+
+As to the authority of the cardinals in their decree, Polacco asserts
+that, since they are the "Pope's Council" and his "brothers," their
+work is one, except that the Pope is favoured with special divine
+enlightenment.
+
+Having shown that the authority of the Scriptures, of popes, and of
+cardinals is against the new astronomy, he gives a refutation based on
+physics. He asks: "If we concede the motion of the earth, why is it that
+an arrow shot into the air falls back to the same spot, while the earth
+and all things on it have in the meantime moved very rapidly toward
+the east? Who does not see that great confusion would result from this
+motion?"
+
+Next he argues from metaphysics, as follows: "The Copernican theory of
+the earth's motion is against the nature of the earth itself, because
+the earth is not only cold but contains in itself the principle of cold;
+but cold is opposed to motion, and even destroys it--as is evident in
+animals, which become motionless when they become cold."
+
+Finally, he clinches all with a piece of theological reasoning, as
+follows: "Since it can certainly be gathered from Scripture that the
+heavens move above the earth, and since a circular motion requires
+something immovable around which to move,... the earth is at the centre
+of the universe."(66)
+
+
+     (66) For Chiaramonti's book and selections given, see Gebler as above,
+p. 271. For Polacco, see his work as cited, especially Assertiones i,
+ii, vii, xi, xiii, lxxiii, clcccvii, and others. The work is in the
+White Library at Cornell University. The date of it is 1644.
+
+
+But any sketch of the warfare between theology and science in this field
+would be incomplete without some reference to the treatment of Galileo
+after his death. He had begged to be buried in his family tomb in Santa
+Croce; this request was denied. His friends wished to erect a monument
+over him; this, too, was refused. Pope Urban said to the ambassador
+Niccolini that "it would be an evil example for the world if such
+honours were rendered to a man who had been brought before the Roman
+Inquisition for an opinion so false and erroneous; who had communicated
+it to many others, and who had given so great a scandal to Christendom."
+In accordance, therefore, with the wish of the Pope and the orders of
+the Inquisition, Galileo was buried ignobly, apart from his family,
+without fitting ceremony, without monument, without epitaph. Not until
+forty years after did Pierrozzi dare write an inscription to be placed
+above his bones; not until a hundred years after did Nelli dare transfer
+his remains to a suitable position in Santa Croce, and erect a monument
+above them. Even then the old conscientious hostility burst forth: the
+Inquisition was besought to prevent such honours to "a man condemned for
+notorious errors"; and that tribunal refused to allow any epitaph to be
+placed above him which had not been submitted to its censorship. Nor has
+that old conscientious consistency in hatred yet fully relented: hardly
+a generation since has not seen some ecclesiastic, like Marini or De
+Bonald or Rallaye or De Gabriac, suppressing evidence, or torturing
+expressions, or inventing theories to blacken the memory of Galileo
+and save the reputation of the Church. Nay, more: there are school
+histories, widely used, which, in the supposed interest of the Church,
+misrepresent in the grossest manner all these transactions in which
+Galileo was concerned. Sancta simplicitas! The Church has no worse
+enemies than those who devise and teach these perversions. They
+are simply rooting out, in the long run, from the minds of the more
+thoughtful scholars, respect for the great organization which such
+writings are supposed to serve.(67)
+
+
+     (67) For the persecutions of Galileo's memory after his death, see
+Gebler and Wohwill, but especially Th. Martin, p. 243 and chaps. ix
+and x. For documentary proofs, see L'Epinois. For a collection of the
+slanderous theories invented against Galileo, see Martin, final chapters
+and appendix. Both these authors are devoted to the Church, but unlike
+Monsignor Marini, are too upright to resort to the pious fraud of
+suppressing documents or interpolating pretended facts.
+
+
+The Protestant Church was hardly less energetic against this new
+astronomy than the mother Church. The sacred science of the first
+Lutheran Reformers was transmitted as a precious legacy, and in the next
+century was made much of by Calovius. His great learning and determined
+orthodoxy gave him the Lutheran leadership. Utterly refusing to look
+at ascertained facts, he cited the turning back of the shadow upon King
+Hezekiah's dial and the standing still of the sun for Joshua, denied
+the movement of the earth, and denounced the whole new view as clearly
+opposed to Scripture. To this day his arguments are repeated by sundry
+orthodox leaders of American Lutheranism.
+
+As to the other branches of the Reformed Church, we have already seen
+how Calvinists, Anglicans, and, indeed, Protestant sectarians generally,
+opposed the new truth.(68)
+
+
+     (68) For Clovius, see Zoeckler, Geschichte, vol. i, pp. 684 and 763. For
+Calvin and Turretin, see Shields, The Final Philosophy, pp. 60, 61.
+
+
+In England, among the strict churchmen, the great Dr. South denounced
+the Royal Society as "irreligious," and among the Puritans the eminent
+John Owen declared that Newton's discoveries were "built on fallible
+phenomena and advanced by many arbitrary presumptions against evident
+testimonies of Scripture." Even Milton seems to have hesitated between
+the two systems. At the beginning of the eighth book of Paradise Lost
+he makes Adam state the difficulties of the Ptolemaic system, and then
+brings forward an angel to make the usual orthodox answers. Later,
+Milton seems to lean toward the Copernican theory, for, referring to the
+earth, he says:
+
+"Or she from west her silent course advance With inoffensive pace, that
+spinning sleeps On her soft axle, while she faces even And bears thee
+soft with the smooth air along."
+
+
+English orthodoxy continued to assert itself. In 1724 John Hutchinson,
+professor at Cambridge, published his Moses' Principia, a system of
+philosophy in which he sought to build up a complete physical system of
+the universe from the Bible. In this he assaulted the Newtonian theory
+as "atheistic," and led the way for similar attacks by such Church
+teachers as Horne, Duncan Forbes, and Jones of Nayland. But one far
+greater than these involved himself in this view. That same limitation
+of his reason by the simple statements of Scripture which led John
+Wesley to declare that, "unless witchcraft is true, nothing in the Bible
+is true," led him, while giving up the Ptolemaic theory and accepting in
+a general way the Copernican, to suspect the demonstrations of
+Newton. Happily, his inborn nobility of character lifted him above any
+bitterness or persecuting spirit, or any imposition of doctrinal tests
+which could prevent those who came after him from finding their way to
+the truth.
+
+But in the midst of this vast expanse of theologic error signs of right
+reason began to appear, both in England and America. Noteworthy is it
+that Cotton Mather, bitter as was his orthodoxy regarding witchcraft,
+accepted, in 1721, the modern astronomy fully, with all its
+consequences.
+
+In the following year came an even more striking evidence that the new
+scientific ideas were making their way in England. In 1722 Thomas Burnet
+published the sixth edition of his Sacred Theory of the Earth. In this
+he argues, as usual, to establish the scriptural doctrine of the
+earth's stability; but in his preface he sounds a remarkable warning.
+He mentions the great mistake into which St. Augustine led the Church
+regarding the doctrine of the antipodes, and says, "If within a
+few years or in the next generation it should prove as certain and
+demonstrable that the earth is moved, as it is now that there are
+antipodes, those that have been zealous against it, and engaged the
+Scripture in the controversy, would have the same reason to repent of
+their forwardness that St. Augustine would now, if he were still alive."
+
+Fortunately, too, Protestantism had no such power to oppose the
+development of the Copernican ideas as the older Church had enjoyed.
+Yet there were some things in its warfare against science even more
+indefensible. In 1772 the famous English expedition for scientific
+discovery sailed from England under Captain Cook. Greatest by far of all
+the scientific authorities chosen to accompany it was Dr. Priestley. Sir
+Joseph Banks had especially invited him. But the clergy of Oxford and
+Cambridge interfered. Priestley was considered unsound in his views
+of the Trinity; it was evidently suspected that this might vitiate his
+astronomical observations; he was rejected, and the expedition crippled.
+
+The orthodox view of astronomy lingered on in other branches of the
+Protestant Church. In Germany even Leibnitz attacked the Newtonian
+theory of gravitation on theological grounds, though he found some
+little consolation in thinking that it might be used to support the
+Lutheran doctrine of consubstantiation.
+
+In Holland the Calvinistic Church was at first strenuous against the
+whole new system, but we possess a comical proof that Calvinism even in
+its strongholds was powerless against it; for in 1642 Blaer published at
+Amsterdam his book on the use of globes, and, in order to be on the safe
+side, devoted one part of his work to the Ptolemaic and the other to the
+Copernican scheme, leaving the benevolent reader to take his choice.(69)
+
+
+     (69) For the attitude of Leibnetz, Hutchinson, and the others named
+toward the Newtonian theory, see Lecky, History of England in the
+Eighteenth Century, chap. ix. For John Wesley, see his Compendium of
+Natural Philosophy, being a Survey of the Wisdom of God in the Creation,
+London, 1784. See also Leslie Stephen, Eighteenth Century, vol. ii,
+p. 413. For Owen, see his Works, vol. xix, p. 310. For Cotton Mather's
+view, see The Christian Philosopher, London, 1721, especially pp. 16 and
+17. For the case of Priestley, see Weld, History of the Royal Society,
+vol. ii, p. 56, for the facts and the admirable letter of Priestley upon
+this rejection. For Blaer, see his L'Usage des Globes, Amsterdam, 1642.
+
+
+Nor have efforts to renew the battle in the Protestant Church been
+wanting in these latter days. The attempt in the Church of England,
+in 1864, to fetter science, which was brought to ridicule by Herschel,
+Bowring, and De Morgan; the assemblage of Lutheran clergy at Berlin, in
+1868, to protest against "science falsely so called," are examples
+of these. Fortunately, to the latter came Pastor Knak, and his
+denunciations of the Copernican theory as absolutely incompatible with a
+belief in the Bible, dissolved the whole assemblage in ridicule.
+
+In its recent dealings with modern astronomy the wisdom of the Catholic
+Church in the more civilized countries has prevented its yielding to
+some astounding errors into which one part of the Protestant Church has
+fallen heedlessly.
+
+Though various leaders in the older Church have committed the absurd
+error of allowing a text-book and sundry review articles to appear which
+grossly misstate the Galileo episode, with the certainty of ultimately
+undermining confidence in her teachings among her more thoughtful
+young men, she has kept clear of the folly of continuing to tie her
+instruction, and the acceptance of our sacred books, to an adoption of
+the Ptolemaic theory.
+
+Not so with American Lutheranism. In 1873 was published in St. Louis, at
+the publishing house of the Lutheran Synod of Missouri, a work entitled
+Astronomische Unterredung, the author being well known as a late
+president of a Lutheran Teachers' Seminary.
+
+No attack on the whole modern system of astronomy could be more bitter.
+On the first page of the introduction the author, after stating the two
+theories, asks, "Which is right?" and says: "It would be very simple to
+me which is right, if it were only a question of human import. But the
+wise and truthful God has expressed himself on this matter in the Bible.
+The entire Holy Scripture settles the question that the earth is the
+principal body (Hauptkorper) of the universe, that it stands fixed, and
+that sun and moon only serve to light it."
+
+The author then goes on to show from Scripture the folly, not only of
+Copernicus and Newton, but of a long line of great astronomers in more
+recent times. He declares: "Let no one understand me as inquiring first
+where truth is to be found--in the Bible or with the astronomers. No; I
+know that beforehand--that my God never lies, never makes a mistake; out
+of his mouth comes only truth, when he speaks of the structure of the
+universe, of the earth, sun, moon, and stars....
+
+"Because the truth of the Holy Scripture is involved in this, therefore
+the above question is of the highest importance to me.... Scientists and
+others lean upon the miserable reed (Rohrstab) that God teaches only the
+order of salvation, but not the order of the universe."
+
+Very noteworthy is the fact that this late survival of an ancient belief
+based upon text-worship is found, not in the teachings of any zealous
+priest of the mother Church, but in those of an eminent professor in
+that branch of Protestantism which claims special enlightenment.(70)
+
+
+     (70) For the amusing details of the attempt in the English Church to
+repress science, and of the way in which it was met, see De Morgan,
+Paradoxes, p. 42. For Pastor Knak and his associates, see the Revue des
+Deux Mondes, 1868. Of the recent Lutheran works against the Copernican
+astronomy, see especially Astronomische Unterredung zwischen einem
+Liebhaber der Astronomie und mehreren beruhmten Astronomer der Neuzeit,
+by J. C. W. L., St. Louis, 1873.
+
+
+Nor has the warfare against the dead champions of science been carried
+on by the older Church alone.
+
+On the 10th of May, 1859, Alexander von Humboldt was buried. His labours
+had been among the glories of the century, and his funeral was one of
+the most imposing that Berlin had ever seen. Among those who honoured
+themselves by their presence was the prince regent, afterward the
+Emperor William I; but of the clergy it was observed that none
+were present save the officiating clergyman and a few regarded as
+unorthodox.(71)
+
+
+     (71) See Bruhns and Lassell, Life of Humboldt, London, 1873, vol. ii, p.
+411.
+
+
+
+
+V. RESULTS OF THE VICTORY OVER GALILEO.
+
+
+We return now to the sequel of the Galileo case.
+
+Having gained their victory over Galileo, living and dead, having used
+it to scare into submission the professors of astronomy throughout
+Europe, conscientious churchmen exulted. Loud was their rejoicing that
+the "heresy," the "infidelity" the "atheism" involved in believing that
+the earth revolves about its axis and moves around the sun had been
+crushed by the great tribunal of the Church, acting in strict obedience
+to the expressed will of one Pope and the written order of another. As
+we have seen, all books teaching this hated belief were put upon the
+Index of books forbidden to Christians, and that Index was prefaced by
+a bull enforcing this condemnation upon the consciences of the faithful
+throughout the world, and signed by the reigning Pope.
+
+The losses to the world during this complete triumph of theology
+were even more serious than at first appears: one must especially be
+mentioned. There was then in Europe one of the greatest thinkers ever
+given to mankind--Rene Descartes. Mistaken though many of his reasonings
+were, they bore a rich fruitage of truth. He had already done a vast
+work. His theory of vortices--assuming a uniform material regulated by
+physical laws--as the beginning of the visible universe, though it was
+but a provisional hypothesis, had ended the whole old theory of the
+heavens with the vaulted firmament and the direction of the planetary
+movements by angels, which even Kepler had allowed. The scientific
+warriors had stirred new life in him, and he was working over and
+summing up in his mighty mind all the researches of his time. The
+result would have made an epoch in history. His aim was to combine all
+knowledge and thought into a Treatise on the World, and in view of this
+he gave eleven years to the study of anatomy alone. But the fate of
+Galileo robbed him of all hope, of all courage; the battle seemed lost;
+he gave up his great plan forever.(72)
+
+
+     (72) For Descartes's discouragement, see Humboldt, Cosmos, London,
+1851, vol iii, p. 21; also Lange, Geschichte des Materialismus, English
+translation, vol. i, pp. 248, 249, where the letters of Descartes are
+given, showing his despair, and the relinquishment of his best thoughts
+and works in order to preserve peace with the Church; also Saisset,
+Descartes et ses Precurseurs, pp. 100 et seq.; also Jolly, Histoire du
+Mouvement intellectuel au XVI Siecle, vol. i, p. 390.
+
+
+But ere long it was seen that this triumph of the Church was in reality
+a prodigious defeat. From all sides came proofs that Copernicus and
+Galileo were right; and although Pope Urban and the inquisition held
+Galileo in strict seclusion, forbidding him even to SPEAK regarding the
+double motion of the earth; and although this condemnation of "all
+books which affirm the motion of the earth" was kept on the Index; and
+although the papal bull still bound the Index and the condemnations
+in it on the consciences of the faithful; and although colleges and
+universities under Church control were compelled to teach the old
+doctrine--it was seen by clear-sighted men everywhere that this victory
+of the Church was a disaster to the victors.
+
+New champions pressed on. Campanella, full of vagaries as he was, wrote
+his Apology for Galileo, though for that and other heresies, religious,
+and political, he seven times underwent torture.
+
+And Kepler comes: he leads science on to greater victories. Copernicus,
+great as he was, could not disentangle scientific reasoning entirely
+from the theological bias: the doctrines of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas
+as to the necessary superiority of the circle had vitiated the minor
+features of his system, and left breaches in it through which the enemy
+was not slow to enter; but Kepler sees these errors, and by wonderful
+genius and vigour he gives to the world the three laws which bear his
+name, and this fortress of science is complete. He thinks and speaks
+as one inspired. His battle is severe. He is solemnly warned by the
+Protestant Consistory of Stuttgart "not to throw Christ's kingdom into
+confusion with his silly fancies," and as solemnly ordered to "bring
+his theory of the world into harmony with Scripture": he is sometimes
+abused, sometimes ridiculed, sometimes imprisoned. Protestants in Styria
+and Wurtemberg, Catholics in Austria and Bohemia, press upon him but
+Newton, Halley, Bradley, and other great astronomers follow, and to
+science remains the victory.(73)
+
+
+     (73) For Campanella, see Amabile, Fra Tommaso Campanella, Naples, 1882,
+especially vol. iii; also Libri, vol. iv, pp. 149 et seq. Fromundus,
+speaking of Kepler's explanation, says, "Vix teneo ebullientem risum."
+This is almost equal to the New York Church Journal, speaking of John
+Stuart Mill as "that small sciolist," and of the preface to Dr. Draper's
+great work as "chippering." How a journal, generally so fair in its
+treatment of such subjects, can condescend to such weapons is one of the
+wonders of modern journalism. For the persecution of Kepler, see Heller,
+Geschichte der Physik, vol. i, pp. 281 et seq; also Reuschle, Kepler und
+die Astronomie, Frankfurt a. M., 1871, pp. 87 et seq. There is a poetic
+justice in the fact that these two last-named books come from Wurtemberg
+professors. See also The New-Englander for March, 1884, p. 178.
+
+
+Yet this did not end the war. During the seventeenth century, in France,
+after all the splendid proofs added by Kepler, no one dared openly teach
+the Copernican theory, and Cassini, the great astronomer, never declared
+for it. In 1672 the Jesuit Father Riccioli declared that there
+were precisely forty-nine arguments for the Copernican theory and
+seventy-seven against it. Even after the beginning of the eighteenth
+century--long after the demonstrations of Sir Isaac Newton--Bossuet,
+the great Bishop of Meaux, the foremost theologian that France has ever
+produced, declared it contrary to Scripture.
+
+Nor did matters seem to improve rapidly during that century. In England,
+John Hutchinson, as we have seen, published in 1724 his Moses' Principia
+maintaining that the Hebrew Scriptures are a perfect system of natural
+philosophy, and are opposed to the Newtonian system of gravitation; and,
+as we have also seen, he was followed by a long list of noted men in
+the Church. In France, two eminent mathematicians published in 1748 an
+edition of Newton's Principia; but, in order to avert ecclesiastical
+censure, they felt obliged to prefix to it a statement absolutely false.
+Three years later, Boscovich, the great mathematician of the Jesuits,
+used these words: "As for me, full of respect for the Holy Scriptures
+and the decree of the Holy Inquisition, I regard the earth as immovable;
+nevertheless, for simplicity in explanation I will argue as if the
+earth moves; for it is proved that of the two hypotheses the appearances
+favour this idea."
+
+In Germany, especially in the Protestant part of it, the war was even
+more bitter, and it lasted through the first half of the eighteenth
+century. Eminent Lutheran doctors of divinity flooded the country with
+treatises to prove that the Copernican theory could not be reconciled
+with Scripture. In the theological seminaries and in many of the
+universities where clerical influence was strong they seemed to sweep
+all before them; and yet at the middle of the century we find some
+of the clearest-headed of them aware of the fact that their cause was
+lost.(74)
+
+
+     (74) For Cassini's position, see Henri Martin, Histoire de France, vol.
+xiii, p. 175. For Riccioli, see Daunou, Etudes Historiques, vol. ii,
+p. 439. For Boussuet, see Bertrand, p. 41. For Hutchinson, see Lyell,
+Principles of Geology, p. 48. For Wesley, see his work, already cited.
+As to Boscovich, his declaration, mentioned in the text, was in 1746,
+but in 1785 he seemed to feel his position in view of history, and
+apologized abjectly; Bertrand, pp. 60, 61. See also Whewell's notice
+of Le Sueur and Jacquier's introduction to their edition of Newton's
+Principia. For the struggle in Germany, see Zoeckler, Geschichte der
+Beziehungenzwischen Theologie und Naturwissenschaft, vol. ii, pp. 45 et
+seq.
+
+
+In 1757 the most enlightened perhaps in the whole line of the popes,
+Benedict XIV, took up the matter, and the Congregation of the Index
+secretly allowed the ideas of Copernicus to be tolerated. Yet in 1765
+Lalande, the great French astronomer, tried in vain at Rome to induce
+the authorities to remove Galileo's works from the Index. Even at a
+date far within our own nineteenth century the authorities of many
+universities in Catholic Europe, and especially those in Spain, excluded
+the Newtonian system. In 1771 the greatest of them all, the University
+of Salamanca, being urged to teach physical science, refused, making
+answer as follows: "Newton teaches nothing that would make a good
+logician or metaphysician; and Gassendi and Descartes do not agree so
+well with revealed truth as Aristotle does."
+
+Vengeance upon the dead also has continued far into our own century. On
+the 5th of May, 1829, a great multitude assembled at Warsaw to honour
+the memory of Copernicus and to unveil Thorwaldsen's statue of him.
+
+Copernicus had lived a pious, Christian life; he had been beloved for
+unostentatious Christian charity; with his religious belief no fault had
+ever been found; he was a canon of the Church at Frauenberg, and over
+his grave had been written the most touching of Christian epitaphs.
+Naturally, then, the people expected a religious service; all was
+understood to be arranged for it; the procession marched to the church
+and waited. The hour passed, and no priest appeared; none could be
+induced to appear. Copernicus, gentle, charitable, pious, one of the
+noblest gifts of God to religion as well as to science, was evidently
+still under the ban. Five years after that, his book was still standing
+on the Index of books prohibited to Christians.
+
+The edition of the Index published in 1819 was as inexorable toward the
+works of Copernicus and Galileo as its predecessors had been; but in the
+year 1820 came a crisis. Canon Settele, Professor of Astronomy at Rome,
+had written an elementary book in which the Copernican system was taken
+for granted. The Master of the Sacred Palace, Anfossi, as censor of the
+press, refused to allow the book to be printed unless Settele revised
+his work and treated the Copernican theory as merely a hypothesis. On
+this Settele appealed to Pope Pius VII, and the Pope referred the matter
+to the Congregation of the Holy Office. At last, on the 16th of August,
+1820, it was decided that Settele might teach the Copernican system as
+established, and this decision was approved by the Pope. This aroused
+considerable discussion, but finally, on the 11th of September, 1822,
+the cardinals of the Holy Inquisition graciously agreed that "the
+printing and publication of works treating of the motion of the earth
+and the stability of the sun, in accordance with the general opinion of
+modern astronomers, is permitted at Rome." This decree was ratified by
+Pius VII, but it was not until thirteen years later, in 1835, that there
+was issued an edition of the Index from which the condemnation of works
+defending the double motion of the earth was left out.
+
+This was not a moment too soon, for, as if the previous proofs had not
+been sufficient, each of the motions of the earth was now absolutely
+demonstrated anew, so as to be recognised by the ordinary observer.
+The parallax of fixed stars, shown by Bessel as well as other noted
+astronomers in 1838, clinched forever the doctrine of the revolution of
+the earth around the sun, and in 1851 the great experiment of Foucault
+with the pendulum showed to the human eye the earth in motion around its
+own axis. To make the matter complete, this experiment was publicly made
+in one of the churches at Rome by the eminent astronomer, Father Secchi,
+of the Jesuits, in 1852--just two hundred and twenty years after the
+Jesuits had done so much to secure Galileo's condemnation.(75)
+
+
+     (75) For good statements of the final action of the Church in the
+matter, see Gebler; also Zoeckler, ii, 352. See also Bertrand,
+Fondateurs de l'Astronomie moderne, p. 61; Flammarion, Vie de Copernic,
+chap. ix. As to the time when the decree of condemnation was repealed,
+there have been various pious attempts to make it earlier than the
+reality. Artaud, p. 307, cited in an apologetic article in the Dublin
+Review, September, 1865, says that Galileo's famous dialogue was
+published in 1714, at Padua, entire, and with the usual approbations.
+The same article also declares that in 1818, the ecclesiastical decrees
+were repealed by Pius VII in full Consistory. Whewell accepts this;
+but Cantu, an authority favourable to the Church, acknowledges that
+Copernicus's work remained on the Index as late as 1835 (Cantu, Histoire
+universelle, vol. xv, p. 483); and with this Th. Martin, not less
+favourable to the Church, but exceedingly careful as to the facts,
+agrees; and the most eminent authority of all, Prof. Reusch, of Bonn,
+in his Der Index der vorbotenen Bucher, Bonn, 1885, vol. ii, p. 396,
+confirms the above statement in the text. For a clear statement of
+Bradley's exquisite demonstration of the Copernican theory by reasonings
+upon the rapidity of light, etc., and Foucault's exhibition of the
+rotation of the earth by the pendulum experiment, see Hoefer, Histoire
+de l'Astronomie, pp. 492 et seq. For more recent proofs of the
+Copernican theory, by the discoveries of Bunsen, Bischoff, Benzenberg,
+and others, see Jevons, Principles of Science.
+
+
+
+
+
+VI. THE RETREAT OF THE CHURCH AFTER ITS VICTORY OVER GALILEO.
+
+
+Any history of the victory of astronomical science over dogmatic
+theology would be incomplete without some account of the retreat made by
+the Church from all its former positions in the Galileo case.
+
+The retreat of the Protestant theologians was not difficult. A little
+skilful warping of Scripture, a little skilful use of that time-honoured
+phrase, attributed to Cardinal Baronius, that the Bible is given to
+teach us, not how the heavens go, but how men go to heaven, and a free
+use of explosive rhetoric against the pursuing army of scientists,
+sufficed.
+
+But in the older Church it was far less easy. The retreat of the
+sacro-scientific army of Church apologists lasted through two centuries.
+
+In spite of all that has been said by these apologists, there no longer
+remains the shadow of a doubt that the papal infallibility was committed
+fully and irrevocably against the double revolution of the earth. As the
+documents of Galileo's trial now published show, Paul V, in 1616, pushed
+on with all his might the condemnation of Galileo and of the works of
+Copernicus and of all others teaching the motion of the earth around its
+own axis and around the sun. So, too, in the condemnation of Galileo in
+1633, and in all the proceedings which led up to it and which followed
+it, Urban VIII was the central figure. Without his sanction no action
+could have been taken.
+
+True, the Pope did not formally sign the decree against the Copernican
+theory THEN; but this came later. In 1664 Alexander VII prefixed to
+the Index containing the condemnations of the works of Copernicus and
+Galileo and "all books which affirm the motion of the earth" a papal
+bull signed by himself, binding the contents of the Index upon the
+consciences of the faithful. This bull confirmed and approved in express
+terms, finally, decisively, and infallibly, the condemnation of "all
+books teaching the movement of the earth and the stability of the
+sun."(76)
+
+
+     (76) See Rev. William W. Roberts, The Pontifical Decrees against the
+Doctrine of the Earth's Movement, London, 1885, p. 94; and for the text
+of the papal bull, Speculatores domus Israel, pp. 132, 133, see also St.
+George Mivart's article in the Nineteenth Century for July, 1885. For
+the authentic publication of the bull, see preface to the Index of 1664,
+where the bull appears, signed by the Pope. The Rev. Mr. Roberts and
+Mr. St. George Mivart are Roman Catholics and both acknowledge that the
+papal sanction was fully given.
+
+
+The position of the mother Church had been thus made especially
+difficult; and the first important move in retreat by the apologists was
+the statement that Galileo was condemned, not because he affirmed the
+motion of the earth, but because he supported it from Scripture. There
+was a slight appearance of truth in this. Undoubtedly, Galileo's letters
+to Castelli and the grand duchess, in which he attempted to show that
+his astronomical doctrines were not opposed to Scripture, gave a new
+stir to religious bigotry. For a considerable time, then, this quibble
+served its purpose; even a hundred and fifty years after Galileo's
+condemnation it was renewed by the Protestant Mallet du Pan, in his wish
+to gain favour from the older Church.
+
+But nothing can be more absurd, in the light of the original documents
+recently brought out of the Vatican archives, than to make this
+contention now. The letters of Galileo to Castelli and the Grand-Duchess
+were not published until after the condemnation; and, although the
+Archbishop of Pisa had endeavoured to use them against him, they were
+but casually mentioned in 1616, and entirely left out of view in 1633.
+What was condemned in 1616 by the Sacred Congregation held in the
+presence of Pope Paul V, as "ABSURD, FALSE IN THEOLOGY, AND HERETICAL,
+BECAUSE ABSOLUTELY CONTRARY TO HOLY SCRIPTURE," was the proposition that
+"THE SUN IS THE CENTRE ABOUT WHICH THE EARTH REVOLVES"; and what was
+condemned as "ABSURD, FALSE IN PHILOSOPHY, AND FROM A THEOLOGIC POINT
+OF VIEW, AT LEAST, OPPOSED TO THE TRUE FAITH," was the proposition that
+"THE EARTH IS NOT THE CENTRE OF THE UNIVERSE AND IMMOVABLE, BUT HAS A
+DIURNAL MOTION."
+
+And again, what Galileo was made, by express order of Pope Urban, and
+by the action of the Inquisition under threat of torture, to abjure in
+1633, was "THE ERROR AND HERESY OF THE MOVEMENT OF THE EARTH."
+
+What the Index condemned under sanction of the bull issued by Alexander
+VII in 1664 was, "ALL BOOKS TEACHING THE MOVEMENT OF THE EARTH AND THE
+STABILITY OF THE SUN."
+
+What the Index, prefaced by papal bulls, infallibly binding its contents
+upon the consciences of the faithful, for nearly two hundred years
+steadily condemned was, "ALL BOOKS WHICH AFFIRM THE MOTION OF THE
+EARTH."
+
+Not one of these condemnations was directed against Galileo "for
+reconciling his ideas with Scripture."(77)
+
+
+     (77) For the original trial documents, copied carefully from the Vatican
+manuscripts, see the Roman Catholic authority, L'Epinois, especially
+p. 35, where the principal document is given in its original Latin;
+see also Gebler, Die Acten des galilei'schen Processes, for still more
+complete copies of the same documents. For minute information regarding
+these documents and their publication, see Favaro, Miscellanea Galileana
+Inedita, forming vol. xxii, part iii, of the Memoirs of the Venetian
+Institute for 1887, and especially pp. 891 and following.
+
+
+Having been dislodged from this point, the Church apologists sought
+cover under the statement that Galileo was condemned not for heresy, but
+for contumacy and want of respect toward the Pope.
+
+There was a slight chance, also, for this quibble: no doubt Urban VIII,
+one of the haughtiest of pontiffs, was induced by Galileo's enemies
+to think that he had been treated with some lack of proper etiquette:
+first, by Galileo's adhesion to his own doctrines after his condemnation
+in 1616; and, next, by his supposed reference in the Dialogue of 1632 to
+the arguments which the Pope had used against him.
+
+But it would seem to be a very poor service rendered to the doctrine
+of papal infallibility to claim that a decision so immense in its
+consequences could be influenced by the personal resentment of the
+reigning pontiff.
+
+Again, as to the first point, the very language of the various sentences
+shows the folly of this assertion; for these sentences speak always of
+"heresy" and never of "contumacy." As to the last point, the display
+of the original documents settled that forever. They show Galileo from
+first to last as most submissive toward the Pope, and patient under the
+papal arguments and exactions. He had, indeed, expressed his anger at
+times against his traducers; but to hold this the cause of the judgment
+against him is to degrade the whole proceedings, and to convict Paul V,
+Urban VIII, Bellarmin, the other theologians, and the Inquisition, of
+direct falsehood, since they assigned entirely different reasons
+for their conduct. From this position, therefore, the assailants
+retreated.(78)
+
+
+     (78) The invention of the "contumacy" quibble seems due to Monsignor
+Marini, who appears also to have manipulated the original documents to
+prove it. Even Whewell was evidently somewhat misled by him, but Whewell
+wrote before L'Epinois had shown all the documents, and under the
+supposition that Marini was an honest man.
+
+
+The next rally was made about the statement that the persecution of
+Galileo was the result of a quarrel between Aristotelian professors on
+one side and professors favouring the experimental method on the other.
+But this position was attacked and carried by a very simple statement.
+If the divine guidance of the Church is such that it can be dragged
+into a professorial squabble, and made the tool of a faction in bringing
+about a most disastrous condemnation of a proved truth, how did the
+Church at that time differ from any human organization sunk into
+decrepitude, managed nominally by simpletons, but really by schemers? If
+that argument be true, the condition of the Church was even worse than
+its enemies have declared it; and amid the jeers of an unfeeling world
+the apologists sought new shelter.
+
+The next point at which a stand was made was the assertion that
+the condemnation of Galileo was "provisory"; but this proved a more
+treacherous shelter than the others. The wording of the decree of
+condemnation itself is a sufficient answer to this claim. When doctrines
+have been solemnly declared, as those of Galileo were solemnly declared
+under sanction of the highest authority in the Church, "contrary to the
+sacred Scriptures," "opposed to the true faith," and "false and
+absurd in theology and philosophy"--to say that such declarations
+are "provisory" is to say that the truth held by the Church is not
+immutable; from this, then, the apologists retreated.(79)
+
+
+     (79) This argument also seems to have been foisted upon the world by the
+wily Monsignor Marini.
+
+
+Still another contention was made, in some respects more curious
+than any other: it was, mainly, that Galileo "was no more a victim
+of Catholics than of Protestants; for they more than the Catholic
+theologians impelled the Pope to the action taken."(80)
+
+
+     (80) See the Rev. A. M. Kirsch on Professor Huxley and Evolution, in The
+American Catholic Quarterly, October, 1877. The article is, as a whole,
+remarkably fair-minded, and in the main, just, as to the Protestant
+attitude, and as to the causes underlying the whole action against
+Galileo.
+
+
+But if Protestantism could force the papal hand in a matter of this
+magnitude, involving vast questions of belief and far-reaching questions
+of policy, what becomes of "inerrancy"--of special protection and
+guidance of the papal authority in matters of faith?
+
+While this retreat from position to position was going on, there was a
+constant discharge of small-arms, in the shape of innuendoes, hints,
+and sophistries: every effort was made to blacken Galileo's private
+character: the irregularities of his early life were dragged forth, and
+stress was even laid upon breaches of etiquette; but this succeeded so
+poorly that even as far back as 1850 it was thought necessary to cover
+the retreat by some more careful strategy.
+
+This new strategy is instructive. The original documents of the Galileo
+trial had been brought during the Napoleonic conquests to Paris; but in
+1846 they were returned to Rome by the French Government, on the express
+pledge by the papal authorities that they should be published. In 1850,
+after many delays on various pretexts, the long-expected publication
+appeared. The personage charged with presenting them to the world was
+Monsignor Marini. This ecclesiastic was of a kind which has too often
+afflicted both the Church and the world at large. Despite the solemn
+promise of the papal court, the wily Marini became the instrument of
+the Roman authorities in evading the promise. By suppressing a document
+here, and interpolating a statement there, he managed to give plausible
+standing-ground for nearly every important sophistry ever broached
+to save the infallibility of the Church and destroy the reputation of
+Galileo. He it was who supported the idea that Galileo was "condemned
+not for heresy, but for contumacy."
+
+The first effect of Monsignor Marini's book seemed useful in covering
+the retreat of the Church apologists. Aided by him, such vigorous
+writers as Ward were able to throw up temporary intrenchments between
+the Roman authorities and the indignation of the world.
+
+But some time later came an investigator very different from Monsignor
+Marini. This was a Frenchman, M. L'Epinois. Like Marini, L'Epinois was
+devoted to the Church; but, unlike Marini, he could not lie. Having
+obtained access in 1867 to the Galileo documents at the Vatican,
+he published several of the most important, without suppression or
+pious-fraudulent manipulation. This made all the intrenchments based
+upon Marini's statements untenable. Another retreat had to be made.
+
+And now came the most desperate effort of all. The apologetic army,
+reviving an idea which the popes and the Church had spurned for
+centuries, declared that the popes AS POPES had never condemned the
+doctrines of Copernicus and Galileo; that they had condemned them as men
+simply; that therefore the Church had never been committed to them; that
+the condemnation was made by the cardinals of the inquisition and index;
+and that the Pope had evidently been restrained by interposition of
+Providence from signing their condemnation. Nothing could show the
+desperation of the retreating party better than jugglery like this. The
+fact is, that in the official account of the condemnation by Bellarmin,
+in 1616, he declares distinctly that he makes this condemnation "in the
+name of His Holiness the Pope."(81)
+
+
+     (81) See the citation from the Vatican manuscript given in Gebler, p.
+78.
+
+
+Again, from Pope Urban downward, among the Church authorities of the
+seventeenth century the decision was always acknowledged to be made by
+the Pope and the Church. Urban VIII spoke of that of 1616 as made by
+Pope Paul V and the Church, and of that of 1633 as made by himself
+and the Church. Pope Alexander VII in 1664, in his bull Speculatores,
+solemnly sanctioned the condemnation of all books affirming the earth's
+movement.(82)
+
+
+     (82) For references by Urban VIII to the condemnation as made by Pope
+Paul V see pp. 136, 144, and elsewhere in Martin, who much against
+his will is forced to allow this. See also Roberts, Pontifical decrees
+against the Earth's Movement, and St. George Mivart's article, as above
+quoted; also Reusch, Index der verbotenen Bucher, Bonn, 1885, vol. ii,
+pp. 29 et seq.
+
+
+When Gassendi attempted to raise the point that the decision against
+Copernicus and Galileo was not sanctioned by the Church as such, an
+eminent theological authority, Father Lecazre, rector of the College of
+Dijon, publicly contradicted him, and declared that it "was not certain
+cardinals, but the supreme authority of the Church," that had condemned
+Galileo; and to this statement the Pope and other Church authorities
+gave consent either openly or by silence. When Descartes and others
+attempted to raise the same point, they were treated with contempt.
+Father Castelli, who had devoted himself to Galileo, and knew to his
+cost just what the condemnation meant and who made it, takes it for
+granted, in his letter to the papal authorities, that it was made by the
+Church. Cardinal Querenghi, in his letters; the ambassador Guicciardini,
+in his dispatches; Polacco, in his refutation; the historian Viviani,
+in his biography of Galileo--all writing under Church inspection
+and approval at the time, took the view that the Pope and the Church
+condemned Galileo, and this was never denied at Rome. The Inquisition
+itself, backed by the greatest theologian of the time (Bellarmin), took
+the same view. Not only does he declare that he makes the condemnation
+"in the name of His Holiness the Pope," but we have the Roman Index,
+containing the condemnation for nearly two hundred years, prefaced by
+a solemn bull of the reigning Pope binding this condemnation on the
+consciences of the whole Church, and declaring year after year that "all
+books which affirm the motion of the earth" are damnable. To attempt
+to face all this, added to the fact that Galileo was required to abjure
+"the heresy of the movement of the earth" by written order of the Pope,
+was soon seen to be impossible. Against the assertion that the Pope
+was not responsible we have all this mass of testimony, and the bull of
+Alexander VII in 1664.(83)
+
+
+     (83) For Lecazre's answer to Gassendi, see Martin, pp. 146, 147. For the
+attempt to make the crimes of Galileo breach of etiquette, see Dublin
+Review, as above. Whewell, vol. i, p. 283. Citation from Marini:
+"Galileo was punished for trifling with the authorities, to which
+he refused to submit, and was punished for obstinate contumacy, not
+heresy." The sufficient answer to all this is that the words of the
+inflexible sentence designating the condemned books are "libri omnes
+qui affirmant telluris motum." See Bertrand, p. 59. As to the idea
+that "Galileo was punished for not his opinion, but for basing it on
+Scripture," the answer may be found in the Roman Index of 1704, in which
+are noted for condemnation "Libri omnes docentes mobilitatem terrae et
+immobilitatem solis." For the way in which, when it was found convenient
+in argument, Church apologists insisted that it WAS "the Supreme Chief
+of the Church by a pontifical decree, and not certain cardinals," who
+condemned Galileo and his doctrine, see Father Lecazre's letter to
+Gassendi, in Flammarion, Pluralite des Mondes, p. 427, and Urban
+VIII's own declarations as given by Martin. For the way in which,
+when necessary, Church apologists asserted the very contrary of this,
+declaring that it was "issued in a doctrinal degree of the Congregation
+of the Index, and NOT as the Holy Father's teaching," see Dublin Review,
+September, 1865.
+
+
+This contention, then, was at last utterly given up by honest Catholics
+themselves. In 1870 a Roman Catholic clergy man in England, the Rev. Mr.
+Roberts, evidently thinking that the time had come to tell the truth,
+published a book entitled The Pontifical Decrees against the Earth's
+Movement, and in this exhibited the incontrovertible evidences that
+the papacy had committed itself and its infallibility fully against the
+movement of the earth. This Catholic clergyman showed from the original
+record that Pope Paul V, in 1616, had presided over the tribunal
+condemning the doctrine of the earth's movement, and ordering Galileo
+to give up the opinion. He showed that Pope Urban VIII, in 1633, pressed
+on, directed, and promulgated the final condemnation, making himself
+in all these ways responsible for it. And, finally, he showed that Pope
+Alexander VII, in 1664, by his bull--Speculatores domus Israel--attached
+to the Index, condemning "all books which affirm the motion of the
+earth," had absolutely pledged the papal infallibility against the
+earth's movement. He also confessed that under the rules laid down by
+the highest authorities in the Church, and especially by Sixtus V and
+Pius IX, there was no escape from this conclusion.
+
+Various theologians attempted to evade the force of the argument. Some,
+like Dr. Ward and Bouix, took refuge in verbal niceties; some, like Dr.
+Jeremiah Murphy, comforted themselves with declamation. The only result
+was, that in 1885 came another edition of the Rev. Mr. Roberts's work,
+even more cogent than the first; and, besides this, an essay by
+that eminent Catholic, St. George Mivart, acknowledging the Rev. Mr.
+Roberts's position to be impregnable, and declaring virtually that the
+Almighty allowed Pope and Church to fall into complete error regarding
+the Copernican theory, in order to teach them that science lies outside
+their province, and that the true priesthood of scientific truth rests
+with scientific investigators alone.(84)
+
+
+     (84) For the crushing answer by two eminent Roman Catholics to the
+sophistries cited--an answer which does infinitely more credit to the
+older Church that all the perverted ingenuity used in concealing the
+truth or breaking the force of it--see Roberts and St. George Mivart, as
+already cited.
+
+
+In spite, then, of all casuistry and special pleading, this sturdy
+honesty ended the controversy among Catholics themselves, so far as
+fair-minded men are concerned.
+
+In recalling it at this day there stand out from its later phases
+two efforts at compromise especially instructive, as showing the
+embarrassment of militant theology in the nineteenth century.
+
+The first of these was made by John Henry Newman in the days when he was
+hovering between the Anglican and Roman Churches. In one of his sermons
+before the University of Oxford he spoke as follows:
+
+"Scripture says that the sun moves and the earth is stationary, and
+science that the earth moves and the sun is comparatively at rest. How
+can we determine which of these opposite statements is the very truth
+till we know what motion is? If our idea of motion is but an accidental
+result of our present senses, neither proposition is true and both are
+true: neither true philosophically; both true for certain practical
+purposes in the system in which they are respectively found."
+
+In all anti-theological literature there is no utterance more hopelessly
+skeptical. And for what were the youth of Oxford led into such
+bottomless depths of disbelief as to any real existence of truth or
+any real foundation for it? Simply to save an outworn system of
+interpretation into which the gifted preacher happened to be born.
+
+The other utterance was suggested by De Bonald and developed in the
+Dublin Review, as is understood, by one of Newman's associates. This
+argument was nothing less than an attempt to retreat under the charge
+of deception against the Almighty himself. It is as follows: "But it may
+well be doubted whether the Church did retard the progress of scientific
+truth. What retarded it was the circumstance that God has thought fit to
+express many texts of Scripture in words which have every appearance of
+denying the earth's motion. But it is God who did this, not the Church;
+and, moreover, since he saw fit so to act as to retard the progress of
+scientific truth, it would be little to her discredit, even if it were
+true, that she had followed his example."
+
+This argument, like Mr. Gosse's famous attempt to reconcile geology to
+Genesis--by supposing that for some inscrutable purpose God deliberately
+deceived the thinking world by giving to the earth all the appearances
+of development through long periods of time, while really creating it in
+six days, each of an evening and a morning--seems only to have awakened
+the amazed pity of thinking men. This, like the argument of Newman, was
+a last desperate effort of Anglican and Roman divines to save something
+from the wreckage of dogmatic theology.(85)
+
+
+     (85) For the quotation from Newman, see his Sermons on the Theory of
+Religious Belief, sermon xiv, cited by Bishop Goodwin in Contemporary
+Review for January, 1892. For the attempt to take the blame off the
+shoulders of both Pope and cardinals and place it upon the Almighty, see
+the article above cited, in the Dublin Review, September 1865, p.
+419 and July, 1871, pp. 157 et seq. For a good summary of the various
+attempts, and for replies to them in a spirit of judicial fairness, see
+Th. Martin, Vie de Galilee, though there is some special pleading to
+save the infallibility of the Pope and Church. The bibliography at the
+close is very valuable. For details of Mr. Gosse's theory, as developed
+in his Omphalos, see the chapter on Geology in this work. As to a still
+later attempt, see Wegg-Prosser, Galileo and his Judges, London, 1889,
+the main thing in it being an attempt to establish, against the honest
+and honourable concessions of Catholics like Roberts and Mivart,
+sundry far-fetched and wire-drawn distinctions between dogmatic and
+disciplinary bulls--an attempt which will only deepen the distrust of
+straightforward reasoners. The author's point of view is stated in
+the words, "I have maintained that the Church has a right to lay her
+restraining hand on the speculations of natural science" (p. 167).
+
+
+All these well-meaning defenders of the faith but wrought into the
+hearts of great numbers of thinking men the idea that there is a
+necessary antagonism between science and religion. Like the landsman who
+lashes himself to the anchor of the sinking ship, they simply attached
+Christianity by the strongest cords of logic which they could spin to
+these mistaken ideas in science, and, could they have had their way, the
+advance of knowledge would have ingulfed both together.
+
+On the other hand, what had science done for religion? Simply this:
+Copernicus, escaping persecution only by death; Giordano Bruno, burned
+alive as a monster of impiety; Galileo, imprisoned and humiliated as
+the worst of misbelievers; Kepler, accused of "throwing Christ's kingdom
+into confusion with his silly fancies"; Newton, bitterly attacked for
+"dethroning Providence," gave to religion stronger foundations and more
+ennobling conceptions.
+
+Under the old system, that princely astronomer, Alphonso of Castile,
+seeing the inadequacy of the Ptolemaic theory, yet knowing no other,
+startled Europe with the blasphemy that, if he had been present at
+creation, he could have suggested a better order of the heavenly bodies.
+Under the new system, Kepler, filled with a religious spirit, exclaimed,
+"I do think the thoughts of God." The difference in religious spirit
+between these two men marks the conquest made in this long struggle by
+Science for Religion.(86)
+
+
+     (86) As a pendant to this ejaculation of Kepler may be cited the words
+of Linnaeus: "Deum ominpotentem a tergo transeuntem vidi et obstupui."
+
+
+Nothing is more unjust than to cast especial blame for all this
+resistance to science upon the Roman Church. The Protestant Church,
+though rarely able to be so severe, has been more blameworthy. The
+persecution of Galileo and his compeers by the older Church was
+mainly at the beginning of the seventeenth century; the persecution
+of Robertson Smith, and Winchell, and Woodrow, and Toy, and the young
+professors at Beyrout, by various Protestant authorities, was near the
+end of the nineteenth century. Those earlier persecutions by Catholicism
+were strictly in accordance with principles held at that time by all
+religionists, Catholic and Protestant, throughout the world; these later
+persecutions by Protestants were in defiance of principles which all
+Protestants to-day hold or pretend to hold, and none make louder
+claim to hold them than the very sects which persecuted these eminent
+Christian men of our day, men whose crime was that they were intelligent
+enough to accept the science of their time, and honest enough to
+acknowledge it.
+
+Most unjustly, then, would Protestantism taunt Catholicism for excluding
+knowledge of astronomical truths from European Catholic universities
+in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, while real knowledge
+of geological and biological and anthropological truth is denied
+or pitifully diluted in so many American Protestant colleges and
+universities in the nineteenth century.
+
+Nor has Protestantism the right to point with scorn to the Catholic
+Index, and to lay stress on the fact that nearly every really important
+book in the last three centuries has been forbidden by it, so long as
+young men in so many American Protestant universities and colleges are
+nursed with "ecclesiastical pap" rather than with real thought, and
+directed to the works of "solemnly constituted impostors," or to sundry
+"approved courses of reading," while they are studiously kept aloof from
+such leaders in modern thought as Darwin, Spencer, Huxley, Draper, and
+Lecky.
+
+It may indeed be justly claimed by Protestantism that some of the former
+strongholds of her bigotry have become liberalized; but, on the other
+hand, Catholicism can point to the fact that Pope Leo XIII, now
+happily reigning, has made a noble change as regards open dealing with
+documents. The days of Monsignor Marini, it may be hoped, are gone. The
+Vatican Library, with its masses of historical material, has been thrown
+open to Protestant and Catholic scholars alike, and this privilege has
+been freely used by men representing all shades of religious thought.
+
+As to the older errors, the whole civilized world was at fault,
+Protestant as well as Catholic. It was not the fault of religion; it
+was the fault of that short-sighted linking of theological dogmas to
+scriptural texts which, in utter defiance of the words and works of the
+Blessed Founder of Christianity, narrow-minded, loud-voiced men are ever
+prone to substitute for religion. Justly is it said by one of the most
+eminent among contemporary Anglican divines, that "it is because they
+have mistaken the dawn for a conflagration that theologians have so
+often been foes of light."(87)
+
+
+     (87) For an exceedingly striking statement, by a Roman Catholic
+historian of genius, as to the POPULAR demand for persecution and the
+pressure of the lower strata in ecclesiastical organizations for cruel
+measures, see Balmes's Le Protestantisme compare au Catholicisme, etc.,
+fourth edition, Paris, 1855, vol. ii. Archbishop Spaulding has something
+of the same sort in his Miscellanies. L'Epinois, Galilee, p. 22 et seq.,
+stretches this as far as possible to save the reputation of the Church
+in the Galileo matter. As to the various branches of the Protestant
+Church in England and the United States, it is a matter of notoriety
+that the smug, well-to-do laymen, whether elders, deacons, or vestrymen,
+are, as a rule, far more prone to heresy-hunting than are their better
+educated pastors. As to the cases of Messrs. Winchell, Woodrow, Toy,
+and all the professors at Beyrout, with details, see the chapter in this
+series on The Fall of Man and Anthropology. Among Protestant historians
+who have recently been allowed full and free examination of the
+treasures in the Vatican Library, and even those involving questions
+between Catholicism and Protestantism, are von Sybel, of Berlin, and
+Philip Schaff, of New York. It should be added that the latter went with
+commendatory letters from eminent prelates in the Catholic Church in
+America and Europe. For the closing citation, see Canon Farrar, History
+of Interpretation, p. 432.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.  FROM "SIGNS AND WONDERS" TO LAW IN THE HEAVENS.
+
+
+
+
+I. THE THEOLOGICAL VIEW.
+
+
+Few things in the evolution of astronomy are more suggestive than the
+struggle between the theological and the scientific doctrine regarding
+comets--the passage from the conception of them as fire-balls flung by
+an angry God for the purpose of scaring a wicked world, to a recognition
+of them as natural in origin and obedient to law in movement. Hardly
+anything throws a more vivid light upon the danger of wresting texts
+of Scripture to preserve ideas which observation and thought have
+superseded, and upon the folly of arraying ecclesiastical power against
+scientific discovery.(88)
+
+
+     (88) The present study, after its appearance in the Popular Science
+Monthly as a "new chapter in the Warfare of Science," was revised
+and enlarged to nearly its present form, and read before the American
+Historical Association, among whose papers it was published, in 1887,
+under the title of A History of the Doctrine of Comets.
+
+
+Out of the ancient world had come a mass of beliefs regarding comets,
+meteors, and eclipses; all these were held to be signs displayed from
+heaven for the warning of mankind. Stars and meteors were generally
+thought to presage happy events, especially the births of gods, heroes,
+and great men. So firmly rooted was this idea that we constantly find
+among the ancient nations traditions of lights in the heavens preceding
+the birth of persons of note. The sacred books of India show that
+the births of Crishna and of Buddha were announced by such heavenly
+lights.(89) The sacred books of China tell of similar appearances at
+the births of Yu, the founder of the first dynasty, and of the inspired
+sage, Lao-tse. According to the Jewish legends, a star appeared at the
+birth of Moses, and was seen by the Magi of Egypt, who informed the
+king; and when Abraham was born an unusual star appeared in the east.
+The Greeks and Romans cherished similar traditions. A heavenly light
+accompanied the birth of Aesculapius, and the births of various Caesars
+were heralded in like manner.(90)
+
+
+     (89) For Crishna, see Cox, Aryan Mythology, vol. ii, p. 133; the Vishnu
+Purana (Wilson's translation), book v, chap. iv. As to lights at
+the birth, or rather at the conception, of Buddha, see Bunsen, Angel
+Messiah, pp. 22,23; Alabaster, Wheel of the Law (illustrations of
+Buddhism), p. 102; Edwin Arnold, Light of Asia; Bp. Bigandet, Life
+of Gaudama, the Burmese Buddha, p. 30; Oldenberg, Buddha (English
+translation), part i, chap. ii.
+
+
+     (90) For Chinese legends regarding stars at the birth of Yu and
+Lao-tse, see Thornton, History of China, vol. i, p. 137; also Pingre,
+Cometographie, p. 245. Regarding stars at the birth of Moses and
+Abraham, see Calmet, Fragments, part viii; Baring-Gould, Legends of Old
+Testament Characters, chap. xxiv; Farrar, Life of Christ, chap. iii. As
+to the Magi, see Higgins, Anacalypsis; Hooykaas, Ort, and Kuenen,
+Bible for Learners, vol. iii. For Greek and Roman traditions, see Bell,
+Pantheon, s. v. Aesculapius and Atreus; Gibbon, Decline and Fall, vol.
+i, pp. 151, 590; Farrar, Life of Christ (American edition), p. 52; Cox,
+Tales of Ancient Greece, pp. 41, 61, 62; Higgins, Anacalypsis, vol. i,
+p. 322; also Suetonius, Caes., Julius, p.88, Claud., p. 463; Seneca,
+Nat. Quaest, vol. 1, p. 1; Virgil, Ecl., vol. ix, p. 47; as well as
+Ovid, Pliny, and others.
+
+
+The same conception entered into our Christian sacred books. Of all the
+legends which grew in such luxuriance and beauty about the cradle of
+Jesus of Nazareth, none appeals more directly to the highest poetic
+feeling than that given by one of the evangelists, in which a star,
+rising in the east, conducted the wise men to the manger where the
+Galilean peasant-child--the Hope of Mankind, the Light of the World--was
+lying in poverty and helplessness.
+
+Among the Mohammedans we have a curious example of the same tendency
+toward a kindly interpretation of stars and meteors, in the belief of
+certain Mohammedan teachers that meteoric showers are caused by good
+angels hurling missiles to drive evil angels out of the sky.
+
+Eclipses were regarded in a very different light, being supposed
+to express the distress of Nature at earthly calamities. The Greeks
+believed that darkness overshadowed the earth at the deaths of
+Prometheus, Atreus, Hercules, Aesculapius, and Alexander the Great. The
+Roman legends held that at the death of Romulus there was darkness for
+six hours. In the history of the Caesars occur portents of all three
+kinds; for at the death of Julius the earth was shrouded in darkness,
+the birth of Augustus was heralded by a star, and the downfall of Nero
+by a comet. So, too, in one of the Christian legends clustering about
+the crucifixion, darkness overspread the earth from the sixth to the
+ninth hour. Neither the silence regarding it of the only evangelist who
+claims to have been present, nor the fact that observers like Seneca
+and Pliny, who, though they carefully described much less striking
+occurrences of the same sort and in more remote regions, failed to
+note any such darkness even in Judea, have availed to shake faith in an
+account so true to the highest poetic instincts of humanity.
+
+This view of the relations between Nature and man continued among both
+Jews and Christians. According to Jewish tradition, darkness overspread
+the earth for three days when the books of the Law were profaned by
+translation into Greek. Tertullian thought an eclipse an evidence of
+God's wrath against unbelievers. Nor has this mode of thinking ceased
+in modern times. A similar claim was made at the execution of Charles I;
+and Increase Mather thought an eclipse in Massachusetts an evidence
+of the grief of Nature at the death of President Chauncey, of Harvard
+College. Archbishop Sandys expected eclipses to be the final tokens of
+woe at the destruction of the world, and traces of this feeling have
+come down to our own time.
+
+The quaint story of the Connecticut statesman who, when his associates
+in the General Assembly were alarmed by an eclipse of the sun, and
+thought it the beginning of the Day of Judgment, quietly ordered in
+candles, that he might in any case be found doing his duty, marks
+probably the last noteworthy appearance of the old belief in any
+civilized nation.(91)
+
+
+     (91) For Hindu theories, see Alabaster, Wheel of the Law, 11. For Greek
+and Roman legends, See Higgins, Anacalypsis, vol. i, pp. 616, 617.; also
+Suetonius, Caes., Julius, p. 88, Claud., p. 46; Seneca, Quaest. Nat.,
+vol. i, p. 1, vol. vii, p. 17; Pliny, Hist. Nat., vol. ii, p. 25;
+Tacitus, Ann., vol. xiv, p. 22; Josephus, Antiq., vol. xiv, p. 12; and
+the authorities above cited. For the tradition of the Jews regarding
+the darkness of three days, see citation in Renan, Histoire du Peuple
+Israel, vol. iv, chap. iv. For Tertullian's belief regarding the
+significance of an eclipse, see the Ad Scapulum, chap. iii, in Migne,
+Patrolog. Lat., vol. i, p. 701. For the claim regarding Charles I, see
+a sermon preached before Charles II, cited by Lecky, England in the
+Eighteenth Century, vol. i, p. 65. Mather thought, too, that it might
+have something to do with the death of sundry civil functionaries of
+the colonies; see his Discourse concerning comets, 1682. For Archbishop
+Sandy's belief, see his eighteenth sermon (in Parker Soc. Publications).
+The story of Abraham Davenport has been made familiar by the poem of
+Whittier.
+
+
+In these beliefs regarding meteors and eclipses there was little
+calculated to do harm by arousing that superstitious terror which is
+the worst breeding-bed of cruelty. Far otherwise was it with the belief
+regarding comets. During many centuries it gave rise to the direst
+superstition and fanaticism. The Chaldeans alone among the ancient
+peoples generally regarded comets without fear, and thought them bodies
+wandering as harmless as fishes in the sea; the Pythagoreans alone among
+philosophers seem to have had a vague idea of them as bodies returning
+at fixed periods of time; and in all antiquity, so far as is known, one
+man alone, Seneca, had the scientific instinct and prophetic inspiration
+to give this idea definite shape, and to declare that the time would
+come when comets would be found to move in accordance with natural law.
+Here and there a few strong men rose above the prevailing superstition.
+The Emperor Vespasian tried to laugh it down, and insisted that a
+certain comet in his time could not betoken his death, because it was
+hairy, and he bald; but such scoffing produced little permanent effect,
+and the prophecy of Seneca was soon forgotten. These and similar
+isolated utterances could not stand against the mass of opinion which
+upheld the doctrine that comets are "signs and wonders."(92)
+
+
+     (92) For terror caused in Rome by comets, see Pingre, Cometographie, pp.
+165, 166. For the Chaldeans, see Wolf, Geschichte der Astronomie, p. 10
+et seq., and p. 181 et seq.; also Pingre, chap. ii. For the Pythagorean
+notions, see citations from Plutarch in Costard, History of Astronomy,
+p. 283. For Seneca's prediction, see Guillemin, World of Comets
+(translated by Glaisher), pp. 4, 5; also Watson, On Comets, p. 126. For
+this feeling in antiquity generally, see the preliminary chapters of the
+two works last cited.
+
+
+The belief that every comet is a ball of fire flung from the right hand
+of an angry God to warn the grovelling dwellers of earth was received
+into the early Church, transmitted through the Middle Ages to the
+Reformation period, and in its transmission was made all the more
+precious by supposed textual proofs from Scripture. The great fathers of
+the Church committed themselves unreservedly to it. In the third century
+Origen, perhaps the most influential of the earlier fathers of the
+universal Church in all questions between science and faith, insisted
+that comets indicate catastrophes and the downfall of empires and
+worlds. Bede, so justly revered by the English Church, declared in the
+eighth century that "comets portend revolutions of kingdoms, pestilence,
+war, winds, or heat"; and John of Damascus, his eminent contemporary
+in the Eastern Church, took the same view. Rabanus Maurus, the great
+teacher of Europe in the ninth century, an authority throughout the
+Middle Ages, adopted Bede's opinion fully. St. Thomas Aquinas, the great
+light of the universal Church in the thirteenth century, whose works the
+Pope now reigning commends as the centre and source of all university
+instruction, accepted and handed down the same opinion. The sainted
+Albert the Great, the most noted genius of the medieval Church in
+natural science, received and developed this theory. These men and
+those who followed them founded upon scriptural texts and theological
+reasonings a system that for seventeen centuries defied every advance of
+thought.(93)
+
+
+     (93) For Origen, se his De Princip., vol. i, p. 7; also Maury, Leg.
+pieuses, p. 203, note. For Bede and others, see De Nat., vol. xxiv; Joh.
+Dam., De Fid. Or.,vol. ii, p. 7; Maury, La Magie et l'Astronomie, pp.
+181, 182. For Albertus Magnus, see his Opera, vol. i, tr. iii, chaps.
+x, xi. Among the texts of Scripture on which this belief rested was
+especially Joel ii, 30, 31.
+
+
+The main evils thence arising were three: the paralysis of self-help,
+the arousing of fanaticism, and the strengthening of ecclesiastical
+and political tyranny. The first two of these evils--the paralysis of
+self-help and the arousing of fanaticism--are evident throughout
+all these ages. At the appearance of a comet we constantly see all
+Christendom, from pope to peasant, instead of striving to avert war
+by wise statesmanship, instead of striving to avert pestilence by
+observation and reason, instead of striving to avert famine by skilful
+economy, whining before fetiches, trying to bribe them to remove these
+signs of God's wrath, and planning to wreak this supposed wrath of God
+upon misbelievers.
+
+As to the third of these evils--the strengthening of ecclesiastical
+and civil despotism--examples appear on every side. It was natural that
+hierarchs and monarchs whose births were announced by stars, or whose
+deaths were announced by comets, should regard themselves as far above
+the common herd, and should be so regarded by mankind; passive obedience
+was thus strengthened, and the most monstrous assumptions of authority
+were considered simply as manifestations of the Divine will. Shakespeare
+makes Calphurnia say to Caesar:
+
+
+"When beggars die, there are no comets seen; The heavens themselves
+blaze forth the death of princes."
+
+
+Galeazzo, the tyrant of Milan, expressing satisfaction on his deathbed
+that his approaching end was of such importance as to be heralded by a
+comet, is but a type of many thus encouraged to prey upon mankind;
+and Charles V, one of the most powerful monarchs the world has known,
+abdicating under fear of the comet of 1556, taking refuge in the
+monastery of San Yuste, and giving up the best of his vast realms to
+such a scribbling bigot as Philip II, furnishes an example even more
+striking.(94)
+
+
+
+     (94) For Caesar, see Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, act ii, sc. 2. For
+Galeazzo, see Guillemin, World of Comets, p. 19. For Charles V, see
+Prof. Wolf's essay in the Monatschrift des wissenschaftlichen Vereins,
+Zurich, 1857, p. 228.
+
+
+But for the retention of this belief there was a moral cause. Myriads
+of good men in the Christian Church down to a recent period saw in the
+appearance of comets not merely an exhibition of "signs in the heavens"
+foretold in Scripture, but also Divine warnings of vast value to
+humanity as incentives to repentance and improvement of life-warnings,
+indeed, so precious that they could not be spared without danger to
+the moral government of the world. And this belief in the portentous
+character of comets as an essential part of the Divine government,
+being, as it was thought, in full accord with Scripture, was made for
+centuries a source of terror to humanity. To say nothing of examples in
+the earlier periods, comets in the tenth century especially increased
+the distress of all Europe. In the middle of the eleventh century a
+comet was thought to accompany the death of Edward the Confessor and to
+presage the Norman conquest; the traveller in France to-day may see this
+belief as it was then wrought into the Bayeux tapestry.(95)
+
+
+     (95) For evidences of this widespread terror, see chronicles of
+Raoul Glaber, Guillaume de Nangis, William of Malmesbury, Florence
+of Worcester, Ordericus Vitalis, et al., passim, and the Anglo-Saxon
+Chronicle (in the Rolls Series). For very thrilling pictures of this
+horror in England, see Freeman, Norman Conquest, vol. iii, pp. 640-644,
+and William Rufus, vol. ii, p. 118. For the Bayeau tapestry, see Bruce,
+Bayeux Tapestry Elucidated, plate vii and p. 86; also Guillemin, World
+of Comets, p. 24. There is a large photographic copy, in the South
+Kensington Museum at London, of the original, wrought, as is generally
+believed, by the wife of William the Conqueror and her ladies, and is
+still preserved in the town museum at Bayeux.
+
+
+Nearly every decade of years throughout the Middle Ages saw Europe
+plunged into alarm by appearances of this sort, but the culmination
+seems to have been reached in 1456. At that time the Turks, after a long
+effort, had made good their footing in Europe. A large statesmanship
+or generalship might have kept them out; but, while different religious
+factions were disputing over petty shades of dogma, they had advanced,
+had taken Constantinople, and were evidently securing their foothold.
+Now came the full bloom of this superstition. A comet appeared. The
+Pope of that period, Calixtus III, though a man of more than ordinary
+ability, was saturated with the ideas of his time. Alarmed at this
+monster, if we are to believe the contemporary historian, this
+infallible head of the Church solemnly "decreed several days of prayer
+for the averting of the wrath of God, that whatever calamity impended
+might be turned from the Christians and against the Turks." And, that
+all might join daily in this petition, there was then established that
+midday Angelus which has ever since called good Catholics to prayer
+against the powers of evil. Then, too, was incorporated into a litany
+the plea, "From the Turk and the comet, good Lord, deliver us."
+Never was papal intercession less effective; for the Turk has held
+Constantinople from that day to this, while the obstinate comet, being
+that now known under the name of Halley, has returned imperturbably at
+short periods ever since.(96)
+
+
+     (96) The usual statement is, that Calixtus excommunicated the comet by
+a bull, and this is accepted by Arago, Grant, Hoefer, Guillemin, Watson,
+and many historians of astronomy. Hence the parallel is made on a noted
+occasion by President Lincoln. No such bull, however, is to be found in
+the published Bulleria, and that establishing the Angelus (as given by
+Raynaldus in the Annales Eccl.) contains no mention of the comet. But
+the authority of Platina (in his Vitae Pontificum, Venice, 1479, sub
+Calistus III) who was not only in Rome at the time, but when he wrote
+his history, archivist of the Vatican, is final as to the Pope's
+attitude. Platina's authority was never questioned until modern science
+changed the ideas of the world. The recent attempt of Pastor (in his
+Geschichte der Papste) to pooh-pooh down the whole matter is too evident
+an evasion to carry weight with those who know how even the most careful
+histories have to be modified to suit the views of the censorship at
+Rome.
+
+
+But the superstition went still further. It became more and more
+incorporated into what was considered "scriptural science" and "sound
+learning." The encyclopedic summaries, in which the science of the
+Middle Ages and the Reformation period took form, furnish abundant
+proofs of this.
+
+Yet scientific observation was slowly undermining this structure. The
+inspired prophecy of Seneca had not been forgotten. Even as far back as
+the ninth century, in the midst of the sacred learning so abundant
+at the court of Charlemagne and his successors, we find a scholar
+protesting against the accepted doctrine. In the thirteenth century we
+have a mild question by Albert the Great as to the supposed influence of
+comets upon individuals; but the prevailing theological current was too
+strong, and he finally yielded to it in this as in so many other things.
+
+So, too, in the sixteenth century, we have Copernicus refusing to accept
+the usual theory, Paracelsus writing to Zwingli against it, and Julius
+Caesar Scaliger denouncing it as "ridiculous folly."(97)
+
+
+     (97) As to encyclopedic summaries, see Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum
+Naturale, and the various editions of Reisch's Margarita Philosophica.
+For Charlemagne's time, see Champion, La Fin du Monde, p. 156; Leopardi,
+Errori Popolari, p. 165. As to Albert the Great's question, see Heller,
+Geschichte der Physik, vol. i, p. 188. As to scepticism in the sixteenth
+century, see Champion, La Fin du Monde, pp. 155, 156; and for Scaliger,
+Dudith's book, cited below.
+
+
+At first this scepticism only aroused the horror of theologians and
+increased the vigour of ecclesiastics; both asserted the theological
+theory of comets all the more strenuously as based on scriptural truth.
+During the sixteenth century France felt the influence of one of her
+greatest men on the side of this superstition. Jean Bodin, so far before
+his time in political theories, was only thoroughly abreast of it in
+religious theories: the same reverence for the mere letter of Scripture
+which made him so fatally powerful in supporting the witchcraft
+delusion, led him to support this theological theory of comets--but
+with a difference: he thought them the souls of men, wandering in space,
+bringing famine, pestilence, and war.
+
+Not less strong was the same superstition in England. Based upon
+mediaeval theology, it outlived the revival of learning. From a
+multitude of examples a few may be selected as typical. Early in the
+sixteenth century Polydore Virgil, an ecclesiastic of the unreformed
+Church, alludes, in his English History, to the presage of the death of
+the Emperor Constantine by a comet as to a simple matter of fact; and
+in his work on prodigies he pushes this superstition to its most extreme
+point, exhibiting comets as preceding almost every form of calamity.
+
+In 1532, just at the transition period from the old Church to the new,
+Cranmer, paving the way to his archbishopric, writes from Germany to
+Henry VIII, and says of the comet then visible: "What strange things
+these tokens do signify to come hereafter, God knoweth; for they do not
+lightly appear but against some great matter."
+
+Twenty years later Bishop Latimer, in an Advent sermon, speaks of
+eclipses, rings about the sun, and the like, as signs of the approaching
+end of the world.(98)
+
+
+     (98) For Bodin, see Theatr., lib. ii, cited by Pingre, vol. i, p. 45;
+also a vague citation in Baudrillart, Bodin et son Temps, p. 360.
+For Polydore Virgil, see English History, p. 97 (in Camden Society
+Publications). For Cranmer, see Remains, vol. ii, p. 535 (in Parker
+Society Publications). For Latimer, see Sermons, second Sunday in
+Advent, 1552.
+
+
+In 1580, under Queen Elizabeth, there was set forth an "order of
+prayer to avert God's wrath from us, threatened by the late terrible
+earthquake, to be used in all parish churches." In connection with this
+there was also commended to the faithful "a godly admonition for the
+time present"; and among the things referred to as evidence of God's
+wrath are comets, eclipses, and falls of snow.
+
+This view held sway in the Church of England during Elizabeth's whole
+reign and far into the Stuart period: Strype, the ecclesiastical
+annalist, gives ample evidence of this, and among the more curious
+examples is the surmise that the comet of 1572 was a token of Divine
+wrath provoked by the St. Bartholomew massacre.
+
+As to the Stuart period, Archbishop Spottiswoode seems to have been
+active in carrying the superstition from the sixteenth century to the
+seventeenth, and Archbishop Bramhall cites Scripture in support of
+it. Rather curiously, while the diary of Archbishop Laud shows so much
+superstition regarding dreams as portents, it shows little or none
+regarding comets; but Bishop Jeremy Taylor, strong as he was, evidently
+favoured the usual view. John Howe, the eminent Nonconformist divine
+in the latter part of the century, seems to have regarded the comet
+superstition as almost a fundamental article of belief; he laments the
+total neglect of comets and portents generally, declaring that this
+neglect betokens want of reverence for the Ruler of the world; he
+expresses contempt for scientific inquiry regarding comets, insists that
+they may be natural bodies and yet supernatural portents, and ends by
+saying, "I conceive it very safe to suppose that some very considerable
+thing, either in the way of judgment or mercy, may ensue, according as
+the cry of persevering wickedness or of penitential prayer is more or
+less loud at that time."(99)
+
+
+     (99) For Liturgical Services of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, see Parker
+Society Publications, pp. 569, 570. For Strype, see his Ecclesiastical
+Memorials, vol. iii, part i, p. 472; also see his Annals of the
+reformation, vol. ii, part ii, p. 151; and his Life of Sir Thomas Smith,
+pp. 161, 162. For Spottiswoode, see History of the Church of Scotland
+(Edinburgh reprint, 1851), vol. i, pp. 185, 186. For Bramhall, see his
+Works, Oxford, 1844, vol. iv, pp. 60, 307, etc. For Jeremy Taylor, see
+his Sermons on the Life of Christ. For John Howe, see his Works, London,
+1862, vol. iv, pp. 140, 141.
+
+
+The Reformed Church of Scotland supported the superstition just as
+strongly. John Knox saw in comets tokens of the wrath of Heaven; other
+authorities considered them "a warning to the king to extirpate the
+Papists"; and as late as 1680, after Halley had won his victory, comets
+were announced on high authority in the Scottish Church to be "prodigies
+of great judgment on these lands for our sins, for never was the Lord
+more provoked by a people."
+
+While such was the view of the clergy during the sixteenth and
+seventeenth centuries, the laity generally accepted it as a matter of
+course, Among the great leaders in literature there was at least general
+acquiescence in it. Both Shakespeare and Milton recognise it, whether
+they fully accept it or not. Shakespeare makes the Duke of Bedford,
+lamenting at the bier of Henry V, say:
+
+
+"Comets, importing change of time and states, Brandish your crystal
+tresses in the sky; And with them scourge the bad revolting stars, That
+have consented unto Henry's death."
+
+
+Milton, speaking of Satan preparing for combat, says:
+
+
+"On the other side, Incensed with indignation, Satan stood. Unterrified,
+and like a comet burned, That fires the length of Ophiuchus huge In the
+arctic sky, and from its horrid hair Shakes pestilence and war."
+
+
+We do indeed find that in some minds the discoveries of Tycho Brahe
+and Kepler begin to take effect, for, in 1621, Burton in his Anatomy of
+Melancholy alludes to them as changing public opinion somewhat regarding
+comets; and, just before the middle of the century, Sir Thomas Browne
+expresses a doubt whether comets produce such terrible effects, "since
+it is found that many of them are above the moon."(100) Yet even as late
+as the last years of the seventeenth century we have English authors
+of much power battling for this supposed scriptural view and among the
+natural and typical results we find, in 1682, Ralph Thoresby, a Fellow
+of the Royal Society, terrified at the comet of that year, and writing
+in his diary the following passage: "Lord, fit us for whatever changes
+it may portend; for, though I am not ignorant that such meteors proceed
+from natural causes, yet are they frequently also the presages of
+imminent calamities." Interesting is it to note here that this was
+Halley's comet, and that Halley was at this very moment making those
+scientific studies upon it which were to free the civilized world
+forever from such terrors as distressed Thoresby.
+
+
+     (100) For John Knox, see his Histoire of the Reformation of Religion
+within the Realm of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1732), lib. iv; also Chambers,
+Domestic Annals of Scotland, vol. ii, pp 410-412. For Burton, see his
+Anatomy of Melancholy, part ii, sect 2. For Browne, see the Vulgar and
+Common Errors, book vi, chap. xiv.
+
+
+The belief in comets as warnings against sin was especially one of those
+held "always, everywhere, and by all," and by Eastern Christians as well
+as by Western. One of the most striking scenes in the history of the
+Eastern Church is that which took place at the condemnation of Nikon,
+the great Patriarch of Moscow. Turning toward his judges, he pointed to
+a comet then blazing in the sky, and said, "God's besom shall sweep you
+all away!"
+
+Of all countries in western Europe, it was in Germany and German
+Switzerland that this superstition took strongest hold. That same depth
+of religious feeling which produced in those countries the most terrible
+growth of witchcraft persecution, brought superstition to its highest
+development regarding comets. No country suffered more from it in the
+Middle Ages. At the Reformation Luther declared strongly in favour of
+it. In one of his Advent sermons he said, "The heathen write that the
+comet may arise from natural causes, but God creates not one that does
+not foretoken a sure calamity." Again he said, "Whatever moves in the
+heaven in an unusual way is certainly a sign of God's wrath."
+
+And sometimes, yielding to another phase of his belief, he declared them
+works of the devil, and declaimed against them as "harlot stars."(101)
+
+
+     (101) For Thoresby, see his Diary, (London, 1830). Halley's great
+service is described further on in this chapter. For Nikon's speech, see
+Dean Stanley's History of the Eastern Church, p. 485. For very striking
+examples of this mediaeval terror in Germany, see Von Raumer, Geschichte
+der Hohenstaufen, vol. vi, p. 538. For the Reformation period, see Wolf,
+Gesch. d. Astronomie; also Praetorius, Ueber d. Cometstern (Erfurt,
+1589), in which the above sentences of Luther are printed on the title
+page as epigraphs. For "Huren-Sternen," see the sermon of Celichius,
+described later.
+
+
+Melanchthon, too, in various letters refers to comets as heralds of
+Heaven's wrath, classing them, with evil conjunctions of the planets and
+abortive births, among the "signs" referred to in Scripture. Zwingli,
+boldest of the greater Reformers in shaking off traditional beliefs,
+could not shake off this, and insisted that the comet of 1531 betokened
+calamity. Arietus, a leading Protestant theologian, declared, "The
+heavens are given us not merely for our pleasure, but also as a warning
+of the wrath of God for the correction of our lives." Lavater insisted
+that comets are signs of death or calamity, and cited proofs from
+Scripture.
+
+Catholic and Protestant strove together for the glory of this doctrine.
+It was maintained with especial vigour by Fromundus, the eminent
+professor and Doctor of Theology at the Catholic University of Louvain,
+who so strongly opposed the Copernican system; at the beginning of the
+seventeenth century, even so gifted an astronomer as Kepler yielded
+somewhat to the belief; and near the end of that century Voigt declared
+that the comet of 1618 clearly presaged the downfall of the Turkish
+Empire, and he stigmatized as "atheists and Epicureans" all who did not
+believe comets to be God's warnings.(102)
+
+
+     (102) For Melanchthon, see Wolf, ubi supra. For Zwingli, see Wolf, p.
+235. For Arietus, see Madler, Geschichte der Himmelskunde, vol. ii. For
+Kepler's superstition, see Wolf, p. 281. For Voight, see Himmels-Manaten
+Reichstage, Hamburg, 1676. For both Fromundus and Voigt, see also
+Madler, vol. ii, p. 399, and Lecky, Rationalism in Europe, vol. i, p.28.
+
+
+II. THEOLOGICAL EFFORTS TO CRUSH THE SCIENTIFIC VIEW.
+
+
+Out of this belief was developed a great series of efforts to maintain
+the theological view of comets, and to put down forever the scientific
+view. These efforts may be divided into two classes: those directed
+toward learned men and scholars, through the universities, and those
+directed toward the people at large, through the pulpits. As to the
+first of these, that learned men and scholars might be kept in the paths
+of "sacred science" and "sound learning," especial pains was taken to
+keep all knowledge of the scientific view of comets as far as possible
+from students in the universities. Even to the end of the seventeenth
+century the oath generally required of professors of astronomy over a
+large part of Europe prevented their teaching that comets are heavenly
+bodies obedient to law. Efforts just as earnest were made to fasten into
+students' minds the theological theory. Two or three examples out of
+many may serve as types. First of these may be named the teaching of
+Jacob Heerbrand, professor at the University of Tubingen, who in 1577
+illustrated the moral value of comets by comparing the Almighty sending
+a comet, to the judge laying the executioner's sword on the table
+between himself and the criminal in a court of justice; and, again, to
+the father or schoolmaster displaying the rod before naughty children.
+A little later we have another churchman of great importance in that
+region, Schickhart, head pastor and superintendent at Goppingen,
+preaching and publishing a comet sermon, in which he denounces those who
+stare at such warnings of God without heeding them, and compares them
+to "calves gaping at a new barn door." Still later, at the end of the
+seventeenth century, we find Conrad Dieterich, director of studies at
+the University of Marburg, denouncing all scientific investigation of
+comets as impious, and insisting that they are only to be regarded as
+"signs and wonders."(103)
+
+
+     (103) For the effect of the anti-Pythagorean oath, see Prowe,
+Copernicus; also Madler and Wolf. For Heerbrand, see his Von dem
+erschrockenlichen Wunderzeichen, Tubingen, 1577. For Schickart, see
+his Predigt vom Wunderzeichen, Stuttgart, 1621. For Deiterich, see his
+sermon, described more fully below.
+
+
+The results of this ecclesiastical pressure upon science in the
+universities were painfully shown during generation after generation, as
+regards both professors and students; and examples may be given typical
+of its effects upon each of these two classes.
+
+The first of these is the case of Michael Maestlin. He was by birth a
+Swabian Protestant, was educated at Tubingen as a pupil of Apian, and,
+after a period of travel, was settled as deacon in the little parish
+of Backnang, when the comet of 1577 gave him an occasion to apply his
+astronomical studies. His minute and accurate observation of it is to
+this day one of the wonders of science. It seems almost impossible that
+so much could be accomplished by the naked eye. His observations agreed
+with those of Tycho Brahe, and won for Maestlin the professorship of
+astronomy in the University of Heidelberg. No man had so clearly proved
+the supralunar position of a comet, or shown so conclusively that
+its motion was not erratic, but regular. The young astronomer, though
+Apian's pupil, was an avowed Copernican and the destined master and
+friend of Kepler. Yet, in the treatise embodying his observations, he
+felt it necessary to save his reputation for orthodoxy by calling
+the comet a "new and horrible prodigy," and by giving a chapter of
+"conjectures on the signification of the present comet," in which he
+proves from history that this variety of comet betokens peace, but
+peace purchased by a bloody victory. That he really believed in this
+theological theory seems impossible; the very fact that his observations
+had settled the supralunar character and regular motion of comets proves
+this. It was a humiliation only to be compared to that of Osiander
+when he wrote his grovelling preface to the great book of Copernicus.
+Maestlin had his reward: when, a few years, later his old teacher,
+Apian, was driven from his chair at Tubingen for refusing to sign the
+Lutheran Concord-Book, Maestlin was elected to his place.
+
+Not less striking was the effect of this theological pressure upon the
+minds of students. Noteworthy as an example of this is the book of the
+Leipsic lawyer, Buttner. From no less than eighty-six biblical texts
+he proves the Almighty's purpose of using the heavenly bodies for the
+instruction of men as to future events, and then proceeds to frame
+exhaustive tables, from which, the time and place of the comet's first
+appearance being known, its signification can be deduced. This manual
+he gave forth as a triumph of religious science, under the name of the
+Comet Hour-Book.(104)
+
+
+     (104) For Maestlin, see his Observatio et Demonstration Cometae,
+Tubingen, 1578. For Buttner, see his Cometen Stundbuchlein, Leipsic,
+1605.
+
+
+The same devotion to the portent theory is found in the universities
+of Protestant Holland. Striking is it to see in the sixteenth century,
+after Tycho Brahe's discovery, the Dutch theologian, Gerard Vossius,
+Professor of Theology and Eloquence at Leyden, lending his great weight
+to the superstition. "The history of all times," he says, "shows comets
+to be the messengers of misfortune. It does not follow that they are
+endowed with intelligence, but that there is a deity who makes use of
+them to call the human race to repentance." Though familiar with the
+works of Tycho Brahe, he finds it "hard to believe" that all comets are
+ethereal, and adduces several historical examples of sublunary ones.
+
+Nor was this attempt to hold back university teaching to the old view of
+comets confined to Protestants. The Roman Church was, if possible,
+more strenuous in the same effort. A few examples will serve as types,
+representing the orthodox teaching at the great centres of Catholic
+theology.
+
+One of these is seen in Spain. The eminent jurist Torreblanca was
+recognised as a controlling authority in all the universities of Spain,
+and from these he swayed in the seventeenth century the thought of
+Catholic Europe, especially as to witchcraft and the occult powers
+in Nature. He lays down the old cometary superstition as one of the
+foundations of orthodox teaching: Begging the question, after the
+fashion of his time, he argues that comets can not be stars, because new
+stars always betoken good, while comets betoken evil.
+
+The same teaching was given in the Catholic universities of the
+Netherlands. Fromundus, at Louvain, the enemy of Galileo, steadily
+continued his crusade against all cometary heresy.(105)
+
+
+     (105) For Vossius, see the De Idololatria (in his Opera, vol. v, pp.
+283-285). For Torreblanc, see his De Magia, Seville, 1618, and often
+reprinted. For Fromundus, see his Meteorologica.
+
+
+But a still more striking case is seen in Italy. The reverend Father
+Augustin de Angelis, rector of the Clementine College at Rome, as late
+as 1673, after the new cometary theory had been placed beyond reasonable
+doubt, and even while Newton was working out its final demonstration,
+published a third edition of his Lectures on Meteorology. It was
+dedicated to the Cardinal of Hesse, and bore the express sanction of
+the Master of the Sacred Palace at Rome and of the head of the religious
+order to which De Angelis belonged. This work deserves careful analysis,
+not only as representing the highest and most approved university
+teaching of the time at the centre of Roman Catholic Christendom, but
+still more because it represents that attempt to make a compromise
+between theology and science, or rather the attempt to confiscate
+science to the uses of theology, which we so constantly find whenever
+the triumph of science in any field has become inevitable.
+
+As to the scientific element in this compromise, De Angelis holds, in
+his general introduction regarding meteorology, that the main material
+cause of comets is "exhalation," and says, "If this exhalation is thick
+and sticky, it blazes into a comet." And again he returns to the
+same view, saying that "one form of exhalation is dense, hence easily
+inflammable and long retentive of fire, from which sort are especially
+generated comets." But it is in his third lecture that he takes up
+comets specially, and his discussion of them is extended through the
+fourth, fifth, and sixth lectures. Having given in detail the opinions
+of various theologians and philosophers, he declares his own in the form
+of two conclusions. The first of these is that "comets are not heavenly
+bodies, but originate in the earth's atmosphere below the moon; for
+everything heavenly is eternal and incorruptible, but comets have a
+beginning and ending--ergo, comets can not be heavenly bodies." This,
+we may observe, is levelled at the observations and reasonings of Tycho
+Brahe and Kepler, and is a very good illustration of the scholastic
+and mediaeval method--the method which blots out an ascertained fact by
+means of a metaphysical formula. His second conclusion is that "comets
+are of elemental and sublunary nature; for they are an exhalation
+hot and dry, fatty and well condensed, inflammable and kindled in
+the uppermost regions of the air." He then goes on to answer sundry
+objections to this mixture of metaphysics and science, and among other
+things declares that "the fatty, sticky material of a comet may be
+kindled from sparks falling from fiery heavenly bodies or from a
+thunderbolt"; and, again, that the thick, fatty, sticky quality of the
+comet holds its tail in shape, and that, so far are comets from having
+their paths beyond the moon's orbit, as Tycho Brahe and Kepler thought,
+he himself in 1618 saw "a bearded comet so near the summit of Vesuvius
+that it almost seemed to touch it." As to sorts and qualities of
+comets, he accepts Aristotle's view, and divides them into bearded and
+tailed.(106) He goes on into long disquisitions upon their colours,
+forms, and motions. Under this latter head he again plunges deep into
+a sea of metaphysical considerations, and does not reappear until he
+brings up his compromise in the opinion that their movement is as yet
+uncertain and not understood, but that, if we must account definitely
+for it, we must say that it is effected by angels especially assigned to
+this service by Divine Providence. But, while proposing this compromise
+between science and theology as to the origin and movement of comets,
+he will hear to none as regards their mission as "signs and wonders" and
+presages of evil. He draws up a careful table of these evils, arranging
+them in the following order: Drought, wind, earthquake, tempest, famine,
+pestilence, war, and, to clinch the matter, declares that the comet
+observed by him in 1618 brought not only war, famine, pestilence, and
+earthquake, but also a general volcanic eruption, "which would have
+destroyed Naples, had not the blood of the invincible martyr Januarius
+withstood it."
+
+
+     (106) Barbata et caudata.
+
+
+It will be observed, even from this sketch, that, while the learned
+Father Augustin thus comes infallibly to the mediaeval conclusion, he
+does so very largely by scientific and essentially modern processes,
+giving unwonted prominence to observation, and at times twisting
+scientific observation into the strand with his metaphysics. The
+observations and methods of his science are sometimes shrewd, sometimes
+comical. Good examples of the latter sort are such as his observing that
+the comet stood very near the summit of Vesuvius, and his reasoning
+that its tail was kept in place by its stickiness. But observations and
+reasonings of this sort are always the first homage paid by theology to
+science as the end of their struggle approaches.(107)
+
+
+     (107) See De Angelis, Lectiones Meteorologicae, Rome, 1669.
+
+
+Equally striking is an example seen a little later in another part of
+Europe; and it is the more noteworthy because Halley and Newton had
+already fully established the modern scientific theory. Just at the
+close of the seventeenth century the Jesuit Reinzer, professor at Linz,
+put forth his Meteorologia Philosophico-Politica, in which all natural
+phenomena received both a physical and a moral interpretation. It was
+profusely and elaborately illustrated, and on account of its instructive
+contents was in 1712 translated into German for the unlearned reader.
+The comet receives, of course, great attention. "It appears," says
+Reinzer, "only then in the heavens when the latter punish the earth, and
+through it (the comet) not only predict but bring to pass all sorts of
+calamity.... And, to that end, its tail serves for a rod, its hair for
+weapons and arrows, its light for a threat, and its heat for a sign of
+anger and vengeance." Its warnings are threefold: (1) "Comets, generated
+in the air, betoken NATURALLY drought, wind, earthquake, famine, and
+pestilence." (2) "Comets can indirectly, in view of their material,
+betoken wars, tumults, and the death of princes; for, being hot and
+dry, they bring the moistnesses (Feuchtigkeiten) in the human body to
+an extraordinary heat and dryness, increasing the gall; and, since the
+emotions depend on the temperament and condition of the body, men are
+through this change driven to violent deeds, quarrels, disputes, and
+finally to arms: especially is this the result with princes, who
+are more delicate and also more arrogant than other men, and whose
+moistnesses are more liable to inflammation of this sort, inasmuch as
+they live in luxury and seldom restrain themselves from those things
+which in such a dry state of the heavens are especially injurious." (3)
+"All comets, whatever prophetic significance they may have naturally
+in and of themselves, are yet principally, according to the Divine
+pleasure, heralds of the death of great princes, of war, and of other
+such great calamities; and this is known and proved, first of all, from
+the words of Christ himself: 'Nation shall rise against nation, and
+kingdom against kingdom; and great earthquakes shall be in divers
+places, and famines, and pestilences; and fearful sights and great signs
+shall there be from heaven.'"(108)
+
+
+     (108) See Reinzer, Meteorologica Philosophico-Politica (edition of
+Augsburg, 1712), pp. 101-103.
+
+
+While such pains was taken to keep the more highly educated classes
+in the "paths of scriptural science and sound learning;" at the
+universities, equal efforts were made to preserve the cometary orthodoxy
+of the people at large by means of the pulpits. Out of the mass of
+sermons for this purpose which were widely circulated I will select just
+two as typical, and they are worthy of careful study as showing some
+special dangers of applying theological methods to scientific facts.
+In the second half of the sixteenth century the recognised capital of
+orthodox Lutheranism was Magdeburg, and in the region tributary to this
+metropolis no Church official held a more prominent station than the
+"Superintendent," or Lutheran bishop, of the neighbouring Altmark. It
+was this dignitary, Andreas Celichius by name, who at Magdeburg, in
+1578, gave to the press his Theological Reminder of the New Comet.
+After deprecating as blasphemous the attempt of Aristotle to explain the
+phenomenon otherwise than as a supernatural warning from God to sinful
+man, he assures his hearers that "whoever would know the comet's real
+source and nature must not merely gape and stare at the scientific
+theory that it is an earthy, greasy, tough, and sticky vapour and mist,
+rising into the upper air and set ablaze by the celestial heat." Far
+more important for them is it to know what this vapour is. It is really,
+in the opinion of Celichius, nothing more or less than "the thick smoke
+of human sins, rising every day, every hour, every moment, full of
+stench and horror, before the face of God, and becoming gradually so
+thick as to form a comet, with curled and plaited tresses, which at last
+is kindled by the hot and fiery anger of the Supreme Heavenly Judge."
+He adds that it is probably only through the prayers and tears of
+Christ that this blazing monument of human depravity becomes visible to
+mortals. In support of this theory, he urges the "coming up before God"
+of the wickedness of Sodom and Gomorrah and of Nineveh, and especially
+the words of the prophet regarding Babylon, "Her stench and rottenness
+is come up before me." That the anger of God can produce the
+conflagration without any intervention of Nature is proved from the
+Psalms, "He sendeth out his word and melteth them." From the position
+of the comet, its course, and the direction of its tail he augurs
+especially the near approach of the judgment day, though it may also
+betoken, as usual, famine, pestilence, and war. "Yet even in these
+days," he mourns, "there are people reckless and giddy enough to pay
+no heed to such celestial warnings, and these even cite in their own
+defence the injunction of Jeremiah not to fear signs in the heavens."
+This idea he explodes, and shows that good and orthodox Christians,
+while not superstitious like the heathen, know well "that God is not
+bound to his creation and the ordinary course of Nature, but must often,
+especially in these last dregs of the world, resort to irregular means
+to display his anger at human guilt."(109)
+
+
+     (109) For Celichius, or Celich, see his own treatise, as above.
+
+
+The other typical case occurred in the following century and in another
+part of Germany. Conrad Dieterich was, during the first half of the
+seventeenth century, a Lutheran ecclesiastic of the highest authority.
+His ability as a theologian had made him Archdeacon of Marburg,
+Professor of Philosophy and Director of Studies at the University of
+Giessen, and "Superintendent," or Lutheran bishop, in southwestern
+Germany. In the year 1620, on the second Sunday in Advent, in the great
+Cathedral of Ulm, he developed the orthodox doctrine of comets in a
+sermon, taking up the questions: 1. What are comets? 2. What do they
+indicate? 3. What have we to do with their significance? This sermon
+marks an epoch. Delivered in that stronghold of German Protestantism
+and by a prelate of the highest standing, it was immediately printed,
+prefaced by three laudatory poems from different men of note, and sent
+forth to drive back the scientific, or, as it was called, the "godless,"
+view of comets. The preface shows that Dieterich was sincerely alarmed
+by the tendency to regard comets as natural appearances. His text was
+taken from the twenty-fifth verse of the twenty-first chapter of St.
+Luke: "And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the
+stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea
+and the waves roaring." As to what comets are, he cites a multitude of
+philosophers, and, finding that they differ among themselves, he uses a
+form of argument not uncommon from that day to this, declaring that this
+difference of opinion proves that there is no solution of the problem
+save in revelation, and insisting that comets are "signs especially sent
+by the Almighty to warn the earth." An additional proof of this he
+finds in the forms of comets. One, he says, took the form of a trumpet;
+another, of a spear; another of a goat; another, of a torch; another, of
+a sword; another, of an arrow; another, of a sabre; still another, of a
+bare arm. From these forms of comets he infers that we may divine their
+purpose. As to their creation, he quotes John of Damascus and other
+early Church authorities in behalf of the idea that each comet is a
+star newly created at the Divine command, out of nothing, and that it
+indicates the wrath of God. As to their purpose, having quoted largely
+from the Bible and from Luther, he winds up by insisting that, as God
+can make nothing in vain, comets must have some distinct object; then,
+from Isaiah and Joel among the prophets, from Matthew, Mark, and
+Luke among the evangelists, from Origen and John Chrysostom among the
+fathers, from Luther and Melanchthon among the Reformers, he draws
+various texts more or less conclusive to prove that comets indicate evil
+and only evil; and he cites Luther's Advent sermon to the effect that,
+though comets may arise in the course of Nature, they are still signs
+of evil to mankind. In answer to the theory of sundry naturalists that
+comets are made up of "a certain fiery, warm, sulphurous, saltpetery,
+sticky fog," he declaims: "Our sins, our sins: they are the fiery heated
+vapours, the thick, sticky, sulphurous clouds which rise from the
+earth toward heaven before God." Throughout the sermon Dieterich pours
+contempt over all men who simply investigate comets as natural objects,
+calls special attention to a comet then in the heavens resembling a long
+broom or bundle of rods, and declares that he and his hearers can only
+consider it rightly "when we see standing before us our Lord God in
+heaven as an angry father with a rod for his children." In answer to the
+question what comets signify, he commits himself entirely to the idea
+that they indicate the wrath of God, and therefore calamities of every
+sort. Page after page is filled with the records of evils following
+comets. Beginning with the creation of the world, he insists that
+the first comet brought on the deluge of Noah, and cites a mass of
+authorities, ranging from Moses and Isaiah to Albert the Great and
+Melanchthon, in support of the view that comets precede earthquakes,
+famines, wars, pestilences, and every form of evil. He makes some parade
+of astronomical knowledge as to the greatness of the sun and moon, but
+relapses soon into his old line of argument. Imploring his audience not
+to be led away from the well-established belief of Christendom and the
+principles of their fathers, he comes back to his old assertion, insists
+that "our sins are the inflammable material of which comets are made,"
+and winds up with a most earnest appeal to the Almighty to spare his
+people.(110)
+
+
+     (110) For Deiterich, see Ulmische Cometen-Predigt, von dem Cometen, so
+nechst abgewischen 1618 Jahrs im Wintermonat erstenmahls in Schwaben
+sehen lassen,... gehalten zu Ulm... durch Conrad Dieterich, Ulm, 1620.
+For a life of the author, see article Dieterich in the Allgemeine
+Deutsche Biographie. See also Wolf.
+
+
+Similar efforts from the pulpit were provoked by the great comet of
+1680. Typical among these was the effort in Switzerland of Pastor
+Heinrich Erni, who, from the Cathedral of Zurich, sent a circular letter
+to the clergy of that region showing the connection of the eleventh and
+twelfth verses of the first chapter of Jeremiah with the comet, giving
+notice that at his suggestion the authorities had proclaimed a solemn
+fast, and exhorting the clergy to preach earnestly on the subject of
+this warning.
+
+Nor were the interpreters of the comet's message content with simple
+prose. At the appearance of the comet of 1618, Grasser and Gross,
+pastors and doctors of theology at Basle, put forth a collection
+of doggerel rhymes to fasten the orthodox theory into the minds of
+school-children and peasants. One of these may be translated:
+
+"I am a Rod in God's right hand  threatening the German and foreign land."
+
+
+Others for a similar purpose taught:
+
+
+"Eight things there be a Comet brings, When it on high doth horrid
+range: Wind, Famine, Plague, and Death to Kings, War, Earthquakes,
+Floods, and Direful Change."
+
+
+Great ingenuity was shown in meeting the advance of science, in the
+universities and schools, with new texts of Scripture; and Stephen
+Spleiss, Rector of the Gymnasium at Schaffhausen, got great credit by
+teaching that in the vision of Jeremiah the "almond rod" was a tailed
+comet, and the "seething pot" a bearded one.(111)
+
+
+     (111) For Erni, see Wolf, Gesch. d. Astronomie, p. 239. For Grassner and
+Gross, see their Christenliches Bedenken... von dem erschrockenlichen
+Cometen, etc., Zurich, 1664. For Spleiss, see Beilauftiger Bericht von
+dem jetzigen Cometsternen, etc., schaffhausen, 1664.
+
+
+It can be easily understood that such authoritative utterances as that
+of Dieterich must have produced a great effect throughout Protestant
+Christendom; and in due time we see their working in New England. That
+same tendency to provincialism, which, save at rare intervals, has been
+the bane of Massachusetts thought from that day to this, appeared; and
+in 1664 we find Samuel Danforth arguing from the Bible that "comets
+are portentous signals of great and notable changes," and arguing from
+history that they "have been many times heralds of wrath to a secure and
+impenitent world." He cites especially the comet of 1652, which appeared
+just before Mr. Cotton's sickness and disappeared after his death.
+Morton also, in his Memorial recording the death of John Putnam, alludes
+to the comet of 1662 as "a very signal testimony that God had then
+removed a bright star and a shining light out of the heaven of his
+Church here into celestial glory above." Again he speaks of another
+comet, insisting that "it was no fiery meteor caused by exhalation, but
+it was sent immediately by God to awaken the secure world," and goes
+on to show how in that year "it pleased God to smite the fruits of the
+earth--namely, the wheat in special--with blasting and mildew, whereby
+much of it was spoiled and became profitable for nothing, and much of
+it worth little, being light and empty. This was looked upon by the
+judicious and conscientious of the land as a speaking providence against
+the unthankfulness of many,... as also against voluptuousness and abuse
+of the good creatures of God by licentiousness in drinking and fashions
+in apparel, for the obtaining whereof a great part of the principal
+grain was oftentimes unnecessarily expended."
+
+But in 1680 a stronger than either of these seized upon the doctrine
+and wielded it with power. Increase Mather, so open always to ideas
+from Europe, and always so powerful for good or evil in the cloonies,
+preached his sermon on "Heaven's Alarm to the World,... wherein is shown
+that fearful sights and signs in the heavens are the presages of great
+calamities at hand." The texts were taken from the book of Revelation:
+"And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven,
+burning, as it were a lamp," and "Behold, the third woe cometh quickly."
+In this, as in various other sermons, he supports the theological
+cometary theory fully. He insists that "we are fallen into the dregs
+of time," and that the day of judgment is evidently approaching. He
+explains away the words of Jeremiah--"Be not dismayed at signs in the
+heavens"--and shows that comets have been forerunners of nearly every
+form of evil. Having done full justice to evils thus presaged in
+scriptural times, he begins a similar display in modern history by
+citing blazing stars which foretold the invasions of Goths, Huns,
+Saracens, and Turks, and warns gainsayers by citing the example of
+Vespasian, who, after ridiculing a comet, soon died. The general shape
+and appearance of comets, he thinks, betoken their purpose, and he cites
+Tertullian to prove them "God's sharp razors on mankind, whereby he doth
+poll, and his scythe whereby he doth shear down multitudes of sinful
+creatures." At last, rising to a fearful height, he declares: "For the
+Lord hath fired his beacon in the heavens among the stars of God there;
+the fearful sight is not yet out of sight. The warning piece of heaven
+is going off. Now, then, if the Lord discharge his murdering pieces from
+on high, and men be found in their sins unfit for death, their blood
+shall be upon them." And again, in an agony of supplication, he cries
+out: "Do we see the sword blazing over us? Let it put us upon crying
+to God, that the judgment be diverted and not return upon us again so
+speedily.... Doth God threaten our very heavens? O pray unto him, that he
+would not take away stars and send comets to succeed them."(112)
+
+
+     (112) For Danforth, see his Astronomical Descritption of the Late Comet
+or Blazing Star, Together with a Brief Theological Application Thereof,
+1664. For Morton, see his Memorial, pp. 251, 252,; also 309, 310. Texts
+cited by Mather were Rev., viii, 10, and xi, 14.
+
+
+Two years later, in August, 1682, he followed this with another sermon
+on "The Latter Sign," "wherein is showed that the voice of God in
+signal providences, especially when repeated and iterated, ought to be
+hearkened unto." Here, too, of course, the comet comes in for a large
+share of attention. But his tone is less sure: even in the midst of all
+his arguments appears an evident misgiving. The thoughts of Newton in
+science and Bayle in philosophy were evidently tending to accomplish
+the prophecy of Seneca. Mather's alarm at this is clear. His natural
+tendency is to uphold the idea that a comet is simply a fire-ball flung
+from the hand of an avenging God at a guilty world, but he evidently
+feels obliged to yield something to the scientific spirit; hence, in the
+Discourse concerning Comets, published in 1683, he declares: "There are
+those who think that, inasmuch as comets may be supposed to proceed from
+natural causes, there is no speaking voice of Heaven in them beyond what
+is to be said of all other works of God. But certain it is that many
+things which may happen according to the course of Nature are portentous
+signs of Divine anger and prognostics of great evils hastening upon the
+world." He then notices the eclipse of August, 1672, and adds: "That
+year the college was eclipsed by the death of the learned president
+there, worthy Mr. Chauncey and two colonies--namely, Massachusetts and
+Plymouth--by the death of two governors, who died within a twelvemonth
+after.... Shall, then, such mighty works of God as comets are be
+insignificant things?"(113)
+
+
+     (113) Increase Mather's Heaven's Alarm to the World was first printed
+at Boston in 1681, but was reprinted in 1682, and was appended, with the
+sermon on The Latter Sign, to the Discourse on Comets (Boston, 1683).
+
+
+
+
+III. THE INVASION OF SCEPTICISM.
+
+
+Vigorous as Mather's argument is, we see scepticism regarding "signs"
+continuing to invade the public mind; and, in spite of his threatenings,
+about twenty years after we find a remarkable evidence of this progress
+in the fact that this scepticism has seized upon no less a personage
+than that colossus of orthodoxy, his thrice illustrious son, Cotton
+Mather himself; and him we find, in 1726, despite the arguments of his
+father, declaring in his Manuductio: "Perhaps there may be some need for
+me to caution you against being dismayed at the signs of the heavens,
+or having any superstitious fancies upon eclipses and the like.... I am
+willing that you be apprehensive of nothing portentous in blazing stars.
+For my part, I know not whether all our worlds, and even the sun itself,
+may not fare the better for them."(114)
+
+
+     (114) For Cotton Mather, see the Manuductio, pp. 54, 55.
+
+
+Curiously enough, for this scientific scepticism in Cotton Mather there
+was a cause identical with that which had developed superstition in the
+mind of his father. The same provincial tendency to receive implicitly
+any new European fashion in thinking or speech wrought upon both,
+plunging one into superstition and drawing the other out of it.
+
+European thought, which New England followed, had at last broken away in
+great measure from the theological view of comets as signs and wonders.
+The germ of this emancipating influence was mainly in the great
+utterance of Seneca; and we find in nearly every century some evidence
+that this germ was still alive. This life became more and more evident
+after the Reformation period, even though theologians in every Church
+did their best to destroy it. The first series of attacks on the old
+theological doctrine were mainly founded in philosophic reasoning. As
+early as the first half of the sixteenth century we hear Julius Caesar
+Scaliger protesting against the cometary superstition as "ridiculous
+folly."(115) Of more real importance was the treatise of Blaise de
+Vigenere, published at Paris in 1578. In this little book various
+statements regarding comets as signs of wrath or causes of evils are
+given, and then followed by a very gentle and quiet discussion, usually
+tending to develop that healthful scepticism which is the parent of
+investigation. A fair example of his mode of treating the subject is
+seen in his dealing with a bit of "sacred science." This was simply
+that "comets menace princes and kings with death because they live more
+delicately than other people; and, therefore, the air thickened and
+corrupted by a comet would be naturally more injurious to them than to
+common folk who live on coarser food." To this De Vigenere answers that
+there are very many persons who live on food as delicate as that enjoyed
+by princes and kings, and yet receive no harm from comets. He then goes
+on to show that many of the greatest monarchs in history have met death
+without any comet to herald it.
+
+
+     (115) For Scaliger, see p. 20 of Dudith's book, cited below.
+
+
+In the same year thoughtful scepticism of a similar sort found an
+advocate in another part of Europe. Thomas Erastus, the learned and
+devout professor of medicine at Heidelberg, put forth a letter dealing
+in the plainest terms with the superstition. He argued especially that
+there could be no natural connection between the comet and pestilence,
+since the burning of an exhalation must tend to purify rather than to
+infect the air. In the following year the eloquent Hungarian divine
+Dudith published a letter in which the theological theory was handled
+even more shrewdly, for he argued that, if comets were caused by the
+sins of mortals, they would never be absent from the sky. But these
+utterances were for the time brushed aside by the theological leaders of
+thought as shallow or impious.
+
+In the seventeenth century able arguments against the superstition, on
+general grounds, began to be multiplied. In Holland, Balthasar Bekker
+opposed this, as he opposed the witchcraft delusion, on general
+philosophic grounds; and Lubienitzky wrote in a compromising spirit to
+prove that comets were as often followed by good as by evil events. In
+France, Pierre Petit, formerly geographer of Louis XIII, and an intimate
+friend of Descartes, addressed to the young Louis XIV a vehement protest
+against the superstition, basing his arguments not on astronomy, but on
+common sense. A very effective part of the little treatise was devoted
+to answering the authority of the fathers of the early Church. To do
+this, he simply reminded his readers that St. Augustine and St. John
+Damascenus had also opposed the doctrine of the antipodes. The book
+did good service in France, and was translated in Germany a few years
+later.(116)
+
+
+     (116) For Blaise de Vigenere, see his Traite des Cometes, Paris, 1578.
+For Dudith, see his De Cometarum Dignificatione, Basle, 1579, to which
+the letter of Erastus is appended. Bekker's views may be found in
+his Onderzoek van de Betekening der Cometen, Leeuwarden, 1683. For
+Lubienitsky's, see his Theatrum Cometicum, Amsterdam, 1667, in part
+ii: Historia Cometarum, preface "to the reader." For Petit, see his
+Dissertation sur la Nature des Cometes, Paris, 1665 (German translation,
+Dresden and Zittau, 1681).
+
+
+All these were denounced as infidels and heretics, yet none the less did
+they set men at thinking, and prepare the way for a far greater genius;
+for toward the end of the same century the philosophic attack was taken
+up by Pierre Bayle, and in the whole series of philosophic champions he
+is chief. While professor at the University of Sedan he had observed the
+alarm caused by the comet of 1680, and he now brought all his reasoning
+powers to bear upon it. Thoughts deep and witty he poured out in volume
+after volume. Catholics and Protestants were alike scandalized. Catholic
+France spurned him, and Jurieu, the great Reformed divine, called his
+cometary views "atheism," and tried hard to have Protestant Holland
+condemn him. Though Bayle did not touch immediately the mass of mankind,
+he wrought with power upon men who gave themselves the trouble of
+thinking. It was indeed unfortunate for the Church that theologians,
+instead of taking the initiative in this matter, left it to Bayle; for,
+in tearing down the pretended scriptural doctrine of comets, he tore
+down much else: of all men in his time, no one so thoroughly prepared
+the way for Voltaire.
+
+Bayle's whole argument is rooted in the prophecy of Seneca. He declares:
+"Comets are bodies subject to the ordinary law of Nature, and not
+prodigies amenable to no law." He shows historically that there is no
+reason to regard comets as portents of earthly evils. As to the fact
+that such evils occur after the passage of comets across the sky, he
+compares the person believing that comets cause these evils to a woman
+looking out of a window into a Paris street and believing that the
+carriages pass because she looks out. As to the accomplishment of some
+predictions, he cites the shrewd saying of Henry IV, to the effect that
+"the public will remember one prediction that comes true better than all
+the rest that have proved false." Finally, he sums up by saying: "The
+more we study man, the more does it appear that pride is his ruling
+passion, and that he affects grandeur even in his misery. Mean and
+perishable creature that he is, he has been able to persuade men that he
+can not die without disturbing the whole course of Nature and obliging
+the heavens to put themselves to fresh expense. In order to light his
+funeral pomp. Foolish and ridiculous vanity! If we had a just idea of
+the universe, we should soon comprehend that the death or birth of a
+prince is too insignificant a matter to stir the heavens."(117)
+
+
+     (117) Regarding Bayle, see Madler, Himmelskunde, vol. i, p. 327.
+For special points of interest in Bayle's arguments, see his Pensees
+Diverses sur les Cometes, Amsterdam, 1749, pp. 79, 102, 134, 206. For
+the response to Jurieu, see the continuation des Pensees, Rotterdam,
+1705; also Champion, p. 164, Lecky, ubi supra, and Guillemin, pp. 29,
+30.
+
+
+This great philosophic champion of right reason was followed by a
+literary champion hardly less famous; for Fontenelle now gave to the
+French theatre his play of The Comet, and a point of capital importance
+in France was made by rendering the army of ignorance ridiculous.(118)
+
+
+     (118) See Fontenelle, cited by Champion, p. 167.
+
+
+Such was the line of philosophic and literary attack, as developed from
+Scaliger to Fontenelle. But beneath and in the midst of all of it, from
+first to last, giving firmness, strength, and new sources of vitality to
+it, was the steady development of scientific effort; and to the
+series of great men who patiently wrought and thought out the truth by
+scientific methods through all these centuries belong the honours of the
+victory.
+
+For generations men in various parts of the world had been making
+careful observations on these strange bodies. As far back as the time
+when Luther and Melanchthon and Zwingli were plunged into alarm by
+various comets from 1531 to 1539, Peter Apian kept his head sufficiently
+cool to make scientific notes of their paths through the heavens. A
+little later, when the great comet of 1556 scared popes, emperors, and
+reformers alike, such men as Fabricius at Vienna and Heller at Nuremberg
+quietly observed its path. In vain did men like Dieterich and Heerbrand
+and Celich from various parts of Germany denounce such observations and
+investigations as impious; they were steadily continued, and in 1577
+came the first which led to the distinct foundation of the modern
+doctrine. In that year appeared a comet which again plunged Europe into
+alarm. In every European country this alarm was strong, but in Germany
+strongest of all. The churches were filled with terror-stricken
+multitudes. Celich preaching at Magdeburg was echoed by Heerbrand
+preaching at Tubingen, and both these from thousands of other pulpits,
+Catholic and Protestant, throughout Europe. In the midst of all this
+din and outcry a few men quietly but steadily observed the monster; and
+Tycho Brahe announced, as the result, that its path lay farther from
+the earth than the orbit of the moon. Another great astronomical genius,
+Kepler, confirmed this. This distinct beginning of the new doctrine was
+bitterly opposed by theologians; they denounced it as one of the evil
+results of that scientific meddling with the designs of Providence
+against which they had so long declaimed in pulpits and professors'
+chairs; they even brought forward some astronomers ambitious or
+wrong-headed enough to testify that Tycho and Kepler were in error.(119)
+
+
+     (119) See Madler, Himmelskunde, vol. i, pp. 181, 197; also Wolf, Gesch.
+d. Astronomie, and Janssen, Gesch. d. deutschen Volkes, vol. v, p. 350.
+Heerbrand's sermon, cited above, is a good specimen of the theologic
+attitude. See Pingre, vol. ii, p. 81.
+
+
+Nothing could be more natural than such opposition; for this simple
+announcement by Tycho Brahe began a new era. It shook the very
+foundation of cometary superstition. The Aristotelian view, developed by
+the theologians, was that what lies within the moon's orbit appertains
+to the earth and is essentially transitory and evil, while what lies
+beyond it belongs to the heavens and is permanent, regular, and pure.
+Tycho Brahe and Kepler, therefore, having by means of scientific
+observation and thought taken comets out of the category of meteors and
+appearances in the neighbourhood of the earth, and placed them among the
+heavenly bodies, dealt a blow at the very foundations of the theological
+argument, and gave a great impulse to the idea that comets are
+themselves heavenly bodies moving regularly and in obedience to law.
+
+
+
+
+IV. THEOLOGICAL EFFORTS AT COMPROMISE.--THE FINAL VICTORY OF SCIENCE.
+
+
+Attempts were now made to compromise. It was declared that, while
+some comets were doubtless supralunar, some must be sublunar. But this
+admission was no less fatal on another account. During many centuries
+the theory favoured by the Church had been, as we have seen, that the
+earth was surrounded by hollow spheres, concentric and transparent,
+forming a number of glassy strata incasing one another "like the
+different coatings of an onion," and that each of these in its movement
+about the earth carries one or more of the heavenly bodies. Some
+maintained that these spheres were crystal; but Lactantius, and with him
+various fathers of the Church, spoke of the heavenly vault as made of
+ice. Now, the admission that comets could move beyond the moon was fatal
+to this theory, for it sent them crashing through these spheres of
+ice or crystal, and therefore through the whole sacred fabric of the
+Ptolemaic theory.(120)
+
+
+     (120) For these features in cometary theory, see Pingre, vol. i, p. 89;
+also Humboldt, Cosmos (English translation, London, 1868), vol. iii, p.
+169.
+
+
+Here we may pause for a moment to note one of the chief differences
+between scientific and theological reasoning considered in themselves.
+Kepler's main reasoning as to the existence of a law for cometary
+movement was right; but his secondary reasoning, that comets move nearly
+in straight lines, was wrong. His right reasoning was developed by
+Gassendi in France, by Borelli in Italy, by Hevel and Doerfel in
+Germany, by Eysat and Bernouilli in Switzerland, by Percy and--most
+important of all, as regards mathematical demonstration--by Newton
+in England. The general theory, which was true, they accepted and
+developed; the secondary theory, which was found untrue, they rejected;
+and, as a result, both of what they thus accepted and of what they
+rejected, was evolved the basis of the whole modern cometary theory.
+
+Very different was this from the theological method. As a rule, when
+there arises a thinker as great in theology as Kepler in science, the
+whole mass of his conclusions ripens into a dogma. His disciples labour
+not to test it, but to establish it; and while, in the Catholic Church,
+it becomes a dogma to be believed or disbelieved under the penalty of
+damnation, it becomes in the Protestant Church the basis for one more
+sect.
+
+Various astronomers laboured to develop the truth discovered by Tycho
+and strengthened by Kepler. Cassini seemed likely to win for Italy the
+glory of completing the great structure; but he was sadly fettered by
+Church influences, and was obliged to leave most of the work to others.
+Early among these was Hevel. He gave reasons for believing that comets
+move in parabolic curves toward the sun. Then came a man who developed
+this truth further--Samuel Doerfel; and it is a pleasure to note that
+he was a clergyman. The comet of 1680, which set Erni in Switzerland,
+Mather in New England, and so many others in all parts of the world
+at declaiming, set Doerfel at thinking. Undismayed by the authority of
+Origen and St. John Chrysostom, the arguments of Luther, Melanchthon,
+and Zwingli, the outcries of Celich, Heerbrand, and Dieterich, he
+pondered over the problem in his little Saxon parsonage, until in
+1681 he set forth his proofs that comets are heavenly bodies moving in
+parabolas of which the sun is the focus. Bernouilli arrived at the same
+conclusion; and, finally, this great series of men and works was closed
+by the greatest of all, when Newton, in 1686, having taken the data
+furnished by the comet of 1680, demonstrated that comets are guided in
+their movements by the same principle that controls the planets in their
+orbits. Thus was completed the evolution of this new truth in science.
+
+Yet we are not to suppose that these two great series of philosophical
+and scientific victories cleared the field of all opponents. Declamation
+and pretended demonstration of the old theologic view were still heard;
+but the day of complete victory dawned when Halley, after most thorough
+observation and calculation, recognised the comet of 1682 as one which
+had already appeared at stated periods, and foretold its return in about
+seventy-five years; and the battle was fully won when Clairaut, seconded
+by Lalande and Mme. Lepaute, predicted distinctly the time when
+the comet would arrive at its perihelion, and this prediction was
+verified.(121) Then it was that a Roman heathen philosopher was proved
+more infallible and more directly under Divine inspiration than a Roman
+Christian pontiff; for the very comet which the traveller finds to-day
+depicted on the Bayeux tapestry as portending destruction to Harold and
+the Saxons at the Norman invasion of England, and which was regarded by
+Pope Calixtus as portending evil to Christendom, was found six centuries
+later to be, as Seneca had prophesied, a heavenly body obeying the great
+laws of the universe, and coming at regular periods. Thenceforth the
+whole ponderous enginery of this superstition, with its proof-texts
+regarding "signs in the heavens," its theological reasoning to show
+the moral necessity of cometary warnings, and its ecclesiastical
+fulminations against the "atheism, godlessness, and infidelity" of
+scientific investigation, was seen by all thinking men to be as weak
+against the scientific method as Indian arrows against needle guns.
+Copernicus, Galileo, Cassini, Doerfel, Newton, Halley, and Clairaut had
+gained the victory.(122)
+
+
+     (121) See Pingre, vol. i, p. 53; Grant, History of Physical Astronomy,
+p. 305, etc., etc. For a curious partial anticipation by Hooke, in 1664,
+of the great truth announced by Halley in 1682, see Pepy's Diary for
+March 1, 1664. For excellent summaries of the whole work of Halley and
+Clairaut and their forerunners and associates, see Pingre, Madler, Wolf,
+Arago, et al.
+
+
+     (122) In accordance with Halley's prophecy, the comet of 1682 has
+returned in 1759 and 1835. See Madler, Guillemin, Watson, Grant,
+Delambre, Proctor, article Astronomy in Encycl. Brit., and especially
+for details, Wolf, pp. 407-412 and 701-722. For clear statement
+regarding Doerfel, see Wolf, p. 411.
+
+
+It is instructive to note, even after the main battle was lost, a
+renewal of the attempt, always seen under like circumstances, to effect
+a compromise, to establish a "safe science" on grounds pseudo-scientific
+and pseudo-theologic. Luther, with his strong common sense, had
+foreshadowed this; Kepler had expressed a willingness to accept it.
+It was insisted that comets might be heavenly bodies moving in regular
+orbits, and even obedient to law, and yet be sent as "signs in the
+heavens." Many good men clung longingly to this phase of the old belief,
+and in 1770 Semler, professor at Halle, tried to satisfy both sides. He
+insisted that, while from a scientific point of view comets could not
+exercise any physical influence upon the world, yet from a religious
+point of view they could exercise a moral influence as reminders of the
+Just Judge of the Universe.
+
+So hard was it for good men to give up the doctrine of "signs in the
+heavens," seemingly based upon Scripture and exercising such a healthful
+moral tendency! As is always the case after such a defeat, these
+votaries of "sacred science" exerted the greatest ingenuity in devising
+statements and arguments to avert the new doctrine. Within our own
+century the great Catholic champion, Joseph de Maistre, echoed these in
+declaring his belief that comets are special warnings of evil. So, too,
+in Protestant England, in 1818, the Gentleman's Magazine stated that
+under the malign influence of a recent comet "flies became blind and
+died early in the season," and "the wife of a London shoemaker had four
+children at a birth." And even as late as 1829 Mr. Forster, an English
+physician, published a work to prove that comets produce hot summers,
+cold winters, epidemics, earthquakes, clouds of midges and locusts, and
+nearly every calamity conceivable. He bore especially upon the fact that
+the comet of 1665 was coincident with the plague in London, apparently
+forgetting that the other great cities of England and the Continent were
+not thus visited; and, in a climax, announces the fact that the comet of
+1663 "made all the cats in Westphalia sick."
+
+There still lingered one little cloud-patch of superstition, arising
+mainly from the supposed fact that comets had really been followed by
+a marked rise in temperature. Even this poor basis for the belief
+that they might, after all, affect earthly affairs was swept away, and
+science won here another victory; for Arago, by thermometric records
+carefully kept at Paris from 1735 to 1781, proved that comets had
+produced no effect upon temperature. Among multitudes of similar
+examples he showed that, in some years when several comets appeared, the
+temperature was lower than in other years when few or none appeared. In
+1737 there were two comets, and the weather was cool; in 1785 there was
+no comet, and the weather was hot; through the whole fifty years it was
+shown that comets were sometimes followed by hot weather, sometimes
+by cool, and that no rule was deducible. The victory of science was
+complete at every point.(123)
+
+
+     (123) For Forster, see his Illustrations of the Atmospherical Origin of
+Epidemic Diseases, Chelmsford, 1829, cited by Arago; also in Quarterly
+Review for April, 1835. For the writings of several on both sides, and
+especially those who sought to save, as far as possible, the sacred
+theory of comets, see Madler, vol. ii, p. 384 et seq., and Wolf, p. 186.
+
+
+But in this history there was one little exhibition so curious as to be
+worthy of notice, though its permanent effect upon thought was small.
+Whiston and Burnet, so devoted to what they considered sacred science,
+had determined that in some way comets must be instruments of Divine
+wrath. One of them maintained that the deluge was caused by the tail of
+a comet striking the earth; the other put forth the theory that comets
+are places of punishment for the damned--in fact, "flying hells." The
+theories of Whiston and Burnet found wide acceptance also in Germany,
+mainly through the all-powerful mediation of Gottsched, so long, from
+his professor's chair at Leipsic, the dictator of orthodox thought,
+who not only wrote a brief tractate of his own upon the subject, but
+furnished a voluminous historical introduction to the more elaborate
+treatise of Heyn. In this book, which appeared at Leipsic in 1742, the
+agency of comets in the creation, the flood, and the final destruction
+of the world is fully proved. Both these theories were, however, soon
+discredited.
+
+Perhaps the more interesting of them can best be met by another, which,
+if not fully established, appears much better based--namely, that in
+1868 the earth passed directly through the tail of a comet, with
+no deluge, no sound of any wailings of the damned, with but slight
+appearances here and there, only to be detected by the keen sight of the
+meteorological or astronomical observer.
+
+In our own country superstitious ideas regarding comets continued to
+have some little currency; but their life was short. The tendency shown
+by Cotton Mather, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, toward
+acknowledging the victory of science, was completed by the utterances
+of Winthrop, professor at Harvard, who in 1759 published two lectures
+on comets, in which he simply and clearly revealed the truth, never
+scoffing, but reasoning quietly and reverently. In one passage he says:
+"To be thrown into a panic whenever a comet appears, on account of the
+ill effects which some few of them might possibly produce, if they were
+not under proper direction, betrays a weakness unbecoming a reasonable
+being."
+
+A happy influence in this respect was exercised on both continents by
+John Wesley. Tenaciously as he had held to the supposed scriptural view
+in so many other matters of science, in this he allowed his reason
+to prevail, accepted the demonstrations of Halley, and gloried in
+them.(124)
+
+
+     (124) For Heyn, see his Versuch einer Betrachtung uber die cometun, die
+Sundfluth und das Vorspeil des jungsten Gerichts, Leipsic, 1742. A Latin
+version, of the same year, bears the title, Specimen Cometologiae Sacre.
+For the theory that the earth encountered the tail of a comet, see
+Guillemin and Watson. For survival of the old idea in America, see a
+Sermon of Israel Loring, of Sudbury, published in 1722. For Prof.
+J. Winthrop, see his Comets. For Wesley, see his Natural Philosophy,
+London, 1784, vol. iii, p. 303.
+
+
+The victory was indeed complete. Happily, none of the fears expressed by
+Conrad Dieterich and Increase Mather were realized. No catastrophe has
+ensued either to religion or to morals. In the realm of religion the
+Psalms of David remain no less beautiful, the great utterances of the
+Hebrew prophets no less powerful; the Sermon on the Mount, "the first
+commandment, and the second, which is like unto it," the definition
+of "pure religion and undefiled" by St. James, appeal no less to
+the deepest things in the human heart. In the realm of morals, too,
+serviceable as the idea of firebrands thrown by the right hand of
+an avenging God to scare a naughty world might seem, any competent
+historian must find that the destruction of the old theological cometary
+theory was followed by moral improvement rather than by deterioration.
+We have but to compare the general moral tone of society to-day,
+wretchedly imperfect as it is, with that existing in the time when this
+superstition had its strongest hold. We have only to compare the court
+of Henry VIII with the court of Victoria, the reign of the later Valois
+and earlier Bourbon princes with the present French Republic, the period
+of the Medici and Sforzas and Borgias with the period of Leo XIII and
+Humbert, the monstrous wickedness of the Thirty Years' War with the
+ennobling patriotism of the Franco-Prussian struggle, and the despotism
+of the miserable German princelings of the sixteenth and seventeenth
+centuries with the reign of the Emperor William. The gain is not simply
+that mankind has arrived at a clearer conception of law in the universe;
+not merely that thinking men see more clearly that we are part of a
+system not requiring constant patching and arbitrary interference; but
+perhaps best of all is the fact that science has cleared away one more
+series of those dogmas which tend to debase rather than to develop man's
+whole moral and religious nature. In this emancipation from terror and
+fanaticism, as in so many other results of scientific thinking, we have
+a proof of the inspiration of those great words, "THE TRUTH SHALL MAKE
+YOU FREE."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.  FROM GENESIS TO GEOLOGY.
+
+
+
+
+I. GROWTH OF THEOLOGICAL EXPLANATIONS.
+
+
+Among the philosophers of Greece we find, even at an early period, germs
+of geological truth, and, what is of vast importance, an atmosphere
+in which such germs could grow. These germs were transmitted to Roman
+thought; an atmosphere of tolerance continued; there was nothing which
+forbade unfettered reasoning regarding either the earth's strata or
+the remains of former life found in them, and under the Roman Empire a
+period of fruitful observation seemed sure to begin.
+
+But, as Christianity took control of the world, there came a great
+change. The earliest attitude of the Church toward geology and its
+kindred sciences was indifferent, and even contemptuous. According to
+the prevailing belief, the earth was a "fallen world," and was soon
+to be destroyed. Why, then, should it be studied? Why, indeed, give a
+thought to it? The scorn which Lactantius and St. Augustine had cast
+upon the study of astronomy was extended largely to other sciences.
+(125)
+
+
+     (125) For a compact and admirable statement as to the dawn of geological
+conceptions in Greece and Rome, see Mr. Lester Ward's essay on
+paleobotany in the Fifth Annual Report of the United States Geological
+Survey, for 1883-'84. As to the reasons why Greek philosophers did
+comparatively so little for geology, see D'Archiac, Geologie, p. 18. For
+the contempt felt by Lactantius and St. Augustine toward astronomical
+science, see foregoing chapters on Astronomy and Geography.
+
+
+But the germs of scientific knowledge and thought developed in the
+ancient world could be entirely smothered neither by eloquence nor by
+logic; some little scientific observation must be allowed, though all
+close reasoning upon it was fettered by theology. Thus it was that St.
+Jerome insisted that the broken and twisted crust of the earth exhibits
+the wrath of God against sin, and Tertullian asserted that fossils
+resulted from the flood of Noah.
+
+To keep all such observation and reasoning within orthodox limits, St.
+Augustine, about the beginning of the fifth century, began an effort to
+develop from these germs a growth in science which should be sacred and
+safe. With this intent he prepared his great commentary on the work of
+creation, as depicted in Genesis, besides dwelling upon the subject in
+other writings. Once engaged in this work, he gave himself to it more
+earnestly than any other of the earlier fathers ever did; but his vast
+powers of research and thought were not directed to actual observation
+or reasoning upon observation. The keynote of his whole method is seen
+in his famous phrase, "Nothing is to be accepted save on the authority
+of Scripture, since greater is that authority than all the powers of
+the human mind." All his thought was given to studying the letter of
+the sacred text, and to making it explain natural phenomena by methods
+purely theological.(126)
+
+
+     (126) For citations and authorities on these points, see the chapter on
+Meteorology.
+
+
+Among the many questions he then raised and discussed may be mentioned
+such as these: "What caused the creation of the stars on the fourth
+day?" "Were beasts of prey and venomous animals created before, or
+after, the fall of Adam? If before, how can their creation be reconciled
+with God's goodness; if afterward, how can their creation be reconciled
+to the letter of God's Word?" "Why were only beasts and birds brought
+before Adam to be named, and not fishes and marine animals?" "Why did
+the Creator not say, 'Be fruitful and multiply,' to plants as well as to
+animals?"(127)
+
+
+     (127) See Augustine, De Genesi, ii, 13, 15, et seq.; ix, 12 et seq. For
+the reference to St. Jerome, see Shields, Final Philosophy, p. 119; also
+Leyell, Introduction to Geology, vol. i, chap. ii.
+
+
+Sundry answers to these and similar questions formed the main
+contributions of the greatest of the Latin fathers to the scientific
+knowledge of the world, after a most thorough study of the biblical text
+and a most profound application of theological reasoning. The results
+of these contributions were most important. In this, as in so many
+other fields, Augustine gave direction to the main current of thought in
+western Europe, Catholic and Protestant, for nearly thirteen centuries.
+
+In the ages that succeeded, the vast majority of prominent scholars
+followed him implicitly. Even so strong a man as Pope Gregory the Great
+yielded to his influence, and such leaders of thought as St. Isidore,
+in the seventh century, and the Venerable Bede, in the eighth, planting
+themselves upon Augustine's premises, only ventured timidly to extend
+their conclusions upon lines he had laid down.
+
+In his great work on Etymologies, Isidore took up Augustine's attempt to
+bring the creation into satisfactory relations with the book of Genesis,
+and, as to fossil remains, he, like Tertullian, thought that they
+resulted from the Flood of Noah. In the following century Bede developed
+the same orthodox traditions.(128)
+
+
+     (128) For Isidore, see the Etymologiae, xi, 4, xiii, 22. For Bede, see
+the Hexaemeron, i, ii, in Migne, tome xci.
+
+
+The best guess, in a geological sense, among the followers of St.
+Augustine was made by an Irish monkish scholar, who, in order to
+diminish the difficulty arising from the distribution of animals,
+especially in view of the fact that the same animals are found in
+Ireland as in England, held that various lands now separated were once
+connected. But, alas! the exigencies of theology forced him to place
+their separation later than the Flood. Happily for him, such facts were
+not yet known as that the kangaroo is found only on an island in
+the South Pacific, and must therefore, according to his theory, have
+migrated thither with all his progeny, and along a causeway so
+curiously constructed that none of the beasts of prey, who were his
+fellow-voyagers in the ark, could follow him.
+
+These general lines of thought upon geology and its kindred science of
+zoology were followed by St. Thomas Aquinas and by the whole body
+of medieval theologians, so far as they gave any attention to such
+subjects.
+
+The next development of geology, mainly under Church guidance, was by
+means of the scholastic theology. Phrase-making was substituted for
+investigation. Without the Church and within it wonderful contributions
+were thus made. In the eleventh century Avicenna accounted for the
+fossils by suggesting a "stone-making force";(129) in the thirteenth,
+Albert the Great attributed them to a "formative quality;"(130) in the
+following centuries some philosophers ventured the idea that they grew
+from seed; and the Aristotelian doctrine of spontaneous generation was
+constantly used to prove that these stony fossils possessed powers of
+reproduction like plants and animals.(131)
+
+
+     (129) Vis lapidifica.
+
+
+     (130) Virtus formativa.
+
+
+     (131) See authorities given in Mr. Ward's assay, as above.
+
+
+Still, at various times and places, germs implanted by Greek and Roman
+thought were warmed into life. The Arabian schools seem to have been
+less fettered by the letter of the Koran than the contemporary Christian
+scholars by the letter of the Bible; and to Avicenna belongs the credit
+of first announcing substantially the modern geological theory of
+changes in the earth's surface.(132)
+
+
+     (132) For Avicenna, see Lyell and D'Archiac.
+
+
+The direct influence of the Reformation was at first unfavourable to
+scientific progress, for nothing could be more at variance with any
+scientific theory of the development of the universe than the ideas of
+the Protestant leaders. That strict adherence to the text of Scripture
+which made Luther and Melanchthon denounce the idea that the planets
+revolve about the sun, was naturally extended to every other scientific
+statement at variance with the sacred text. There is much reason to
+believe that the fetters upon scientific thought were closer under the
+strict interpretation of Scripture by the early Protestants than they
+had been under the older Church. The dominant spirit among the Reformers
+is shown by the declaration of Peter Martyr to the effect that, if
+a wrong opinion should obtain regarding the creation as described in
+Genesis, "all the promises of Christ fall into nothing, and all the life
+of our religion would be lost."(133)
+
+
+     (133) See his Commentary on Genesis, cited by Zoeckler, Geschichte der
+Beziehungen zwischen Theologie und Naturwissenschaft, vol. i, p. 690.
+
+
+In the times immediately succeeding the Reformation matters went from
+bad to worse. Under Luther and Melanchthon there was some little freedom
+of speculation, but under their successors there was none; to question
+any interpretation of Luther came to be thought almost as wicked as
+to question the literal interpretation of the Scriptures themselves.
+Examples of this are seen in the struggles between those who held that
+birds were created entirely from water and those who held that they were
+created out of water and mud. In the city of Lubeck, the ancient centre
+of the Hanseatic League, close at the beginning of the seventeenth
+century, Pfeiffer, "General Superintendent" or bishop in those parts,
+published his Pansophia Mosaica, calculated, as he believed, to beat
+back science forever. In a long series of declamations he insisted that
+in the strict text of Genesis alone is safety, that it contains all
+wisdom and knowledge, human and divine. This being the case, who could
+care to waste time on the study of material things and give thought to
+the structure of the world? Above all, who, after such a proclamation
+by such a ruler in the Lutheran Israel, would dare to talk of the "days"
+mentioned in Genesis as "periods of time"; or of the "firmament" as not
+meaning a solid vault over the universe; or of the "waters above the
+heavens" as not contained in a vast cistern supported by the heavenly
+vault; or of the "windows of heaven" as a figure of speech?(134)
+
+
+     (134) For Pfeiffer, see Zoeckler, vol. i, pp. 688, 689.
+
+
+In England the same spirit was shown even as late as the time of
+Sir Matthew Hale. We find in his book on the Origination of Mankind,
+published in 1685, the strictest devotion to a theory of creation based
+upon the mere letter of Scripture, and a complete inability to draw
+knowledge regarding the earth's origin and structure from any other
+source.
+
+While the Lutheran, Calvinistic, and Anglican Reformers clung to literal
+interpretations of the sacred books, and turned their faces away from
+scientific investigation, it was among their contemporaries at the
+revival of learning that there began to arise fruitful thought in this
+field. Then it was, about the beginning of the sixteenth century, that
+Leonardo da Vinci, as great a genius in science as in art, broached
+the true idea as to the origin of fossil remains; and his compatriot,
+Fracastoro, developed this on the modern lines of thought. Others in
+other parts of Europe took up the idea, and, while mixing with it many
+crudities, drew from it more and more truth. Toward the end of the
+sixteenth century Bernard Palissy, in France, took hold of it with the
+same genius which he showed in artistic creation; but, remarkable as
+were his assertions of scientific realities, they could gain little
+hearing. Theologians, philosophers, and even some scientific men of
+value, under the sway of scholastic phrases, continued to insist upon
+such explanations as that fossils were the product of "fatty matter set
+into a fermentation by heat"; or of a "lapidific juice";(135) or of
+a "seminal air";(136) or of a "tumultuous movement of terrestrial
+exhalations"; and there was a prevailing belief that fossil remains, in
+general, might be brought under the head of "sports of Nature," a pious
+turn being given to this phrase by the suggestion that these "sports"
+indicated some inscrutable purpose of the Almighty.
+
+
+     (135) Succus lapidificus.
+
+
+     (136) Aura seminalis.
+
+
+This remained a leading orthodox mode of explanation in the Church,
+Catholic and Protestant, for centuries.
+
+
+
+
+II. EFFORTS TO SUPPRESS THE SCIENTIFIC VIEW.
+
+
+But the scientific method could not be entirely hidden; and, near the
+beginning of the seventeenth century, De Clave, Bitaud, and De Villon
+revived it in France. Straightway the theological faculty of Paris
+protested against the scientific doctrine as unscriptural, destroyed the
+offending treatises, banished their authors from Paris, and forbade them
+to live in towns or enter places of public resort.(137)
+
+
+     (137) See Morley, Life of Palissy the Potter, vol. ii, p. 315 et seq.
+
+
+The champions of science, though depressed for a time, quietly laboured
+on, especially in Italy. Half a century later, Steno, a Dane, and
+Scilla, an Italian, went still further in the right direction; and,
+though they and their disciples took great pains to throw a tub to the
+whale, in the shape of sundry vague concessions to the Genesis legends,
+they developed geological truth more and more.
+
+In France, the old theological spirit remained exceedingly powerful.
+About the middle of the eighteenth century Buffon made another attempt
+to state simple geological truths; but the theological faculty of the
+Sorbonne dragged him at once from his high position, forced him to
+recant ignominiously, and to print his recantation. It runs as follows:
+"I declare that I had no intention to contradict the text of Scripture;
+that I believe most firmly all therein related about the creation, both
+as to order of time and matter of fact. I abandon everything in my book
+respecting the formation of the earth, and generally all which may be
+contrary to the narrative of Moses." This humiliating document reminds
+us painfully of that forced upon Galileo a hundred years before.
+
+It has been well observed by one of the greatest of modern authorities
+that the doctrine which Buffon thus "abandoned" is as firmly established
+as that of the earth's rotation upon its axis.(138) Yet one hundred
+and fifty years were required to secure for it even a fair hearing; the
+prevailing doctrine of the Church continued to be that "all things were
+made at the beginning of the world," and that to say that stones
+and fossils were made before or since "the beginning" is contrary
+to Scripture. Again we find theological substitutes for scientific
+explanation ripening into phrases more and more hollow--making fossils
+"sports of Nature," or "mineral concretions," or "creations of plastic
+force," or "models" made by the Creator before he had fully decided upon
+the best manner of creating various beings.
+
+
+     (138) See citation and remark in Lyell's Principles of Geology, chap.
+iii, p. 57; also Huxley, Essays on Controverted Questions, p. 62.
+
+
+Of this period, when theological substitutes for science were carrying
+all before them, there still exists a monument commemorating at the
+same time a farce and a tragedy. This is the work of Johann Beringer,
+professor in the University of Wurzburg and private physician to
+the Prince-Bishop--the treatise bearing the title Lithographiae
+Wirceburgensis Specimen Primum, "illustrated with the marvellous
+likenesses of two hundred figured or rather insectiform stones."
+Beringer, for the greater glory of God, had previously committed
+himself so completely to the theory that fossils are simply "stones of
+a peculiar sort, hidden by the Author of Nature for his own
+pleasure,"(139) that some of his students determined to give his faith
+in that pious doctrine a thorough trial. They therefore prepared a
+collection of sham fossils in baked clay, imitating not only plants,
+reptiles, and fishes of every sort that their knowledge or imagination
+could suggest, but even Hebrew and Syriac inscriptions, one of them
+the name of the Almighty; and these they buried in a place where the
+professor was wont to search for specimens. The joy of Beringer on
+unearthing these proofs of the immediate agency of the finger of God in
+creating fossils knew no bounds. At great cost he prepared this book,
+whose twenty-two elaborate plates of facsimiles were forever to settle
+the question in favour of theology and against science, and prefixed to
+the work an allegorical title page, wherein not only the glory of his
+own sovereign, but that of heaven itself, was pictured as based upon a
+pyramid of these miraculous fossils. So robust was his faith that not
+even a premature exposure of the fraud could dissuade him from the
+publication of his book. Dismissing in one contemptuous chapter this
+exposure as a slander by his rivals, he appealed to the learned world.
+But the shout of laughter that welcomed the work soon convinced even its
+author. In vain did he try to suppress it; and, according to tradition,
+having wasted his fortune in vain attempts to buy up all the copies of
+it, and being taunted by the rivals whom he had thought to overwhelm, he
+died of chagrin. Even death did not end his misfortunes. The copies
+of the first edition having been sold by a graceless descendant to a
+Leipsic bookseller, a second edition was brought out under a new title,
+and this, too, is now much sought as a precious memorial of human
+credulity.(140)
+
+
+     (139) See Beringer's Lithographiae, etc., p. 91.
+
+
+     (140) See Carus, Geschichte der Zoologie, Munich, 1872, p. 467, note,
+and Reusch, Bibel und Natur, p. 197. A list of authorities upon this
+episode, with the text of one of the epigrams circulated at poor
+Beringer's expense, is given by Dr. Reuss in the Serapeum for 1852, p.
+203. The book itself (the original impression) is in the White Library
+at Cornell University. For Beringer himself, see especially the
+encyclopedia of Ersch and Gruber, and the Allgemeine deutsche
+Biographie.
+
+
+But even this discomfiture did not end the idea which had caused
+it, for, although some latitude was allowed among the various
+theologico-scientific explanations, it was still held meritorious
+to believe that all fossils were placed in the strata on one of the
+creative days by the hand of the Almighty, and that this was done for
+some mysterious purpose, probably for the trial of human faith.
+
+Strange as it may at first seem, the theological war against a
+scientific method in geology was waged more fiercely in Protestant
+countries than in Catholic. The older Church had learned by her costly
+mistakes, especially in the cases of Copernicus and Galileo, what
+dangers to her claim of infallibility lay in meddling with a growing
+science. In Italy, therefore, comparatively little opposition was made,
+while England furnished the most bitter opponents to geology so long as
+the controversy could be maintained, and the most active negotiators in
+patching up a truce on the basis of a sham science afterward. The Church
+of England did, indeed, produce some noble men, like Bishop Clayton
+and John Mitchell, who stood firmly by the scientific method; but these
+appear generally to have been overwhelmed by a chorus of churchmen and
+dissenters, whose mixtures of theology and science, sometimes tragic in
+their results and sometimes comic, are among the most instructive things
+in modern history.(141)
+
+
+     (141) For a comparison between the conduct of Italian and English
+ecclesiastics as regards geology, see Lyell, Principles of Geology,
+tenth English edition, vol. i, p. 33. For a philosophical statement of
+reasons why the struggle was more bitter and the attempt at deceptive
+compromises more absurd in England than elsewhere, see Maury,
+L'Ancienne Academie des Sciences, second edition, p. 152. For very
+frank confessions of the reasons why the Catholic Church has become
+more careful in her dealings with science, see Roberts, The Pontifical
+Decrees against the Earth's Movement, London, 1885, especially pp. 94
+and 132, 133, and St. George Mivart's article in the Nineteenth Century
+for July 1885. The first of these gentlemen, it must not be forgotten,
+is a Roman Catholic clergyman and the second an eminent layman of the
+same Church, and both admit that it was the Pope, speaking ex cathedra,
+who erred in the Galileo case; but their explanation is that God allowed
+the Pope and Church to fall into this grievous error, which has cost so
+dear, in order to show once and for all that the Church has no right to
+decide questions in Science.
+
+
+We have already noted that there are generally three periods or phases
+in a theological attack upon any science. The first of these is marked
+by the general use of scriptural texts and statements against the new
+scientific doctrine; the third by attempts at compromise by means of
+far-fetched reconciliations of textual statements with ascertained fact;
+but the second or intermediate period between these two is frequently
+marked by the pitting against science of some great doctrine in
+theology. We saw this in astronomy, when Bellarmin and his followers
+insisted that the scientific doctrine of the earth revolving about the
+sun is contrary to the theological doctrine of the incarnation. So now
+against geology it was urged that the scientific doctrine that fossils
+represent animals which died before Adam contradicts the theological
+doctrine of Adam's fall and the statement that "death entered the world
+by sin."
+
+In this second stage of the theological struggle with geology, England
+was especially fruitful in champions of orthodoxy, first among whom may
+be named Thomas Burnet. In the last quarter of the seventeenth century,
+just at the time when Newton's great discovery was given to the
+world, Burnet issued his Sacred Theory of the Earth. His position was
+commanding; he was a royal chaplain and a cabinet officer. Planting
+himself upon the famous text in the second epistle of Peter,(142) he
+declares that the flood had destroyed the old and created a new world.
+The Newtonian theory he refuses to accept. In his theory of the deluge
+he lays less stress upon the "opening of the windows of heaven" than
+upon the "breaking up of the fountains of the great deep." On this
+latter point he comes forth with great strength. His theory is that
+the earth is hollow, and filled with fluid like an egg. Mixing together
+sundry texts from Genesis and from the second epistle of Peter, the
+theological doctrine of the "Fall," an astronomical theory regarding the
+ecliptic, and various notions adapted from Descartes, he insisted that,
+before sin brought on the Deluge, the earth was of perfect mathematical
+form, smooth and beautiful, "like an egg," with neither seas nor islands
+nor valleys nor rocks, "with not a wrinkle, scar, or fracture," and that
+all creation was equally perfect.
+
+
+     (142) See II Peter iii, 6.
+
+
+In the second book of his great work Burnet went still further. As in
+his first book he had mixed his texts of Genesis and St. Peter with
+Descartes, he now mixed the account of the Garden of Eden in Genesis
+with heathen legends of the golden age, and concluded that before the
+flood there was over the whole earth perpetual spring, disturbed by no
+rain more severe than the falling of the dew.
+
+In addition to his other grounds for denying the earlier existence of
+the sea, he assigned the reason that, if there had been a sea before
+the Deluge, sinners would have learned to build ships, and so, when the
+Deluge set in, could have saved themselves.
+
+The work was written with much power, and attracted universal attention.
+It was translated into various languages, and called forth a multitude
+of supporters and opponents in all parts of Europe. Strong men rose
+against it, especially in England, and among them a few dignitaries of
+the Church; but the Church generally hailed the work with joy. Addison
+praised it in a Latin ode, and for nearly a century it exercised a
+strong influence upon European feeling, and aided to plant more deeply
+than ever the theological opinion that the earth as now existing
+is merely a ruin; whereas, before sin brought on the Flood, it was
+beautiful in its "egg-shaped form," and free from every imperfection.
+
+A few years later came another writer of the highest standing--William
+Whiston, professor at Cambridge, who in 1696 published his New Theory
+of the Earth. Unlike Burnet, he endeavoured to avail himself of the
+Newtonian idea, and brought in, to aid the geological catastrophe caused
+by human sin, a comet, which broke open "the fountains of the great
+deep."
+
+But, far more important than either of these champions, there arose in
+the eighteenth century, to aid in the subjection of science to theology,
+three men of extraordinary power--John Wesley, Adam Clarke, and Richard
+Watson. All three were men of striking intellectual gifts, lofty
+character, and noble purpose, and the first-named one of the greatest
+men in English history; yet we find them in geology hopelessly fettered
+by the mere letter of Scripture, and by a temporary phase in theology.
+As in regard to witchcraft and the doctrine of comets, so in regard to
+geology, this theological view drew Wesley into enormous error.(143)
+The great doctrine which Wesley, Watson, Clarke, and their compeers,
+following St. Augustine, Bede, Peter Lombard, and a long line of the
+greatest minds in the universal Church, thought it especially necessary
+to uphold against geologists was, that death entered the world by
+sin--by the first transgression of Adam and Eve. The extent to which the
+supposed necessity of upholding this doctrine carried Wesley seems now
+almost beyond belief. Basing his theology on the declaration that the
+Almighty after creation found the earth and all created things "very
+good," he declares, in his sermon on the Cause and Cure of Earthquakes,
+that no one who believes the Scriptures can deny that "sin is the moral
+cause of earthquakes, whatever their natural cause may be." Again,
+he declares that earthquakes are the "effect of that curse which was
+brought upon the earth by the original transgression." Bringing into
+connection with Genesis the declaration of St. Paul that "the whole
+creation groaneth and travaileth together in pain until now," he finds
+additional scriptural proof that the earthquakes were the result of
+Adam's fall. He declares, in his sermon on God's Approbation of His
+Works, that "before the sin of Adam there were no agitations within
+the bowels of the earth, no violent convulsions, no concussions of the
+earth, no earthquakes, but all was unmoved as the pillars of heaven.
+There were then no such things as eruptions of fires; no volcanoes or
+burning mountains." Of course, a science which showed that earthquakes
+had been in operation for ages before the appearance of man on the
+planet, and which showed, also, that those very earthquakes which he
+considered as curses resultant upon the Fall were really blessings,
+producing the fissures in which we find today those mineral veins so
+essential to modern civilization, was entirely beyond his comprehension.
+He insists that earthquakes are "God's strange works of judgment, the
+proper effect and punishment of sin."
+
+
+     (143) For his statement that "the giving up of witchcraft is in effect
+the giving up of the Bible," see Welsey's Journal, 1766-'68.
+
+
+So, too, as to death and pain. In his sermon on the Fall of Man he
+took the ground that death and pain entered the world by Adam's
+transgression, insisting that the carnage now going on among animals is
+the result of Adam's sin. Speaking of the birds, beasts, and insects, he
+says that, before sin entered the world by Adam's fall, "none of these
+attempted to devour or in any way hurt one another"; that "the spider
+was then as harmless as the fly and did not then lie in wait for blood."
+Here, again, Wesley arrayed his early followers against geology, which
+reveals, in the fossil remains of carnivorous animals, pain and death
+countless ages before the appearance of man. The half-digested fragments
+of weaker animals within the fossilized bodies of the stronger have
+destroyed all Wesley's arguments in behalf of his great theory.(144)
+
+
+     (144) See Wesley's sermon on God's Approbation of His Works, parts xi
+and xii.
+
+
+Dr. Adam Clarke held similar views. He insisted that thorns and thistles
+were given as a curse to human labour, on account of Adam's sin, and
+appeared upon the earth for the first time after Adam's fall. So, too,
+Richard Watson, the most prolific writer of the great evangelical reform
+period, and the author of the Institutes, the standard theological
+treatise on the evangelical side, says, in a chapter treating of the
+Fall, and especially of the serpent which tempted Eve: "We have no
+reason at all to believe that the animal had a serpentine form in any
+mode or degree until his transformation. That he was then degraded to
+a reptile, to go upon his belly, imports, on the contrary, an entire
+alteration and loss of the original form." All that admirable adjustment
+of the serpent to its environment which delights naturalists was to the
+Wesleyan divine simply an evil result of the sin of Adam and Eve. Yet
+here again geology was obliged to confront theology in revealing the
+PYTHON in the Eocene, ages before man appeared.(145)
+
+
+     (145) See Westminster Review, October, 1870, article on John Wesley's
+Cosmogony, with citations from Wesley's Sermons, Watson's Institutes of
+Theology, Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures, etc.
+
+
+The immediate results of such teaching by such men was to throw many who
+would otherwise have resorted to observation and investigation back upon
+scholastic methods. Again reappears the old system of solving the riddle
+by phrases. In 1733, Dr. Theodore Arnold urged the theory of "models,"
+and insisted that fossils result from "infinitesimal particles brought
+together in the creation to form the outline of all the creatures
+and objects upon and within the earth"; and Arnold's work gained wide
+acceptance.(146)
+
+
+     (146) See citation in Mr. Ward's article, as above, p. 390.
+
+
+Such was the influence of this succession of great men that toward the
+close of the last century the English opponents of geology on biblical
+grounds seemed likely to sweep all before them. Cramping our whole
+inheritance of sacred literature within the rules of a historical
+compend, they showed the terrible dangers arising from the revelations
+of geology, which make the earth older than the six thousand years
+required by Archbishop Usher's interpretation of the Old Testament.
+Nor was this feeling confined to ecclesiastics. Williams, a thoughtful
+layman, declared that such researches led to infidelity and atheism, and
+are "nothing less than to depose the Almighty Creator of the universe
+from his office." The poet Cowper, one of the mildest of men, was also
+roused by these dangers, and in his most elaborate poem wrote:
+
+                "Some drill and bore
+The solid earth, and from the strata there Extract a register, by
+which we learn That He who made it, and revealed its date To Moses, was
+mistaken in its age!"
+
+
+John Howard summoned England to oppose "those scientific systems which
+are calculated to tear up in the public mind every remaining attachment
+to Christianity."
+
+With this special attack upon geological science by means of the dogma
+of Adam's fall, the more general attack by the literal interpretation
+of the text was continued. The legendary husks and rinds of our sacred
+books were insisted upon as equally precious and nutritious with the
+great moral and religious truths which they envelop. Especially precious
+were the six days--each "the evening and the morning"--and the exact
+statements as to the time when each part of creation came into being. To
+save these, the struggle became more and more desperate.
+
+Difficult as it is to realize it now, within the memory of many now
+living the battle was still raging most fiercely in England, and both
+kinds of artillery usually brought against a new science were in full
+play, and filling the civilized world with their roar.
+
+About half a century since, the Rev. J. Mellor Brown, the Rev. Henry
+Cole, and others were hurling at all geologists alike, and especially at
+such Christian scholars as Dr. Buckland and Dean Conybeare and Pye Smith
+and Prof. Sedgwick, the epithets of "infidel," "impugner of the sacred
+record," and "assailant of the volume of God."(147)
+
+
+     (147) For these citations, see Lyell, Principles of Geology,
+introduction.
+
+
+The favourite weapon of the orthodox party was the charge that the
+geologists were "attacking the truth of God." They declared geology
+"not a subject of lawful inquiry," denouncing it as "a dark art," as
+"dangerous and disreputable," as "a forbidden province," as
+"infernal artillery," and as "an awful evasion of the testimony of
+revelation."(148)
+
+
+     (148) See Pye Smith, D. D., Geology and Scripture, pp. 156, 157, 168,
+169.
+
+
+This attempt to scare men from the science having failed, various other
+means were taken. To say nothing about England, it is humiliating to
+human nature to remember the annoyances, and even trials, to which the
+pettiest and narrowest of men subjected such Christian scholars in our
+own country as Benjamin Silliman and Edward Hitchcock and Louis Agassiz.
+
+But it is a duty and a pleasure to state here that one great Christian
+scholar did honour to religion and to himself by quietly accepting
+the claims of science and making the best of them, despite all these
+clamours. This man was Nicholas Wiseman, better known afterward as
+Cardinal Wiseman. The conduct of this pillar of the Roman Catholic
+Church contrasts admirably with that of timid Protestants, who were
+filling England with shrieks and denunciations.(149)
+
+
+     (149) Wiseman, Twelve Lectures on the Connection between Science and
+Revealed Religion, first American edition, New York, 1837. As to the
+comparative severity of the struggle regarding astronomy, geology, etc.,
+in the Catholic and Protestant countries, see Lecky's England in the
+Eighteenth Century, chap. ix, p. 525.
+
+
+And here let it be noted that one of the most interesting skirmishes
+in this war occurred in New England. Prof. Stuart, of Andover, justly
+honoured as a Hebrew scholar, declared that to speak of six periods of
+time for the creation was flying in the face of Scripture; that Genesis
+expressly speaks of six days, each made up of "the evening and the
+morning," and not six periods of time.
+
+To him replied a professor in Yale College, James Kingsley. In an
+article admirable for keen wit and kindly temper, he showed that Genesis
+speaks just as clearly of a solid firmament as of six ordinary days,
+and that, if Prof. Stuart had surmounted one difficulty and accepted
+the Copernican theory, he might as well get over another and accept the
+revelations of geology. The encounter was quick and decisive, and the
+victory was with science and the broader scholarship of Yale.(150)
+
+
+     (150) See Silliman's Journal, vol. xxx, p. 114.
+
+Perhaps the most singular attempt against geology was made by a fine
+survival of the eighteenth century Don--Dean Cockburn, of York--to SCOLD
+its champions off the field. Having no adequate knowledge of the new
+science, he opened a battery of abuse, giving it to the world at large
+from the pulpit and through the press, and even through private letters.
+From his pulpit in York Minster he denounced Mary Somerville by name for
+those studies in physical geography which have made her name honoured
+throughout the world.
+
+But the special object of his antipathy was the British Association for
+the Advancement of Science. He issued a pamphlet against it which
+went through five editions in two years, sent solemn warnings to its
+president, and in various ways made life a burden to Sedgwick, Buckland,
+and other eminent investigators who ventured to state geological facts
+as they found them.
+
+These weapons were soon seen to be ineffective; they were like Chinese
+gongs and dragon lanterns against rifled cannon; the work of science
+went steadily on.(151)
+
+
+     (151) Prof. Goldwin Smith informs me that the papers of Sir Robert Peel,
+yet unpublished, contain very curious specimens of the epistles of Dean
+Cockburn. See also Personal Recollections of Mary Somerville, Boston,
+1874, pp. 139 and 375. Compare with any statement of his religious views
+that Dean Cockburn was able to make, the following from Mrs. Somerville:
+"Nothing has afforded me so convincing a proof of the Deity as these
+purely mental conceptions of numerical and mathematical science which
+have been, by slow degrees, vouchsafed to man--and are still granted
+in these latter times by the differential calculus, now superseded by
+the higher algebra--all of which must have existed in that sublimely
+omniscient mind from eternity." See also The Life and Letters of Adam
+Sedgwick, Cambridge, 1890, vol. ii, pp. 76 and following.
+
+
+
+
+
+III. THE FIRST GREAT EFFORT AT COMPROMISE, BASED ON THE FLOOD OF NOAH.
+
+
+Long before the end of the struggle already described, even at a very
+early period, the futility of the usual scholastic weapons had been
+seen by the more keen-sighted champions of orthodoxy; and, as the
+difficulties of the ordinary attack upon science became more and more
+evident, many of these champions endeavoured to patch up a truce. So
+began the third stage in the war--the period of attempts at compromise.
+
+The position which the compromise party took was that the fossils were
+produced by the Deluge of Noah.
+
+This position was strong, for it was apparently based upon Scripture.
+Moreover, it had high ecclesiastical sanction, some of the fathers
+having held that fossil remains, even on the highest mountains,
+represented animals destroyed at the Deluge. Tertullian was especially
+firm on this point, and St. Augustine thought that a fossil tooth
+discovered in North Africa must have belonged to one of the giants
+mentioned in Scripture.(152)
+
+
+     (152) For Tertullian, see his De Pallio, c. ii (Migne, Patr. Lat.,
+vol. ii, p. 1033). For Augustine's view, see Cuvier, Recherches sur les
+Ossements fossiles, fourth edition, vol. ii, p. 143.
+
+
+In the sixteenth century especially, weight began to be attached to
+this idea by those who felt the worthlessness of various scholastic
+explanations. Strong men in both the Catholic and the Protestant camps
+accepted it; but the man who did most to give it an impulse into modern
+theology was Martin Luther. He easily saw that scholastic phrase-making
+could not meet the difficulties raised by fossils, and he naturally
+urged the doctrine of their origin at Noah's Flood.(153)
+
+
+     (153) For Luther's opinion, see his Commentary on Genesis.
+
+
+With such support, it soon became the dominant theory in Christendom:
+nothing seemed able to stand against it; but before the end of the same
+sixteenth century it met some serious obstacles. Bernard Palissy, one of
+the most keen-sighted of scientific thinkers in France, as well as one
+of the most devoted of Christians, showed that it was utterly untenable.
+Conscientious investigators in other parts of Europe, and especially
+in Italy, showed the same thing; all in vain.(154) In vain did good men
+protest against the injury sure to be brought upon religion by tying it
+to a scientific theory sure to be exploded; the doctrine that fossils
+are the remains of animals drowned at the Flood continued to be upheld
+by the great majority of theological leaders for nearly three centuries
+as "sound doctrine," and as a blessed means of reconciling science
+with Scripture. To sustain this scriptural view, efforts energetic and
+persistent were put forth both by Catholics and Protestants.
+
+
+
+     (154) For a very full statement of the honourable record of Italy in
+this respect, and for the enlightened views of some Italian churchmen,
+see Stoppani, Il Dogma a le Scienze Positive, Milan, 1886, pp. 203 et
+seq.
+
+
+In France, the learned Benedictine, Calmet, in his great works on the
+Bible, accepted it as late as the beginning of the eighteenth century,
+believing the mastodon's bones exhibited by Mazurier to be those of King
+Teutobocus, and holding them valuable testimony to the existence of the
+giants mentioned in Scripture and of the early inhabitants of the earth
+overwhelmed by the Flood.(155)
+
+
+     (155) For the steady adherence to this sacred theory, see Audiat, Vie de
+Palissy, p. 412, and Cantu, Histoire Universelle, vol. xv, p. 492. For
+Calmet, see his Dissertation sur les Geants, cited in Berger de Xivery,
+Traditions Teratologiques, p. 191.
+
+
+But the greatest champion appeared in England. We have already seen how,
+near the close of the seventeenth century, Thomas Burnet prepared the
+way in his Sacred Theory of the Earth by rejecting the discoveries of
+Newton, and showing how sin led to the breaking up of the "foundations
+of the great deep," and we have also seen how Whiston, in his New Theory
+of the Earth, while yielding a little and accepting the discoveries of
+Newton, brought in a comet to aid in producing the Deluge; but far more
+important than these in permanent influence was John Woodward, professor
+at Gresham College, a leader in scientific thought at the University
+of Cambridge, and, as a patient collector of fossils and an earnest
+investigator of their meaning, deserving of the highest respect. In 1695
+he published his Natural History of the Earth, and rendered one great
+service to science, for he yielded another point, and thus destroyed the
+foundations for the old theory of fossils. He showed that they were not
+"sports of Nature," or "models inserted by the Creator in the strata for
+some inscrutable purpose," but that they were really remains of living
+beings, as Xenophanes had asserted two thousand years before him. So
+far, he rendered a great service both to science and religion; but, this
+done, the text of the Old Testament narrative and the famous passage in
+St. Peter's Epistle were too strong for him, and he, too, insisted that
+the fossils were produced by the Deluge. Aided by his great authority,
+the assault on the true scientific position was vigorous: Mazurier
+exhibited certain fossil remains of a mammoth discovered in France as
+bones of the giants mentioned in Scripture; Father Torrubia did the
+same thing in Spain; Increase Mather sent to England similar remains
+discovered in America, with a like statement.
+
+For the edification of the faithful, such "bones of the giants mentioned
+in Scripture" were hung up in public places. Jurieu saw some of
+them thus suspended in one of the churches of Valence; and Henrion,
+apparently under the stimulus thus given, drew up tables showing the
+size of our antediluvian ancestors, giving the height of Adam as 123
+feet 9 inches and that of Eve as 118 feet 9 inches and 9 lines.(156)
+
+
+     (156) See Cuvier, Recherches sur les Ossements fossiles, fourth edition,
+vol. ii, p. 56; also Geoffrey St.-Hilaire, cited by Berger de Xivery,
+Traditions Teratologiques, p. 190.
+
+
+But the most brilliant service rendered to the theological theory came
+from another quarter for, in 1726, Scheuchzer, having discovered a large
+fossil lizard, exhibited it to the world as the "human witness of the
+Deluge":(157) this great discovery was hailed everywhere with joy,
+for it seemed to prove not only that human beings were drowned at the
+Deluge, but that "there were giants in those days." Cheered by the
+applause thus gained, he determined to make the theological position
+impregnable. Mixing together various texts of Scripture with notions
+derived from the philosophy of Descartes and the speculations of
+Whiston, he developed the theory that "the fountains of the great deep"
+were broken up by the direct physical action of the hand of God, which,
+being literally applied to the axis of the earth, suddenly stopped the
+earth's rotation, broke up "the fountains of the great deep," spilled
+the water therein contained, and produced the Deluge. But his service
+to sacred science did not end here, for he prepared an edition of the
+Bible, in which magnificent engravings in great number illustrated his
+view and enforced it upon all readers. Of these engravings no less than
+thirty-four were devoted to the Deluge alone.(158)
+
+
+     (157) Homo diluvii testis.
+
+
+     (158) See Zoeckler, vol. ii, p. 172; also Scheuchzer, Physica Sacra,
+Augustae Vindel et Ulmae, 1732. For the ancient belief regarding
+giants, see Leopoldi, Saggio. For accounts of the views of Mazaurier and
+Scheuchzer, see Cuvier; also Buchner, Man in Past, Present, and Future,
+English translation, pp. 235, 236. For Increase Mather's views, see
+Philosophical Transactions, vol. xxiv, p. 85. As to similar fossils
+sent from New York to the Royal Society as remains of giants, see Weld,
+History of the Royal Society, vol. i, p. 421. For Father Torrubia and
+his Gigantologia Espanola, see D'Archiac, Introduction a l'Etude de
+la Paleontologie Stratigraphique, Paris, 1864, p. 201. For admirable
+summaries, see Lyell, Principles of Geology, London, 1867; D'Archiac,
+Geologie et Paleontologie, Paris, 1866; Pictet, Traite de Paleontologie,
+Paris, 1853; Vezian, Prodrome de la Geologie, Paris, 1863; Haeckel,
+History of Creation, English translation, New York, 1876, chap. iii;
+and for recent progress, Prof. O. S. Marsh's Address on the History and
+Methods of Paleontology.
+
+
+In the midst all this came an episode very comical but very instructive;
+for it shows that the attempt to shape the deductions of science to meet
+the exigencies of dogma may mislead heterodoxy as absurdly as orthodoxy.
+
+About the year 1760 news of the discovery of marine fossils in various
+elevated districts of Europe reached Voltaire. He, too, had a theologic
+system to support, though his system was opposed to that of the sacred
+books of the Hebrews; and, fearing that these new discoveries might be
+used to support the Mosaic accounts of the Deluge, all his wisdom and
+wit were compacted into arguments to prove that the fossil fishes were
+remains of fishes intended for food, but spoiled and thrown away
+by travellers; that the fossil shells were accidentally dropped by
+crusaders and pilgrims returning from the Holy Land; and that the fossil
+bones found between Paris and Etampes were parts of a skeleton belonging
+to the cabinet of some ancient philosopher. Through chapter after
+chapter, Voltaire, obeying the supposed necessities of his theology,
+fought desperately the growing results of the geologic investigations of
+his time.(159)
+
+
+     (159) See Voltaire, Dissertation sur les Changements arrives dans notre
+Globe; also Voltaire, Les Singularities de la Nature, chap. xii; also
+Jevons, Principles of Science, vol. ii, p. 328.
+
+
+But far more prejudicial to Christianity was the continued effort on the
+other side to show that the fossils were caused by the Deluge of Noah.
+
+No supposition was too violent to support this theory, which was
+considered vital to the Bible. By taking the mere husks and rinds of
+biblical truth for truth itself, by taking sacred poetry as prose,
+and by giving a literal interpretation of it, the followers of Burnet,
+Whiston, and Woodward built up systems which bear to real geology much
+the same relation that the Christian Topography of Cosmas bears to real
+geography. In vain were exhibited the absolute geological, zoological,
+astronomical proofs that no universal deluge, or deluge covering any
+large part of the earth, had taken place within the last six thousand or
+sixty thousand years; in vain did so enlightened a churchman as Bishop
+Clayton declare that the Deluge could not have extended beyond that
+district where Noah lived before the Flood; in vain did others, like
+Bishop Croft and Bishop Stillingfleet, and the nonconformist Matthew
+Poole, show that the Deluge might not have been and probably was not
+universal; in vain was it shown that, even if there had been a universal
+deluge, the fossils were not produced by it: the only answers were the
+citation of the text, "And all the high mountains which were under the
+whole heaven were covered," and, to clinch the matter, Worthington and
+men like him insisted that any argument to show that fossils were not
+remains of animals drowned at the Deluge of Noah was "infidelity." In
+England, France, and Germany, belief that the fossils were produced
+by the Deluge of Noah was widely insisted upon as part of that faith
+essential to salvation.(160)
+
+
+     (160) For a candid summary of the proofs from geology, astronomy,
+and zoology, that the Noachian Deluge was not universally or widely
+extended, see McClintock and Strong, Cyclopedia of Biblical Theology
+and Ecclesiastical Literature, article Deluge. For general history, see
+Lyell, D'Archiac, and Vezian. For special cases showing the bitterness
+of the conflict, see the Rev. Mr. Davis's Life of Rev. Dr. Pye Smith,
+passim. For a late account, see Prof. Huxley on The Lights of the Church
+and the Light of Science, in the Nineteenth Century for July, 1890.
+
+
+But the steady work of science went on: not all the force of the
+Church--not even the splendid engravings in Scheuchzer's Bible--could
+stop it, and the foundations of this theological theory began to crumble
+away. The process was, indeed, slow; it required a hundred and twenty
+years for the searchers of God's truth, as revealed in Nature--such men
+as Hooke, Linnaeus, Whitehurst, Daubenton, Cuvier, and William Smith--to
+push their works under this fabric of error, and, by statements which
+could not be resisted, to undermine it. As we arrive at the beginning of
+the nineteenth century, science is becoming irresistible in this field.
+Blumenbach, Von Buch, and Schlotheim led the way, but most important on
+the Continent was the work of Cuvier. In the early years of the present
+century his researches among fossils began to throw new light into the
+whole subject of geology. He was, indeed, very conservative, and even
+more wary and diplomatic; seeming, like Voltaire, to feel that "among
+wolves one must howl a little." It was a time of reaction. Napoleon
+had made peace with the Church, and to disturb that peace was akin to
+treason. By large but vague concessions Cuvier kept the theologians
+satisfied, while he undermined their strongest fortress. The danger was
+instinctively felt by some of the champions of the Church, and typical
+among these was Chateaubriand, who in his best-known work, once so
+great, now so little--the Genius of Christianity--grappled with the
+questions of creation by insisting upon a sort of general deception "in
+the beginning," under which everything was created by a sudden fiat,
+but with appearances of pre-existence. His words are as follows: "It
+was part of the perfection and harmony of the nature which was displayed
+before men's eyes that the deserted nests of last year's birds should be
+seen on the trees, and that the seashore should be covered with shells
+which had been the abode of fish, and yet the world was quite new, and
+nests and shells had never been inhabited."(161) But the real victory
+was with Brongniart, who, about 1820, gave forth his work on fossil
+plants, and thus built a barrier against which the enemies of science
+raged in vain.(162)
+
+
+     (161) Genie du Christianisme, chap.v, pp. 1-14, cited by Reusch, vol. i,
+p. 250.
+
+
+     (162) For admirable sketches of Brongniart and other paleobotanists, see
+Ward, as above.
+
+
+Still the struggle was not ended, and, a few years later, a forlorn hope
+was led in England by Granville Penn.
+
+His fundamental thesis was that "our globe has undergone only two
+revolutions, the Creation and the Deluge, and both by the immediate fiat
+of the Almighty"; he insisted that the Creation took place in exactly
+six days of ordinary time, each made up of "the evening and the
+morning"; and he ended with a piece of that peculiar presumption so
+familiar to the world, by calling on Cuvier and all other geologists to
+"ask for the old paths and walk therein until they shall simplify their
+system and reduce their numerous revolutions to the two events or epochs
+only--the six days of Creation and the Deluge."(163) The geologists
+showed no disposition to yield to this peremptory summons; on the
+contrary, the President of the British Geological Society, and even so
+eminent a churchman and geologist as Dean Buckland, soon acknowledged
+that facts obliged them to give up the theory that the fossils of the
+coal measures were deposited at the Deluge of Noah, and to deny that the
+Deluge was universal.
+
+
+     (163) See the Works of Granville Penn, vol. ii, p. 273.
+
+
+The defection of Buckland was especially felt by the orthodox party. His
+ability, honesty, and loyalty to his profession, as well as his position
+as Canon of Christ Church and Professor of Geology at Oxford, gave him
+great authority, which he exerted to the utmost in soothing his brother
+ecclesiastics. In his inaugural lecture he had laboured to show that
+geology confirmed the accounts of Creation and the Flood as given
+in Genesis, and in 1823, after his cave explorations had revealed
+overwhelming evidences of the vast antiquity of the earth, he had still
+clung to the Flood theory in his Reliquiae Diluvianae.
+
+This had not, indeed, fully satisfied the anti-scientific party, but as
+a rule their attacks upon him took the form not so much of abuse as of
+humorous disparagement. An epigram by Shuttleworth, afterward Bishop
+of Chichester, in imitation of Pope's famous lines upon Newton, ran as
+follows:
+
+
+"Some doubts were once expressed about the Flood: Buckland arose, and
+all was clear as mud."
+
+
+On his leaving Oxford for a journey to southern Europe, Dean Gaisford
+was heard to exclaim: "Well, Buckland is gone to Italy; so, thank God,
+we shall have no more of this geology!"
+
+Still there was some comfort as long as Buckland held to the Deluge
+theory; but, on his surrender, the combat deepened: instead of epigrams
+and caricatures came bitter attacks, and from the pulpit and press came
+showers of missiles. The worst of these were hurled at Lyell. As we have
+seen, he had published in 1830 his Principles of Geology. Nothing
+could have been more cautious. It simply gave an account of the main
+discoveries up to that time, drawing the necessary inferences with plain
+yet convincing logic, and it remains to this day one of those works
+in which the Anglo-Saxon race may most justly take pride,--one of the
+land-marks in the advance of human thought.
+
+But its tendency was inevitably at variance with the Chaldean and other
+ancient myths and legends regarding the Creation and Deluge which
+the Hebrews had received from the older civilizations among their
+neighbours, and had incorporated into the sacred books which they
+transmitted to the modern world; it was therefore extensively "refuted."
+
+Theologians and men of science influenced by them insisted that his
+minimizing of geological changes, and his laying stress on the gradual
+action of natural causes still in force, endangered the sacred record of
+Creation and left no place for miraculous intervention; and when it
+was found that he had entirely cast aside their cherished idea that the
+great geological changes of the earth's surface and the multitude of
+fossil remains were due to the Deluge of Noah, and had shown that a far
+longer time was demanded for Creation than any which could possibly
+be deduced from the Old Testament genealogies and chronicles, orthodox
+indignation burst forth violently; eminent dignitaries of the Church
+attacked him without mercy and for a time he was under social ostracism.
+
+As this availed little, an effort was made on the scientific side to
+crush him beneath the weighty authority of Cuvier; but the futility of
+this effort was evident when it was found that thinking men would no
+longer listen to Cuvier and persisted in listening to Lyell. The great
+orthodox text-book, Cuvier's Theory of the Earth, became at once so
+discredited in the estimation of men of science that no new edition
+of it was called for, while Lyell's work speedily ran through twelve
+editions and remained a firm basis of modern thought.(164)
+
+
+     (164) For Buckland and the various forms of attack upon him, see Gordon,
+Life of Buckland, especially pp. 10, 26, 136. For the attack on Lyell
+and his book, see Huxley, The Lights of the Church and the Light of
+Science.
+
+
+As typical of his more moderate opponents we may take Fairholme, who in
+1837 published his Mosaic Deluge, and argued that no early convulsions
+of the earth, such as those supposed by geologists, could have taken
+place, because there could have been no deluge "before moral guilt could
+possibly have been incurred"--that is to say, before the creation of
+mankind. In touching terms he bewailed the defection of the President of
+the Geological Society and Dean Buckland--protesting against geologists
+who "persist in closing their eyes upon the solemn declarations of the
+Almighty"
+
+Still the geologists continued to seek truth: the germs planted
+especially by William Smith, "the Father of English Geology" were
+developed by a noble succession of investigators, and the victory was
+sure. Meanwhile those theologians who felt that denunciation of
+science as "godless" could accomplish little, laboured upon schemes for
+reconciling geology with Genesis. Some of these show amazing ingenuity,
+but an eminent religious authority, going over them with great
+thoroughness, has well characterized them as "daring and fanciful." Such
+attempts have been variously classified, but the fact regarding them
+all is that each mixes up more or less of science with more or less of
+Scripture, and produces a result more or less absurd. Though a few men
+here and there have continued these exercises, the capitulation of the
+party which set the literal account of the Deluge of Noah against the
+facts revealed by geology was at last clearly made.(165)
+
+
+     (165) For Fairholme, see his Mosaic Deluge, London, 1837, p. 358. For a
+very just characterization of various schemes of "reconciliation," see
+Shields, The Final Philosophy, p. 340.
+
+
+One of the first evidences of the completeness of this surrender has
+been so well related by the eminent physiologist, Dr. W. B. Carpenter,
+that it may best be given in his own words: "You are familiar with a
+book of considerable value, Dr. W. Smith's Dictionary of the Bible. I
+happened to know the influences under which that dictionary was
+framed. The idea of the publisher and of the editor was to give as much
+scholarship and such results of modern criticism as should be compatible
+with a very judicious conservatism. There was to be no objection
+to geology, but the universality of the Deluge was to be strictly
+maintained. The editor committed the article Deluge to a man of very
+considerable ability, but when the article came to him he found that
+it was so excessively heretical that he could not venture to put it in.
+There was not time for a second article under that head, and if you look
+in that dictionary you will find under the word Deluge a reference to
+Flood. Before Flood came, a second article had been commissioned from a
+source that was believed safely conservative; but when the article came
+in it was found to be worse than the first. A third article was then
+commissioned, and care was taken to secure its 'safety.' If you look
+for the word Flood in the dictionary, you will find a reference to Noah.
+Under that name you will find an article written by a distinguished
+professor of Cambridge, of which I remember that Bishop Colenso said
+to me at the time, 'In a very guarded way the writer concedes the whole
+thing.' You will see by this under what trammels scientific thought has
+laboured in this department of inquiry."(166)
+
+
+     (166) See Official Report of the National Conference of Unitarian and
+other Christian Churches held at Saratoga, 1882, p. 97.
+
+
+A similar surrender was seen when from a new edition of Horne's
+Introduction to the Scriptures, the standard textbook of orthodoxy, its
+accustomed use of fossils to prove the universality of the Deluge was
+quietly dropped.(167)
+
+
+     (167) This was about 1856; see Tylor, Early History of Mankind, p. 329.
+
+
+A like capitulation in the United States was foreshadowed in 1841, when
+an eminent Professor of Biblical Literature and interpretation in the
+most important theological seminary of the Protestant Episcopal Church,
+Dr. Samuel Turner, showed his Christian faith and courage by virtually
+accepting the new view; and the old contention was utterly cast away
+by the thinking men of another great religious body when, at a later
+period, two divines among the most eminent for piety and learning in
+the Methodist Episcopal Church inserted in the Biblical Cyclopaedia,
+published under their supervision, a candid summary of the proofs
+from geology, astronomy, and zoology that the Deluge of Noah was not
+universal, or even widely extended, and this without protest from any
+man of note in any branch of the American Church.(168)
+
+
+     (168) For Dr. Turner, see his Companion to the Book of Genesis, London
+and New York, 1841, pp. 216-219. For McClintock and Strong, see their
+Cyclopaedia of Biblical Knowledge, etc., article Deluge. For similar
+surrenders of the Deluge in various other religious encyclopedias and
+commentaries, see Huxley, Essays on controverted questions, chap. xiii.
+
+
+The time when the struggle was relinquished by enlightened theologians
+of the Roman Catholic Church may be fixed at about 1862, when Reusch,
+Professor of Theology at Bonn, in his work on The Bible and Nature,
+cast off the old diluvial theory and all its supporters, accepting the
+conclusions of science.(169)
+
+
+     (169) See Reusch, Bibel und Natur, chap. xxi.
+
+
+But, though the sacred theory with the Deluge of Noah as a universal
+solvent for geological difficulties was evidently dying, there still
+remained in various quarters a touching fidelity to it. In Roman
+Catholic countries the old theory was widely though quietly cherished,
+and taught from the religious press, the pulpit, and the theological
+professor's chair. Pope Pius IX was doubtless in sympathy with this
+feeling when, about 1850, he forbade the scientific congress of Italy to
+meet at Bologna.(170)
+
+
+     (170) See Whiteside, Italy in the Nineteenth Century, vol. iii, chap.
+xiv.
+
+
+In 1856 Father Debreyne congratulated the theologians of France on their
+admirable attitude: "Instinctively," he says, "they still insist upon
+deriving the fossils from Noah's Flood."(171) In 1875 the Abbe Choyer
+published at Paris and Angers a text-book widely approved by Church
+authorities, in which he took similar ground; and in 1877 the Jesuit
+father Bosizio published at Mayence a treatise on Geology and the
+Deluge, endeavouring to hold the world to the old solution of the
+problem, allowing, indeed, that the "days" of Creation were long
+periods, but making atonement for this concession by sneers at
+Darwin.(172)
+
+
+     (171) See Zoeckler, vol. ii, p. 472.
+
+
+     (172) See Zoeckler, vol. ii, p. 478, and Bosizio, Geologie und die
+Sundfluth, Mayence, 1877, preface, p. xiv.
+
+
+In the Russo-Greek Church, in 1869, Archbishop Macarius, of Lithuania,
+urged the necessity of believing that Creation in six days of ordinary
+time and the Deluge of Noah are the only causes of all that geology
+seeks to explain; and, as late as 1876, another eminent theologian of
+the same Church went even farther, and refused to allow the faithful to
+believe that any change had taken place since "the beginning" mentioned
+in Genesis, when the strata of the earth were laid, tilted, and twisted,
+and the fossils scattered among them by the hand of the Almighty during
+six ordinary days.(173)
+
+
+     (173) See Zoeckler, vol. ii, p. 472, 571, and elsewhere; also citations
+in Reusch and Shields.
+
+
+In the Lutheran branch of the Protestant Church we also find echoes
+of the old belief. Keil, eminent in scriptural interpretation at the
+University of Dorpat, gave forth in 1860 a treatise insisting that
+geology is rendered futile and its explanations vain by two great facts:
+the Curse which drove Adam and Eve out of Eden, and the Flood that
+destroyed all living things save Noah, his family, and the animals in
+the ark. In 1867, Phillippi, and in 1869, Dieterich, both theologians
+of eminence, took virtually the same ground in Germany, the latter
+attempting to beat back the scientific hosts with a phrase apparently
+pithy, but really hollow--the declaration that "modern geology observes
+what is, but has no right to judge concerning the beginning of things."
+As late as 1876, Zugler took a similar view, and a multitude of lesser
+lights, through pulpit and press, brought these antiscientific doctrines
+to bear upon the people at large--the only effect being to arouse grave
+doubts regarding Christianity among thoughtful men, and especially among
+young men, who naturally distrusted a cause using such weapons.
+
+For just at this time the traditional view of the Deluge received its
+death-blow, and in a manner entirely unexpected. By the investigations
+of George Smith among the Assyrian tablets of the British Museum, in
+1872, and by his discoveries just afterward in Assyria, it was put
+beyond a reasonable doubt that a great mass of accounts in Genesis
+are simply adaptations of earlier and especially of Chaldean myths and
+legends. While this proved to be the fact as regards the accounts of
+Creation and the fall of man, it was seen to be most strikingly so as
+regards the Deluge. The eleventh of the twelve tablets, on which the
+most important of these inscriptions was found, was almost wholly
+preserved, and it revealed in this legend, dating from a time far
+earlier than that of Moses, such features peculiar to the childhood of
+the world as the building of the great ship or ark to escape the flood,
+the careful caulking of its seams, the saving of a man beloved of
+Heaven, his selecting and taking with him into the vessel animals of all
+sorts in couples, the impressive final closing of the door, the sending
+forth different birds as the flood abated, the offering of sacrifices
+when the flood had subsided, the joy of the Divine Being who had caused
+the flood as the odour of the sacrifice reached his nostrils; while
+throughout all was shown that partiality for the Chaldean sacred number
+seven which appears so constantly in the Genesis legends and throughout
+the Hebrew sacred books.
+
+Other devoted scholars followed in the paths thus opened--Sayce in
+England, Lenormant in France, Schrader in Germany--with the result that
+the Hebrew account of the Deluge, to which for ages theologians had
+obliged all geological research to conform, was quietly relegated,
+even by most eminent Christian scholars, to the realm of myth and
+legend.(174)
+
+
+     (174) For George Smith, see his Chaldean Account of Genesis, New York,
+1876, especially pp. 36, 263, 286; also his special work on the subject.
+See also Lenormant, Les Origins de l'Histoire, Paris, 1880, chap. viii.
+For Schrader, see his The Cuneiform Inscriptions and the Old Testament,
+Whitehouse's translation, London, 1885, vol. i, pp. 47-49 and 58-60, and
+elsewhere.
+
+
+Sundry feeble attempts to break the force of this discovery, and an
+evidently widespread fear to have it known, have certainly impaired not
+a little the legitimate influence of the Christian clergy.
+
+And yet this adoption of Chaldean myths into the Hebrew Scriptures
+furnishes one of the strongest arguments for the value of our Bible as
+a record of the upward growth of man; for, while the Chaldean legend
+primarily ascribes the Deluge to the mere arbitrary caprice of one among
+many gods (Bel), the Hebrew development of the legend ascribes it to
+the justice, the righteousness, of the Supreme God; thus showing the
+evolution of a higher and nobler sentiment which demanded a moral cause
+adequate to justify such a catastrophe.
+
+Unfortunately, thus far, save in a few of the broader and nobler minds
+among the clergy, the policy of ignoring such new revelations has
+prevailed, and the results of this policy, both in Roman Catholic and in
+Protestant countries, are not far to seek. What the condition of thought
+is among the middle classes of France and Italy needs not to be stated
+here. In Germany, as a typical fact, it may be mentioned that there was
+in the year 1881 church accommodation in the city of Berlin for but two
+per cent of the population, and that even this accommodation was more
+than was needed. This fact is not due to the want of a deep religious
+spirit among the North Germans: no one who has lived among them can
+doubt the existence of such a spirit; but it is due mainly to the fact
+that, while the simple results of scientific investigation have filtered
+down among the people at large, the dominant party in the Lutheran
+Church has steadily refused to recognise this fact, and has persisted in
+imposing on Scripture the fetters of literal and dogmatic interpretation
+which Germany has largely outgrown. A similar danger threatens every
+other country in which the clergy pursue a similar policy. No thinking
+man, whatever may be his religious views, can fail to regret this. A
+thoughtful, reverent, enlightened clergy is a great blessing to any
+country, and anything which undermines their legitimate work of leading
+men out of the worship of material things to the consideration of that
+which is highest is a vast misfortune.(175)
+
+
+     (175) For the foregoing statements regarding Germany the writer relies
+on his personal observation as a student at the University of Berlin in
+1856, as a traveller at various periods afterward, and as Minister of
+the United States in 1879, 1880, and 1881.
+
+
+
+
+IV. FINAL EFFORTS AT COMPROMISE.--THE VICTORY OF SCIENCE COMPLETE.
+
+
+Before concluding, it may be instructive to note a few especially
+desperate attempts at truces or compromises, such as always appear when
+the victory of any science has become absolutely sure. Typical among
+the earliest of these may be mentioned the effort of Carl von Raumer in
+1819. With much pretension to scientific knowledge, but with aspirations
+bounded by the limits of Prussian orthodoxy, he made a laboured attempt
+to produce a statement which, by its vagueness, haziness, and "depth,"
+should obscure the real questions at issue. This statement appeared in
+the shape of an argument, used by Bertrand and others in the previous
+century, to prove that fossil remains of plants in the coal measures
+had never existed as living plants, but had been simply a "result of the
+development of imperfect plant embryos"; and the same misty theory was
+suggested to explain the existence of fossil animals without supposing
+the epochs and changes required by geological science.
+
+In 1837 Wagner sought to uphold this explanation; but it was so clearly
+a mere hollow phrase, unable to bear the weight of the facts to be
+accounted for, that it was soon given up.
+
+Similar attempts were made throughout Europe, the most noteworthy
+appearing in England. In 1853 was issued an anonymous work having as its
+title A Brief and Complete Refutation of the Anti-Scriptural Theory of
+Geologists: the author having revived an old idea, and put a spark
+of life into it--this idea being that "all the organisms found in the
+depths of the earth were made on the first of the six creative days, as
+models for the plants and animals to be created on the third, fifth, and
+sixth days."(176)
+
+
+     (176) See Zoeckler, vol. ii, p. 475.
+
+
+But while these attempts to preserve the old theory as to fossil remains
+of lower animals were thus pressed, there appeared upon the geological
+field a new scientific column far more terrible to the old doctrines
+than any which had been seen previously.
+
+For, just at the close of the first quarter of the nineteenth century,
+geologists began to examine the caves and beds of drift in various
+parts of the world; and within a few years from that time a series
+of discoveries began in France, in Belgium, in England, in Brazil, in
+Sicily, in India, in Egypt, and in America, which established the
+fact that a period of time much greater than any which had before been
+thought of had elapsed since the first human occupation of the earth.
+The chronologies of Archbishop Usher, Petavius, Bossuet, and the other
+great authorities on which theology had securely leaned, were found
+worthless. It was clearly seen that, no matter how well based upon the
+Old Testament genealogies and lives of the patriarchs, all these systems
+must go for nothing. The most conservative geologists were gradually
+obliged to admit that man had been upon the earth not merely six
+thousand, or sixty thousand, or one hundred and sixty thousand years.
+And when, in 1863, Sir Charles Lyell, in his book on The Antiquity of
+Man, retracted solemnly his earlier view--yielding with a reluctance
+almost pathetic, but with a thoroughness absolutely convincing--the last
+stronghold of orthodoxy in this field fell.(177)
+
+
+     (177) See Prof. Marsh's address as President of the Society for the
+Advancement of Science, in 1879; and for a development of the matter,
+see the chapters on The Antiquity of Man and Egyptology and the Fall of
+Man and Anthropology, in this work.
+
+
+The supporters of a theory based upon the letter of Scripture, who
+had so long taken the offensive, were now obliged to fight upon the
+defensive and at fearful odds. Various lines of defence were taken;
+but perhaps the most pathetic effort was that made in the year 1857,
+in England, by Gosse. As a naturalist he had rendered great services to
+zoological science, but he now concentrated his energies upon one last
+effort to save the literal interpretation of Genesis and the theological
+structure built upon it. In his work entitled Omphalos he developed the
+theory previously urged by Granville Penn, and asserted a new principle
+called "prochronism." In accordance with this, all things were created
+by the Almighty hand literally within the six days, each made up of "the
+evening and the morning," and each great branch of creation was brought
+into existence in an instant. Accepting a declaration of Dr. Ure, that
+"neither reason nor revelation will justify us in extending the origin
+of the material system beyond six thousand years from our own days,"
+Gosse held that all the evidences of convulsive changes and long epochs
+in strata, rocks, minerals, and fossils are simply "APPEARANCES"--only
+that and nothing more. Among these mere "appearances," all created
+simultaneously, were the glacial furrows and scratches on rocks, the
+marks of retreat on rocky masses, as at Niagara, the tilted and twisted
+strata, the piles of lava from extinct volcanoes, the fossils of every
+sort in every part of the earth, the foot-tracks of birds and reptiles,
+the half-digested remains of weaker animals found in the fossilized
+bodies of the stronger, the marks of hyenas' teeth on fossilized bones
+found in various caves, and even the skeleton of the Siberian mammoth
+at St. Petersburg with lumps of flesh bearing the marks of wolves'
+teeth--all these, with all gaps and imperfections, he urged mankind
+to believe came into being in an instant. The preface of the work
+is especially touching, and it ends with the prayer that science and
+Scripture may be reconciled by his theory, and "that the God of truth
+will deign so to use it, and if he do, to him be all the glory."(177) At
+the close of the whole book Gosse declared: "The field is left clear and
+undisputed for the one witness on the opposite side, whose testimony is
+as follows: 'In six days Jehovah made heaven and earth, the sea, and all
+that in them is.'" This quotation he placed in capital letters, as the
+final refutation of all that the science of geology had built.
+
+
+     (177) See Gosse, Omphalos, London, 1857, p. 5, and passim; and for a
+passage giving the keynote of the whole, with a most farcical note on
+coprolites, see pp. 353, 354.
+
+
+In other parts of Europe desperate attempts were made even later to
+save the letter of our sacred books by the revival of a theory in some
+respects more striking. To shape this theory to recent needs, vague
+reminiscences of a text in Job regarding fire beneath the earth, and
+vague conceptions of speculations made by Humboldt and Laplace, were
+mingled with Jewish tradition. Out of the mixture thus obtained Schubert
+developed the idea that the Satanic "principalities and powers" formerly
+inhabiting our universe plunged it into the chaos from which it was
+newly created by a process accurately described in Genesis. Rougemont
+made the earth one of the "morning stars" of Job, reduced to chaos by
+Lucifer and his followers, and thence developed in accordance with the
+nebular hypothesis. Kurtz evolved from this theory an opinion that the
+geological disturbances were caused by the opposition of the devil to
+the rescue of our universe from chaos by the Almighty. Delitzsch put a
+similar idea into a more scholastic jargon; but most desperate of all
+were the statements of Dr. Anton Westermeyer, of Munich, in The Old
+Testament vindicated from Modern Infidel Objections. The following
+passage will serve to show his ideas: "By the fructifying brooding of
+the Divine Spirit on the waters of the deep, creative forces began to
+stir; the devils who inhabited the primeval darkness and considered it
+their own abode saw that they were to be driven from their possessions,
+or at least that their place of habitation was to be contracted, and
+they therefore tried to frustrate God's plan of creation and exert all
+that remained to them of might and power to hinder or at least to mar
+the new creation." So came into being "the horrible and destructive
+monsters, these caricatures and distortions of creation," of which
+we have fossil remains. Dr. Westermeyer goes on to insist that "whole
+generations called into existence by God succumbed to the corruption of
+the devil, and for that reason had to be destroyed"; and that "in the
+work of the six days God caused the devil to feel his power in all
+earnest, and made Satan's enterprise appear miserable and vain."(178)
+
+
+     (178) See Shields's Final Philosophy, pp. 340 et seq., and Reusch's
+Nature and the Bible (English translation, 1886), vol. i, pp. 318-320.
+
+
+Such was the last important assault upon the strongholds of geological
+science in Germany; and, in view of this and others of the same kind, it
+is little to be wondered at that when, in 1870, Johann Silberschlag made
+an attempt to again base geology upon the Deluge of Noah, he found such
+difficulties that, in a touching passage, he expressed a desire to get
+back to the theory that fossils were "sports of Nature."(179)
+
+
+     (179) See Reusch, vol. i, p. 264.
+
+
+But the most noted among efforts to keep geology well within the
+letter of Scripture is of still more recent date. In the year 1885 Mr.
+Gladstone found time, amid all his labours and cares as the greatest
+parliamentary leader in England, to take the field in the struggle for
+the letter of Genesis against geology.
+
+On the face of it his effort seemed Quixotic, for he confessed at
+the outset that in science he was "utterly destitute of that kind of
+knowledge which carries authority," and his argument soon showed that
+this confession was entirely true.
+
+But he had some other qualities of which much might be expected: great
+skill in phrase-making, great shrewdness in adapting the meanings of
+single words to conflicting necessities in discussion, wonderful power
+in erecting showy structures of argument upon the smallest basis
+of fact, and a facility almost preternatural in "explaining away"
+troublesome realities. So striking was his power in this last respect,
+that a humorous London chronicler once advised a bigamist, as his only
+hope, to induce Mr. Gladstone to explain away one of his wives.
+
+At the basis of this theologico-geological structure Mr. Gladstone
+placed what he found in the text of Genesis: "A grand fourfold division"
+of animated Nature "set forth in an orderly succession of times." And he
+arranged this order and succession of creation as follows: "First,
+the water population; secondly, the air population; thirdly, the land
+population of animals; fourthly, the land population consummated in
+man."
+
+His next step was to slide in upon this basis the apparently harmless
+proposition that this division and sequence "is understood to have been
+so affirmed in our time by natural science that it may be taken as a
+demonstrated conclusion and established fact."
+
+Finally, upon these foundations he proceeded to build an argument out
+of the coincidences thus secured between the record in the Hebrew sacred
+books and the truths revealed by science as regards this order and
+sequence, and he easily arrived at the desired conclusion with which he
+crowned the whole structure, namely, as regards the writer of Genesis,
+that "his knowledge was divine."(180)
+
+
+     (180) See Mr. Gladstone's Dawn of Creation and Worship, a reply to Dr.
+Reville, in the Nineteenth Century for November, 1885.
+
+
+Such was the skeleton of the structure; it was abundantly decorated with
+the rhetoric in which Mr. Gladstone is so skilful an artificer, and
+it towered above "the average man" as a structure beautiful and
+invincible--like some Chinese fortress in the nineteenth century, faced
+with porcelain and defended with crossbows.
+
+Its strength was soon seen to be unreal. In an essay admirable in its
+temper, overwhelming in its facts, and absolutely convincing in its
+argument, Prof. Huxley, late President of the Royal Society, and
+doubtless the most eminent contemporary authority on the scientific
+questions concerned, took up the matter.
+
+Mr. Gladstone's first proposition, that the sacred writings give us a
+great "fourfold division" created "in an orderly succession of times,"
+Prof. Huxley did not presume to gainsay.
+
+As to Mr. Gladstone's second proposition, that "this great fourfold
+division... created in an orderly succession of times... has been so
+affirmed in our own time by natural science that it may be taken as a
+demonstrated conclusion and established fact," Prof. Huxley showed
+that, as a matter of fact, no such "fourfold division" and "orderly
+succession" exist; that, so far from establishing Mr. Gladstone's
+assumption that the population of water, air, and land followed each
+other in the order given, "all the evidence we possess goes to prove
+that they did not"; that the distribution of fossils through the various
+strata proves that some land animals originated before sea animals;
+that there has been a mixing of sea, land, and air "population" utterly
+destructive to the "great fourfold division" and to the creation "in an
+orderly succession of times"; that, so far is the view presented in the
+sacred text, as stated by Mr. Gladstone, from having been "so
+affirmed in our own time by natural science, that it may be taken as
+a demonstrated conclusion and established fact" that Mr. Gladstone's
+assertion is "directly contradictory to facts known to every one who is
+acquainted with the elements of natural science"; that Mr. Gladstone's
+only geological authority, Cuvier, had died more than fifty years
+before, when geological science was in its infancy (and he might have
+added, when it was necessary to make every possible concession to
+the Church); and, finally, he challenged Mr. Gladstone to produce any
+contemporary authority in geological science who would support his
+so-called scriptural view. And when, in a rejoinder, Mr. Gladstone
+attempted to support his view on the authority of Prof. Dana, Prof.
+Huxley had no difficulty in showing from Prof. Dana's works that Mr.
+Gladstone's inference was utterly unfounded. But, while the fabric
+reared by Mr. Gladstone had been thus undermined by Huxley on the
+scientific side, another opponent began an attack from the biblical
+side. The Rev. Canon Driver, professor at Mr. Gladstone's own
+University of Oxford, took up the question in the light of scriptural
+interpretation. In regard to the comparative table drawn up by Sir J. W.
+Dawson, showing the supposed correspondence between the scriptural and
+the geological order of creation, Canon Driver said: "The two series
+are evidently at variance. The geological record contains no evidence
+of clearly defined periods corresponding to the 'days' of Genesis. In
+Genesis, vegetation is complete two days before animal life appears.
+Geology shows that they appear simultaneously--even if animal life
+does not appear first. In Genesis, birds appear together with aquatic
+creatures, and precede all land animals; according to the evidence of
+geology, birds are unknown till a period much later than that at which
+aquatic creatures (including fishes and amphibia) abound, and they are
+preceded by numerous species of land animals--in particular, by insects
+and other 'creeping things.'" Of the Mosaic account of the existence
+of vegetation before the creation of the sun, Canon Driver said, "No
+reconciliation of this representation with the data of science has yet
+been found"; and again: "From all that has been said, however reluctant
+we may be to make the admission, only one conclusion seems possible.
+Read without prejudice or bias, the narrative of Genesis i, creates an
+impression at variance with the facts revealed by science." The
+eminent professor ends by saying that the efforts at reconciliation are
+"different modes of obliterating the characteristic features of Genesis,
+and of reading into it a view which it does not express."
+
+Thus fell Mr. Gladstone's fabric of coincidences between the "great
+fourfold division" in Genesis and the facts ascertained by geology.
+Prof. Huxley had shattered the scientific parts of the structure, Prof.
+Driver had removed its biblical foundations, and the last great fortress
+of the opponents of unfettered scientific investigation was in ruins.
+
+In opposition to all such attempts we may put a noble utterance by
+a clergyman who has probably done more to save what is essential in
+Christianity among English-speaking people than any other ecclesiastic
+of his time. The late Dean of Westminster, Dr. Arthur Stanley, was
+widely known and beloved on both continents. In his memorial sermon
+after the funeral of Sir Charles Lyell he said: "It is now clear to
+diligent students of the Bible that the first and second chapters of
+Genesis contain two narratives of the creation side by side, differing
+from each other in almost every particular of time and place and order.
+It is well known that, when the science of geology first arose, it was
+involved in endless schemes of attempted reconciliation with the
+letter of Scripture. There were, there are perhaps still, two modes of
+reconciliation of Scripture and science, which have been each in their
+day attempted, AND EACH HAS TOTALLY AND DESERVEDLY FAILED. One is the
+endeavour to wrest the words of the Bible from their natural meaning and
+FORCE IT TO SPEAK THE LANGUAGE OF SCIENCE." And again, speaking of the
+earliest known example, which was the interpolation of the word "not"
+in Leviticus xi, 6, he continues: "This is the earliest instance of THE
+FALSIFICATION OF SCRIPTURE TO MEET THE DEMANDS OF SCIENCE; and it has
+been followed in later times by the various efforts which have been
+made to twist the earlier chapters of the book of Genesis into APPARENT
+agreement with the last results of geology--representing days not to be
+days, morning and evening not to be morning and evening, the Deluge not
+to be the Deluge, and the ark not to be the ark."
+
+After a statement like this we may fitly ask, Which is the more likely
+to strengthen Christianity for its work in the twentieth century which
+we are now about to enter--a large, manly, honest, fearless utterance
+like this of Arthur Stanley, or hair-splitting sophistries, bearing
+in their every line the germs of failure, like those attempted by Mr.
+Gladstone?
+
+The world is finding that the scientific revelation of creation is ever
+more and more in accordance with worthy conceptions of that great Power
+working in and through the universe. More and more it is seen that
+inspiration has never ceased, and that its prophets and priests are not
+those who work to fit the letter of its older literature to the needs
+of dogmas and sects, but those, above all others, who patiently,
+fearlessly, and reverently devote themselves to the search for truth as
+truth, in the faith that there is a Power in the universe wise enough
+to make truth-seeking safe and good enough to make truth-telling
+useful.(181)
+
+
+
+     (181) For the Huxley-Gladstone controversy, see The Nineteenth Century
+for 1885-'86. For Canon Driver, see his article, The Cosmogony of
+Genesis, in The Expositor for January, 1886.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.  THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN EGYPTOLOGY, AND ASSYRIOLOGY.
+
+
+
+
+I. THE SACRED CHRONOLOGY.
+
+
+In the great ranges of investigation which bear most directly upon the
+origin of man, there are two in which Science within the last few years
+has gained final victories. The significance of these in changing, and
+ultimately in reversing, one of the greatest currents of theological
+thought, can hardly be overestimated; not even the tide set in motion by
+Cusa, Copernicus, and Galileo was more powerful to bring in a new epoch
+of belief.
+
+The first of these conquests relates to the antiquity of man on the
+earth.
+
+The fathers of the early Christian Church, receiving all parts of our
+sacred books as equally inspired, laid little, if any, less stress
+on the myths, legends, genealogies, and tribal, family, and personal
+traditions contained in the Old and the New Testaments, than upon the
+most powerful appeals, the most instructive apologues, and the most
+lofty poems of prophets, psalmists, and apostles. As to the age of our
+planet and the life of man upon it, they found in the Bible a carefully
+recorded series of periods, extending from Adam to the building of the
+Temple at Jerusalem, the length of each period being explicitly given.
+
+Thus they had a biblical chronology--full, consecutive, and
+definite--extending from the first man created to an event of known
+date well within ascertained profane history; as a result, the early
+Christian commentators arrived at conclusions varying somewhat, but in
+the main agreeing. Some, like Origen, Eusebius, Lactantius, Clement
+of Alexandria, and the great fathers generally of the first three
+centuries, dwelling especially upon the Septuagint version of the
+Scriptures, thought that man's creation took place about six thousand
+years before the Christian era. Strong confirmation of this view was
+found in a simple piece of purely theological reasoning: for, just as
+the seven candlesticks of the Apocalypse were long held to prove the
+existence of seven heavenly bodies revolving about the earth, so it was
+felt that the six days of creation prefigured six thousand years during
+which the earth in its first form was to endure; and that, as the first
+Adam came on the sixth day, Christ, the second Adam, had come at the
+sixth millennial period. Theophilus, Bishop of Antioch, in the second
+century clinched this argument with the text, "One day is with the Lord
+as a thousand years."
+
+On the other hand, Eusebius and St. Jerome, dwelling more especially
+upon the Hebrew text, which we are brought up to revere, thought
+that man's origin took place at a somewhat shorter period before the
+Christian era; and St. Jerome's overwhelming authority made this the
+dominant view throughout western Europe during fifteen centuries.
+
+The simplicity of these great fathers as regards chronology is
+especially reflected from the tables of Eusebius. In these, Moses,
+Joshua, and Bacchus,--Deborah, Orpheus, and the Amazons,--Abimelech,
+the Sphinx, and Oedipus, appear together as personages equally real, and
+their positions in chronology equally ascertained.
+
+At times great bitterness was aroused between those holding the longer
+and those holding the shorter chronology, but after all the difference
+between them, as we now see, was trivial; and it may be broadly stated
+that in the early Church, "always, everywhere, and by all," it was held
+as certain, upon the absolute warrant of Scripture, that man was created
+from four to six thousand years before the Christian era.
+
+To doubt this, and even much less than this, was to risk damnation.
+St. Augustine insisted that belief in the antipodes and in the longer
+duration of the earth than six thousand years were deadly heresies,
+equally hostile to Scripture. Philastrius, the friend of St. Ambrose and
+St. Augustine, whose fearful catalogue of heresies served as a guide
+to intolerance throughout the Middle Ages, condemned with the same holy
+horror those who expressed doubt as to the orthodox number of years
+since the beginning of the world, and those who doubted an earthquake to
+be the literal voice of an angry God, or who questioned the plurality of
+the heavens, or who gainsaid the statement that God brings out the stars
+from his treasures and hangs them up in the solid firmament above the
+earth every night.
+
+About the beginning of the seventh century Isidore of Seville, the great
+theologian of his time, took up the subject. He accepted the dominant
+view not only of Hebrew but of all other chronologies, without anything
+like real criticism. The childlike faith of his system may be imagined
+from his summaries which follow. He tells us:
+
+"Joseph lived one hundred and five years. Greece began to cultivate
+grain."
+
+"The Jews were in slavery in Egypt one hundred and forty-four years.
+Atlas discovered astrology."
+
+"Joshua ruled for twenty-seven years. Ericthonius yoked horses
+together."
+
+"Othniel, forty years. Cadmus introduced letters into Greece."
+
+"Deborah, forty years. Apollo discovered the art of medicine and
+invented the cithara."
+
+"Gideon, forty years. Mercury invented the lyre and gave it to Orpheus."
+
+Reasoning in this general way, Isidore kept well under the longer date;
+and, the great theological authority of southern Europe having thus
+spoken, the question was virtually at rest throughout Christendom for
+nearly a hundred years.
+
+Early in the eighth century the Venerable Bede took up the problem.
+Dwelling especially upon the received Hebrew text of the Old Testament,
+he soon entangled himself in very serious difficulties; but, in spite of
+the great fathers of the first three centuries, he reduced the antiquity
+of man on the earth by nearly a thousand years, and, in spite of
+mutterings against him as coming dangerously near a limit which made the
+theological argument from the six days of creation to the six ages of
+the world look doubtful, his authority had great weight, and did much to
+fix western Europe in its allegiance to the general system laid down by
+Eusebius and Jerome.
+
+In the twelfth century this belief was re-enforced by a tide of thought
+from a very different quarter. Rabbi Moses Maimonides and other Jewish
+scholars, by careful study of the Hebrew text, arrived at conclusions
+diminishing the antiquity of man still further, and thus gave
+strength throughout the Middle Ages to the shorter chronology: it was
+incorporated into the sacred science of Christianity; and Vincent of
+Beauvais, in his great Speculum Historiale, forming part of that still
+more enormous work intended to sum up all the knowledge possessed by the
+ages of faith, placed the creation of man at about four thousand years
+before our era.(182)
+
+
+     (182) For a table summing up the periods, from Adam to the building of
+the Temple, explicitly given in the Scriptures, see the admirable paper
+on The Pope and the Bible, in The Contemporary Review for April, 1893.
+For the date of man's creation as given by leading chronologists in
+various branches of the Church, see L'Art de Verifier les Dates,
+Paris, 1819, vol. i, pp. 27 et seq. In this edition there are sundry
+typographical errors; compare with Wallace, True Age of the World,
+London, 1844. As to preference for the longer computation by the fathers
+of the Church, see Clinton, Fasti Hellenici, vol. ii, p. 291. For the
+sacred significance of the six days of creation in ascertaining
+the antiquity of man, see especially Eichen, Geschichte der
+mittelalterlichen Weltanschauung; also Wallace, True Age of the World,
+pp. 2,3. For the views of St. Augustine, see Topinard, Anthropologie,
+citing the De Civ. Dei., lib. xvi, c. viii, c. x. For the views of
+Philastrius, see the De Hoeresibus, c. 102, 112, et passim, in Migne,
+tome xii. For Eusebius's simple credulity, see the tables in Palmer's
+Egyptian Chronicles, vol. ii, pp. 828, 829. For Bede, see Usher's
+Chronologia Sacra, cited in Wallace, True Age of the World, p. 35. For
+Isidore of Seville, see the Etymologia, lib. v, c. 39; also lib. iii, in
+Migne, tome lxxxii.
+
+
+At the Reformation this view was not disturbed. The same manner of
+accepting the sacred text which led Luther, Melanchthon, and the great
+Protestant leaders generally, to oppose the Copernican theory, fixed
+them firmly in this biblical chronology; the keynote was sounded for
+them by Luther when he said, "We know, on the authority of Moses,
+that longer ago than six thousand years the world did not exist."
+Melanchthon, more exact, fixed the creation of man at 3963 B.C.
+
+But the great Christian scholars continued the old endeavour to make the
+time of man's origin more precise: there seems to have been a sort
+of fascination in the subject which developed a long array of
+chronologists, all weighing the minutest indications in our sacred
+books, until the Protestant divine De Vignolles, who had given forty
+years to the study of biblical chronology, declared in 1738 that he had
+gathered no less than two hundred computations based upon Scripture, and
+no two alike.
+
+As to the Roman Church, about 1580 there was published, by authority of
+Pope Gregory XIII, the Roman Martyrology, and this, both as originally
+published and as revised in 1640 under Pope Urban VIII, declared that
+the creation of man took place 5199 years before Christ.
+
+But of all who gave themselves up to these chronological studies, the
+man who exerted the most powerful influence upon the dominant nations of
+Christendom was Archbishop Usher. In 1650 he published his Annals of the
+Ancient and New Testaments, and it at once became the greatest authority
+for all English-speaking peoples. Usher was a man of deep and wide
+theological learning, powerful in controversy; and his careful
+conclusion, after years of the most profound study of the Hebrew
+Scriptures, was that man was created 4004 years before the Christian
+era. His verdict was widely received as final; his dates were inserted
+in the margins of the authorized version of the English Bible, and
+were soon practically regarded as equally inspired with the sacred text
+itself: to question them seriously was to risk preferment in the Church
+and reputation in the world at large.
+
+The same adhesion to the Hebrew Scriptures which had influenced Usher
+brought leading men of the older Church to the same view: men who would
+have burned each other at the stake for their differences on other
+points, agreed on this: Melanchthon and Tostatus, Lightfoot and Jansen,
+Salmeron and Scaliger, Petavius and Kepler, inquisitors and reformers,
+Jesuits and Jansenists, priests and rabbis, stood together in the belief
+that the creation of man was proved by Scripture to have taken place
+between 3900 and 4004 years before Christ.
+
+In spite of the severe pressure of this line of authorities, extending
+from St. Jerome and Eusebius to Usher and Petavius, in favour of this
+scriptural chronology, even devoted Christian scholars had sometimes
+felt obliged to revolt. The first great source of difficulty was
+increased knowledge regarding the Egyptian monuments. As far back as
+the last years of the sixteenth century Joseph Scaliger had done what
+he could to lay the foundations of a more scientific treatment of
+chronology, insisting especially that the historical indications in
+Persia, in Babylon, and above all in Egypt, should be brought to bear
+on the question. More than that, he had the boldness to urge that the
+chronological indications of the Hebrew Scriptures should be fully and
+critically discussed in the light of Egyptian and other records, without
+any undue bias from theological considerations. His idea may well be
+called inspired; yet it had little effect as regards a true view of the
+antiquity of man, even upon himself, for the theological bias prevailed
+above all his reasonings, even in his own mind. Well does a brilliant
+modern writer declare that, "among the multitude of strong men in modern
+times abdicating their reason at the command of their prejudices, Joseph
+Scaliger is perhaps the most striking example." Early in the following
+century Sir Walter Raleigh, in his History of the World (1603-1616),
+pointed out the danger of adhering to the old system. He, too, foresaw
+one of the results of modern investigation, stating it in these words,
+which have the ring of prophetic inspiration: "For in Abraham's time
+all the then known parts of the world were developed.... Egypt had many
+magnificent cities,... and these not built with sticks, but of hewn
+stone,... which magnificence needed a parent of more antiquity than
+these other men have supposed." In view of these considerations Raleigh
+followed the chronology of the Septuagint version, which enabled him to
+give to the human race a few more years than were usually allowed.
+
+About the middle of the seventeenth century Isaac Vossius, one of the
+most eminent scholars of Christendom, attempted to bring the prevailing
+belief into closer accordance with ascertained facts, but, save by a
+chosen few, his efforts were rejected. In some parts of Europe a man
+holding new views on chronology was by no means safe from bodily harm.
+As an example of the extreme pressure exerted by the old theological
+system at times upon honest scholars, we may take the case of La
+Peyrere, who about the middle of the seventeenth century put forth his
+book on the Pre-Adamites--an attempt to reconcile sundry well-known
+difficulties in Scripture by claiming that man existed on earth before
+the time of Adam. He was taken in hand at once; great theologians rushed
+forward to attack him from all parts of Europe; within fifty years
+thirty-six different refutations of his arguments had appeared;
+the Parliament of Paris burned the book, and the Grand Vicar of the
+archdiocese of Mechlin threw him into prison and kept him there until
+he was forced, not only to retract his statements, but to abjure his
+Protestantism.
+
+In England, opposition to the growing truth was hardly less earnest.
+Especially strong was Pearson, afterward Master of Trinity and Bishop
+of Chester. In his treatise on the Creed, published in 1659, which has
+remained a theologic classic, he condemned those who held the earth to
+be more than fifty-six hundred years old, insisted that the first man
+was created just six days later, declared that the Egyptian records were
+forged, and called all Christians to turn from them to "the infallible
+annals of the Spirit of God."
+
+But, in spite of warnings like these, we see the new idea cropping out
+in various parts of Europe. In 1672, Sir John Marsham published a work
+in which he showed himself bold and honest. After describing the heathen
+sources of Oriental history, he turns to the Christian writers,
+and, having used the history of Egypt to show that the great Church
+authorities were not exact, he ends one important argument with the
+following words: "Thus the most interesting antiquities of Egypt have
+been involved in the deepest obscurity by the very interpreters of
+her chronology, who have jumbled everything up (qui omnia susque deque
+permiscuerunt), so as to make them match with their own reckonings
+of Hebrew chronology. Truly a very bad example, and quite unworthy of
+religious writers."
+
+This sturdy protest of Sir John against the dominant system and against
+the "jumbling" by which Eusebius had endeavoured to cut down ancient
+chronology within safe and sound orthodox limits, had little effect.
+Though eminent chronologists of the eighteenth century, like Jackson,
+Hales, and Drummond, gave forth multitudes of ponderous volumes pleading
+for a period somewhat longer than that generally allowed, and
+insisting that the received Hebrew text was grossly vitiated as
+regards chronology, even this poor favour was refused them; the mass of
+believers found it more comfortable to hold fast the faith committed to
+them by Usher, and it remained settled that man was created about four
+thousand years before our era.
+
+To those who wished even greater precision, Dr. John Lightfoot,
+Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, the great rabbinical
+scholar of his time, gave his famous demonstration from our sacred books
+that "heaven and earth, centre and circumference, were created together,
+in the same instant, and clouds full of water," and that "this work took
+place and man was created by the Trinity on the twenty-third of October,
+4004 B.C., at nine o'clock in the morning."
+
+This tide of theological reasoning rolled on through the eighteenth
+century, swollen by the biblical researches of leading commentators,
+Catholic and Protestant, until it came in much majesty and force into
+our own nineteenth century. At the very beginning of the century it
+gained new strength from various great men in the Church, among whom may
+be especially named Dr. Adam Clarke, who declared that, "to preclude the
+possibility of a mistake, the unerring Spirit of God directed Moses in
+the selection of his facts and the ascertaining of his dates."
+
+All opposition to the received view seemed broken down, and as late as
+1835--indeed, as late as 1850--came an announcement in the work of one
+of the most eminent Egyptologists, Sir J. G. Wilkinson, to the
+effect that he had modified the results he had obtained from Egyptian
+monuments, in order that his chronology might not interfere with the
+received date of the Deluge of Noah.(183)
+
+
+     (183) For Lightfoot, see his Prolegomena relating to the age of the
+world at the birth of Christ; see also in the edition of his works,
+London, 1822, vol. 4, pp. 64, 112. For Scaliger, see in the De
+Emendatione Temporum, 1583; also Mark Pattison, Essays, Oxford, 1889,
+vol. i, pp. 162 et seq. For Raleigh's misgivings, see his History of the
+World, London, 1614, p. 227, book ii of part i, section 7 of chapter
+i; also Clinton's Fasti Hellenici, vol. ii, p. 293. For Usher, see
+his Annales Vet. et Nov. Test., London, 1650. For Pearson, see his
+Exposition of the Creed, sixth edition, London, 1692, pp. 59 et seq.
+For Marsham, see his Chronicus Canon Aegypticus, Ebraicus, Graecus,
+et Disquisitiones, London, 1672. For La Peyrere, see especially
+Quatrefarges, in Revue de Deux Mondes for 1861; also other chapters in
+this work. For Jackson, Hales, and others, see Wallace's True Age of
+the World. For Wilkinson, see various editions of his work on Egypt. For
+Vignolles, see Leblois, vol. iii, p. 617. As to the declaration in favor
+of the recent origin of man, sanctioned by Popes Gregory XIII and Urban
+VIII, see Strachius, cited in Wallace, p. 97. For the general agreement
+of Church authorities, as stated, see L'Art de Verifier les Dates, as
+above. As to difficulties of scriptural chronology, see Ewald, History
+of Israel, English translation, London, 1883, pp. 204 et seq.
+
+
+
+
+
+II. THE NEW CHRONOLOGY.
+
+
+But all investigators were not so docile as Wilkinson, and there soon
+came a new train of scientific thought which rapidly undermined all this
+theological chronology. Not to speak of other noted men, we have early
+in the present century Young, Champollion, and Rosellini, beginning a
+new epoch in the study of the Egyptian monuments. Nothing could be more
+cautious than their procedure, but the evidence was soon overwhelming in
+favour of a vastly longer existence of man in the Nile Valley than
+could be made to agree with even the longest duration then allowed by
+theologians. For, in spite of all the suppleness of men like Wilkinson,
+it became evident that, whatever system of scriptural chronology was
+adopted, Egypt was the seat of a flourishing civilization at a period
+before the "Flood of Noah," and that no such flood had ever interrupted
+it. This was bad, but worse remained behind: it was soon clear that
+the civilization of Egypt began earlier than the time assigned for
+the creation of man, even according to the most liberal of the sacred
+chronologists.
+
+As time went on, this became more and more evident. The long duration
+assigned to human civilization in the fragments of Manetho, the Egyptian
+scribe at Thebes in the third century B.C., was discovered to be more
+accordant with truth than the chronologies of the great theologians;
+and, as the present century has gone on, scientific results have
+been reached absolutely fatal to the chronological view based by the
+universal Church upon Scripture for nearly two thousand years.
+
+As is well known, the first of the Egyptian kings of whom mention is
+made upon the monuments of the Nile Valley is Mena, or Menes. Manetho
+had given a statement, according to which Mena must have lived nearly
+six thousand years before the Christian era. This was looked upon for a
+long time as utterly inadmissible, as it was so clearly at variance
+with the chronology of our own sacred books; but, as time went on, large
+fragments of the original work of Manetho were more carefully studied
+and distinguished from corrupt transcriptions, the lists of kings at
+Karnak, Sacquarah, and the two temples at Abydos were brought to light,
+and the lists of court architects were discovered. Among all these
+monuments the scholar who visits Egypt is most impressed by the
+sculptured tablets giving the lists of kings. Each shows the monarch of
+the period doing homage to the long line of his ancestors. Each of these
+sculptured monarchs has near him a tablet bearing his name. That great
+care was always taken to keep these imposing records correct is certain;
+the loyalty of subjects, the devotion of priests, and the family pride
+of kings were all combined in this; and how effective this care was,
+is seen in the fact that kings now known to be usurpers are carefully
+omitted. The lists of court architects, extending over the period from
+Seti to Darius, throw a flood of light over the other records.
+
+Comparing, then, all these sources, and applying an average from the
+lengths of the long series of well-known reigns to the reigns preceding,
+the most careful and cautious scholars have satisfied themselves that
+the original fragments of Manetho represent the work of a man honest and
+well informed, and, after making all allowances for discrepancies and
+the overlapping of reigns, it has become clear that the period known as
+the reign of Mena must be fixed at more than three thousand years
+B.C. In this the great Egyptologists of our time concur. Mariette,
+the eminent French authority, puts the date at 5004 B.C.; Brugsch, the
+leading German authority, puts it at about 4500 B.C.; and Meyer, the
+latest and most cautious of the historians of antiquity, declares 3180
+B.C. the latest possible date that can be assigned it. With these
+dates the foremost English authorities, Sayce and Flinders Petrie,
+substantially agree. This view is also confirmed on astronomical grounds
+by Mr. Lockyer, the Astronomer Royal. We have it, then, as the result of
+a century of work by the most acute and trained Egyptologists, and with
+the inscriptions upon the temples and papyri before them, both of which
+are now read with as much facility as many medieval manuscripts, that
+the reign of Mena must be placed more than five thousand years ago.
+
+But the significance of this conclusion can not be fully understood
+until we bring into connection with it some other facts revealed by the
+Egyptian monuments.
+
+The first of these is that which struck Sir Walter Raleigh, that,
+even in the time of the first dynasties in the Nile Valley, a high
+civilization had already been developed. Take, first, man himself:
+we find sculptured upon the early monuments types of the various
+races--Egyptians, Israelites, negroes, and Libyans--as clearly
+distinguishable in these paintings and sculptures of from four to six
+thousand years ago as the same types are at the present day. No one
+can look at these sculptures upon the Egyptian monuments, or even the
+drawings of them, as given by Lepsius or Prisse d' Avennes, without
+being convinced that they indicate, even at that remote period, a
+difference of races so marked that long previous ages must have been
+required to produce it.
+
+The social condition of Egypt revealed in these early monuments of art
+forces us to the same conclusion. Those earliest monuments show that a
+very complex society had even then been developed. We not only have a
+separation between the priestly and military orders, but agriculturists,
+manufacturers, and traders, with a whole series of subdivisions in
+each of these classes. The early tombs show us sculptured and painted
+representations of a daily life which even then had been developed into
+a vast wealth and variety of grades, forms, and usages.
+
+Take, next, the political and military condition. One fact out of many
+reveals a policy which must have been the result of long experience.
+Just as now, at the end of the nineteenth century, the British
+Government, having found that they can not rely upon the native
+Egyptians for the protection of the country, are drilling the negroes
+from the interior of Africa as soldiers, so the celebrated inscription
+of Prince Una, as far back as the sixth dynasty, speaks of the Maksi or
+negroes levied and drilled by tens of thousands for the Egyptian army.
+
+Take, next, engineering. Here we find very early operations in the way
+of canals, dikes, and great public edifices, so bold in conception and
+thorough in execution as to fill our greatest engineers of these days
+with astonishment. The quarrying, conveyance, cutting, jointing, and
+polishing of the enormous blocks in the interior of the Great Pyramid
+alone are the marvel of the foremost stone-workers of our century.
+
+As regards architecture, we find not only the pyramids, which date from
+the very earliest period of Egyptian history, and which are to this hour
+the wonder of the world for size, for boldness, for exactness, and for
+skilful contrivance, but also the temples, with long ranges of
+colossal columns wrought in polished granite, with wonderful beauty of
+ornamentation, with architraves and roofs vast in size and exquisite in
+adjustment, which by their proportions tax the imagination, and lead the
+beholder to ask whether all this can be real.
+
+As to sculpture, we have not only the great Sphinx of Gizeh, so
+marvellous in its boldness and dignity, dating from the very first
+period of Egyptian history, but we have ranges of sphinxes, heroic
+statues, and bas-reliefs, showing that even in the early ages this
+branch of art had reached an amazing development.
+
+As regards the perfection of these, Lubke, the most eminent German
+authority on plastic art, referring to the early works in the tombs
+about Memphis, declares that, "as monuments of the period of the fourth
+dynasty, they are an evidence of the high perfection to which the
+sculpture of the Egyptians had attained." Brugsch declares that "every
+artistic production of those early days, whether picture, writing, or
+sculpture, bears the stamp of the highest perfection in art." Maspero,
+the most eminent French authority in this field, while expressing his
+belief that the Sphinx was sculptured even before the time of Mena,
+declares that "the art which conceived and carved this prodigious statue
+was a finished art--an art which had attained self-mastery and was sure
+of its effects"; while, among the more eminent English authorities,
+Sayce tells us that "art is at its best in the age of the
+pyramid-builders," and Sir James Fergusson declares, "We are startled to
+find Egyptian art nearly as perfect in the oldest periods as in any of
+the later."
+
+The evidence as to the high development of Egyptian sculpture in the
+earlier dynasties becomes every day more overwhelming. What exquisite
+genius the early Egyptian sculptors showed in their lesser statues is
+known to all who have seen those most precious specimens in the museum
+at Cairo, which were wrought before the conventional type was adopted in
+obedience to religious considerations.
+
+In decorative and especially in ceramic art, as early as the fourth
+and fifth dynasties, we have vases, cups, and other vessels showing
+exquisite beauty of outline and a general sense of form almost if not
+quite equal to Etruscan and Grecian work of the best periods.
+
+Take, next, astronomy. Going back to the very earliest period of
+Egyptian civilization, we find that the four sides of the Great Pyramid
+are adjusted to the cardinal points with the utmost precision. "The day
+of the equinox can be taken by observing the sun set across the face of
+the pyramid, and the neighbouring Arabs adjust their astronomical dates
+by its shadow." Yet this is but one out of many facts which prove that
+the Egyptians, at the earliest period of which their monuments exist,
+had arrived at knowledge and skill only acquired by long ages of
+observation and thought. Mr. Lockyer, Astronomer Royal of Great Britain,
+has recently convinced himself, after careful examination of various
+ruined temples at Thebes and elsewhere, that they were placed with
+reference to observations of stars. To state his conclusion in his own
+words: "There seems a very high probability that three thousand, and
+possibly four thousand, years before Christ the Egyptians had among them
+men with some knowledge of astronomy, and that six thousand years ago
+the course of the sun through the year was practically very well known,
+and methods had been invented by means of which in time it might
+be better known; and that, not very long after that, they not only
+considered questions relating to the sun, but began to take up other
+questions relating to the position and movement of the stars."
+
+The same view of the antiquity of man in the Nile valley is confirmed by
+philologists. To use the words of Max Duncker: "The oldest monuments
+of Egypt--and they are the oldest monuments in the world--exhibit the
+Egyptian in possession of the art of writing." It is found also, by the
+inscriptions of the early dynasties, that the Egyptian language had even
+at that early time been developed in all essential particulars to the
+highest point it ever attained. What long periods it must have required
+for such a development every scholar in philology can imagine.
+
+As regards medical science, we have the Berlin papyrus, which, although
+of a later period, refers with careful specification to a medical
+literature of the first dynasty.
+
+As regards archaeology, the earliest known inscriptions point to still
+earlier events and buildings, indicating a long sequence in previous
+history.
+
+As to all that pertains to the history of civilization, no man of fair
+and open mind can go into the museums of Cairo or the Louvre or the
+British Museum and look at the monuments of those earlier dynasties
+without seeing in them the results of a development in art, science,
+laws, customs, and language, which must have required a vast period
+before the time of Mena. And this conclusion is forced upon us all the
+more invincibly when we consider the slow growth of ideas in the earlier
+stages of civilization as compared with the later--a slowness of growth
+which has kept the natives of many parts of the world in that earliest
+civilization to this hour. To this we must add the fact that Egyptian
+civilization was especially immobile: its development into castes is but
+one among many evidences that it was the very opposite of a civilization
+developed rapidly.
+
+As to the length of the period before the time of Mena, there is, of
+course, nothing exact. Manetho gives lists of great personages before
+that first dynasty, and these extend over twenty-four thousand years.
+Bunsen, one of the most learned of Christian scholars, declares that
+not less than ten thousand years were necessary for the development of
+civilization up to the point where we find it in Mena's time. No one can
+claim precision for either of these statements, but they are valuable
+as showing the impression of vast antiquity made upon the most competent
+judges by the careful study of those remains: no unbiased judge can
+doubt that an immensely long period of years must have been required for
+the development of civilization up to the state in which we there find
+it.
+
+The investigations in the bed of the Nile confirm these views. That some
+unwarranted conclusions have at times been announced is true; but the
+fact remains that again and again rude pottery and other evidences of
+early stages of civilization have been found in borings at places so
+distant from each other, and at depths so great, that for such a range
+of concurring facts, considered in connection with the rate of earthy
+deposit by the Nile, there is no adequate explanation save the existence
+of man in that valley thousands on thousands of years before the longest
+time admitted by our sacred chronologists.
+
+Nor have these investigations been of a careless character. Between
+the years 1851 and 1854, Mr. Horner, an extremely cautious English
+geologist, sank ninety-six shafts in four rows at intervals of eight
+English miles, at right angles to the Nile, in the neighbourhood of
+Memphis. In these pottery was brought up from various depths, and
+beneath the statue of Rameses II at Memphis from a depth of thirty-nine
+feet. At the rate of the Nile deposit a careful estimate has declared
+this to indicate a period of over eleven thousand years. So eminent a
+German authority, in geography as Peschel characterizes objections to
+such deductions as groundless. However this may be, the general results
+of these investigations, taken in connection with the other results of
+research, are convincing.
+
+And, finally, as if to make assurance doubly sure, a series of
+archaeologists of the highest standing, French, German, English, and
+American, have within the past twenty years discovered relics of a
+savage period, of vastly earlier date than the time of Mena, prevailing
+throughout Egypt. These relics have been discovered in various parts of
+the country, from Cairo to Luxor, in great numbers. They are the same
+sort of prehistoric implements which prove to us the early existence of
+man in so many other parts of the world at a geological period so remote
+that the figures given by our sacred chronologists are but trivial. The
+last and most convincing of these discoveries, that of flint implements
+in the drift, far down below the tombs of early kings at Thebes, and
+upon high terraces far above the present bed of the Nile, will be
+referred to later.
+
+But it is not in Egypt alone that proofs are found of the utter
+inadequacy of the entire chronological system derived from our sacred
+books. These results of research in Egypt are strikingly confirmed by
+research in Assyria and Babylonia. Prof. Sayce exhibits various proofs
+of this. To use his own words regarding one of these proofs: "On the
+shelves of the British Museum you may see huge sun-dried bricks, on
+which are stamped the names and titles of kings who erected or repaired
+the temples where they have been found.... They must... have reigned
+before the time when, according to the margins of our Bibles, the Flood
+of Noah was covering the earth and reducing such bricks as these to
+their primeval slime."
+
+This conclusion was soon placed beyond a doubt. The lists of king's and
+collateral inscriptions recovered from the temples of the great valley
+between the Tigris and Euphrates, and the records of astronomical
+observations in that region, showed that there, too, a powerful
+civilization had grown up at a period far earlier than could be made
+consistent with our sacred chronology. The science of Assyriology was
+thus combined with Egyptology to furnish one more convincing proof that,
+precious as are the moral and religious truths in our sacred books
+and the historical indications which they give us, these truths
+and indications are necessarily inclosed in a setting of myth and
+legend.(184)
+
+
+     (184) As to Manetho, see, for a very full account of his relations to
+other chronologists, Palmer, Egyptian Chronicles, vol. i, chap. ii.
+For a more recent and readable account, see Brugsch, Egypt under the
+Pharaohs, English edition, London, 1879, chap. iv. For lists of kings at
+Abydos and elsewhere, also the lists of architects, see Brugsch, Palmer,
+Mariette, and others; also illustrations in Lepsius. For proofs that the
+dynasties given were consecutive and not contemporeaneous, as was
+once so fondly argued by those who tried to save Archbishop Usher's
+chronology, see Mariette; also Sayce's Herodotus, appendix, p. 316.
+For the various race types given on early monuments, see the coloured
+engravings in Lepsius, Denkmaler; also Prisse d'Avennes, and the
+frontpiece in the English edition of Brugsch; see also statement
+regarding the same subject in Tylor, Anthropology, chap. i. For
+the fulness of development of Egyptian civilization in the earliest
+dynasties, see Rawlinson's Egypt, London, 1881, chap. xiii; also Brugsch
+and other works cited. For the perfection of Egyptian engineering,
+I rely not merely upon my own observation, but on what is far more
+important, the testimony of my friend the Hon. J. G. Batterson, probably
+the largest and most experienced worker in granite in the United States,
+who acknowledges, from personal observation, that the early Egyptian
+work is, in boldness and perfection, far beyond anything known since,
+and a source of perpetual wonder to him. As to the perfection of
+Egyptian architecture, see very striking statements in Fergusson,
+History of Architecture, book i, chap. i. As to the pyramids, showing a
+very high grade of culture already reached under the earliest dynasties,
+see Lubke, Gesch. der Arch., book i. For Sayce's views, see his
+Herodotus, appendix, p. 348. As to sculpture, see for representations
+photographs published by the Boulak Museum, and such works as the
+Description de l'Egypte, Lepsius's Denkmaler, and Prisse d'Avennes; see
+also a most small work, easy of access, Maspero, Archeology, translated
+by Miss A. B. Edwards, New York and London, 1887, chaps. i and ii. See
+especially in Prisse, vol. ii, the statue of Chafre the Scribe, and the
+group of "Tea" and his wife. As to the artistic value of the Sphinx,
+see Maspero, as above, pp. 202, 203. See also similar ideas in Lubke's
+History of Sculpture, vol. i, p. 24. As to astronomical knowledge
+evidenced by the Great Pyramid, see Tylor, as above, p. 21; also
+Lockyer, On Some Points in the Early History of Astronomy, in Nature
+for 1891, and especially in the issues of June 4th and July 2d; also his
+Dawn of Astronomy, passim. For a recent and conservative statement as to
+the date of Mena, see Flinders Petrie, History of Egypt, London, 1894,
+chap. ii. For delineations of vases, etc., showing Grecian proportion
+and beauty of form under the fourth and fifth dynasties, see Prisse,
+vol. ii, Art Industriel. As to the philological question, and the
+development of language in Egypt, with the hieroglyphic sytem of
+writing, see Rawlinson's Egypt, London, 1881, chap. xii; also Lenormanr;
+also Max Duncker, Geschichte des Alterthums, Abbott's translation, 1877.
+As to the medical papyrus of Berlin, see Brugsch, vol. i, p. 58, but
+especially the Papyrus Ebers. As to the corruption of later copies of
+Manetho and fidelity of originals as attested by the monuments, see
+Brugsch, chap. iv. On the accuracy of the present Egyptian chronology as
+regards long periods, see ibid, vol. i, p. 32. As to the pottery found
+deep in the Nile and the value of Horner's discovery, see Peschel, Races
+of Man, New York, 1876, pp. 42-44. For succinct statement, see also
+Laing, Problems of the Future, p. 94. For confirmatory proofs from
+Assyriology, see Sayce, Lectures on the Religion of the Babylonians
+(Hibbert Lectures for 1887), London, 1887, introductory chapter, and
+especially pp. 21-25. See also Laing, Human Origins, chap. ii, for an
+excellent summary. For an account of flint implements recently found
+in gravel terraces fifteen hundred feet above the present level of the
+Nile, and showing evidences of an age vastly greater even than those dug
+out of the gravel at Thebes, see article by Flinders Petrie in London
+Times of April 18th, 1895.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.  THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN AND PREHISTORIC ARCHAEOLOGY
+
+
+
+
+I. THE THUNDER-STONES.
+
+
+While the view of chronology based upon the literal acceptance of
+Scripture texts was thus shaken by researches in Egypt, another line
+of observation and thought was slowly developed, even more fatal to the
+theological view.
+
+From a very early period there had been dug from the earth, in various
+parts of the world, strangely shaped masses of stone, some rudely
+chipped, some polished: in ancient times the larger of these were very
+often considered as thunderbolts, the smaller as arrows, and all of
+them as weapons which had been hurled by the gods and other supernatural
+personages. Hence a sort of sacredness attached to them. In Chaldea,
+they were built into the wall of temples; in Egypt, they were strung
+about the necks of the dead. In India, fine specimens are to this day
+seen upon altars, receiving prayers and sacrifices.
+
+Naturally these beliefs were brought into the Christian mythology and
+adapted to it. During the Middle Ages many of these well-wrought stones
+were venerated as weapons, which during the "war in heaven" had been
+used in driving forth Satan and his hosts; hence in the eleventh century
+an Emperor of the East sent to the Emperor of the West a "heaven axe";
+and in the twelfth century a Bishop of Rennes asserted the value of
+thunder-stones as a divinely-appointed means of securing success in
+battle, safety on the sea, security against thunder, and immunity from
+unpleasant dreams. Even as late as the seventeenth century a French
+ambassador brought a stone hatchet, which still exists in the museum at
+Nancy, as a present to the Prince-Bishop of Verdun, and claimed for it
+health-giving virtues.
+
+In the last years of the sixteenth century Michael Mercati tried to
+prove that the "thunder-stones" were weapons or implements of early
+races of men; but from some cause his book was not published until the
+following century, when other thinkers had begun to take up the same
+idea, and then it had to contend with a theory far more accordant with
+theologic modes of reasoning in science. This was the theory of the
+learned Tollius, who in 1649 told the world that these chipped or
+smoothed stones were "generated in the sky by a fulgurous exhalation
+conglobed in a cloud by the circumposed humour."
+
+But about the beginning of the eighteenth century a fact of great
+importance was quietly established. In the year 1715 a large pointed
+weapon of black flint was found in contact with the bones of an
+elephant, in a gravel bed near Gray's Inn Lane, in London. The world in
+general paid no heed to this: if the attention of theologians was called
+to it, they dismissed it summarily with a reference to the Deluge of
+Noah; but the specimen was labelled, the circumstances regarding it were
+recorded, and both specimen and record carefully preserved.
+
+In 1723 Jussieu addressed the French Academy on The Origin and Uses of
+Thunder-stones. He showed that recent travellers from various parts of
+the world had brought a number of weapons and other implements of stone
+to France, and that they were essentially similar to what in Europe had
+been known as "thunder-stones." A year later this fact was clinched into
+the scientific mind of France by the Jesuit Lafitau, who published
+a work showing the similarity between the customs of aborigines then
+existing in other lands and those of the early inhabitants of Europe. So
+began, in these works of Jussieu and Lafitau, the science of Comparative
+Ethnography.
+
+But it was at their own risk and peril that thinkers drew from these
+discoveries any conclusions as to the antiquity of man. Montesquieu,
+having ventured to hint, in an early edition of his Persian Letters,
+that the world might be much older than had been generally supposed,
+was soon made to feel danger both to his book and to himself, so that in
+succeeding editions he suppressed the passage.
+
+In 1730 Mahudel presented a paper to the French Academy of Inscriptions
+on the so-called "thunder-stones," and also presented a series of plates
+which showed that these were stone implements, which must have been used
+at an early period in human history.
+
+In 1778 Buffon, in his Epoques de la Nature, intimated his belief that
+"thunder-stones" were made by early races of men; but he did not press
+this view, and the reason for his reserve was obvious enough: he had
+already one quarrel with the theologians on his hands, which had cost
+him dear--public retraction and humiliation. His declaration, therefore,
+attracted little notice.
+
+In the year 1800 another fact came into the minds of thinking men in
+England. In that year John Frere presented to the London Society of
+Antiquaries sundry flint implements found in the clay beds near
+Hoxne: that they were of human make was certain, and, in view of the
+undisturbed depths in which they were found, the theory was suggested
+that the men who made them must have lived at a very ancient geological
+epoch; yet even this discovery and theory passed like a troublesome
+dream, and soon seemed to be forgotten.
+
+About twenty years later Dr. Buckland published a discussion of the
+subject, in the light of various discoveries in the drift and in caves.
+It received wide attention, but theology was soothed by his temporary
+concession that these striking relics of human handiwork, associated
+with the remains of various extinct animals, were proofs of the Deluge
+of Noah.
+
+In 1823 Boue, of the Vienna Academy of Sciences, showed to Cuvier sundry
+human bones found deep in the alluvial deposits of the upper Rhine,
+and suggested that they were of an early geological period; this Cuvier
+virtually, if not explicitly, denied. Great as he was in his own field,
+he was not a great geologist; he, in fact, led geology astray for many
+years. Moreover, he lived in a time of reaction; it was the period of
+the restored Bourbons, of the Voltairean King Louis XVIII, governing
+to please orthodoxy. Boue's discovery was, therefore, at first opposed,
+then enveloped in studied silence.
+
+Cuvier evidently thought, as Voltaire had felt under similar
+circumstances, that "among wolves one must howl a little"; and his
+leading disciple, Elie de Beaumont, who succeeded, him in the sway over
+geological science in France, was even more opposed to the new view
+than his great master had been. Boue's discoveries were, therefore,
+apparently laid to rest forever.(185)
+
+
+     (185) For the general history of early views regarding stone implements,
+see the first chapters in Cartailhac, La France Prehistorique; also
+Jolie, L'Homme avant les Metaux; also Lyell, Lubbock, and Evans. For
+lightning-stones in China and elsewhere, see citation from a Chinese
+encyclopedia of 1662, in Tylor, Early History of Mankind, p. 209. On the
+universality of this belief, on the surviving use of stone implements
+even into civilized times, and on their manufacture to-day, see ibid.,
+chapter viii. For the treatment of Boue's discovery, see especially
+Morillet, Le Prehistorique, Paris, 1885, p. 11. For the suppression of
+the passage in Montesquieu's Persian Letters, see Letter 113, cited in
+Schlosser's History of the Eighteenth Century (English translation),
+vol. i, p. 135.
+
+
+In 1825 Kent's Cavern, near Torquay, was explored by the Rev. Mr.
+McEnery, a Roman Catholic clergyman, who seems to have been completely
+overawed by orthodox opinion in England and elsewhere; for, though
+he found human bones and implements mingled with remains of extinct
+animals, he kept his notes in manuscript, and they were only brought to
+light more than thirty years later by Mr. Vivian.
+
+The coming of Charles X, the last of the French Bourbons, to the throne,
+made the orthodox pressure even greater. It was the culmination of
+the reactionary period--the time in France when a clerical committee,
+sitting at the Tuileries, took such measures as were necessary to hold
+in check all science that was not perfectly "safe"; the time in Austria
+when Kaiser Franz made his famous declaration to sundry professors, that
+what he wanted of them was simply to train obedient subjects, and that
+those who did not make this their purpose would be dismissed; the time
+in Germany when Nicholas of Russia and the princelings and ministers
+under his control, from the King of Prussia downward, put forth all
+their might in behalf of "scriptural science"; the time in Italy when
+a scientific investigator, arriving at any conclusion distrusted by
+the Church, was sure of losing his place and in danger of losing his
+liberty; the time in England when what little science was taught was
+held in due submission to Archdeacon Paley; the time in the United
+States when the first thing essential in science was, that it be
+adjusted to the ideas of revival exhorters.
+
+Yet men devoted to scientific truth laboured on; and in 1828 Tournal, of
+Narbonne, discovered in the cavern of Bize specimens of human industry,
+with a fragment of a human skeleton, among bones of extinct animals. In
+the following year Christol published accounts of his excavations in the
+caverns of Gard; he had found in position, and under conditions which
+forbade the idea of after-disturbance, human remains mixed with bones of
+the extinct hyena of the early Quaternary period. Little general notice
+was taken of this, for the reactionary orthodox atmosphere involved such
+discoveries in darkness.
+
+But in the French Revolution of 1830 the old politico-theological system
+collapsed: Charles X and his advisers fled for their lives; the other
+continental monarchs got glimpses of new light; the priesthood in charge
+of education were put on their good behaviour for a time, and a better
+era began.
+
+Under the constitutional monarchy of the house of Orleans in France and
+Belgium less attention was therefore paid by Government to the saving
+of souls; and we have in rapid succession new discoveries of remains
+of human industry, and even of human skeletons so mingled with bones of
+extinct animals as to give additional proofs that the origin of man was
+at a period vastly earlier than any which theologians had dreamed of.
+
+A few years later the reactionary clerical influence against science in
+this field rallied again. Schmerling in 1833 had explored a multitude
+of caverns in Belgium, especially at Engis and Engihoul, and had found
+human skulls and bones closely associated with bones of extinct animals,
+such as the cave bear, hyena, elephant, and rhinoceros, while mingled
+with these were evidences of human workmanship in the shape of chipped
+flint implements; discoveries of a similar sort had been made by
+De Serres in France and by Lund in Brazil; but, at least as far as
+continental Europe was concerned, these discoveries were received with
+much coolness both by Catholic leaders of opinion in France and Belgium
+and by Protestant leaders in England and Holland. Schmerling himself
+appears to have been overawed, and gave forth a sort of apologetic
+theory, half scientific, half theologic, vainly hoping to satisfy the
+clerical side.
+
+Nor was it much better in England. Sir Charles Lyell, so devoted a
+servant of prehistoric research thirty years later, was still holding
+out against it on the scientific side; and, as to the theological
+side, it was the period when that great churchman, Dean Cockburn, was
+insulting geologists from the pulpit of York Minster, and the Rev.
+Mellor Brown denouncing geology as "a black art," "a forbidden province"
+and when, in America, Prof. Moses Stuart and others like him were
+belittling the work of Benjamin Silliman and Edward Hitchcock.
+
+In 1840 Godwin Austin presented to the Royal Geological Society
+an account of his discoveries in Kent's Cavern, near Torquay, and
+especially of human bones and implements mingled with bones of the
+elephant, rhinoceros, cave bear, hyena, and other extinct animals;
+yet this memoir, like that of McEnery fifteen years before, found an
+atmosphere so unfavourable that it was not published.
+
+
+
+
+II. THE FLINT WEAPONS AND IMPLEMENTS.
+
+
+At the middle of the nineteenth century came the beginning of a new
+epoch in science--an epoch when all these earlier discoveries were to
+be interpreted by means of investigations in a different field: for,
+in 1847, a man previously unknown to the world at large, Boucher de
+Perthes, published at Paris the first volume of his work on Celtic and
+Antediluvian Antiquities, and in this he showed engravings of typical
+flint implements and weapons, of which he had discovered thousands upon
+thousands in the high drift beds near Abbeville, in northern France.
+
+The significance of this discovery was great indeed--far greater than
+Boucher himself at first supposed. The very title of his book showed
+that he at first regarded these implements and weapons as having
+belonged to men overwhelmed at the Deluge of Noah; but it was soon
+seen that they were something very different from proofs of the literal
+exactness of Genesis: for they were found in terraces at great heights
+above the river Somme, and, under any possible theory having regard to
+fact, must have been deposited there at a time when the river system
+of northern France was vastly different from anything known within
+the historic period. The whole discovery indicated a series of great
+geological changes since the time when these implements were made,
+requiring cycles of time compared to which the space allowed by the
+orthodox chronologists was as nothing.
+
+His work was the result of over ten years of research and thought.
+Year after year a force of men under his direction had dug into these
+high-terraced gravel deposits of the river Somme, and in his book he
+now gave, in the first full form, the results of his labour. So far as
+France was concerned, he was met at first by what he calls "a conspiracy
+of silence," and then by a contemptuous opposition among orthodox
+scientists, at the head of whom stood Elie de Beaumont.
+
+This heavy, sluggish opposition seemed immovable: nothing that Boucher
+could do or say appeared to lighten the pressure of the orthodox
+theological opinion behind it; not even his belief that these fossils
+were remains of men drowned at the Deluge of Noah, and that they were
+proofs of the literal exactness of Genesis seemed to help the matter.
+His opponents felt instinctively that such discoveries boded danger to
+the accepted view, and they were right: Boucher himself soon saw the
+folly of trying to account for them by the orthodox theory.
+
+And it must be confessed that not a little force was added to the
+opposition by certain characteristics of Boucher de Perthes himself.
+Gifted, far-sighted, and vigorous as he was, he was his own worst enemy.
+Carried away by his own discoveries, he jumped to the most astounding
+conclusions. The engravings in the later volume of his great work,
+showing what he thought to be human features and inscriptions upon
+some of the flint implements, are worthy of a comic almanac; and at
+the National Museum of Archaeology at St. Germain, beneath the shelves
+bearing the remains which he discovered, which mark the beginning of a
+new epoch in science, are drawers containing specimens hardly worthy of
+a penny museum, but from which he drew the most unwarranted inferences
+as to the language, religion, and usages of prehistoric man.
+
+Boucher triumphed none the less. Among his bitter opponents at first was
+Dr. Rigollot, who in 1855, searching earnestly for materials to refute
+the innovator, dug into the deposits of St. Acheul--and was converted:
+for he found implements similar to those of Abbeville, making still more
+certain the existence of man during the Drift period. So, too, Gaudry a
+year later made similar discoveries.
+
+But most important was the evidence of the truth which now came from
+other parts of France and from other countries. The French leaders in
+geological science had been held back not only by awe of Cuvier but by
+recollections of Scheuchzer. Ridicule has always been a serious weapon
+in France, and the ridicule which finally overtook the supporters of
+the attempt of Scheuchzer, Mazurier, and others, to square geology with
+Genesis, was still remembered. From the great body of French geologists,
+therefore, Boucher secured at first no aid. His support came from the
+other side of the Channel. The most eminent English geologists, such as
+Falconer, Prestwich, and Lyell, visited the beds at Abbeville and St.
+Acheul, convinced themselves that the discoveries of Boucher, Rigollot,
+and their colleagues were real, and then quietly but firmly told England
+the truth.
+
+And now there appeared a most effective ally in France. The
+arguments used against Boucher de Perthes and some of the other early
+investigators of bone caves had been that the implements found might
+have been washed about and turned over by great floods, and therefore
+that they might be of a recent period; but in 1861 Edward Lartet
+published an account of his own excavations at the Grotto of Aurignac,
+and the proof that man had existed in the time of the Quaternary animals
+was complete. This grotto had been carefully sealed in prehistoric times
+by a stone at its entrance; no interference from disturbing currents of
+water had been possible; and Lartet found, in place, bones of eight out
+of nine of the main species of animals which characterize the Quaternary
+period in Europe; and upon them marks of cutting implements, and in the
+midst of them coals and ashes.
+
+Close upon these came the excavations at Eyzies by Lartet and his
+English colleague, Christy. In both these men there was a carefulness in
+making researches and a sobriety in stating results which converted many
+of those who had been repelled by the enthusiasm of Boucher de Perthes.
+The two colleagues found in the stony deposits made by the water
+dropping from the roof of the cave at Eyzies the bones of numerous
+animals extinct or departed to arctic regions--one of these a vertebra
+of a reindeer with a flint lance-head still fast in it, and with these
+were found evidences of fire.
+
+Discoveries like these were thoroughly convincing; yet there still
+remained here and there gainsayers in the supposed interest of
+Scripture, and these, in spite of the convincing array of facts,
+insisted that in some way, by some combination of circumstances, these
+bones of extinct animals of vastly remote periods might have been
+brought into connection with all these human bones and implements of
+human make in all these different places, refusing to admit that
+these ancient relics of men and animals were of the same period. Such
+gainsayers virtually adopted the reasoning of quaint old Persons, who,
+having maintained that God created the world "about five thousand sixe
+hundred and odde yeares agoe," added, "And if they aske what God was
+doing before this short number of yeares, we answere with St. Augustine
+replying to such curious questioners, that He was framing Hell for
+them." But a new class of discoveries came to silence this opposition.
+At La Madeleine in France, at the Kessler cave in Switzerland, and
+at various other places, were found rude but striking carvings and
+engravings on bone and stone representing sundry specimens of those
+long-vanished species; and these specimens, or casts of them, were soon
+to be seen in all the principal museums. They showed the hairy mammoth,
+the cave bear, and various other animals of the Quaternary period,
+carved rudely but vigorously by contemporary men; and, to complete the
+significance of these discoveries, travellers returning from the
+icy regions of North America brought similar carvings of animals now
+existing in those regions, made by the Eskimos during their long arctic
+winters to-day.(186)
+
+
+     (186) For the explorations in Belgium, see Dupont, Le Temps
+Prehistorique en Belgique. For the discoveries by McEnery and Godwin
+Austin, see Lubbock, Prehistoric Times, London, 1869, chap. x; also
+Cartailhac, Joly, and others above cited. For Boucher de Perthes, see
+his Antiquites Celtiques et Antediluviennes, Paris, 1847-'64, vol. iii,
+pp. 526 et seq. For sundry extravagances of Boucher de Perthes, see
+Reinach, Description raisonne du Musee de St.-Germain-en-Laye, Paris,
+1889, vol. i, pp. 16 et seq. For the mixture of sound and absurd results
+in Boucher's work, see Cartailhac as above, p. 19. Boucher had published
+in 1838 a work entitled De la Creation, but it seems to have dropped
+dead from the press. For the attempts of Scheuchzer to reconcile geology
+and Genesis by means of the Homo diluvii testis, and similar "diluvian
+fossils," see the chapter on Geology in this series. The original
+specimens of these prehistoric engravings upon bone and stone may best
+be seen at the Archaeological Museum of St.-Germain and the British
+Museum. For engravings of some of the most recent, see especially
+Dawkin's Early Man in Britain, chap. vii, and the Description du Musee
+de St.-Germain. As to the Kessler etchings and their antiquity, see
+D. G. Brinton, in Science, August 12, 1892. For comparison of this
+prehistoric work with that produced to-day by the Eskimos and others,
+see Lubbock, Prehistoric Times, chapters x and xiv. For very striking
+exhibitions of this same artistic gift in a higher field to-day by
+descendants of the barbarian tribes of northern America, see the very
+remarkable illustrations in Rink, Danish Greenland, London, 1877,
+especially those in chap. xiv.
+
+
+As a result of these discoveries and others like them, showing that man
+was not only contemporary with long-extinct animals of past geological
+epochs, but that he had already developed into a stage of culture above
+pure savagery, the tide of thought began to turn. Especially was this
+seen in 1863, when Lyell published the first edition of his Geological
+Evidence of the Antiquity of Man; and the fact that he had so long
+opposed the new ideas gave force to the clear and conclusive argument
+which led him to renounce his early scientific beliefs.
+
+Research among the evidences of man's existence in the early Quaternary,
+and possibly in the Tertiary period, was now pressed forward along the
+whole line. In 1864 Gabriel Mortillet founded his review devoted to
+this subject; and in 1865 the first of a series of scientific congresses
+devoted to such researches was held in Italy. These investigations
+went on vigorously in all parts of France and spread rapidly to other
+countries. The explorations which Dupont began in 1864, in the caves
+of Belgium, gave to the museum at Brussels eighty thousand flint
+implements, forty thousand bones of animals of the Quaternary period,
+and a number of human skulls and bones found mingled with these remains.
+From Germany, Italy, Spain, America, India, and Egypt similar results
+were reported.
+
+Especially noteworthy were the further explorations of the caves and
+drift throughout the British Islands. The discovery by Colonel Wood, In
+1861, of flint tools in the same strata with bones of the earlier forms
+of the rhinoceros, was but typical of many. A thorough examination of
+the caverns of Brixham and Torquay, by Pengelly and others, made it
+still more evident that man had existed in the early Quaternary period.
+The existence of a period before the Glacial epoch or between different
+glacial epochs in England, when the Englishman was a savage, using rude
+stone tools, was then fully ascertained, and, what was more significant,
+there were clearly shown a gradation and evolution even in the history
+of that period. It was found that this ancient Stone epoch showed
+progress and development. In the upper layers of the caves, with remains
+of the reindeer, who, although he has migrated from these regions, still
+exists in more northern climates, were found stone implements revealing
+some little advance in civilization; next below these, sealed up in
+the stalagmite, came, as a rule, another layer, in which the remains
+of reindeer were rare and those of the mammoth more frequent, the
+implements found in this stratum being less skilfully made than those
+in the upper and more recent layers; and, finally, in the lowest levels,
+near the floors of these ancient caverns, with remains of the cave
+bear and others of the most ancient extinct animals, were found stone
+implements evidently of a yet ruder and earlier stage of human progress.
+No fairly unprejudiced man can visit the cave and museum at Torquay
+without being convinced that there were a gradation and an evolution in
+these beginnings of human civilization. The evidence is complete;
+the masses of breccia taken from the cave, with the various soils,
+implements, and bones carefully kept in place, put this progress beyond
+a doubt.
+
+All this indicated a great antiquity for the human race, but in it lay
+the germs of still another great truth, even more important and more
+serious in its consequences to the older theologic view, which will be
+discussed in the following chapter.
+
+But new evidences came in, showing a yet greater antiquity of man.
+Remains of animals were found in connection with human remains, which
+showed not only that man was living in times more remote than the
+earlier of the new investigators had dared dream, but that some of
+these early periods of his existence must have been of immense length,
+embracing climatic changes betokening different geological periods; for
+with remains of fire and human implements and human bones were found not
+only bones of the hairy mammoth and cave bear, woolly rhinoceros, and
+reindeer, which could only have been deposited there in a time of arctic
+cold, but bones of the hyena, hippopotamus, sabre-toothed tiger, and
+the like, which could only have been deposited when there was in these
+regions a torrid climate. The conjunction of these remains clearly
+showed that man had lived in England early enough and long enough to
+pass through times when there was arctic cold and times when there was
+torrid heat; times when great glaciers stretched far down into England
+and indeed into the continent, and times when England had a land
+connection with the European continent, and the European continent with
+Africa, allowing tropical animals to migrate freely from Africa to the
+middle regions of England.
+
+The question of the origin of man at a period vastly earlier than the
+sacred chronologists permitted was thus absolutely settled, but among
+the questions regarding the existence of man at a period yet more
+remote, the Drift period, there was one which for a time seemed to give
+the champions of science some difficulty. The orthodox leaders in the
+time of Boucher de Perthes, and for a considerable time afterward, had
+a weapon of which they made vigorous use: the statement that no human
+bones had yet been discovered in the drift. The supporters of science
+naturally answered that few if any other bones as small as those of man
+had been found, and that this fact was an additional proof of the great
+length of the period since man had lived with the extinct animals; for,
+since specimens of human workmanship proved man's existence as fully as
+remains of his bones could do, the absence or even rarity of human and
+other small bones simply indicated the long periods of time required for
+dissolving them away.
+
+Yet Boucher, inspired by the genius he had already shown, and filled
+with the spirit of prophecy, declared that human bones would yet be
+found in the midst of the flint implements, and in 1863 he claimed that
+this prophecy had been fulfilled by the discovery at Moulin Quignon of
+a portion of a human jaw deep in the early Quaternary deposits. But his
+triumph was short-lived: the opposition ridiculed his discovery; they
+showed that he had offered a premium to his workmen for the discovery
+of human remains, and they naturally drew the inference that some
+tricky labourer had deceived him. The result of this was that the men
+of science felt obliged to acknowledge that the Moulin Quignon discovery
+was not proven.
+
+But ere long human bones were found in the deposits of the early
+Quaternary period, or indeed of an earlier period, in various other
+parts of the world, and the question regarding the Moulin Quignon relic
+was of little importance.
+
+We have seen that researches regarding the existence of prehistoric
+man in England and on the Continent were at first mainly made in the
+caverns; but the existence of man in the earliest Quaternary period
+was confirmed on both sides of the English Channel, in a way even
+more striking, by the close examination of the drift and early gravel
+deposits. The results arrived at by Boucher de Perthes were amply
+confirmed in England. Rude stone implements were found in terraces a
+hundred feet and more above the levels at which various rivers of Great
+Britain now flow, and under circumstances which show that, at the time
+when they were deposited, the rivers of Great Britain in many cases were
+entirely different from those of the present period, and formed parts
+of the river system of the European continent. Researches in the high
+terraces above the Thames and the Ouse, as well as at other points in
+Great Britain, placed beyond a doubt the fact that man existed on the
+British Islands at a time when they were connected by solid land
+with the Continent, and made it clear that, within the period of the
+existence of man in northern Europe, a large portion of the British
+Islands had been sunk to depths between fifteen hundred and twenty-five
+hundred feet beneath the Northern Ocean,--had risen again from the
+water,--had formed part of the continent of Europe, and had been in
+unbroken connection with Africa, so that elephants, bears, tigers,
+lions, the rhinoceros and hippopotamus, of species now mainly extinct,
+had left their bones in the same deposits with human implements as far
+north as Yorkshire. Moreover, connected with this fact came in the new
+conviction, forced upon geologists by the more careful examination of
+the earth and its changes, that such elevations and depressions of Great
+Britain and other parts of the world were not necessarily the results
+of sudden cataclysms, but generally of slow processes extending through
+vast cycles of years--processes such as are now known to be going on in
+various parts of the world. Thus it was that the six or seven thousand
+years allowed by the most liberal theologians of former times were seen
+more and more clearly to be but a mere nothing in the long succession of
+ages since the appearance of man.
+
+Confirmation of these results was received from various other parts of
+the world. In Africa came the discovery of flint implements deep in the
+hard gravel of the Nile Valley at Luxor and on the high hills behind
+Esneh. In America the discoveries at Trenton, N.J., and at various
+places in Delaware, Ohio, Minnesota, and elsewhere, along the southern
+edge of the drift of the Glacial epochs, clinched the new scientific
+truth yet more firmly; and the statement made by an eminent American
+authority is, that "man was on this continent when the climate and ice
+of Greenland extended to the mouth of New York harbour." The discoveries
+of prehistoric remains on the Pacific coast, and especially in British
+Columbia, finished completely the last chance at a reasonable contention
+by the adherents of the older view. As to these investigations on the
+Pacific slope of the United States, the discoveries of Whitney and
+others in California had been so made and announced that the judgment of
+scientific men regarding them was suspended until the visit of perhaps
+the greatest living authority in his department, Alfred Russel Wallace,
+in 1887. He confirmed the view of Prof. Whitney and others with the
+statement that "both the actual remains and works of man found deep
+under the lava-flows of Pliocene age show that he existed in the
+New World at least as early as in the Old." To this may be added the
+discoveries in British Columbia, which prove that, since man existed in
+these regions, "valleys have been filled up by drift from the waste of
+mountains to a depth in some cases of fifteen hundred feet; this covered
+by a succession of tuffs, ashes, and lava-streams from volcanoes long
+since extinct, and finally cut down by the present rivers through beds
+of solid basalt, and through this accumulation of lavas and gravels."
+The immense antiquity of the human remains in the gravels of the Pacific
+coast is summed up by a most eminent English authority and declared
+to be proved, "first, by the present river systems being of subsequent
+date, sometimes cutting through them and their superincumbent lava-cap
+to a depth of two thousand feet; secondly, by the great denudation that
+has taken place since they were deposited, for they sometimes lie on the
+summits of mountains six thousand feet high; thirdly, by the fact that
+the Sierra Nevada has been partly elevated since their formation."(187)
+
+
+     (187) For the general subject of investigations in British prehistoric
+remains, see especially Boyd Dawkins, Early Man in Britain and his Place
+in the Tertiary Period, London, 1880. For Boucher de Perthes's account
+of his discovery of the human jaw at Moulin Quignon, see his Antiquites
+Celtiques et Antediluviennes, vol. iii, p. 542 et seq., Appendix. For an
+excellent account of special investigations in the high terraces above
+the Thames, see J. Allen Brown, F. G. S., Palaeolithic Man in Northwest
+Middlesex, London, 1887. For discoveries in America, and the citations
+regarding them, see Wright, the Ice Age in North America, New York,
+1889, chap. xxi. Very remarkable examples of these specimens from
+the drift at Trenton may be seen in Prof. Abbott's collections at the
+University of Pennsylvania. For an admirable statement, see Prof. Henry
+W. Haynes, in Wright, as above. For proofs of the vast antiquity of man
+upon the Pacific coast, cited in the text, see Skertchley, F. G. S., in
+the Journal of the Anthropological Institute for 1887, p. 336; see also
+Wallace, Darwinism, London, 1890, chap. xv; and for a striking summary
+of the evidence that man lived before the last submergence of Britain,
+see Brown, Palaeolithic Man in Northwest Middlesex, as above cited.
+For proofs that man existed in a period when the streams were flowing
+hundreds of feet above their present level, see ibid., p. 33. As to the
+evidence of the action of the sea and of glacial action in the Welsh
+bone caves after the remains of extinct animals and weapons of human
+workmanship had been deposited, see ibid., p. 198. For a good statement
+of the slowness of the submergance and emergence of Great Britain, with
+an illustration from the rising of the shore of Finland, see ibid.,
+pp. 47, 48. As to the flint implements of Palaeolithic man in the high
+terraced gravels throughout the Thames Valley, associated with bones of
+the mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, etc., see Brown, p. 31. For still
+more conclusive proofs that man inhabited North Wales before the last
+submergence of the greater part of the British Islands to a depth of
+twelve hundred to fourteen hundred feet, see ibid., pp. 199, 200. For
+maps showing the connection of the British river system with that of the
+Continent, see Boyd Dawkins, Early Man in Britain, London, 1880, pp.
+18, 41, 73; also Lyell, Antiquity of Man, chap. xiv. As to the long
+continuance of the early Stone period, see James Geikie, The Great Ice
+Age, New York, 1888, p. 402. As to the impossibility of the animals of
+the arctic and torrid regions living together or visiting the same place
+at different times in the same year, see Geikie, as above, pp. 421
+et seq.; and for a conclusive argument that the animals of the period
+assigned lived in England not since, but before, the Glacial period,
+or in the intergalcial period, see ibid., p. 459. For a very candid
+statement by perhaps the foremost leader of the theological rear-guard,
+admitting the insuperable difficulties presented by the Old Testament
+chronology as regards the Creation and the Deluge, see the Duke of
+Argyll's Primeval Man, pp. 90-100, and especially pp. 93, 124. For a
+succinct statement on the general subject, see Laing, Problems of the
+Future, London, 1889, chapters v and vi. For discoveries of prehistoric
+implements in India, see notes by Bruce Foote, F. G. S., in the British
+Journal of the Anthropological Institute for 1886 and 1887. For
+similar discoveries in South Africa, see Gooch, in Journal of the
+Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, vol. xi, pp. 124
+et seq. For proofs of the existance of Palaeolithic man in Egypt, see
+Mook, Haynes, Pitt-Rivers, Flinders-Petrie, and others, cited at length
+in the next chapter. For the corroborative and concurrent testimony
+of ethnology, philology, and history to the vast antiquity of man, see
+Tylor, Anthropology, chap. i.
+
+
+As an important supplement to these discoveries of ancient implements
+came sundry comparisons made by eminent physiologists between human
+skulls and bones found in different places and under circumstances
+showing vast antiquity.
+
+Human bones had been found under such circumstances as early as 1835
+at Cannstadt near Stuttgart, and in 1856 in the Neanderthal near
+Dusseldorf; but in more recent searches they had been discovered in a
+multitude of places, especially in Germany, France, Belgium, England,
+the Caucasus, Africa, and North and South America. Comparison of these
+bones showed that even in that remote Quaternary period there were great
+differences of race, and here again came in an argument for the yet
+earlier existence of man on the earth; for long previous periods must
+have been required to develop such racial differences. Considerations
+of this kind gave a new impulse to the belief that man's existence might
+even date back into the Tertiary period. The evidence for this earlier
+origin of man was ably summed up, not only by its brilliant advocate,
+Mortillet, but by a former opponent, one of the most conservative of
+modern anthropologists, Quatrefages; and the conclusion arrived at
+by both was, that man did really exist in the Tertiary period. The
+acceptance of this conclusion was also seen in the more recent work
+of Alfred Russel Wallace, who, though very cautious and conservative,
+placed the origin of man not only in the Tertiary period, but in an
+earlier stage of it than most had dared assign--even in the Miocene.
+
+The first thing raising a strong presumption, if not giving proof, that
+man existed in the Tertiary, was the fact that from all explored
+parts of the world came in more and more evidence that in the earlier
+Quaternary man existed in different, strongly marked races and in great
+numbers. From all regions which geologists had explored, even from
+those the most distant and different from each other, came this same
+evidence--from northern Europe to southern Africa; from France to China;
+from New Jersey to British Columbia; from British Columbia to Peru. The
+development of man in such numbers and in so many different regions,
+with such differences of race and at so early a period, must have
+required a long previous time.
+
+This argument was strengthened by discoveries of bones bearing marks
+apparently made by cutting instruments, in the Tertiary formations of
+France and Italy, and by the discoveries of what were claimed to be
+flint implements by the Abbe Bourgeois in France, and of implements and
+human bones by Prof. Capellini in Italy.
+
+On the other hand, some of the more cautious men of science are still
+content to say that the existence of man in the Tertiary period is not
+yet proven. As to his existence throughout the Quaternary epoch, no new
+proofs are needed; even so determined a supporter of the theological
+side as the Duke of Argyll has been forced to yield to the evidence.
+
+Of attempts to make an exact chronological statement throwing light on
+the length of the various prehistoric periods, the most notable have
+been those by M. Morlot, on the accumulated strata of the Lake of
+Geneva; by Gillieron, on the silt of Lake Neufchatel; by Horner, in the
+delta deposits of Egypt; and by Riddle, in the delta of the Mississippi.
+But while these have failed to give anything like an exact result,
+all these investigations together point to the central truth, so amply
+established, of the vast antiquity of man, and the utter inadequacy of
+the chronology given in our sacred books. The period of man's past life
+upon our planet, which has been fixed by the universal Church, "always,
+everywhere, and by all," is thus perfectly proved to be insignificant
+compared with those vast geological epochs during which man is now known
+to have existed.(188)
+
+
+     (188) As to the evidence of man in the Tertiary period, see works
+already cited, especially Quatrefages, Cartailhac, and Mortillet. For an
+admirable summary, see Laing, Human Origins, chap. viii. See also, for
+a summing up of the evidence in favour of man in the Tertiary period,
+Quatrefages, History Generale des Races Humaines, in the Bibliotheque
+Ethnologique, Paris, 1887, chap. iv. As to the earlier view, see Vogt,
+Lectures on Man, London, 1864, lecture xi. For a thorough and convincing
+refutation of Sir J. W. Dawson's attempt to make the old and new Stone
+periods coincide, see H. W. Haynes, in chap. vi of the History of
+America, edited by Justin Winsor. For development of various important
+points in the relation of anthropology to the human occupancy of our
+planet, see Topinard, Anthropology, London, 1890, chap. ix.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII. THE "FALL OF MAN" AND ANTHROPOLOGY
+
+
+In the previous chapters we have seen how science, especially within
+the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, has thoroughly changed the
+intelligent thought of the world in regard to the antiquity of man upon
+our planet; and how the fabric built upon the chronological indications
+in our sacred books--first, by the early fathers of the Church,
+afterward by the medieval doctors, and finally by the reformers and
+modern orthodox chronologists--has virtually disappeared before an
+entirely different view forced upon us, especially by Egyptian and
+Assyrian studies, as well as by geology and archeology.
+
+In this chapter I purpose to present some outlines of the work of
+Anthropology, especially as assisted by Ethnology, in showing what the
+evolution of human civilization has been.
+
+Here, too, the change from the old theological view based upon the
+letter of our sacred books to the modern scientific view based upon
+evidence absolutely irrefragable is complete. Here, too, we are at the
+beginning of a vast change in the basis and modes of thought upon man--a
+change even more striking than that accomplished by Copernicus and
+Galileo, when they substituted for a universe in which sun and planets
+revolved about the earth a universe in which the earth is but the merest
+grain or atom revolving with other worlds, larger and smaller, about the
+sun; and all these forming but one among innumerable systems.
+
+Ever since the beginning of man's effective thinking upon the great
+problems around him, two antagonistic views have existed regarding the
+life of the human race upon earth. The first of these is the belief that
+man was created "in the beginning" a perfect being, endowed with the
+highest moral and intellectual powers, but that there came a "fall,"
+and, as its result, the entrance into the world of evil, toil, sorrow,
+and death.
+
+Nothing could be more natural than such an explanation of the existence
+of evil, in times when men saw everywhere miracle and nowhere law. It
+is, under such circumstances, by far the most easy of explanations, for
+it is in accordance with the appearances of things: men adopted it just
+as naturally as they adopted the theory that the Almighty hangs up the
+stars as lights in the solid firmament above the earth, or hides the sun
+behind a mountain at night, or wheels the planets around the earth, or
+flings comets as "signs and wonders" to scare a wicked world, or allows
+evil spirits to control thunder, lightning, and storm, and to cause
+diseases of body and mind, or opens the "windows of heaven" to let down
+"the waters that be above the heavens," and thus to give rain upon the
+earth.
+
+A belief, then, in a primeval period of innocence and perfection--moral,
+intellectual, and physical--from which men for some fault fell, is
+perfectly in accordance with what we should expect.
+
+Among the earliest known records of our race we find this view taking
+shape in the Chaldean legends of war between the gods, and of a fall of
+man; both of which seemed necessary to explain the existence of evil.
+
+In Greek mythology perhaps the best-known statement was made by Hesiod:
+to him it was revealed, regarding the men of the most ancient times,
+that they were at first "a golden race," that "as gods they were wont
+to live, with a life void of care, without labour and trouble; nor was
+wretched old age at all impending; but ever did they delight themselves
+out of the reach of all ills, and they died as if overcome by sleep;
+all blessings were theirs: of its own will the fruitful field would bear
+them fruit, much and ample, and they gladly used to reap the labours
+of their hands in quietness along with many good things, being rich in
+flocks and true to the blessed gods." But there came a "fall," caused
+by human curiosity. Pandora, the first woman created, received a vase
+which, by divine command, was to remain closed; but she was tempted to
+open it, and troubles, sorrow, and disease escaped into the world, hope
+alone remaining.
+
+So, too, in Roman mythological poetry the well-known picture by Ovid
+is but one among the many exhibitions of this same belief in a primeval
+golden age--a Saturnian cycle; one of the constantly recurring attempts,
+so universal and so natural in the early history of man, to account for
+the existence of evil, care, and toil on earth by explanatory myths and
+legends.
+
+This view, growing out of the myths, legends, and theologies of earlier
+peoples, we also find embodied in the sacred tradition of the Jews,
+and especially in one of the documents which form the impressive poem
+beginning the books attributed to Moses. As to the Christian Church, no
+word of its Blessed Founder indicates that it was committed by him to
+this theory, or that he even thought it worthy of his attention. How,
+like so many other dogmas never dreamed of by Jesus of Nazareth and
+those who knew him best, it was developed, it does not lie within the
+province of this chapter to point out; nor is it worth our while to
+dwell upon its evolution in the early Church, in the Middle Ages, at the
+Reformation, and in various branches of the Protestant Church: suffice
+it that, though among English-speaking nations by far the most important
+influence in its favour has come from Milton's inspiration rather than
+from that of older sacred books, no doctrine has been more universally
+accepted, "always, everywhere, and by all," from the earliest fathers of
+the Church down to the present hour.
+
+On the other hand appeared at an early period the opposite view--that
+mankind, instead of having fallen from a high intellectual, moral, and
+religious condition, has slowly risen from low and brutal beginnings.
+In Greece, among the philosophers contemporary with Socrates, we find
+Critias depicting a rise of man, from a time when he was beastlike
+and lawless, through a period when laws were developed, to a time
+when morality received enforcement from religion; but among all the
+statements of this theory the most noteworthy is that given by Lucretius
+in his great poem on The Nature of Things. Despite its errors, it
+remains among the most remarkable examples of prophetic insight in
+the history of our race. The inspiration of Lucretius gave him
+almost miraculous glimpses of truth; his view of the development
+of civilization from the rudest beginnings to the height of its
+achievements is a wonderful growth, rooted in observation and thought,
+branching forth into a multitude of striking facts and fancies; and
+among these is the statement regarding the sequence of inventions:
+
+
+"Man's earliest arms were fingers, teeth, and nails, And stones and
+fragments from the branching woods; Then copper next; and last, as
+latest traced, The tyrant, iron."
+
+
+Thus did the poet prophesy one of the most fruitful achievements of
+modern science: the discovery of that series of epochs which has been so
+carefully studied in our century.
+
+Very striking, also, is the statement of Horace, though his idea is
+evidently derived from Lucretius. He dwells upon man's first condition
+on earth as low and bestial, and pictures him lurking in caves,
+progressing from the use of his fists and nails, first to clubs, then
+to arms which he had learned to forge, and, finally, to the invention of
+the names of things, to literature, and to laws.(189)
+
+
+     (189) For the passage in Hesiod, as given, see the Works and Days, lines
+109-120, in Banks's translation. As to Horace, see the Satires, i, 3,
+99. As to the relation of the poetic account of the Fall in Genesis to
+Chaldean myths, see Smith, Chaldean Account of Genesis, pp. 13, 17. For
+a very instructive separation of the Jehovistic and Elohistic parts
+of Genesis, with the account of the "Fall" as given in the former, see
+Lenormant, La Genese, Paris, 1883, pp. 166-168; also Bacon, Genesis of
+Genesis. Of the lines of Lucretius--
+
+"Arma antiqua, manus, ungues, dentesque fuerunt, Et lapides, et item
+sylvarum fragmina rami, Posterius ferri vis est, aerisque reperta, Sed
+prior aeris erat, quam ferri cognitus usus"---
+
+the translation is that of Good. For a more exact prose translation, see
+Munro's Lucretius, fourth edition, which is much more careful, at least
+in the proof-reading, than the first edition. As regards Lucretius's
+propheitc insight into some of the greatest conclusions of modern
+science, see Munro's translation and notes, fourth edition, book v,
+notes ii, p. 335. On the relation of several passages in Horace to the
+ideas of Lucretius, see Munro as above. For the passage from Luther, see
+the Table Talk, Hazlitt's translation, p. 242.
+
+
+During the mediaeval ages of faith this view was almost entirely
+obscured, and at the Reformation it seemed likely to remain so. Typical
+of the simplicity of belief in "the Fall" cherished among the Reformers
+is Luther's declaration regarding Adam and Eve. He tells us, "they
+entered into the garden about noon, and having a desire to eat, she took
+the apple; then came the fall--according to our account at about
+two o'clock." But in the revival of learning the old eclipsed truth
+reappeared, and in the first part of the seventeenth century we find
+that, among the crimes for which Vanini was sentenced at Toulouse to
+have his tongue torn out and to be burned alive, was his belief that
+there is a gradation extending upward from the lowest to the highest
+form of created beings.
+
+Yet, in the same century, the writings of Bodin, Bacon, Descartes, and
+Pascal were evidently undermining the old idea of "the Fall." Bodin
+especially, brilliant as were his services to orthodoxy, argued lucidly
+against the doctrine of general human deterioration.
+
+Early in the eighteenth century Vico presented the philosophy of history
+as an upward movement of man out of animalism and barbarism. This idea
+took firm hold upon human thought, and in the following centuries such
+men as Lessing and Turgot gave new force to it.
+
+The investigations of the last forty years have shown that Lucretius and
+Horace were inspired prophets: what they saw by the exercise of reason
+illumined by poetic genius, has been now thoroughly based upon facts
+carefully ascertained and arranged--until Thomsen and Nilsson, the
+northern archaeologists, have brought these prophecies to evident
+fulfilment, by presenting a scientific classification dividing the age
+of prehistoric man in various parts of the world between an old stone
+period, a new stone period, a period of beaten copper, a period of
+bronze, and a period of iron, and arraying vast masses of facts from all
+parts of the world, fitting thoroughly into each other, strengthening
+each other, and showing beyond a doubt that, instead of a FALL, there
+has been a RISE of man, from the earliest indications in the Quaternary,
+or even, possibly, in the Tertiary period.(190)
+
+
+     (190) For Vanini, see Topinard, Elements of Anthropologie, p. 52. For a
+brief and careful summary of the agency of Eccard in Germany, Goguet
+in France, Hoare in England, and others in various parts of Europe, as
+regards this development of the scientific view during the eighteenth
+century, see Mortillet, Le Prehistorique, Paris, 1885, chap. i. For the
+agency of Bodin, Bacon, Descartes, and Pascal, see Flint, Philosophy
+of History, introduction, pp. 28 et seq. For a shorter summary,
+see Lubbock, Prehistoric Man. For the statements by the northern
+archaeologists, see Nilsson, Worsaae, and the other main works cited in
+this article. For a generous statement regarding the great services of
+the Danish archaeologists in this field, see Quatrefages, introduction
+to Cartailhac, Les Ages Prehistoriques de l'Espagne et du Portugal.
+
+
+The first blow at the fully developed doctrine of "the Fall" came, as
+we have seen, from geology. According to that doctrine, as held quite
+generally from its beginnings among the fathers and doctors of
+the primitive Church down to its culmination in the minds of great
+Protestants like John Wesley, the statement in our sacred books
+that "death entered the world by sin" was taken as a historic fact,
+necessitating the conclusion that, before the serpent persuaded Eve to
+eat of the forbidden fruit, death on our planet was unknown. Naturally,
+when geology revealed, in the strata of a period long before the coming
+of man on earth, a vast multitude of carnivorous tribes fitted
+to destroy their fellow-creatures on land and sea, and within the
+fossilized skeletons of many of these the partially digested remains of
+animals, this doctrine was too heavy to be carried, and it was quietly
+dropped.
+
+But about the middle of the nineteenth century the doctrine of the
+rise of man as opposed to the doctrine of his "fall" received a great
+accession of strength from a source most unexpected. As we saw in the
+last chapter, the facts proving the great antiquity of man foreshadowed
+a new and even more remarkable idea regarding him. We saw, it is true,
+that the opponents of Boucher de Perthes, while they could not deny his
+discovery of human implements in the drift, were successful in securing
+a verdict of "Not proven" as regarded his discovery of human bones; but
+their triumph was short-lived. Many previous discoveries, little thought
+of up to that time, began to be studied, and others were added which
+resulted not merely in confirming the truth regarding the antiquity of
+man, but in establishing another doctrine which the opponents of science
+regarded with vastly greater dislike--the doctrine that man has not
+fallen from an original high estate in which he was created about six
+thousand years ago, but that, from a period vastly earlier than any
+warranted by the sacred chronologists, he has been, in spite of lapses
+and deteriorations, rising.
+
+A brief review of this new growth of truth may be useful. As early as
+1835 Prof. Jaeger had brought out from a quantity of Quaternary remains
+dug up long before at Cannstadt, near Stuttgart, a portion of a human
+skull, apparently of very low type. A battle raged about it for a time,
+but this finally subsided, owing to uncertainties arising from the
+circumstances of the discovery.
+
+In 1856, in the Neanderthal, near Dusseldorf, among Quaternary remains
+gathered on the floor of a grotto, another skull was found bearing
+the same evidence of a low human type. As in the case of the Cannstadt
+skull, this again was fiercely debated, and finally the questions
+regarding it were allowed to remain in suspense. But new discoveries
+were made: at Eguisheim, at Brux, at Spy, and elsewhere, human skulls
+were found of a similarly low type; and, while each of the earlier
+discoveries was open to debate, and either, had no other been
+discovered, might have been considered an abnormal specimen, the
+combination of all these showed conclusively that not only had a race of
+men existed at that remote period, but that it was of a type as low as
+the lowest, perhaps below the lowest, now known.
+
+Research was now redoubled, and, as a result, human skulls and complete
+skeletons of various types began to be discovered in the ancient
+deposits of many other parts of the world, and especially in France,
+Belgium, Germany, the Caucasus, Africa, and North and South America.
+
+But soon began to emerge from all these discoveries a fact of enormous
+importance. The skulls and bones found at Cro Magnon, Solutre, Furfooz,
+Grenelle, and elsewhere, were compared, and it was thus made certain
+that various races had already appeared and lived in various grades of
+civilization, even in those exceedingly remote epochs; that even then
+there were various strata of humanity ranging from races of a very low
+to those of a very high type; and that upon any theory--certainly upon
+the theory of the origin of mankind from a single pair--two things were
+evident: first, that long, slow processes during vast periods of time
+must have been required for the differentiation of these races, and for
+the evolution of man up to the point where the better specimens show
+him, certainly in the early Quaternary and perhaps in the Tertiary
+period; and, secondly, that there had been from the first appearance of
+man, of which we have any traces, an UPWARD tendency.(191)
+
+
+     (191) For Wesley's statement of the amazing consequences of the entrance
+of death into the world by sin, see citations in his sermon on The Fall
+of Man in the chapter on Geology. For Boucher de Perthes, see his Life
+by Ledieu, especially chapters v and xix; also letters in the appendix;
+also Les Antiquities Celtiques et Antediluviennes, as cited in previous
+chapters of this work. For an account of the Neanderthal man and other
+remains mentioned, see Quatrefages, Human Species, chap. xxvi; also
+Mortillet, Le Prehistorique, Paris, 1885, pp. 232 et seq.; also other
+writers cited in this chapter. For the other discoveries mentioned, see
+the same sources. For an engraving of the skull and the restored human
+face of the Neanderthal man, see Reinach, Antiquities Nationales, etc.,
+vol. i, p. 138. For the vast regions over which that early race spread,
+see Quatrefages as above, p. 307. See also the same author, Histoire
+Generale des Races Humaines, in the Bibliotheque Ethnologique, Paris,
+1887, p. 4. In the vast mass of literature bearing on this subject, see
+Quatrefages, Dupont, Reinach, Joly, Mortillet, Tylor, and Lubbock, in
+works cited through these chapters.
+
+
+This second conclusion, the upward tendency of man from low beginnings,
+was made more and more clear by bringing into relations with these
+remains of human bodies and of extinct animals the remains of human
+handiwork. As stated in the last chapter, the river drift and bone
+caves in Great Britain, France, and other parts of the world, revealed a
+progression, even in the various divisions of the earliest Stone period;
+for, beginning at the very lowest strata of these remains, on the floors
+of the caverns, associated mainly with the bones of extinct animals,
+such as the cave bear, the hairy elephant, and the like, were the rudest
+implements then, in strata above these, sealed in the stalagmite of the
+cavern floors, lying with the bones of animals extinct but more recent,
+stone implements were found, still rude, but, as a rule, of an improved
+type; and, finally, in a still higher stratum, associated with bones
+of animals like the reindeer and bison, which, though not extinct, have
+departed to other climates, were rude stone implements, on the whole
+of a still better workmanship. Such was the foreshadowing, even at that
+early rude Stone period, of the proofs that the tendency of man has
+been from his earliest epoch and in all parts of the world, as a rule,
+upward.
+
+But this rule was to be much further exemplified. About 1850, while the
+French and English geologists were working more especially among the
+relics of the drift and cave periods, noted archaeologists of the
+North--Forchammer, Steenstrup, and Worsaae--were devoting themselves to
+the investigation of certain remains upon the Danish Peninsula. These
+remains were of two kinds: first, there were vast shell-heaps or
+accumulations of shells and other refuse cast aside by rude tribes
+which at some unknown age in the past lived on the shores of the Baltic,
+principally on shellfish. That these shell-heaps were very ancient
+was evident: the shells of oysters and the like found in them were far
+larger than any now found on those coasts; their size, so far from being
+like that of the corresponding varieties which now exist in the brackish
+waters of the Baltic, was in every case like that of those varieties
+which only thrive in the waters of the open salt sea. Here was a clear
+indication that at the time when man formed these shell-heaps those
+coasts were in far more direct communication with the salt sea than at
+present, and that sufficient time must have elapsed since that period to
+have wrought enormous changes in sea and land throughout those regions.
+
+Scattered through these heaps were found indications of a grade of
+civilization when man still used implements of stone, but implements and
+weapons which, though still rude, showed a progress from those of the
+drift and early cave period, some of them being of polished stone.
+
+With these were other evidences that civilization had progressed.
+With implements rude enough to have survived from early periods, other
+implements never known in the drift and bone caves began to appear,
+and, though there were few if any bones of other domestic animals, the
+remains of dogs were found; everything showed that there had been a
+progress in civilization between the former Stone epoch and this.
+
+The second series of discoveries in Scandinavia was made in the
+peat-beds: these were generally formed in hollows or bowls varying in
+depth from ten to thirty feet, and a section of them, like a section of
+the deposits in the bone caverns, showed a gradual evolution of human
+culture. The lower strata in these great bowls were found to be made up
+chiefly of mosses and various plants matted together with the trunks
+of fallen trees, sometimes of very large diameter; and the botanical
+examination of the lowest layer of these trees and plants in the various
+bowls revealed a most important fact: for this layer, the first in point
+of time, was always of the Scotch fir--which now grows nowhere in the
+Danish islands, and can not be made to grow anywhere in them--and of
+plants which are now extinct in these regions, but have retreated within
+the arctic circle. Coming up from the bottom of these great bowls there
+was found above the first layer a second, in which were matted together
+masses of oak trees of different varieties; these, too, were relics of
+a bygone epoch, since the oak has almost entirely disappeared from
+Denmark. Above these came a third stratum made up of fallen beech trees;
+and the beech is now, and has been since the beginning of recorded
+history, the most common tree of the Danish Peninsula.
+
+Now came a second fact of the utmost importance as connected with the
+first. Scattered, as a rule, through the lower of these deposits, that
+of the extinct fir trees and plants, were found implements and weapons
+of smooth stone; in the layer of oak trees were found implements of
+bronze; and among the layer of beeches were found implements and weapons
+of iron.
+
+The general result of these investigations in these two sources, the
+shell mounds and the peat deposits, was the same: the first civilization
+evidenced in them was marked by the use of stone implements more or less
+smooth, showing a progress from the earlier rude Stone period made known
+by the bone caves; then came a later progress to a higher civilization,
+marked by the use of bronze implements; and, finally, a still higher
+development when iron began to be used.
+
+The labours of the Danish archaeologists have resulted in the formation
+of a great museum at Copenhagen, and on the specimens they have
+found, coupled with those of the drift and bone caves, is based the
+classification between the main periods or divisions in the evolution of
+the human race above referred to.
+
+It was not merely in Scandinavian lands that these results were reached;
+substantially the same discoveries were made in Ireland and France, in
+Sardinia and Portugal, in Japan and in Brazil, in Cuba and in the United
+States; in fact, as a rule, in nearly every part of the world which was
+thoroughly examined.(192)
+
+
+     (192) For the general subject, see Mortillet, Le Prehistorique, p. 498,
+et passim. For examples of the rude stone implements, improving as we go
+from earlier to later layers in the bone caves, see Boyd Hawkins, Early
+Man in Britain, chap. vii, p. 186; also Quatrefages, Human Species, New
+York, 1879, pp. 305 et seq. An interesting gleam of light is thrown on
+the subject in De Baye, Grottes Prehistoriques de la Marne, pp. 31 et
+seq.; also Evans, as cited in the previous chapter. For the more recent
+investigations in the Danish shell-heaps, see Boyd Dawkins, Early Man in
+Britain, pp. 303, 304. For these evidences of advanced civilization in
+the shell-heaps, see Mortillet, p. 498. He, like Nilsson, says that only
+the bones of the dog were found; but compare Dawkins, p. 305. For the
+very full list of these discoveries, with their bearing on each other,
+see Mortillet, p. 499. As to those in Scandanavian countries, see
+Nilsson, The Primitive Inhabitants of Scandanavia, third edition, with
+Introduction by Lubbock, London, 1868; also the Pre-History of the
+North, by Worsaae, English translation, London, 1886. For shell-mounds
+and their contents in the Spanish Peninsula, see Cartailhac's greater
+work already cited. For summary of such discoveries throughout the
+world, see Mortillet, Le Prehistorique, pp. 497 et seq.
+
+
+But from another quarter came a yet more striking indication of this
+same evolution. As far back as the year 1829 there were discovered,
+in the Lake of Zurich, piles and other antiquities indicating a former
+existence of human dwellings, standing in the water at some distance
+from the shore; but the usual mixture of thoughtlessness and dread of
+new ideas seems to have prevailed, and nothing was done until about
+1853, when new discoveries of the same kind were followed up vigorously,
+and Rutimeyer, Keller, Troyon, and others showed not only in the Lake
+of Zurich, but in many other lakes in Switzerland, remains of former
+habitations, and, in the midst of these, great numbers of relics,
+exhibiting the grade of civilization which those lake-dwellers had
+attained.
+
+Here, too, were accumulated proofs of the upward tendency of the human
+race. Implements of polished stone, bone, leather, pottery of various
+grades, woven cloth, bones of several kinds of domestic animals, various
+sorts of grain, bread which had been preserved by charring, and a
+multitude of evidences of progress never found among the earlier, ruder
+relics of civilization, showed yet more strongly that man had arrived
+here at a still higher stage than his predecessor of the drift, cave,
+and shell-heap periods, and had gone on from better to better.
+
+Very striking evidences of this upward tendency were found in each class
+of implements. As by comparing the chipped flint implements of the lower
+and earlier strata in the cave period with those of the later and upper
+strata we saw progress, so, in each of the periods of polished stone,
+bronze, and iron, we see, by similar comparisons, a steady progress from
+rude to perfected implements; and especially is this true in the
+remains of the various lake-dwellings, for among these can be traced out
+constant increase in the variety of animals domesticated, and gradual
+improvements in means of subsistence and in ways of living.
+
+Incidentally, too, a fact, at first sight of small account, but on
+reflection exceedingly important, was revealed. The earlier bronze
+implements were frequently found to imitate in various minor respects
+implements of stone; in other words, forms were at first given to bronze
+implements natural in working stone, but not natural in working bronze.
+This showed the DIRECTION of the development--that it was upward from
+stone to bronze, not downward from bronze to stone; that it was progress
+rather than decline.
+
+These investigations were supplemented by similar researches elsewhere.
+In many other parts of the world it was found that lake-dwellers had
+existed in different grades of civilization, but all within a certain
+range, intermediate between the cave-dwellers and the historic period.
+To explain this epoch of the lake-dwellers, history came in with the
+account given by Herodotus of the lake-dwellings on Lake Prasias,
+which gave protection from the armies of Persia. Still more important,
+Comparative Ethnography showed that to-day, in various parts of the
+world, especially in New Guinea and West Africa, races of men are living
+in lake-dwellings built upon piles, and with a range of implements and
+weapons strikingly like many of those discovered in these ancient lake
+deposits of Switzerland.
+
+In Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Ireland, Scotland, and other
+countries, remains of a different sort were also found, throwing light
+on this progress. The cromlechs, cranogs, mounds, and the like,
+though some of them indicate the work of weaker tribes pressed upon by
+stronger, show, as a rule, the same upward tendency.
+
+At a very early period in the history of these discoveries, various
+attempts were made--nominally in the interest of religion, but really in
+the interest of sundry creeds and catechisms framed when men knew little
+or nothing of natural laws--to break the force of such evidences of the
+progress and development of the human race from lower to higher. Out
+of all the earlier efforts two may be taken as fairly typical, for
+they exhibit the opposition to science as developed under two different
+schools of theology, each working in its own way. The first of these
+shows great ingenuity and learning, and is presented by Mr. Southall in
+his book, published in 1875, entitled The Recent Origin of the World.
+In this he grapples first of all with the difficulties presented by the
+early date of Egyptian civilization, and the keynote of his argument is
+the statement made by an eminent Egyptologist, at a period before modern
+archaeological discoveries were well understood, that "Egypt laughs the
+idea of a rude Stone age, a polished Stone age, a Bronze age, an Iron
+age, to scorn."
+
+Mr. Southall's method was substantially that of the late excellent Mr.
+Gosse in geology. Mr. Gosse, as the readers of this work may remember,
+felt obliged, in the supposed interest of Genesis, to urge that safety
+to men's souls might be found in believing that, six thousand years ago,
+the Almighty, for some inscrutable purpose, suddenly set Niagara pouring
+very near the spot where it is pouring now; laid the various strata,
+and sprinkled the fossils through them like plums through a pudding;
+scratched the glacial grooves upon the rocks, and did a vast multitude
+of things, subtle and cunning, little and great, in all parts of the
+world, required to delude geologists of modern times into the conviction
+that all these things were the result of a steady progress through long
+epochs. On a similar plan, Mr. Southall proposed, at the very beginning
+of his book, as a final solution of the problem, the declaration that
+Egypt, with its high civilization in the time of Mena, with its races,
+classes, institutions, arrangements, language, monuments--all indicating
+an evolution through a vast previous history--was a sudden creation
+which came fully made from the hands of the Creator. To use his own
+words, "The Egyptians had no Stone age, and were born civilized."
+
+There is an old story that once on a time a certain jovial King of
+France, making a progress through his kingdom, was received at the gates
+of a provincial town by the mayor's deputy, who began his speech on this
+wise: "May it please your Majesty, there are just thirteen reasons why
+His Honour the Mayor can not be present to welcome you this morning. The
+first of these reasons is that he is dead." On this the king graciously
+declared that this first reason was sufficient, and that he would not
+trouble the mayor's deputy for the twelve others.
+
+So with Mr. Southall's argument: one simple result of scientific
+research out of many is all that it is needful to state, and this is,
+that in these later years we have a new and convincing evidence of
+the existence of prehistoric man in Egypt in his earliest, rudest
+beginnings; the very same evidence which we find in all other parts of
+the world which have been carefully examined. This evidence consists
+of stone implements and weapons which have been found in Egypt in
+such forms, at such points, and in such positions that when studied in
+connection with those found in all other parts of the world, from New
+Jersey to California, from France to India, and from England to the
+Andaman Islands, they force upon us the conviction that civilization
+in Egypt, as in all other parts of the world, was developed by the same
+slow process of evolution from the rudest beginnings.
+
+It is true that men learned in Egyptology had discouraged the idea of
+an earlier Stone age in Egypt, and that among these were Lepsius and
+Brugsch; but these men were not trained in prehistoric archaeology;
+their devotion to the study of the monuments of Egyptian civilization
+had evidently drawn them away from sympathy, and indeed from
+acquaintance, with the work of men like Boucher de Perthes, Lartet,
+Nilsson, Troyon, and Dawkins. But a new era was beginning. In 1867
+Worsaae called attention to the prehistoric implements found on
+the borders of Egypt; two years later Arcelin discussed such stone
+implements found beneath the soil of Sakkara and Gizeh, the very
+focus of the earliest Egyptian civilization; in the same year Hamy and
+Lenormant found such implements washed out from the depths higher up the
+Nile at Thebes, near the tombs of the kings; and in the following year
+they exhibited more flint implements found at various other places.
+Coupled with these discoveries was the fact that Horner and Linant found
+a copper knife at twenty-four feet, and pottery at sixty feet, below the
+surface. In 1872 Dr. Reil, director of the baths at Helouan, near Cairo,
+discovered implements of chipped flint; and in 1877. Dr. Jukes Brown
+made similar discoveries in that region. In 1878 Oscar Fraas, summing up
+the question, showed that the stone implements were mainly such as are
+found in the prehistoric deposits of other countries, and that, Zittel
+having found them in the Libyan Desert, far from the oases, there was
+reason to suppose that these implements were used before the region
+became a desert and before Egypt was civilized. Two years later
+Dr. Mook, of Wurzburg, published a work giving the results of his
+investigations, with careful drawings of the rude stone implements
+discovered by him in the upper Nile Valley, and it was evident that,
+while some of these implements differed slightly from those before
+known, the great mass of them were of the character so common in the
+prehistoric deposits of other parts of the world.
+
+A yet more important contribution to this mass of facts was made by
+Prof. Henry Haynes, of Boston, who in the winter of 1877 and 1878 began
+a very thorough investigation of the subject, and discovered, a few
+miles east of Cairo, many flint implements. The significance of Haynes's
+discoveries was twofold: First, there were, among these, stone axes like
+those found in the French drift beds of St. Acheul, showing that the men
+who made or taught men how to make these in Egypt were passing through
+the same phase of savagery as that of Quaternary France; secondly, he
+found a workshop for making these implements, proving that these flint
+implements were not brought into Egypt by invaders, but were made to
+meet the necessities of the country. From this first field Prof. Haynes
+went to Helouan, north of Cairo, and there found, as Dr. Reil had done,
+various worked flints, some of them like those discovered by M. Riviere
+in the caves of southern France; thence he went up the Nile to Luxor,
+the site of ancient Thebes, began a thorough search in the Tertiary
+limestone hills, and found multitudes of chipped stone implements, some
+of them, indeed, of original forms, but most of forms common in other
+parts of the world under similar circumstances, some of the chipped
+stone axes corresponding closely to those found in the drift beds of
+northern France.
+
+All this seemed to show conclusively that, long ages before the earliest
+period of Egyptian civilization of which the monuments of the first
+dynasties give us any trace, mankind in the Nile Valley was going
+through the same slow progress from the period when, standing just above
+the brutes, he defended himself with implements of rudely chipped stone.
+
+But in 1881 came discoveries which settled the question entirely.
+In that year General Pitt-Rivers, a Fellow of the Royal Society and
+President of the Anthropological Institute, and J. F. Campbell, Fellow
+of the Royal Geographical Society of England, found implements not only
+in alluvial deposits, associated with the bones of the zebra, hyena, and
+other animals which have since retreated farther south, but, at Djebel
+Assas, near Thebes, they found implements of chipped flint in the hard,
+stratified gravel, from six and a half to ten feet below the surface;
+relics evidently, as Mr. Campbell says, "beyond calculation older than
+the oldest Egyptian temples and tombs." They certainly proved that
+Egyptian civilization had not issued in its completeness, and all at
+once, from the hand of the Creator in the time of Mena. Nor was this
+all. Investigators of the highest character and ability--men like Hull
+and Flinders Petrie--revealed geological changes in Egypt requiring
+enormous periods of time, and traces of man's handiwork dating from
+a period when the waters in the Nile Valley extended hundreds of feet
+above the present level. Thus was ended the contention of Mr. Southall.
+
+Still another attack upon the new scientific conclusions came from
+France, when in 1883 the Abbe Hamard, Priest of the Oratory, published
+his Age of Stone and Primitive Man. He had been especially vexed at the
+arrangement of prehistoric implements by periods at the Paris Exposition
+of 1878; he bitterly complains of this as having an anti-Christian
+tendency, and rails at science as "the idol of the day." He attacks
+Mortillet, one of the leaders in French archaeology, with a great
+display of contempt; speaks of the "venom" in books on prehistoric man
+generally; complains that the Church is too mild and gentle with such
+monstrous doctrines; bewails the concessions made to science by some
+eminent preachers; and foretells his own martyrdom at the hands of men
+of science.
+
+Efforts like this accomplished little, and a more legitimate attempt was
+made to resist the conclusions of archaeology by showing that knives of
+stone were used in obedience to a sacred ritual in Egypt for embalming,
+and in Judea for circumcision, and that these flint knives might have
+had this later origin. But the argument against the conclusions drawn
+from this view was triple: First, as we have seen, not only stone
+knives, but axes and other implements of stone similar to those of a
+prehistoric period in western Europe were discovered; secondly,
+these implements were discovered in the hard gravel drift of a period
+evidently far earlier than that of Mena; and, thirdly, the use of stone
+implements in Egyptian and Jewish sacred functions within the historic
+period, so far from weakening the force of the arguments for the long
+and slow development of Egyptian civilization from the men who used rude
+flint implements to the men who built and adorned the great temples
+of the early dynasties, is really an argument in favour of that long
+evolution. A study of comparative ethnology has made it clear that the
+sacred stone knives and implements of the Egyptian and Jewish priestly
+ritual were natural survivals of that previous period. For sacrificial
+or ritual purposes, the knife of stone was considered more sacred than
+the knife of bronze or iron, simply because it was ancient; just as
+to-day, in India, Brahman priests kindle the sacred fire not with
+matches or flint and steel, but by a process found in the earliest,
+lowest stages of human culture--by violently boring a pointed stick into
+another piece of wood until a spark comes; and just as to-day, in Europe
+and America, the architecture of the Middle Ages survives as a special
+religious form in the erection of our most recent churches, and to such
+an extent that thousands on thousands of us feel that we can not worship
+fitly unless in the midst of windows, decorations, vessels, implements,
+vestments, and ornaments, no longer used for other purposes, but which
+have survived in sundry branches of the Christian Church, and derived a
+special sanctity from the fact that they are of ancient origin.
+
+Taking, then, the whole mass of testimony together, even though a
+plausible or very strong argument against single evidences may be made
+here and there, the force of its combined mass remains, and leaves both
+the vast antiquity of man and the evolution of civilization from its
+lowest to its highest forms, as proved by the prehistoric remains of
+Egypt and so many other countries in all parts of the world, beyond
+a reasonable doubt. Most important of all, the recent discoveries in
+Assyria have thrown a new light upon the evolution of the dogma of "the
+fall of man." Reverent scholars like George Smith, Sayce, Delitzsch,
+Jensen, Schrader, and their compeers have found in the Ninevite records
+the undoubted source of that form of the fall legend which was adopted
+by the Hebrews and by them transmitted to Christianity.(193)
+
+
+     (193) For Mr. Southall's views, see his Recent Origin of Man, p. 20
+and elsewhere. For Mr. Gosse'e views, see his Omphalos as cited in the
+chapter on Geology in this work. For a summary of the work of Arcelin,
+Hamy, Lenormant, Richard, Lubbock, Mook, and Haynes, see Mortillet, Le
+Prehistorique, passim. As to Zittel's discovery, see Oscar Fraas's Aus
+dem Orient, Stuttgart, 1878. As to the striking similarities of the stone
+implements found in Egypt with those found in the drift and bone
+caves, see Mook's monograph, Wurzburg, 1880, cited in the next chapter,
+especially Plates IX, XI, XII. For even more striking reproductions
+of photographs showing this remarkable similarity between Egyptian
+and European chipped stone remains, see H. W. Haynes, Palaeolithic
+Implements in Upper Egypt, Boston, 1881. See also Evans, Ancient Stone
+Implements, chap. i, pp. 8, 9, 44, 102, 316, 329. As to stone implements
+used by priests of Jehovah, priests of Baal, priests of Moloch, priests
+of Odin, and Egyptian priests, as religious survivals, see Cartailhac,
+as above, 6 and 7; also Lartet, in De Luynes, Expedition to the Dead
+Sea; also Nilsson, Primitive Inhabitants of Scandanavia, pp. 96, 97;
+also Sayce, Herodotus, p. 171, note. For the discoveries by Pitt-Rivers,
+see the Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and
+Ireland for 1882, vol. xi, pp. 382 et seq.; and for Campbell's decision
+regarding them, see ibid., pp. 396, 397. For facts summed up in the
+words, "It is most probable that Egypt at a remote period passed like
+many other countries through its stone period," see Hilton Price, F. S.
+A., F. G. S., paper in the Journal of the Archaeological Institute of
+Great Britain and Ireland for 1884, p. 56. Specimens of Palaeolithic
+implements from Egypt--knives, arrowheads, spearheads, flakes, and
+the like, both of peculiar and ordinary forms--may be seen in various
+museums, but especially in that of Prof. Haynes, of Boston. Some
+interesting light is also thrown into the subject by the specimens
+obtained by General Wilson and deposited in the Smithsonian Institution
+at Washington. For Abbe Hamard's attack, see his L'Age de la Pierre et
+L'Homme Primitif, Paris, 1883--especially his preface. For the stone
+weapon found in the high drift behind Esneh, see Flinders Petrie,
+History of Egypt, chap. i. Of these discoveries by Pitt-Rivers and
+others, Maspero appears to know nothing.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX. THE "FALL OF MAN" AND ETHNOLOGY.
+
+
+We have seen that, closely connected with the main lines of
+investigation in archaeology and anthropology, there were other
+researches throwing much light on the entire subject. In a previous
+chapter we saw especially that Lafitau and Jussieu were among the first
+to collect and compare facts bearing on the natural history of man,
+gathered by travellers in various parts of the earth, thus laying
+foundations for the science of comparative ethnology. It was soon seen
+that ethnology had most important bearings upon the question of the
+material, intellectual, moral, and religious evolution of the human
+race; in every civilized nation, therefore, appeared scholars who began
+to study the characteristics of various groups of men as ascertained
+from travellers, and to compare the results thus gained with each other
+and with those obtained by archaeology.
+
+Thus, more and more clear became the evidences that the tendency of the
+race has been upward from low beginnings. It was found that groups
+of men still existed possessing characteristics of those in the early
+periods of development to whom the drift and caves and shell-heaps
+and pile-dwellings bear witness; groups of men using many of the same
+implements and weapons, building their houses in the same way, seeking
+their food by the same means, enjoying the same amusements, and going
+through the same general stages of culture; some being in a condition
+corresponding to the earlier, some to the later, of those early periods.
+
+From all sides thus came evidence that we have still upon the
+earth examples of all the main stages in the development of human
+civilization; that from the period when man appears little above the
+brutes, and with little if any religion in any accepted sense of the
+word, these examples can be arranged in an ascending series leading
+to the highest planes which humanity has reached; that philosophic
+observers may among these examples study existing beliefs, usages, and
+institutions back through earlier and earlier forms, until, as a rule,
+the whole evolution can be easily divined if not fully seen. Moreover,
+the basis of the whole structure became more and more clear: the fact
+that "the lines of intelligence have always been what they are, and have
+always operated as they do now; that man has progressed from the simple
+to the complex, from the particular to the general."
+
+As this evidence from ethnology became more and more strong, its
+significance to theology aroused attention, and naturally most
+determined efforts were made to break its force. On the Continent the
+two great champions of the Church in this field were De Maistre and De
+Bonald; but the two attempts which may be especially recalled as the
+most influential among English-speaking peoples were those of Whately,
+Archbishop of Dublin, and the Duke of Argyll.
+
+First in the combat against these new deductions of science was Whately.
+He was a strong man, whose breadth of thought and liberality in practice
+deserve all honour; but these very qualities drew upon him the distrust
+of his orthodox brethren; and, while his writings were powerful in
+the first half of the present century to break down many bulwarks of
+unreason, he seems to have been constantly in fear of losing touch with
+the Church, and therefore to have promptly attacked some scientific
+reasonings, which, had he been a layman, not holding a brief for
+the Church, he would probably have studied with more care and less
+prejudice. He was not slow to see the deeper significance of archaeology
+and ethnology in their relations to the theological conception of "the
+Fall," and he set the battle in array against them.
+
+His contention was, to use his own words, that "no community ever did
+or ever can emerge unassisted by external helps from a state of utter
+barbarism into anything that can be called civilization"; and that, in
+short, all imperfectly civilized, barbarous, and savage races are but
+fallen descendants of races more fully civilized. This view was urged
+with his usual ingenuity and vigour, but the facts proved too strong
+for him: they made it clear, first, that many races were without simple
+possessions, instruments, and arts which never, probably, could have
+been lost if once acquired--as, for example, pottery, the bow for
+shooting, various domesticated animals, spinning, the simplest
+principles of agriculture, household economy, and the like; and,
+secondly, it was shown as a simple matter of fact that various savage
+and barbarous tribes HAD raised themselves by a development of means
+which no one from outside could have taught them; as in the cultivation
+and improvement of various indigenous plants, such as the potato and
+Indian corn among the Indians of North America; in the domestication of
+various animals peculiar to their own regions, such as the llama among
+the Indians of south America; in the making of sundry fabrics out of
+materials and by processes not found among other nations, such as
+the bark cloth of the Polynesians; and in the development of weapons
+peculiar to sundry localities, but known in no others, such as the
+boomerang in Australia.
+
+Most effective in bringing out the truth were such works as those of Sir
+John Lubbock and Tylor; and so conclusive were they that the arguments
+of Whately were given up as untenable by the other of the two great
+champions above referred to, and an attempt was made by him to form the
+diminishing number of thinking men supporting the old theological view
+on a new line of defence.
+
+This second champion, the Duke of Argyll, was a man of wide knowledge
+and strong powers in debate, whose high moral sense was amply shown in
+his adhesion to the side of the American Union in the struggle against
+disunion and slavery, despite the overwhelming majority against him in
+the high aristocracy to which he belonged. As an honest man and close
+thinker, the duke was obliged to give up completely the theological view
+of the antiquity of man. The whole biblical chronology as held by the
+universal Church, "always, everywhere, and by all," he sacrificed, and
+gave all his powers in this field to support the theory of "the Fall."
+Noblesse oblige: the duke and his ancestors had been for centuries the
+chief pillars of the Church of Scotland, and it was too much to expect
+that he could break away from a tenet which forms really its "chief
+cornerstone."
+
+Acknowledging the insufficiency of Archbishop Whately's argument, the
+duke took the ground that the lower, barbarous, savage, brutal
+races were the remains of civilized races which, in the struggle for
+existence, had been pushed and driven off to remote and inclement parts
+of the earth, where the conditions necessary to a continuance in their
+early civilization were absent; that, therefore, the descendants of
+primeval, civilized men degenerated and sank in the scale of culture. To
+use his own words, the weaker races were "driven by the stronger to the
+woods and rocks," so that they became "mere outcasts of the human race."
+
+In answer to this, while it was conceded, first, that there have been
+examples of weaker tribes sinking in the scale of culture after escaping
+from the stronger into regions unfavourable to civilization, and,
+secondly, that many powerful nations have declined and decayed, it was
+shown that the men in the most remote and unfavourable regions have not
+always been the lowest in the scale; that men have been frequently found
+"among the woods and rocks" in a higher state of civilization than on
+the fertile plains, such examples being cited as Mexico, Peru, and even
+Scotland; and that, while there were many examples of special and local
+decline, overwhelming masses of facts point to progress as a rule.
+
+The improbability, not to say impossibility, of many of the conclusions
+arrived at by the duke appeared more and more strongly as more became
+known of the lower tribes of mankind. It was necessary on his theory
+to suppose many things which our knowledge of the human race absolutely
+forbids us to believe: for example, it was necessary to suppose that
+the Australians or New Zealanders, having once possessed so simple and
+convenient an art as that of the potter, had lost every trace of it; and
+that the same tribes, having once had so simple a means of saving labour
+as the spindle or small stick weighted at one end for spinning, had
+given it up and gone back to twisting threads with the hand. In fact,
+it was necessary to suppose that one of the main occupations of man from
+"the beginning" had been the forgetting of simple methods, processes,
+and implements which all experience in the actual world teaches us are
+never entirely forgotten by peoples who have once acquired them.
+
+Some leading arguments of the duke were overthrown by simple statements
+of fact. Thus, his instance of the Eskimo as pushed to the verge
+of habitable America, and therefore living in the lowest depths of
+savagery, which, even if it were true, by no means proved a general
+rule, was deprived of its force by the simple fact that the Eskimos are
+by no means the lowest race on the American continent, and that various
+tribes far more centrally and advantageously placed, as, for instance,
+those in Brazil, are really inferior to them in the scale of culture.
+Again, his statement that "in Africa there appear to be no traces of any
+time when the natives were not acquainted with the use of iron," is met
+by the fact that from the Nile Valley to the Cape of Good Hope we find,
+wherever examination has been made, the same early stone implements
+which in all other parts of the world precede the use of iron, some of
+which would not have been made had their makers possessed iron. The
+duke also tried to show that there were no distinctive epochs of stone,
+bronze, and iron, by adducing the fact that some stone implements are
+found even in some high civilizations. This is indeed a fact. We find
+some few European peasants to-day using stone mallet-heads; but
+this proves simply that the old stone mallet-heads have survived as
+implements cheap and effective.
+
+The argument from Comparative Ethnology in support of the view that the
+tendency of mankind is upward has received strength from many sources.
+Comparative Philology shows that in the less civilized, barbarous, and
+savage races childish forms of speech prevail--frequent reduplications
+and the like, of which we have survivals in the later and even in the
+most highly developed languages. In various languages, too, we find
+relics of ancient modes of thought in the simplest words and expressions
+used for arithmetical calculations. Words and phrases for this purpose
+are frequently found to be derived from the words for hands, feet,
+fingers, and toes, just as clearly as in our own language some of
+our simplest measures of length are shown by their names to have been
+measures of parts of the human body, as the cubit, the foot, and the
+like, and therefore to date from a time when exactness was not required.
+To add another out of many examples, it is found to-day that various
+rude nations go through the simplest arithmetical processes by means
+of pebbles. Into our own language, through the Latin, has come a word
+showing that our distant progenitors reckoned in this way: the word
+CALCULATE gives us an absolute proof of this. According to the theory
+of the Duke of Argyll, men ages ago used pebbles (CALCULI) in performing
+the simplest arithmetical calculations because we to-day "CALCULATE." No
+reduction to absurdity could be more thorough. The simple fact must be
+that we "calculate" because our remote ancestors used pebbles in their
+arithmetic.
+
+Comparative Literature and Folklore also show among peoples of a low
+culture to-day childish modes of viewing nature, and childish ways of
+expressing the relations of man to nature, such as clearly survive from
+a remote ancestry; noteworthy among these are the beliefs in witches and
+fairies, and multitudes of popular and poetic expressions in the most
+civilized nations.
+
+So, too, Comparative Ethnography, the basis of Ethnology, shows in
+contemporary barbarians and savages a childish love of playthings and
+games, of which we have many survivals.
+
+All these facts, which were at first unobserved or observed as matters
+of no significance, have been brought into connection with a fact in
+biology acknowledged alike by all important schools; by Agassiz on one
+hand and by Darwin on the other--namely, as stated by Agassiz, that "the
+young states of each species and group resemble older forms of the same
+group," or, as stated by Darwin, that "in two or more groups of animals,
+however much they may at first differ from each other in structure and
+habits, if they pass through closely similar embryonic stages, we may
+feel almost assured that they have descended from the same parent form,
+and are therefore closely related."(194)
+
+
+     (194) For the stone forms given to early bronze axes, etc., see
+Nilsson, Primitive Inhabitants of Scandanavia, London, 1868, Lubbock's
+Introduction, p. 31; and for plates, see Lubbock's Prehistoric Man,
+chap. ii; also Cartailhac, Les Ages Prehistoriques de l'Espagne et du
+Portugal, p. 227. Also Keller, Lake Dwellings; also Troyon, Habitations
+Lacustres; also Boyd Dawkins, Early Man in Great Britain, p. 191; also
+Lubbock, p. 6; also Lyell, Antiquity of Man,chap. ii. For the cranogs,
+etc., in the north of Europe, see Munro, Ancient Scottish Lake
+Dwellings, Edinburgh, 1882. For mounds and greater stone constructions
+in the extreme south of Europe, see Cartailhac's work on Spain and
+Portugal above cited, part iii, chap. iii. For the source of Mr.
+Southall's contention, see Brugsch, Egypt of the Pharoahs. For the two
+sides of the question whether in the lower grades of savagery there is
+really any recognition of a superior power, or anything which can
+be called, in any accepted sense, religion, compare Quatrefages with
+Lubbock, in works already cited. For a striking but rather ad captandum
+effort to show that there is a moral and religious sense in the very
+lowest of Australian tribes, see one of the discourses of Archbishop
+Vaughn on Science and Religion, Baltimore, 1879. For one out of
+multitiudes of striking and instructive resemblances in ancient
+stone implements and those now in use among sundry savage tribes,
+see comparison between old Scandanavian arrowheads and those recently
+brought from Tierra del Fuego, in Nilsson, as above, especially in Plate
+V. For a brief and admirable statement of the arguments on both sides,
+see Sir J. Lubbock's Dundee paper, given in the appendix to the American
+edition of his Origin of Civilization, etc. For the general argument
+referred to between Whately and the Duke of Argyll on one side, and
+Lubbock on the other, see Lubbock's Dundee paper as above cited; Tylor,
+Early History of Mankind, especially p. 193; and the Duke of Argyll,
+Primeval Man, part iv. For difficulties of savages in arithmetic, see
+Lubbock, as above, pp. 459 et seq. For a very temperate and judicial
+view of the whole question, see Tylor as above, chaps. vii and xiii. For
+a brief summary of the scientific position regarding the stagnation
+and deterioration of races, resulting in the statement that such
+deterioration "in no way contradicts the theory that civilization itself
+is developed from low to high stages," see Tylor, Anthropology, chap. i.
+For striking examples of the testimony of language to upward progress,
+see Tylor, chap. xii.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.  THE "FALL OF MAN" AND HISTORY.
+
+
+The history of art, especially as shown by architecture, in the noblest
+monuments of the most enlightened nations of antiquity; gives abundant
+proofs of the upward tendency of man from the rudest and simplest
+beginnings. Many columns of early Egyptian temples or tombs are but
+bundles of Nile reeds slightly conventionalized in stone; the temples of
+Greece, including not only the earliest forms, but the Parthenon
+itself, while in parts showing an evolution out of Egyptian and Assyrian
+architecture, exhibit frequent reminiscences and even imitations of
+earlier constructions in wood; the medieval cathedrals, while evolved
+out of Roman and Byzantine structures, constantly show unmistakable
+survivals of prehistoric construction. (195)
+
+
+     (195) As to evolution in architecture, and especially of Greek forms
+and ornaments out of Egyptian and Assyrian, with survivals in stone
+architecture of forms obtained in Egypt when reeds were used, and in
+Greece when wood construction prevailed, see Fergusson's Handbook of
+Architecture, vol. i, pp. 100, 228, 233, and elsewhere; also Otfried
+Muller, Ancient Art and its Remains, English translation, London,
+1852, pp. 219, passim. For a very brief but thorough statement, see A.
+Magnard's paper in the Proceedings of the American Oriental Society,
+October, 1889, entitled Reminiscences of Egypt in Doric Architecture.
+On the general subject, see Hommel, Babylonien, ch. i, and Meyer,
+Alterthum, i, S 199.
+
+
+So, too, general history has come in, illustrating the unknown from
+the known: the development of man in the prehistoric period from his
+development within historic times. Nothing is more evident from history
+than the fact that weaker bodies of men driven out by stronger do not
+necessarily relapse into barbarism, but frequently rise, even under the
+most unfavourable circumstances, to a civilization equal or superior
+to that from which they have been banished. Out of very many examples
+showing this law of upward development, a few may be taken as typical.
+The Slavs, who sank so low under the pressure of stronger races that
+they gave the modern world a new word to express the most hopeless
+servitude, have developed powerful civilizations peculiar to themselves;
+the barbarian tribes who ages ago took refuge amid the sand-banks and
+morasses of Holland, have developed one of the world's leading centres
+of civilization; the wretched peasants who about the fifth century took
+refuge from invading hordes among the lagoons and mud banks of Venetia,
+developed a power in art, arms, and politics which is among the wonders
+of human history; the Puritans, driven from the civilization of Great
+Britain to the unfavourable climate, soil, and circumstances of early
+New England,--the Huguenots, driven from France, a country admirably
+fitted for the highest growth of civilization, to various countries
+far less fitted for such growth,--the Irish peasantry, driven in vast
+numbers from their own island to other parts of the world on the whole
+less fitted to them--all are proofs that, as a rule, bodies of men once
+enlightened, when driven to unfavourable climates and brought under the
+most depressing circumstances, not only retain what enlightenment they
+have, but go on increasing it. Besides these, we have such cases as
+those of criminals banished to various penal colonies, from whose
+descendants has been developed a better morality; and of pirates, like
+those of the Bounty, whose descendants, in a remote Pacific island,
+became sober, steady citizens. Thousands of examples show the prevalence
+of this same rule--that men in masses do not forget the main gains of
+their civilization, and that, in spite of deteriorations, their tendency
+is upward.
+
+Another class of historic facts also testifies in the most striking
+manner to this same upward tendency: the decline and destruction
+of various civilizations brilliant but hopelessly vitiated. These
+catastrophes are seen more and more to be but steps in, this
+development. The crumbling away of the great ancient civilizations based
+upon despotism, whether the despotism of monarch, priest, or mob--the
+decline and fall of Roman civilization, for example, which, in his most
+remarkable generalization, Guizot has shown to have been necessary
+to the development of the richer civilization of modern Europe; the
+terrible struggle and loss of the Crusades, which once appeared to be a
+mere catastrophe, but are now seen to have brought in, with the downfall
+of feudalism, the beginnings of the centralizing, civilizing monarchical
+period; the French Revolution, once thought a mere outburst of diabolic
+passion, but now seen to be an unduly delayed transition from the
+monarchical to the constitutional epoch: all show that even widespread
+deterioration and decline--often, indeed, the greatest political and
+moral catastrophes--so far from leading to a fall of mankind, tend in
+the long run to raise humanity to higher planes.
+
+Thus, then, Anthropology and its handmaids, Ethnology, Philology,
+and History, have wrought out, beyond a doubt, proofs of the upward
+evolution of humanity since the appearance of man upon our planet.
+
+Nor have these researches been confined to progress in man's material
+condition. Far more important evidences have been found of upward
+evolution in his family, social, moral, intellectual, and religious
+relations. The light thrown on this subject by such men as Lubbock,
+Tylor, Herbert Spencer, Buckle, Draper, Max Muller, and a multitude of
+others, despite mistakes, haltings, stumblings, and occasional following
+of delusive paths, is among the greatest glories of the century now
+ending. From all these investigators in their various fields, holding
+no brief for any system sacred or secular, but seeking truth as truth,
+comes the same general testimony of the evolution of higher out of
+lower. The process has been indeed slow and painful, but this does not
+prove that it may not become more rapid and less fruitful in sorrow as
+humanity goes on.(196)
+
+
+     (196) As to the good effects of migration, see Waitz, Introduction to
+Anthropology, London, 1863, p. 345.
+
+
+While, then, it is not denied that many instances of retrogression can
+be found, the consenting voice of unbiased investigators in all lands
+has declared more and more that the beginnings of our race must have
+been low and brutal, and that the tendency has been upward. To combat
+this conclusion by examples of decline and deterioration here and
+there has become impossible: as well try to prove that, because in the
+Mississippi there are eddies in which the currents flow northward, there
+is no main stream flowing southward; or that, because trees decay and
+fall, there is no law of upward growth from germ to trunk, branches,
+foliage, and fruit.
+
+A very striking evidence that the theological theory had become
+untenable was seen when its main supporter in the scientific field,
+Von Martius, in the full ripeness of his powers, publicly declared his
+conversion to the scientific view.
+
+Yet, while the tendency of enlightened human thought in recent times is
+unmistakable, the struggle against the older view is not yet ended. The
+bitterness of the Abbe Hamard in France has been carried to similar
+and even greater extremes among sundry Protestant bodies in Europe and
+America. The simple truth of history mates it a necessity, unpleasant
+though it be, to chronicle two typical examples in the United States.
+
+In the year 1875 a leader in American industrial enterprise endowed at
+the capital of a Southern State a university which bore his name. It was
+given into the hands of one of the religious sects most powerful in that
+region, and a bishop of that sect became its president. To its chair
+of Geology was called Alexander Winchell, a scholar who had already
+won eminence as a teacher and writer in that field, a professor greatly
+beloved and respected in the two universities with which he had been
+connected, and a member of the sect which the institution of learning
+above referred to represented.
+
+But his relations to this Southern institution were destined to be
+brief. That his lectures at the Vanderbilt University were learned,
+attractive, and stimulating, even his enemies were forced to admit; but
+he was soon found to believe that there had been men earlier than the
+period as signed to Adam, and even that all the human race are not
+descended from Adam. His desire was to reconcile science and Scripture,
+and he was now treated by a Methodist Episcopal Bishop in Tennessee just
+as, two centuries before, La Peyrere had been treated, for a similar
+effort, by a Roman Catholic vicar-general in Belgium. The publication of
+a series of articles on the subject, contributed by the professor to a
+Northern religious newspaper at its own request, brought matters to a
+climax; for, the articles having fallen under the notice of a leading
+Southwestern organ of the denomination controlling the Vanderbilt
+University, the result was a most bitter denunciation of Prof. Winchell
+and of his views. Shortly afterward the professor was told by Bishop
+McTyeire that "our people are of the opinion that such views are
+contrary to the plan of redemption," and was requested by the bishop to
+quietly resign his chair. To this the professor made the fitting reply:
+"If the board of trustees have the manliness to dismiss me for cause,
+and declare the cause, I prefer that they should do it. No power on
+earth could persuade me to resign."
+
+"We do not propose," said the bishop, with quite gratuitous
+suggestiveness, "to treat you as the Inquisition treated Galileo."
+
+"But what you propose is the same thing," rejoined Dr. Winchell. "It
+is ecclesiastical proscription for an opinion which must be settled by
+scientific evidence."
+
+Twenty-four hours later Dr. Winchell was informed that his chair had
+been abolished, and its duties, with its salary, added to those of a
+colleague; the public were given to understand that the reasons
+were purely economic; the banished scholar was heaped with official
+compliments, evidently in hope that he would keep silence.
+
+Such was not Dr. Winchell's view. In a frank letter to the leading
+journal of the university town he stated the whole matter. The
+intolerance-hating press of the country, religious and secular, did not
+hold its peace. In vain the authorities of the university waited for
+the storm to blow over. It was evident, at last, that a defence must
+be made, and a local organ of the sect, which under the editorship of
+a fellow-professor had always treated Dr. Winchell's views with the
+luminous inaccuracy which usually characterizes a professor's ideas of a
+rival's teachings, assumed the task. In the articles which followed,
+the usual scientific hypotheses as to the creation were declared to be
+"absurd," "vague and unintelligible," "preposterous and gratuitous."
+This new champion stated that "the objections drawn from the
+fossiliferous strata and the like are met by reference to the analogy of
+Adam and Eve, who presented the phenomena of adults when they were but a
+day old, and by the Flood of Noah and other cataclysms, which, with the
+constant change of Nature, are sufficient to account for the phenomena
+in question"!
+
+Under inspiration of this sort the Tennessee Conference of the religious
+body in control of the university had already, in October, 1878, given
+utterance to its opinion of unsanctified science as follows: "This is
+an age in which scientific atheism, having divested itself of the
+habiliments that most adorn and dignify humanity, walks abroad in
+shameless denudation. The arrogant and impertinent claims of this
+'science, falsely so called,' have been so boisterous and persistent,
+that the unthinking mass have been sadly deluded; but our university
+alone has had the courage to lay its young but vigorous hand upon the
+mane of untamed Speculation and say, 'We will have no more of this.'" It
+is a consolation to know how the result, thus devoutly sought, has been
+achieved; for in the "ode" sung at the laying of the corner-stone of a
+new theological building of the same university, in May, 1880, we read:
+
+
+"Science and Revelation here In perfect harmony appear, Guiding young
+feet along the road Through grace and Nature up to God."
+
+
+It is also pleasing to know that, while an institution calling itself
+a university thus violated the fundamental principles on which any
+institution worthy of the name must be based, another institution which
+has the glory of being the first in the entire North to begin
+something like a university organization--the State University of
+Michigan--recalled Dr. Winchell at once to his former professorship, and
+honoured itself by maintaining him in that position, where, unhampered,
+he was thereafter able to utter his views in the midst of the largest
+body of students on the American Continent.
+
+Disgraceful as this history was to the men who drove out Dr. Winchell,
+they but succeeded, as various similar bodies of men making similar
+efforts have done, in advancing their supposed victim to higher position
+and more commanding influence.(197)
+
+
+     (197) For Dr. Winchell's original statements, see Adamites and
+Pre-Adamites, Syracuse, N. Y., 1878. For the first important
+denunciation of his views, see the St. Louis Christian Advocate, May 22,
+1878. For the conversation with Bishop McTyeire, see Dr. Winchell's
+own account in the Nashville American of July 19, 1878. For the further
+course of the attack in the denominational organ of Dr. Winchell's
+oppressors, see the Nashville Christian Advocate, April 26, 1879. For
+the oratorical declaration of the Tennessee Conference upon the
+matter, see the Nashville American, October 15, 1878; and for the "ode"
+regarding the "harmony of science and revelation" as supported at the
+university, see the same journal for May 2, 1880
+
+
+A few years after this suppression of earnest Christian thought at an
+institution of learning in the western part of our Southern States,
+there appeared a similar attempt in sundry seaboard States of the South.
+
+As far back as the year 1857 the Presbyterian Synod of Mississippi
+passed the following resolution:
+
+"WHEREAS, We live in an age in which the most insidious attacks are made
+on revealed religion through the natural sciences, and as it behooves
+the Church at all times to have men capable of defending the faith once
+delivered to the saints;
+
+"RESOLVED, That this presbytery recommend the endowment of a
+professorship of Natural Science as connected with revealed religion in
+one or more of our theological seminaries."
+
+Pursuant to this resolution such a chair was established in the
+theological seminary at Columbia, S.C., and James Woodrow was appointed
+professor. Dr. Woodrow seems to have been admirably fitted for the
+position--a devoted Christian man, accepting the Presbyterian standards
+of faith in which he had been brought up, and at the same time giving
+every effort to acquaint himself with the methods and conclusions of
+science. To great natural endowments he added constant labours to arrive
+at the truth in this field. Visiting Europe, he made the acquaintance
+of many of the foremost scientific investigators, became a student
+in university lecture rooms and laboratories, an interested hearer in
+scientific conventions, and a correspondent of leading men of science
+at home and abroad. As a result, he came to the conclusion that the
+hypothesis of evolution is the only one which explains various leading
+facts in natural science. This he taught, and he also taught that such a
+view is not incompatible with a true view of the sacred Scriptures.
+
+In 1882 and 1883 the board of directors of the theological seminary,
+in fear that "scepticism in the world is using alleged discoveries in
+science to impugn the Word of God," requested Prof. Woodrow to state his
+views in regard to evolution. The professor complied with this request
+in a very powerful address, which was published and widely circulated,
+to such effect that the board of directors shortly afterward passed
+resolutions declaring the theory of evolution as defined by Prof.
+Woodrow not inconsistent with perfect soundness in the faith.
+
+In the year 1884 alarm regarding Dr. Woodrow's teachings began to show
+itself in larger proportions, and a minority report was introduced into
+the Synod of South Carolina declaring that "the synod is called upon
+to decide not upon the question whether the said views of Dr. Woodrow
+contradict the Bible in its highest and absolute sense, but upon the
+question whether they contradict the interpretation of the Bible by the
+Presbyterian Church in the United States."
+
+Perhaps a more self-condemnatory statement was never presented, for
+it clearly recognized, as a basis for intolerance, at least a possible
+difference between "the interpretation of the Bible by the Presbyterian
+Church" and the teachings of "the Bible in its highest and absolute
+sense."
+
+This hostile movement became so strong that, in spite of the favourable
+action of the directors of the seminary, and against the efforts of
+a broad-minded minority in the representative bodies having ultimate
+charge of the institution, the delegates from the various synods raised
+a storm of orthodoxy and drove Dr. Woodrow from his post. Happily, he
+was at the same time professor in the University of South Carolina in
+the same city of Columbia, and from his chair in that institution
+he continued to teach natural science with the approval of the great
+majority of thinking men in that region; hence, the only effect of the
+attempt to crush him was, that his position was made higher, respect for
+him deeper, and his reputation wider.
+
+In spite of attempts by the more orthodox to prevent students of the
+theological seminary from attending his lectures at the university, they
+persisted in hearing him; indeed, the reputation of heresy seemed to
+enhance his influence.
+
+It should be borne in mind that the professor thus treated had been one
+of the most respected and beloved university instructors in the South
+during more than a quarter of a century, and that he was turned out
+of his position with no opportunity for careful defence, and, indeed,
+without even the formality of a trial. Well did an eminent but
+thoughtful divine of the Southern Presbyterian Church declare that "the
+method of procedure to destroy evolution by the majority in the Church
+is vicious and suicidal," and that "logical dynamite has been used to
+put out a supposed fire in the upper stories of our house, and all the
+family in the house at that." Wisely, too, did he refer to the majority
+as "sowing in the fields of the Church the thorns of its errors, and
+cumbering its path with the debris and ruin of its own folly."
+
+To these recent cases may be added the expulsion of Prof. Toy from
+teaching under ecclesiastical control at Louisville, and his election to
+a far more influential chair at Harvard University; the driving out from
+the American College at Beyrout of the young professors who accepted
+evolution as probable, and the rise of one of them, Mr. Nimr, to a far
+more commanding position than that which he left--the control of three
+leading journals at Cairo; the driving out of Robertson Smith from his
+position at Edinburgh, and his reception into the far more important and
+influential professorship at the English University of Cambridge; and
+multitudes of similar cases. From the days when Henry Dunster, the first
+President of Harvard College, was driven from his presidency, as Cotton
+Mather said, for "falling into the briers of Antipedobaptism" until
+now, the same spirit is shown in all such attempts. In each we have
+generally, on one side, a body of older theologians, who since their
+youth have learned nothing and forgotten nothing, sundry professors
+who do not wish to rewrite their lectures, and a mass of unthinking
+ecclesiastical persons of little or no importance save in making up a
+retrograde majority in an ecclesiastical tribunal; on the other side
+we have as generally the thinking, open-minded, devoted men who have
+listened to the revelation of their own time as well as of times past,
+and who are evidently thinking the future thought of the world.
+
+Here we have survivals of that same oppression of thought by theology
+which has cost the modern world so dear; the system which forced great
+numbers of professors, under penalty of deprivation, to teach that the
+sun and planets revolve about the earth; that comets are fire-balls
+flung by an angry God at a wicked world; that insanity is diabolic
+possession; that anatomical investigation of the human frame is sin
+against the Holy Ghost; that chemistry leads to sorcery; that taking
+interest for money is forbidden by Scripture; that geology must conform
+to ancient Hebrew poetry. From the same source came in Austria the rule
+of the "Immaculate Oath," under which university professors, long before
+the dogma of the Immaculate Conception was defined by the Church,
+were obliged to swear to their belief in that dogma before they
+were permitted to teach even arithmetic or geometry; in England, the
+denunciation of inoculation against smallpox; in Scotland, the protests
+against using chloroform in childbirth as "vitiating the primal curse
+against woman"; in France, the use in clerical schools of a historical
+text-book from which Napoleon was left out; and, in America, the use
+of Catholic manuals in which the Inquisition is declared to have been a
+purely civil tribunal, or Protestant manuals in which the Puritans are
+shown to have been all that we could now wish they had been.
+
+So, too, among multitudes of similar efforts abroad, we have during
+centuries the fettering of professors at English and Scotch universities
+by test oaths, subscriptions to articles, and catechisms without number.
+In our own country we have had in a vast multitude of denominational
+colleges, as the first qualification for a professorship, not ability in
+the subject to be taught, but fidelity to the particular shibboleth of
+the denomination controlling the college or university.
+
+Happily, in these days such attempts generally defeat themselves. The
+supposed victim is generally made a man of mark by persecution, and
+advanced to a higher and wider sphere of usefulness. In withstanding
+the march of scientific truth, any Conference, Synod, Board of
+Commissioners, Board of Trustees, or Faculty, is but as a nest of
+field-mice in the path of a steam plough.
+
+The harm done to religion in these attempts is far greater than that
+done to science; for thereby suspicions are widely spread, especially
+among open-minded young men, that the accepted Christian system demands
+a concealment of truth, with the persecution of honest investigators,
+and therefore must be false. Well was it said in substance by President
+McCosh, of Princeton, that no more sure way of making unbelievers in
+Christianity among young men could be devised than preaching to them
+that the doctrines arrived at by the great scientific thinkers of this
+period are opposed to religion.
+
+Yet it is but justice here to say that more and more there is evolving
+out of this past history of oppression a better spirit, which is making
+itself manifest with power in the leading religious bodies of the world.
+In the Church of Rome we have to-day such utterances as those of St.
+George Mivart, declaring that the Church must not attempt to interfere
+with science; that the Almighty in the Galileo case gave her a distinct
+warning that the priesthood of science must remain with the men of
+science. In the Anglican Church and its American daughter we have the
+acts and utterances of such men as Archbishop Tait, Bishop Temple,
+Dean Stanley, Dean Farrar, and many others, proving that the deepest
+religious thought is more and more tending to peace rather than warfare
+with science; and in the other churches, especially in America, while
+there is yet much to be desired, the welcome extended in many of them to
+Alexander Winchell, and the freedom given to views like his, augur well
+for a better state of things in the future.
+
+From the science of Anthropology, when rightly viewed as a whole, has
+come the greatest aid to those who work to advance religion rather than
+to promote any particular system of theology; for Anthropology and its
+subsidiary sciences show more and more that man, since coming upon the
+earth, has risen, from the period when he had little, if any, idea of
+a great power above him, through successive stages of fetichism,
+shamanism, and idolatry, toward better forms of belief, making him more
+and more accessible to nobler forms of religion. The same sciences
+show, too, within the historic period, the same tendency, and especially
+within the events covered by our sacred books, a progress from
+fetichism, of which so many evidences crop out in the early Jewish
+worship as shown in the Old Testament Scriptures, through polytheism,
+when Jehovah was but "a god above all gods," through the period when he
+was "a jealous God," capricious and cruel, until he is revealed in such
+inspired utterances as those of the nobler Psalms, the great passages
+in Isaiah, the sublime preaching of Micah, and, above all, through the
+ideal given to the world by Jesus of Nazareth.
+
+Well indeed has an eminent divine of the Church of England in our own
+time called on Christians to rejoice over this evolution, "between the
+God of Samuel, who ordered infants to be slaughtered, and the God of the
+Psalmist, whose tender mercies are over all his works; between the
+God of the Patriarchs, who was always repenting, and the God of the
+Apostles, who is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever, with whom
+there is no variableness nor shadow of turning, between the God of the
+Old Testament, who walked in the garden in the cool of the day, and the
+God of the New Testament, whom no man hath seen nor can see; between the
+God of Leviticus, who was so particular about the sacrificial furniture
+and utensils, and the God of the Acts, who dwelleth not in temples made
+with hands; between the God who hardened Pharaoh's heart, and the God
+who will have all men to be saved; between the God of Exodus, who is
+merciful only to those who love him, and the God of Christ--the heavenly
+Father--who is kind unto the unthankful and the evil."
+
+However overwhelming, then, the facts may be which Anthropology,
+History, and their kindred sciences may, in the interest of simple
+truth, establish against the theological doctrine of "the Fall"; however
+completely they may fossilize various dogmas, catechisms, creeds,
+confessions, "plans of salvation" and "schemes of redemption," which
+have been evolved from the great minds of the theological period:
+science, so far from making inroads on religion, or even upon our
+Christian development of it, will strengthen all that is essential in
+it, giving new and nobler paths to man's highest aspirations. For the
+one great, legitimate, scientific conclusion of anthropology is, that,
+more and more, a better civilization of the world, despite all its
+survivals of savagery and barbarism, is developing men and women on whom
+the declarations of the nobler Psalms, of Isaiah, of Micah, the Sermon
+on the Mount, the first great commandment, and the second, which is
+like unto it, St. Paul's praise of charity and St. James's definition
+of "pure religion and undefiled," can take stronger hold for the more
+effective and more rapid uplifting of our race.(198)
+
+
+     (198) For the resolution of the Presbyterian Synod of Mississippi in
+1857, see Prof. Woodrow's speech before the Synod of South Carolina,
+October 27 and 28, 1884, p. 6. As to the action of the Board of
+Directors of the Theological Seminary of Columbia, see ibid. As to the
+minority report in the Synod of South Carolina, see ibid., p. 24. For
+the pithy sentences regarding the conduct of the majority in the synods
+toward Dr. Woodrow, see the Rev. Mr. Flynn's article in the Southern
+Presbyterian Review for April, 1885, p. 272, and elsewhere. For the
+restrictions regarding the teaching of the Copernican theory and the
+true doctrine of comets in German universities, see various histories of
+astronomy, especially Madler. For the immaculate oath (Immaculaten-Eid)
+as enforced upon the Austrian professors, see Luftkandl, Die
+Josephinischen Ideen. For the effort of the Church in France, after the
+restoration of the Bourbons, to teach a history of that country from
+which the name of Napoleon should be left out, see Father Loriquet's
+famous Histoire de France a l'Usage de la Jeunesse, Lyon, 1820, vol.
+ii, see especially table of contents at the end. The book bears on its
+title-page the well known initials of the Jesuit motto, A. M. D. G. (Ad
+Majorem Dei Gloriam). For examples in England and Scotland, see various
+English histories, and especially Buckle's chapters on Scotland. For a
+longer collection of examples showing the suppression of anything like
+unfettered thought upon scientific subjects in American universities,
+see Inaugural Address at the Opening of Cornell University, by the
+author of these chapters. For the citation regarding the evolution of
+better and nobler ideas of God, see Church and Creed: Sermons preached
+in the Chapel of the Foundling Hospital, London, by A. W. Momerie,
+M. A., LL. D., Professor of Logic and Metaphysics in King's College,
+London, 1890. For a very vigorous utterance on the other side, see a
+recent charge of the Bishop of Gloucester.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI. FROM "THE PRINCE OF THE POWER OF THE AIR" TO METEOROLOGY
+
+
+
+
+I. GROWTH OF A THEOLOGICAL THEORY.
+
+
+The popular beliefs of classic antiquity regarding storms, thunder,
+and lightning, took shape in myths representing Vulcan as forging
+thunderbolts, Jupiter as flinging them at his enemies, Aeolus intrusting
+the winds in a bag to Aeneas, and the like. An attempt at their further
+theological development is seen in the Pythagorean statement that
+lightnings are intended to terrify the damned in Tartarus.
+
+But at a very early period we see the beginning of a scientific view. In
+Greece, the Ionic philosophers held that such phenomena are obedient to
+law. Plato, Aristotle, and many lesser lights, attempted to account
+for them on natural grounds; and their explanations, though crude, were
+based upon observation and thought. In Rome, Lucretius, Seneca, Pliny,
+and others, inadequate as their statements were, implanted at least the
+germs of a science. But, as the Christian Church rose to power,
+this evolution was checked; the new leaders of thought found, in the
+Scriptures recognized by them as sacred, the basis for a new view, or
+rather for a modification of the old view.
+
+This ending of a scientific evolution based upon observation and
+reason, and this beginning of a sacred science based upon the letter of
+Scripture and on theology, are seen in the utterances of various fathers
+in the early Church. As to the general features of this new development,
+Tertullian held that sundry passages of Scripture prove lightning
+identical with hell-fire; and this idea was transmitted from generation
+to generation of later churchmen, who found an especial support
+of Tertullian's view in the sulphurous smell experienced during
+thunderstorms. St. Hilary thought the firmament very much lower than the
+heavens, and that it was created not only for the support of the upper
+waters, but also for the tempering of our atmosphere.(199) St. Ambrose
+held that thunder is caused by the winds breaking through the solid
+firmament, and cited from the prophet Amos the sublime passage regarding
+"Him that establisheth the thunders."(200) He shows, indeed, some
+conception of the true source of rain; but his whole reasoning is
+limited by various scriptural texts. He lays great stress upon the
+firmament as a solid outer shell of the universe: the heavens he holds
+to be not far outside this outer shell, and argues regarding their
+character from St. Paul's Epistle to the Corinthians and from the one
+hundred and forty-eighth Psalm. As to "the waters which are above the
+firmament," he takes up the objection of those who hold that, this
+outside of the universe being spherical, the waters must slide off it,
+especially if the firmament revolves; and he points out that it is by
+no means certain that the OUTSIDE of the firmament IS spherical, and
+insists that, if it does revolve, the water is just what is needed to
+lubricate and cool its axis.
+
+
+     (199) For Tertullian, see the Apol. contra gentes, c. 47; also Augustin
+de Angelis, Lectiones Meteorologicae, p. 64. For Hilary, see In Psalm
+CXXXV. (Migne, Patr. Lat., vol. ix, p. 773).
+
+
+     (200) "Firmans tonitrua" (Amos iv, 13); the phrase does not appear in
+our version.
+
+
+St. Jerome held that God at the Creation, having spread out the
+firmament between heaven and earth, and having separated the upper
+waters from the lower, caused the upper waters to be frozen into ice,
+in order to keep all in place. A proof of this view Jerome found in
+the words of Ezekiel regarding "the crystal stretched above the
+cherubim."(201)
+
+
+     (201) For Ambrose, see the Hexaemeron, lib. ii, cap. 3,4; lib. iii, cap.
+5 (Migne, Patr. Lat., vol. xiv, pp. 148-150, 153, 165). The passage
+as to lubrication of the heavenly axis is as follows: "Deinde cum ispi
+dicant volvi orbem coeli stellis ardentibus refulgentem, nonne divina
+providentia necessario prospexit, ut intra orbem coeli, et supra orbem
+redundaret aqua, quae illa ferventis axis incendia temperaret?" For
+Jerome, see his Epistola, lxix, cap. 6 (Migne, Patr. Lat., vol. xxii,
+p.659).
+
+
+The germinal principle in accordance with which all these theories were
+evolved was most clearly proclaimed to the world by St. Augustine in his
+famous utterance: "Nothing is to be accepted save on the authority of
+Scripture, since greater is that authority than all the powers of the
+human mind."(202) No treatise was safe thereafter which did not breathe
+the spirit and conform to the letter of this maxim. Unfortunately, what
+was generally understood by the "authority of Scripture" was the tyranny
+of sacred books imperfectly transcribed, viewed through distorting
+superstitions, and frequently interpreted by party spirit.
+
+
+     (202) "Major est quippe Scripturae hujas auctoritas, quam omnis humani
+ingenii capacitas."--Augustine, De Genesi ad Lit., lib. ii, cap. 5
+(Migne, Patr. Lat., vol. xxxiv, pp. 266, 267). Or, as he is cited by
+Vincent of Beauvais (Spec. Nat., lib. iv, 98): "Non est aliquid temere
+diffiniendum, sed quantum Scriptura dicit accipiendum, cujus major est
+auctoritas quam omnis humani ingenii capacitas."
+
+
+Following this precept of St. Augustine there were developed, in every
+field, theological views of science which have never led to a single
+truth--which, without exception, have forced mankind away from the
+truth, and have caused Christendom to stumble for centuries into abysses
+of error and sorrow. In meteorology, as in every other science with
+which he dealt, Augustine based everything upon the letter of the sacred
+text; and it is characteristic of the result that this man, so great
+when untrammelled, thought it his duty to guard especially the whole
+theory of the "waters above the heavens."
+
+In the sixth century this theological reasoning was still further
+developed, as we have seen, by Cosmas Indicopleustes. Finding a sanction
+for the old Egyptian theory of the universe in the ninth chapter of
+Hebrews, he insisted that the earth is a flat parallelogram, and that
+from its outer edges rise immense walls supporting the firmament; then,
+throwing together the reference to the firmament in Genesis and the
+outburst of poetry in the Psalms regarding the "waters that be above
+the heavens," he insisted that over the terrestrial universe are
+solid arches bearing a vault supporting a vast cistern "containing
+the waters"; finally, taking from Genesis the expression regarding
+the "windows of heaven," he insisted that these windows are opened and
+closed by the angels whenever the Almighty wishes to send rain upon the
+earth or to withhold it.
+
+This was accepted by the universal Church as a vast contribution to
+thought; for several centuries it was the orthodox doctrine, and various
+leaders in theology devoted themselves to developing and supplementing
+it.
+
+About the beginning of the seventh century, Isidore, Bishop of Seville,
+was the ablest prelate in Christendom, and was showing those great
+qualities which led to his enrolment among the saints of the Church. His
+theological view of science marks an epoch. As to the "waters above the
+firmament," Isidore contends that they must be lower than, the uppermost
+heaven, though higher than the lower heaven, because in the one hundred
+and forty-eighth Psalm they are mentioned AFTER the heavenly bodies
+and the "heaven of heavens," but BEFORE the terrestrial elements. As to
+their purpose, he hesitates between those who held that they were stored
+up there by the prescience of God for the destruction of the world at
+the Flood, as the words of Scripture that "the windows of heaven were
+opened" seemed to indicate, and those who held that they were kept there
+to moderate the heat of the heavenly bodies. As to the firmament, he is
+in doubt whether it envelops the earth "like an eggshell," or is merely
+spread over it "like a curtain"; for he holds that the passage in the
+one hundred and fourth Psalm may be used to support either view.
+
+Having laid these scriptural foundations, Isidore shows considerable
+power of thought; indeed, at times, when he discusses the rainbow, rain,
+hail, snow, and frost, his theories are rational, and give evidence
+that, if he could have broken away from his adhesion to the letter of
+Scripture, he might have given a strong impulse to the evolution of a
+true science.(203)
+
+
+     (203) For Cosmas, see his Topographia Christiana (in Montfaucon,
+Collectio nova patrum, vol. ii), and the more complete account of his
+theory given in the chapter on Geography in this work. For Isidore, see
+the Etymologiae, lib. xiii, cap. 7-9, De ordine creaturarum, cap. 3, 4,
+and De natura rerum, cap. 29, 30. (Migne, Patr. Lat., vol. lxxxii, pp.
+476, 477, vol. lxxxiii, pp. 920-922, 1001-1003).
+
+
+About a century later appeared, at the other extremity of Europe, the
+second in the trio of theological men of science in the early Middle
+Ages--Bede the Venerable. The nucleus of his theory also is to be found
+in the accepted view of the "firmament" and of the "waters above the
+heavens," derived from Genesis. The firmament he holds to be spherical,
+and of a nature subtile and fiery; the upper heavens, he says, which
+contain the angels, God has tempered with ice, lest they inflame the
+lower elements. As to the waters placed above the firmament, lower than
+the spiritual heavens, but higher than all corporeal creatures, he says,
+"Some declare that they were stored there for the Deluge, but others,
+more correctly, that they are intended to temper the fire of the stars."
+He goes on with long discussions as to various elements and forces in
+Nature, and dwells at length upon the air, of which he says that the
+upper, serene air is over the heavens; while the lower, which is coarse,
+with humid exhalations, is sent off from the earth, and that in this are
+lightning, hail, snow, ice, and tempests, finding proof of this in the
+one hundred and forty-eighth Psalm, where these are commanded to "praise
+the Lord from the earth."(204)
+
+
+     (204) See Bede, De natura rerum (Migne, Patr. Lat., vol. xc).
+
+
+So great was Bede's authority, that nearly all the anonymous
+speculations of the next following centuries upon these subjects were
+eventually ascribed to him. In one of these spurious treatises an
+attempt is made to get new light upon the sources of the waters above
+the heavens, the main reliance being the sheet containing the animals
+let down from heaven, in the vision of St. Peter. Another of these
+treatises is still more curious, for it endeavours to account for
+earthquakes and tides by means of the leviathan mentioned in Scripture.
+This characteristic passage runs as follows: "Some say that the earth
+contains the animal leviathan, and that he holds his tail after a
+fashion of his own, so that it is sometimes scorched by the sun,
+whereupon he strives to get hold of the sun, and so the earth is shaken
+by the motion of his indignation; he drinks in also, at times, such huge
+masses of the waves that when he belches them forth all the seas feel
+their effect." And this theological theory of the tides, as caused by
+the alternate suction and belching of leviathan, went far and wide.(205)
+
+
+     (205) See the treatise De mundi constitutione, in Bede's Opera (Migne,
+Patr. Lat., vol. xc, p. 884).
+
+
+In the writings thus covered with the name of Bede there is much showing
+a scientific spirit, which might have come to something of permanent
+value had it not been hampered by the supposed necessity of conforming
+to the letter of Scripture. It is as startling as it is refreshing to
+hear one of these medieval theorists burst out as follows against those
+who are content to explain everything by the power of God: "What is more
+pitiable than to say that a thing IS, because God is able to do it, and
+not to show any reason why it is so, nor any purpose for which it is so;
+just as if God did everything that he is able to do! You talk like one
+who says that God is able to make a calf out of a log. But DID he ever
+do it? Either, then, show a reason why a thing is so, or a purpose
+wherefore it is so, or else cease to declare it so."(206)
+
+
+     (206) For this remonstrance, see the Elementa philosophiae, in Bede's
+Opera (Migne, Patr. Lat., vol xc, p. 1139). This treatise, which has
+also been printed, under the title of De philosophia mundi, among the
+works of Honorius of Autun, is believed by modern scholars (Haureau,
+Werner, Poole) to be the production of William of Conches.
+
+
+The most permanent contribution of Bede to scientific thought in this
+field was his revival of the view that the firmament is made of ice; and
+he supported this from the words in the twenty-sixth chapter of Job,
+"He bindeth up the waters in his thick cloud, and the cloud is not rent
+under them."
+
+About the beginning of the ninth century appeared the third in that
+triumvirate of churchmen who were the oracles of sacred science
+throughout the early Middle Ages--Rabanus Maurus, Abbot of Fulda and
+Archbishop of Mayence. Starting, like all his predecessors, from the
+first chapter of Genesis, borrowing here and there from the ancient
+philosophers, and excluding everything that could conflict with the
+letter of Scripture, he follows, in his work upon the universe, his
+two predecessors, Isidore and Bede, developing especially St. Jerome's
+theory, drawn from Ezekiel, that the firmament is strong enough to hold
+up the "waters above the heavens," because it is made of ice.
+
+For centuries the authority of these three great teachers was
+unquestioned, and in countless manuals and catechisms their doctrine was
+translated and diluted for the common mind. But about the second quarter
+of the twelfth century a priest, Honorius of Autun, produced several
+treatises which show that thought on this subject had made some little
+progress. He explained the rain rationally, and mainly in the modern
+manner; with the thunder he is less successful, but insists that the
+thunderbolt "is not stone, as some assert." His thinking is vigorous
+and independent. Had theorists such as he been many, a new science could
+have been rapidly evolved, but the theological current was too strong.
+(207)
+
+
+     (207) For Rabanus Maurus, see the Comment. in Genesim and De Universo
+(Migne, Patr. Lat., vol. cvii, cxi). For a charmingly naive example of
+the primers referred to, see the little Anglo-Saxon manual of astronomy,
+sometimes attributed to Aelfric; it is in the vernacular, but is
+translated in Wright's Popular Treatises on Science during the Middle
+Ages. Bede is, of course, its chief source. For Honorius, see De
+imagine mundi and Hexaemeron (Migne, Patr. Lat., vol. clxxii). The De
+philosophia mundi, the most rational of all, is, however, believed by
+modern scholars to be unjustly ascribed to him. See note above.
+
+
+The strength of this current which overwhelmed the thought of Honorius
+is seen again in the work of the Dominican monk, John of San Geminiano,
+who in the thirteenth century gave forth his Summa de Exemplis for the
+use of preachers in his order. Of its thousand pages, over two hundred
+are devoted to illustrations drawn from the heavens and the elements.
+A characteristic specimen is his explanation of the Psalmist's phrase,
+"The arrows of the thunder." These, he tells us, are forged out of a dry
+vapour rising from the earth and kindled by the heat of the upper air,
+which then, coming into contact with a cloud just turning into rain,
+"is conglutinated like flour into dough," but, being too hot to be
+extinguished, its particles become merely sharpened at the lower end,
+and so blazing arrows, cleaving and burning everything they touch.(208)
+
+
+     (208) See Joannes a S. Geminiano, Summa, c. 75.
+
+
+But far more important, in the thirteenth century, was the fact that the
+most eminent scientific authority of that age, Albert the Great, Bishop
+of Ratisbon, attempted to reconcile the speculations of Aristotle
+with theological views derived from the fathers. In one very important
+respect he improved upon the meteorological views of his great master.
+The thunderbolt, he says, is no mere fire, but the product of black
+clouds containing much mud, which, when it is baked by the intense heat,
+forms a fiery black or red stone that falls from the sky, tearing
+beams and crushing walls in its course: such he has seen with his own
+eyes.(209)
+
+
+     (209) See Albertus Magnus, II Sent., Op., vol. xv, p. 137, a. (cited
+by Heller, Gesch. d. Physik, vol. i, p. 184) and his Liber Methaurorum,
+III, iv, 18 (of which I have used the edition of Venice, 1488).
+
+
+The monkish encyclopedists of the later Middle Ages added little to
+these theories. As we glance over the pages of Vincent of Beauvais,
+the monk Bartholomew, and William of Conches, we note only a growing
+deference to the authority of Aristotle as supplementing that of Isidore
+and Bede and explaining sacred Scripture. Aristotle is treated like
+a Church father, but extreme care is taken not to go beyond the great
+maxim of St. Augustine; then, little by little, Bede and Isidore
+fall into the background, Aristotle fills the whole horizon, and his
+utterances are second in sacredness only to the text of Holy Writ.
+
+A curious illustration of the difficulties these medieval scholars had
+to meet in reconciling the scientific theories of Aristotle with the
+letter of the Bible is seen in the case of the rainbow. It is to the
+honour of Aristotle that his conclusions regarding the rainbow, though
+slightly erroneous, were based upon careful observation and evolved by
+reasoning alone; but his Christian commentators, while anxious to follow
+him, had to bear in mind the scriptural statement that God had created
+the rainbow as a sign to Noah that there should never again be a
+Flood on the earth. Even so bold a thinker as Cardinal d'Ailly, whose
+speculations as to the geography of the earth did so much afterward in
+stimulating Columbus, faltered before this statement, acknowledging that
+God alone could explain it; but suggested that possibly never before the
+Deluge had a cloud been suffered to take such a position toward the sun
+as to cause a rainbow.
+
+The learned cardinal was also constrained to believe that certain stars
+and constellations have something to do in causing the rain, since these
+would best explain Noah's foreknowledge of the Deluge. In connection
+with this scriptural doctrine of winds came a scriptural doctrine of
+earthquakes: they were believed to be caused by winds issuing from the
+earth, and this view was based upon the passage in the one hundred and
+thirty-fifth Psalm, "He bringeth the wind out of his treasuries."(210)
+
+
+     (210) For D'Ailly, see his Concordia astronomicae veritatis cum
+theologia (Paris, 1483--in the Imago mundi--and Venice, 1490); also
+Eck's commentary on Aristotle's Meteorologica (Ausburg, 1519), lib. ii,
+nota 2; also Reisch, Margarita philosophica, lib. ix, c. 18.
+
+
+Such were the main typical attempts during nearly fourteen centuries to
+build up under theological guidance and within scriptural limitations a
+sacred science of meteorology. But these theories were mainly evolved
+in the effort to establish a basis and general theory of phenomena: it
+still remained to account for special manifestations, and here came a
+twofold development of theological thought.
+
+On one hand, these phenomena were attributed to the Almighty, and, on
+the other, to Satan. As to the first of these theories, we constantly
+find the Divine wrath mentioned by the earlier fathers as the cause of
+lightning, hailstorms, hurricanes, and the like.
+
+In the early days of Christianity we see a curious struggle between
+pagan and Christian belief upon this point. Near the close of the second
+century the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, in his effort to save the empire,
+fought a hotly contested battle with the Quadi, in what is now Hungary.
+While the issue of this great battle was yet doubtful there came
+suddenly a blinding storm beating into the faces of the Quadi, and this
+gave the Roman troops the advantage, enabling Marcus Aurelius to win a
+decisive victory. Votaries of each of the great religions claimed that
+this storm was caused by the object of their own adoration. The pagans
+insisted that Jupiter had sent the storm in obedience to their prayers,
+and on the Antonine Column at Rome we may still see the figure of
+Olympian Jove casting his thunderbolts and pouring a storm of rain from
+the open heavens against the Quadi. On the other hand, the Christians
+insisted that the storm had been sent by Jehovah in obedience to THEIR
+prayers; and Tertullian, Eusebius, St. Gregory of Nyssa, and St. Jerome
+were among those who insisted upon this meteorological miracle; the
+first two, indeed, in the fervour of their arguments for its reality,
+allowing themselves to be carried considerably beyond exact historical
+truth.(211)
+
+
+     (211) For the authorities, pagan and Christian, see the note of
+Merivale, in his History of the Romans under the Empire, chap. lxviii.
+He refers for still fuller citations to Fynes Clinton's Fasti Rom., p.
+24.
+
+
+As time went on, the fathers developed this view more and more from
+various texts in the Jewish and Christian sacred books, substituting for
+Jupiter flinging his thunderbolts the Almighty wrapped in thunder and
+sending forth his lightnings. Through the Middle Ages this was fostered
+until it came to be accepted as a mere truism, entering into all
+medieval thinking, and was still further developed by an attempt to
+specify the particular sins which were thus punished. Thus even the
+rational Florentine historian Villani ascribed floods and fires to the
+"too great pride of the city of Florence and the ingratitude of the
+citizens toward God," which, "of course," says a recent historian,
+"meant their insufficient attention to the ceremonies of religion."(212)
+
+
+     (212) See Trollope, History of Florence, vol. i, p. 64.
+
+
+In the thirteenth century the Cistercian monk, Caesarius of Heisterbach,
+popularized the doctrine in central Europe. His rich collection of
+anecdotes for the illustration of religious truths was the favourite
+recreative reading in the convents for three centuries, and exercised
+great influence over the thought of the later Middle Ages. In this work
+he relates several instances of the Divine use of lightning, both
+for rescue and for punishment. Thus he tells us how the steward
+(cellerarius) of his own monastery was saved from the clutch of a robber
+by a clap of thunder which, in answer to his prayer, burst suddenly
+from the sky and frightened the bandit from his purpose: how, in a
+Saxon theatre, twenty men were struck down, while a priest escaped,
+not because he was not a greater sinner than the rest, but because the
+thunderbolt had respect for his profession! It is Cesarius, too, who
+tells us the story of the priest of Treves, struck by lightning in his
+own church, whither he had gone to ring the bell against the storm, and
+whose sins were revealed by the course of the lightning, for it tore his
+clothes from him and consumed certain parts of his body, showing that
+the sins for which he was punished were vanity and unchastity.(213)
+
+
+     (213) See Caesarius Heisterbacensis, Dialogus miraculorum, lib. x, c.
+28-30.
+
+
+This mode of explaining the Divine interference more minutely is
+developed century after century, and we find both Catholics and
+Protestants assigning as causes of unpleasant meteorological phenomena
+whatever appears to them wicked or even unorthodox. Among the English
+Reformers, Tyndale quotes in this kind of argument the thirteenth
+chapter of I. Samuel, showing that, when God gave Israel a king, it
+thundered and rained. Archbishop Whitgift, Bishop Bale, and Bishop
+Pilkington insisted on the same view. In Protestant Germany, about the
+same period, Plieninger took a dislike to the new Gregorian calendar and
+published a volume of Brief Reflections, in which he insisted that
+the elements had given utterance to God's anger against it, calling
+attention to the fact that violent storms raged over almost all Germany
+during the very ten days which the Pope had taken out for the correction
+of the year, and that great floods began with the first days of the
+corrected year.(214)
+
+
+     (214) For Tyndale, see his Doctrinal Treatises, p. 194, and for
+Whitgift, see his Works, vol. ii, pp. 477-483; Bale, Works, pp.
+244, 245; and Pilkington, Works, pp. 177, 536 (all in Parker Society
+Publications). Bishop Bale cites especially Job xxxviii, Ecclesiasticus
+xiii, and Revelation viii, as supporting the theory. For Plieninger's
+words, see Janssen, Geschichte des deutschen Volkes, vol. v, p. 350.
+
+
+Early in the seventeenth century, Majoli, Bishop of Voltoraria, in
+southern Italy, produced his huge work Dies Canicularii, or Dog Days,
+which remained a favourite encyclopedia in Catholic lands for over a
+hundred years. Treating of thunder and lightning, he compares them
+to bombs against the wicked, and says that the thunderbolt is "an
+exhalation condensed and cooked into stone," and that "it is not to be
+doubted that, of all instruments of God's vengeance, the thunderbolt is
+the chief"; that by means of it Sennacherib and his army were consumed;
+that Luther was struck by lightning in his youth as a caution against
+departing from the Catholic faith; that blasphemy and Sabbath-breaking
+are the sins to which this punishment is especially assigned, and
+he cites the case of Dathan and Abiram. Fifty years later the Jesuit
+Stengel developed this line of thought still further in four thick
+quarto volumes on the judgments of God, adding an elaborate schedule for
+the use of preachers in the sermons of an entire year. Three chapters
+were devoted to thunder, lightning, and storms. That the author teaches
+the agency in these of diabolical powers goes without saying; but this
+can only act, he declares, by Divine permission, and the thunderbolt is
+always the finger of God, which rarely strikes a man save for his sins,
+and the nature of the special sin thus punished may be inferred from the
+bodily organs smitten. A few years later, in Protestant Swabia, Pastor
+Georg Nuber issued a volume of "weather-sermons," in which he discusses
+nearly every sort of elemental disturbances--storms, floods, droughts,
+lightning, and hail. These, he says, come direct from God for human
+sins, yet no doubt with discrimination, for there are five sins which
+God especially punishes with lightning and hail--namely, impenitence,
+incredulity, neglect of the repair of churches, fraud in the payment
+of tithes to the clergy, and oppression of subordinates, each of which
+points he supports with a mass of scriptural texts.(215)
+
+
+     (215) For Majoli, see Dies Can., I, i; for Stengel, see the De judiciis
+divinis, vol. ii, pp. 15-61, and especially the example of the impurus
+et saltator sacerdos, fulmine castratus, pp. 26, 27. For Nuber, see his
+Conciones meteoricae, Ulm, 1661.
+
+
+This doctrine having become especially precious both to Catholics and to
+Protestants, there were issued handbooks of prayers against bad weather:
+among these was the Spiritual Thunder and Storm Booklet, produced in
+1731 by a Protestant scholar, Stoltzlin, whose three or four hundred
+pages of prayer and song, "sighs for use when it lightens fearfully,"
+and "cries of anguish when the hailstorm is drawing on," show a
+wonderful adaptability to all possible meteorological emergencies. The
+preface of this volume is contributed by Prof. Dilherr, pastor of the
+great church of St. Sebald at Nuremberg, who, in discussing the Divine
+purposes of storms, adds to the three usually assigned--namely, God's
+wish to manifest his power, to display his anger, and to drive sinners
+to repentance--a fourth, which, he says, is that God may show us "with
+what sort of a stormbell he will one day ring in the last judgment."
+
+About the end of the first quarter of the eighteenth century we find,
+in Switzerland, even the eminent and rational Professor of Mathematics,
+Scheuchzer, publishing his Physica Sacra, with the Bible as a basis, and
+forced to admit that the elements, in the most literal sense, utter the
+voice of God. The same pressure was felt in New England. Typical are
+the sermons of Increase Mather on The Voice of God in Stormy Winds. He
+especially lays stress on the voice of God speaking to Job out of the
+whirlwind, and upon the text, "Stormy wind fulfilling his word." He
+declares, "When there are great tempests, the angels oftentimes have a
+hand therein,... yea, and sometimes evil angels." He gives several cases
+of blasphemers struck by lightning, and says, "Nothing can be more
+dangerous for mortals than to contemn dreadful providences, and, in
+particular, dreadful tempests."
+
+His distinguished son, Cotton Mather, disentangled himself somewhat from
+the old view, as he had done in the interpretation of comets. In his
+Christian Philosopher, his Thoughts for the Day of Rain, and his Sermon
+preached at the Time of the Late Storm (in 1723), he is evidently
+tending toward the modern view. Yet, from time to time, the older view
+has reasserted itself, and in France, as recently as the year 1870, we
+find the Bishop of Verdun ascribing the drought afflicting his diocese
+to the sin of Sabbath-breaking.(216)
+
+
+     (216) For Stoltzlin, see his Geistliches Donner- und Wetter-Buchlein
+(Zurich, 1731). For Increase Mather, see his The Voice of God, etc.
+(Boston, 1704). This rare volume is in the rich collection of the
+American Antiquarian Society at Worcester. For Cotton Mather's view, see
+the chapter From Signs and Wonders to Law, in this work. For the Bishop
+of Verdun, see the Semaine relig. de Lorraine, 1879, p. 445 (cited by
+"Paul Parfait," in his Dossier des Pelerinages, pp. 141-143).
+
+
+This theory, which attributed injurious meteorological phenomena mainly
+to the purposes of God, was a natural development, and comparatively
+harmless; but at a very early period there was evolved another theory,
+which, having been ripened into a doctrine, cost the earth dear indeed.
+Never, perhaps, in the modern world has there been a dogma more prolific
+of physical, mental, and moral agony throughout whole nations and during
+whole centuries. This theory, its development by theology, its fearful
+results to mankind, and its destruction by scientific observation and
+thought, will next be considered.
+
+
+
+
+II. DIABOLIC AGENCY IN STORMS.
+
+
+While the fathers and schoolmen were labouring to deduce a science of
+meteorology from our sacred books, there oozed up in European society a
+mass of traditions and observances which had been lurking since the days
+of paganism; and, although here and there appeared a churchman to oppose
+them, the theologians and ecclesiastics ere long began to adopt them and
+to clothe them with the authority of religion.
+
+Both among the pagans of the Roman Empire and among the barbarians of
+the North the Christian missionaries had found it easier to prove the
+new God supreme than to prove the old gods powerless. Faith in the
+miracles of the new religion seemed to increase rather than to diminish
+faith in the miracles of the old; and the Church at last began admitting
+the latter as facts, but ascribing them to the devil. Jupiter and Odin
+sank into the category of ministers of Satan, and transferred to
+that master all their former powers. A renewed study of Scripture by
+theologians elicited overwhelming proofs of the truth of this doctrine.
+Stress was especially laid on the declaration of Scripture, "The gods of
+the heathen are devils."(217) Supported by this and other texts, it soon
+became a dogma. So strong was the hold it took, under the influence
+of the Church, that not until late in the seventeenth century did its
+substantial truth begin to be questioned.
+
+
+     (217) For so the Vulgate and all the early versions rendered Ps. xcvi,
+5.
+
+
+With no field of action had the sway of the ancient deities been more
+identified than with that of atmospheric phenomena. The Roman heard
+Jupiter, and the Teuton heard Thor, in the thunder. Could it be doubted
+that these powerful beings would now take occasion, unless hindered by
+the command of the Almighty, to vent their spite against those who had
+deserted their altars? Might not the Almighty himself be willing to
+employ the malice of these powers of the air against those who had
+offended him?
+
+It was, indeed, no great step, for those whose simple faith accepted
+rain or sunshine as an answer to their prayers, to suspect that the
+untimely storms or droughts, which baffled their most earnest petitions,
+were the work of the archenemy, "the prince of the power of the air."
+
+The great fathers of the Church had easily found warrant for this
+doctrine in Scripture. St. Jerome declared the air to be full of devils,
+basing this belief upon various statements in the prophecies of Isaiah
+and in the Epistle to the Ephesians. St. Augustine held the same view as
+beyond controversy.(218)
+
+
+     (218) For St. Jerome, see his Com. in Ep. ad Ephesios (lib. iii, cap.6):
+commenting on the text, "Our battle is not with flesh and blood," he
+explains this as meaning the devils in the air, and adds, "Nam et in
+alio loco de daemonibus quod in aere isto vagentur, Apostolus ait:
+In quibus ambulastis aliquando juxta Saeculum mundi istius, secundum
+principem potestatis aeris spiritus, qui nunc operatur in filos
+diffidentiae (Eph, ii,2). Haec autem omnium doctorum opinio est, quod
+aer iste qui coelum et terram medius dividens, inane appellatur, plenus
+sit contrariis fortitudinibus." See also his Com. in Isaiam, lib. xiii,
+cap. 50 (Migne, Patr. Lat., vol. xxiv, p. 477). For Augustine, see the
+De Civitate Dei, passim.
+
+
+During the Middle Ages this doctrine of the diabolical origin of storms
+went on gathering strength. Bede had full faith in it, and narrates
+various anecdotes in support of it. St. Thomas Aquinas gave it his
+sanction, saying in his all authoritative Summa, "Rains and winds, and
+whatsoever occurs by local impulse alone, can be caused by demons."
+"It is," he says, "a dogma of faith that the demons can produce wind,
+storms, and rain of fire from heaven."
+
+Albert the Great taught the same doctrine, and showed how a
+certain salve thrown into a spring produced whirlwinds. The great
+Franciscan--the "seraphic doctor"--St. Bonaventura, whose services to
+theology earned him one of the highest places in the Church, and to whom
+Dante gave special honour in paradise, set upon this belief his high
+authority. The lives of the saints, and the chronicles of the Middle
+Ages, were filled with it. Poetry and painting accepted the idea and
+developed it. Dante wedded it to verse, and at Venice this thought
+may still be seen embodied in one of the grand pictures of Bordone: a
+shipload of demons is seen approaching Venice in a storm, threatening
+destruction to the city, but St. Mark, St. George, and St. Nicholas
+attack the vessel, and disperse the hellish crew.(219)
+
+
+     (219) For Bede, see the Hist. Eccles., vol. i, p. 17; Vita Cuthberti,
+c. 17 (Migne, tome xliv). For Thomas Aquinas, see the Summa, pars I, qu.
+lxxx, art. 2. The second citation I owe to Rydberg, Magic of the Middle
+Ages, p. 73, where the whole interesting passage is given at length. For
+Albertus Magnus, see the De Potentia Daemonum (cited by Maury, Legendes
+Pieuses). For Bonaventura, see the Comp. Theol. Veritat., ii, 26. For
+Dante, see Purgatorio, c. 5. On Bordone's picture, see Maury, Legendes
+Pieuses, p. 18, note.
+
+
+The popes again and again sanctioned this doctrine, and it was
+amalgamated with various local superstitions, pious imaginations, and
+interesting arguments, to strike the fancy of the people at large. A
+strong argument in favour of a diabolical origin of the thunderbolt
+was afforded by the eccentricities of its operation. These attracted
+especial attention in the Middle Ages, and the popular love of marvel
+generalized isolated phenomena into rules. Thus it was said that the
+lightning strikes the sword in the sheath, gold in the purse, the
+foot in the shoe, leaving sheath and purse and shoe unharmed; that it
+consumes a human being internally without injuring the skin; that it
+destroys nets in the water, but not on the land; that it kills one
+man, and leaves untouched another standing beside him; that it can tear
+through a house and enter the earth without moving a stone from its
+place; that it injures the heart of a tree, but not the bark; that wine
+is poisoned by it, while poisons struck by it lose their venom; that a
+man's hair may be consumed by it and the man be unhurt.(220)
+
+
+     (220) See, for lists of such admiranda, any of the early writers--e. g.,
+Vincent of Beauvais, Reisch's Margarita, or Eck's Aristotle.
+
+
+These peculiar phenomena, made much of by the allegorizing sermonizers
+of the day, were used in moral lessons from every pulpit. Thus the
+Carmelite, Matthias Farinator, of Vienna, who at the Pope's own instance
+compiled early in the fifteenth century that curious handbook of
+illustrative examples for preachers, the Lumen Animae, finds a spiritual
+analogue for each of these anomalies.(221)
+
+
+     (221) See the Lumen animae, Eichstadt, 1479.
+
+
+This doctrine grew, robust and noxious, until, in the fifteenth,
+sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, we find its bloom in a multitude
+of treatises by the most learned of the Catholic and Protestant divines,
+and its fruitage in the torture chambers and on the scaffolds throughout
+Christendom. At the Reformation period, and for nearly two hundred years
+afterward, Catholics and Protestants vied with each other in promoting
+this growth. John Eck, the great opponent of Luther, gave to the
+world an annotated edition of Aristotle's Physics, which was long
+authoritative in the German universities; and, though the text is free
+from this doctrine, the woodcut illustrating the earth's atmosphere
+shows most vividly, among the clouds of mid-air, the devils who there
+reign supreme.(222)
+
+
+     (222) See Eck, Aristotelis Meteorologica, Augsburg, 1519.
+
+
+Luther, in the other religious camp, supported the superstition even
+more zealously, asserting at times his belief that the winds themselves
+are only good or evil spirits, and declaring that a stone thrown into a
+certain pond in his native region would cause a dreadful storm because
+of the devils, kept prisoners there.(223)
+
+
+     (223) For Luther, see the Table Talk; also Michelet, Life of Luther
+(translated by Hazlitt, p. 321).
+
+
+Just at the close of the same century, Catholics and Protestants
+welcomed alike the great work of Delrio. In this, the power of devils
+over the elements is proved first from the Holy Scriptures, since, he
+declares, "they show that Satan brought fire down from heaven to consume
+the servants and flocks of Job, and that he stirred up a violent
+wind, which overwhelmed in ruin the sons and daughters of Job at their
+feasting." Next, Delrio insists on the agreement of all the orthodox
+fathers, that it was the devil himself who did this, and attention is
+called to the fact that the hail with which the Egyptians were punished
+is expressly declared in Holy Scripture to have been brought by the
+evil angels. Citing from the Apocalypse, he points to the four angels
+standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the winds and
+preventing their doing great damage to mortals; and he dwells especially
+upon the fact that the devil is called by the apostle a "prince of the
+power of the air." He then goes on to cite the great fathers of the
+Church--Clement, Jerome, Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas.(224)
+
+
+     (224) For Delrio, see his Disquisitiones Magicae, first printed at Liege
+in 1599-1600, but reprinted again and again throughout the seventeenth
+century. His interpretation of Psalm lxxviii, 47-49, was apparently
+shared by the translators of our own authorized edition. For citations
+by him, see Revelation vii, 1,; Ephesians ii, 2. Even according to
+modern commentators (e.g., Alford), the word here translated "power"
+denotes not MIGHT, but GOVERNMENT, COURT, HIERARCHY; and in this sense
+it was always used by the ecclesiastical writers, whose conception
+is best rendered by our plural--"powers." See Delrio, Disquisitiones
+Magicae, lib. ii, c. 11.
+
+
+This doctrine was spread not only in ponderous treatises, but in light
+literature and by popular illustrations. In the Compendium Maleficarum
+of the Italian monk Guacci, perhaps the most amusing book in the whole
+literature of witchcraft, we may see the witch, in propria persona,
+riding the diabolic goat through the clouds while the storm rages around
+and beneath her; and we may read a rich collection of anecdotes, largely
+contemporary, which establish the required doctrine beyond question.
+
+The first and most natural means taken against this work of Satan in the
+air was prayer; and various petitions are to be found scattered through
+the Christian liturgies--some very beautiful and touching. This means of
+escape has been relied upon, with greater or less faith, from those days
+to these. Various medieval saints and reformers, and devoted men in
+all centuries, from St. Giles to John Wesley, have used it with results
+claimed to be miraculous. Whatever theory any thinking man may hold
+in the matter, he will certainly not venture a reproachful word: such
+prayers have been in all ages a natural outcome of the mind of man in
+trouble.(225)
+
+
+     (225) For Guacci, see his Compendium Maleficarum (Milan, 1608). For the
+cases of St. Giles, John Wesley, and others stilling the tempests, see
+Brewer, Dictionary of Miracles, s. v. Prayer.
+
+
+But against the "power of the air" were used other means of a very
+different character and tendency, and foremost among these was exorcism.
+In an exorcism widely used and ascribed to Pope Gregory XIII, the
+formula is given: "I, a priest of Christ,... do command ye, most foul
+spirits, who do stir up these clouds,... that ye depart from them, and
+disperse yourselves into wild and untilled places, that ye may be no
+longer able to harm men or animals or fruits or herbs, or whatsoever
+is designed for human use." But this is mild, indeed, compared to some
+later exorcisms, as when the ritual runs: "All the people shall rise,
+and the priest, turning toward the clouds, shall pronounce these
+words: 'I exorcise ye, accursed demons, who have dared to use, for the
+accomplishment of your iniquity, those powers of Nature by which God in
+divers ways worketh good to mortals; who stir up winds, gather vapours,
+form clouds, and condense them into hail.... I exorcise ye,... that
+ye relinquish the work ye have begun, dissolve the hail, scatter the
+clouds, disperse the vapours, and restrain the winds.'" The rubric goes
+on to order that then there shall be a great fire kindled in an open
+place, and that over it the sign of the cross shall be made, and the one
+hundred and fourteenth Psalm chanted, while malodorous substances, among
+them sulphur and asafoetida, shall be cast into the flames. The purpose
+seems to have been literally to "smoke out" Satan.(226)
+
+
+     (226) See Polidorus Valerius, Practica exorcistarum; also the Thesaurus
+exorcismorum (Cologne, 1626), pp. 158-162.
+
+
+Manuals of exorcisms became important--some bulky quartos, others
+handbooks. Noteworthy among the latter is one by the Italian priest
+Locatelli, entitled Exorcisms most Powerful and Efficacious for the
+Dispelling of Aerial Tempests, whether raised by Demons at their own
+Instance or at the Beck of some Servant of the Devil.(227)
+
+
+     (227) That is, Exorcismi, etc. A "corrected" second edition was printed
+at Laybach, 1680, in 24mo, to which is appended another manual of Preces
+et conjurationes contra aereas tempestates, omnibus sacerdotibus utiles
+et necessaria, printed at the monastery of Kempten (in Bavaria) in 1667.
+The latter bears as epigraph the passage from the gospels describing
+Christ's stilling of the winds.
+
+
+The Jesuit Gretser, in his famous book on Benedictions and Maledictions,
+devotes a chapter to this subject, dismissing summarily the scepticism
+that questions the power of devils over the elements, and adducing the
+story of Job as conclusive.(228)
+
+
+     (228) See Gretser, De benedictionibus et maledictionibus, lib. ii, c.
+48.
+
+
+Nor was this theory of exorcism by any means confined to the elder
+Church. Luther vehemently upheld it, and prescribed especially the first
+chapter of St. John's gospel as of unfailing efficacy against thunder
+and lightning, declaring that he had often found the mere sign of the
+cross, with the text, "The word was made flesh," sufficient to put
+storms to flight.(229)
+
+
+     (229) So, at least, says Gretser (in his De ben. et aml., as above).
+
+
+From the beginning of the Middle Ages until long after the Reformation
+the chronicles give ample illustration of the successful use of such
+exorcisms. So strong was the belief in them that it forced itself into
+minds comparatively rational, and found utterance in treatises of much
+importance.
+
+But, since exorcisms were found at times ineffectual, other means were
+sought, and especially fetiches of various sorts. One of the earliest of
+these appeared when Pope Alexander I, according to tradition, ordained
+that holy water should be kept in churches and bedchambers to drive
+away devils.(230) Another safeguard was found in relics, and of similar
+efficacy were the so-called "conception billets" sold by the Carmelite
+monks. They contained a formula upon consecrated paper, at which the
+devil might well turn pale. Buried in the corner of a field, one of
+these was thought to give protection against bad weather and destructive
+insects.(231)
+
+
+     (230) "Instituit ut aqua quam sanctum appellamus sale admixta
+interpositus sacris orationibus et in templis et in cubiculis ad
+fugandos daemones retineretur." Platina, Vitae Pontif. But the story is
+from the False Decretals.
+
+
+     (231) See Rydberg, The Magic of the Middle Ages, translated by Edgren,
+pp. 63-66.
+
+
+But highest in repute during centuries was the Agnus Dei--a piece of wax
+blessed by the Pope's own hand, and stamped with the well-known device
+representing the "Lamb of God." Its powers were so marvellous that Pope
+Urban V thought three of these cakes a fitting gift from himself to the
+Greek Emperor. In the Latin doggerel recounting their virtues, their
+meteorological efficacy stands first, for especial stress is laid on
+their power of dispelling the thunder. The stress thus laid by Pope
+Urban, as the infallible guide of Christendom, on the efficacy of this
+fetich, gave it great value throughout Europe, and the doggerel verses
+reciting its virtues sank deep into the popular mind. It was
+considered a most potent means of dispelling hail, pestilence, storms,
+conflagrations, and enchantments; and this feeling was deepened by the
+rules and rites for its consecration. So solemn was the matter, that the
+manufacture and sale of this particular fetich was, by a papal bull of
+1471, reserved for the Pope himself, and he only performed the required
+ceremony in the first and seventh years of his pontificate. Standing
+unmitred, he prayed: "O God,... we humbly beseech thee that thou wilt
+bless these waxen forms, figured with the image of an innocent lamb,...
+that, at the touch and sight of them, the faithful may break forth into
+praises, and that the crash of hailstorms, the blast of hurricanes, the
+violence of tempests, the fury of winds, and the malice of thunderbolts
+may be tempered, and evil spirits flee and tremble before the standard
+of thy holy cross, which is graven upon them."(232)
+
+
+     (232) These pious charms are still in use in the Church, and may be
+found described in any ecclesiastical cyclopaedia. The doggerel verses
+run as follows:
+
+"Tonitrua magna terret, Inimicos nostras domat Et peccata nostra delet;
+Praegnantem cum partu salvat, Ab incendio praeservat, Dona dignis multa
+confert, A subersione servat, Utque malis mala defert. A morte cita
+liberat, Portio, quamvis parva sit, Et Cacodaemones fugat, Ut magna
+tamen proficit."
+
+See these verses cited in full faith, so late as 1743, in Father Vincent
+of Berg's Enchiridium, pp. 23, 24, where is an ample statement of the
+virtues of the Agnus Dei, and istructions for its use. A full account
+of the rites used in consecrating this fetich, with the prayers and
+benedictions which gave colour to this theory of the powers of the Agnus
+Dei, may be found in the ritual of the Church. I have used the edition
+entitled Sacrarum ceremoniarum sive rituum Sanctae Romanae Ecclesiae
+libri tres, Rome, 1560, in folio. The form of the papal prayer is as
+follows: "Deus... te supplicater deprecamur, ut... has cereas formas,
+innocentissimi agni imagine figuritas, benedicere... digneris, ut per
+ejus tactum et visum fideles invitentur as laudes, fragor grandinum,
+procella turbinum, impetus tempestatum, ventorum rabies, infesta
+tonitrua temperentur, fugiant atque tremiscant maligni spiritus ante
+Sanctae Crucis vexillum, quod in illis exculptum est...."(Sacr. Cer.
+Rom. Eccl., as above). If any are curious as to the extent to which this
+consecrated wax was a specific for all spiritual and most temporal ills
+during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, let them consult the
+Jesuit Litterae annuae, passim.
+
+
+Another favourite means with the clergy of the older Church for bringing
+to naught the "power of the air," was found in great processions bearing
+statues, relics, and holy emblems through the streets. Yet even these
+were not always immediately effective. One at Liege, in the thirteenth
+century, thrice proved unsuccessful in bringing rain, when at last
+it was found that the image of the Virgin had been forgotten! A new
+procession was at once formed, the Salve Regina sung, and the rain came
+down in such torrents as to drive the devotees to shelter.(233)
+
+
+     (233) John of Winterthur describes many such processions in Switzerland
+in the thirteenth century, and all the monkish chronicles speak of them.
+See also Rydberg, Magic of the Middle Ages, p. 74.
+
+
+In Catholic lands this custom remains to this day, and very important
+features in these processions are the statues and the reliquaries of
+patron saints. Some of these excel in bringing sunshine, others in
+bringing rain. The Cathedral of Chartres is so fortunate as to possess
+sundry relics of St. Taurin, especially potent against dry weather,
+and some of St. Piat, very nearly as infallible against wet weather. In
+certain regions a single saint gives protection alternately against wet
+and dry weather--as, for example, St. Godeberte at Noyon. Against storms
+St. Barbara is very generally considered the most powerful protectress;
+but, in the French diocese of Limoges, Notre Dame de Crocq has proved a
+most powerful rival, for when, a few years since, all the neighbouring
+parishes were ravaged by storms, not a hailstone fell in the canton
+which she protected. In the diocese of Tarbes, St. Exupere is especially
+invoked against hail, peasants flocking from all the surrounding country
+to his shrine.(234)
+
+
+     (234) As to protection by special saints as stated, see the Guide du
+touriste et du pelerin a Chartes, 1867 (cited by "Paul Parfait," in his
+Dossier des Pelerinages); also pp. 139-145 of the Dossier.
+
+
+But the means of baffling the powers of the air which came to be most
+widely used was the ringing of consecrated church bells.
+
+This usage had begun in the time of Charlemagne, and there is extant a
+prohibition of his against the custom of baptizing bells and of hanging
+certain tags(235) on their tongues as a protection against hailstorms;
+but even Charlemagne was powerless against this current of medieval
+superstition. Theological reasons were soon poured into it, and in the
+year 968 Pope John XIII gave it the highest ecclesiastical sanction by
+himself baptizing the great bell of his cathedral church, the Lateran,
+and christening it with his own name.(236)
+
+
+     (235) Perticae. See Montanus, Hist. Nachricht van den Glocken (Chenmitz,
+1726), p. 121; and Meyer, Der Aberglaube des Mittelalters, p. 186.
+
+
+     (236) For statements regarding Pope John and bell superstitions, see
+Higgins's Anacalypsis, vol. ii, p. 70. See also Platina, Vitae Pontif.,
+s. v. John XIII, and Baronius, Annales Ecclesiastici, sub anno 968.
+The conjecture of Baronius that the bell was named after St. John the
+Baptist, is even more startling than the accepted tradition of the
+Pope's sponsorship.
+
+
+This idea was rapidly developed, and we soon find it supported in
+ponderous treatises, spread widely in sermons, and popularized in
+multitudes of inscriptions cast upon the bells themselves. This branch
+of theological literature may still be studied in multitudes of church
+towers throughout Europe. A bell at Basel bears the inscription, "Ad
+fugandos demones." Another, in Lugano, declares "The sound of this bell
+vanquishes tempests, repels demons, and summons men." Another, at
+the Cathedral of Erfurt, declares that it can "ward off lightning and
+malignant demons." A peal in the Jesuit church at the university town
+of Pont-a-Mousson bore the words, "They praise God, put to flight the
+clouds, affright the demons, and call the people." This is dated 1634.
+Another bell in that part of France declares, "It is I who dissipate the
+thunders"(Ego sum qui dissipo tonitrua).(237)
+
+
+     (237) For these illustrations, with others equally striking, see Meyer,
+Der Aberglaube des Mittelalters, pp. 185, 186. For the later examples,
+see Germain, Anciennes cloches lorraines (Nancy, 1885), pp. 23, 27.
+
+
+Another, in one of the forest cantons of Switzerland, bears a doggerel
+couplet, which may be thus translated:
+
+"On the devil my spite I'll vent, And, God helping, bad weather
+prevent."(238)
+
+
+     (238) "An dem Tufel will cih mich rachen, Mit der hilf gotz alle bosen
+wetter erbrechen." (See Meyer, as above.)
+
+
+Very common were inscriptions embodying this doctrine in sonorous Latin.
+
+Naturally, then, there grew up a ritual for the consecration of bells.
+Knollys, in his quaint translation of the old chronicler Sleidan,
+gives us the usage in the simple English of the middle of the sixteenth
+century:
+
+"In lyke sorte (as churches) are the belles used. And first, forsouth,
+they must hange so, as the Byshop may goe round about them. Whiche
+after he hath sayde certen Psalmes, he consecrateth water and salte, and
+mingleth them together, wherwith he washeth the belle diligently both
+within and without, after wypeth it drie, and with holy oyle draweth in
+it the signe of the crosse, and prayeth God, that whan they shall rynge
+or sounde that bell, all the disceiptes of the devyll may vanyshe away,
+hayle, thondryng, lightening, wyndes, and tempestes, and all untemperate
+weathers may be aswaged. Whan he hath wipte out the crosse of oyle wyth
+a linen cloth, he maketh seven other crosses in the same, and within
+one only. After saying certen Psalmes, he taketh a payre of sensours and
+senseth the bel within, and prayeth God to sende it good lucke. In many
+places they make a great dyner, and kepe a feast as it were at a solemne
+wedding."(239)
+
+
+     (239) Sleiden's Commentaries, English translation, as above, fol. 334
+(lib. xxi, sub anno 1549).
+
+
+These bell baptisms became matters of great importance. Popes, kings,
+and prelates were proud to stand as sponsors. Four of the bells at
+the Cathedral of Versailles having been destroyed during the French
+Revolution, four new ones were baptized, on the 6th of January, 1824,
+the Voltairean King, Louis XVIII, and the pious Duchess d'Angouleme
+standing as sponsors.
+
+In some of these ceremonies zeal appears to have outrun knowledge, and
+one of Luther's stories, at the expense of the older Church, was that
+certain authorities thus christened a bell "Hosanna," supposing that to
+be the name of a woman.
+
+To add to the efficacy of such baptisms, water was sometimes brought
+from the river Jordan.(240)
+
+
+     (240) See Montanus, as above, who cites Beck, Lutherthum vor Luthero,
+p. 294, for the statement that many bells were carried to the Jordan by
+pilgrims for this purpose.
+
+
+The prayers used at bell baptisms fully recognise this doctrine. The
+ritual of Paris embraces the petition that, "whensoever this bell
+shall sound, it shall drive away the malign influences of the assailing
+spirits, the horror of their apparitions, the rush of whirlwinds, the
+stroke of lightning, the harm of thunder, the disasters of storms, and
+all the spirits of the tempest." Another prayer begs that "the sound of
+this bell may put to flight the fiery darts of the enemy of men"; and
+others vary the form but not the substance of this petition. The great
+Jesuit theologian, Bellarmin, did indeed try to deny the reality of this
+baptism; but this can only be regarded as a piece of casuistry suited
+to Protestant hardness of heart, or as strategy in the warfare against
+heretics.(241)
+
+
+     (241) For prayers at bell baptisms, see Arago, Oeuvres, Paris, 1854,
+vol. iv, p. 322.
+
+
+Forms of baptism were laid down in various manuals sanctioned directly
+by papal authority, and sacramental efficacy was everywhere taken for
+granted.(242) The development of this idea in the older Church was too
+strong to be resisted;(243) but, as a rule, the Protestant theologians
+of the Reformation, while admitting that storms were caused by Satan
+and his legions, opposed the baptism of bells, and denied the theory of
+their influence in dispersing storms. Luther, while never doubting that
+troublesome meteorological phenomena were caused by devils, regarded
+with contempt the idea that the demons were so childish as to be scared
+by the clang of bells; his theory made them altogether too powerful to
+be affected by means so trivial. The great English Reformers, while also
+accepting very generally the theory of diabolic interference in storms,
+reproved strongly the baptizing of bells, as the perversion of a
+sacrament and involving blasphemy. Bishop Hooper declared reliance upon
+bells to drive away tempests, futile. Bishop Pilkington, while arguing
+that tempests are direct instruments of God's wrath, is very severe
+against using "unlawful means," and among these he names "the hallowed
+bell"; and these opinions were very generally shared by the leading
+English clergy.(244)
+
+
+     (242) As has often been pointed out, the ceremony was in all its
+details--even to the sponsors, the wrapping a garment about the
+baptised, the baptismal fee, the feast--precisely the same as when a
+child was baptised. Magius, who is no sceptic, relates from his own
+experience an instant of this sort, where a certain bishop stood sponsor
+for two bells, giving them both his own name--William. (See his De
+Tintinnabulis, vol. xiv.)
+
+
+     (243) And no wonder, when the oracle of the Church, Thomas Aquinas,
+expressly pronounced church bells, "provided they have been duly
+consecrated and baptised," the foremost means of "frustrating the
+atmospheric mischiefs of the devil," and likened steeples in which
+bells are ringing to a hen brooding her chickens, "for the tones of the
+consecrated metal repel the demons and avert storm and lightning"; when
+pre-Reformation preachers of such universal currency as Johannes Herolt
+declared, "Bells, as all agree, are baptised with the result that they
+are secure from the power of Satan, terrify the demons, compel the
+powers"; when Geiler of Kaiserberg especially commended bell-ringing
+as a means of beating off the devil in storms; and when a canonist
+like Durandus explained the purpose of the rite to be, that "the demons
+hearing the trumpets of the Eternal King, to wit, the bells, may flee
+in terror, and may cease from the stirring up of tempests." See Herolt,
+Sermones Discipuli, vol. xvii, and Durandus, De ritibus ecclesiae, vol.
+ii, p. 12. I owe the first of these citations to Rydberg, and the others
+to Montanus. For Geiler, see Dacheux, Geiler de Kaiserberg, pp. 280,
+281.
+
+
+     (244) The baptism of bells was indeed, one of the express complaints
+of the German Protestant princes at the Reformation. See their Gravam.
+Cent. German. Grav., p. 51. For Hooper, see his Early Writings, p. 197
+(in Parker Society Publications). For Pilkington, see his Works, p.
+177 (in same). Among others sharing these opinions were Tyndale, Bishop
+Ridley, Archbishop Sandys, Becon, Calfhill, and Rogers. It is to be
+noted that all of these speak of the rite as "baptism."
+
+
+Toward the end of the sixteenth century the Elector of Saxony strictly
+forbade the ringing of bells against storms, urging penance and prayer
+instead; but the custom was not so easily driven out of the Protestant
+Church, and in some quarters was developed a Protestant theory of a
+rationalistic sort, ascribing the good effects of bell-ringing in storms
+to the calling together of the devout for prayer or to the suggestion
+of prayers during storms at night. As late as the end of the seventeenth
+century we find the bells of Protestant churches in northern Germany
+rung for the dispelling of tempests. In Catholic Austria this
+bell-ringing seems to have become a nuisance in the last century, for
+the Emperor Joseph II found it necessary to issue an edict against
+it; but this doctrine had gained too large headway to be arrested by
+argument or edict, and the bells may be heard ringing during storms to
+this day in various remote districts in Europe.(245) For this was no
+mere superficial view. It was really part of a deep theological current
+steadily developed through the Middle Ages, the fundamental idea of the
+whole being the direct influence of the bells upon the "Power of the
+Air"; and it is perhaps worth our while to go back a little and glance
+over the coming of this current into the modern world. Having grown
+steadily through the Middle Ages, it appeared in full strength at
+the Reformation period; and in the sixteenth century Olaus Magnus,
+Archbishop of Upsala and Primate of Sweden, in his great work on the
+northern nations, declares it a well-established fact that cities and
+harvests may be saved from lightning by the ringing of bells and the
+burning of consecrated incense, accompanied by prayers; and he cautions
+his readers that the workings of the thunderbolt are rather to be
+marvelled at than inquired into. Even as late as 1673 the Franciscan
+professor Lealus, in Italy, in a schoolbook which was received with
+great applause in his region, taught unhesitatingly the agency of
+demons in storms, and the power of bells over them, as well as the
+portentousness of comets and the movement of the heavens by angels.
+He dwells especially, too, upon the perfect protection afforded by the
+waxen Agnus Dei. How strong this current was, and how difficult even for
+philosophical minds to oppose, is shown by the fact that both Descartes
+and Francis Bacon speak of it with respect, admitting the fact, and
+suggesting very mildly that the bells may accomplish this purpose by the
+concussion of the air.(246)
+
+
+     (245) For Elector of Saxony, see Peuchen, Disp. circa tempestates,
+Jena, 1697. For the Protestant theory of bells, see, e. g., the Ciciones
+Selectae of Superintendent Conrad Dieterich (cited by Peuchen, Disp.
+circa tempestates). For Protestant ringing of bells to dispel tempests,
+see Schwimmer, Physicalische Luftfragen, 1692 (cited by Peuchen, as
+above). He pictures the whole population of a Thuringinian district
+flocking to the churches on the approach of a storm.
+
+
+     (246) For Olaus Magnus, see the De gentibus septentrionalibus (Rome,
+1555), lib. i, c. 12, 13. For Descartes, see his De meteor., cent.
+2, 127. In his Historia Ventorum he again alludes to the belief, and
+without comment.
+
+
+But no such moderate doctrine sufficed, and the renowned Bishop
+Binsfeld, of Treves, in his noted treatise on the credibility of the
+confessions of witches, gave an entire chapter to the effect of bells in
+calming atmospheric disturbances. Basing his general doctrine upon the
+first chapter of Job and the second chapter of Ephesians, he insisted
+on the reality of diabolic agency in storms; and then, by theological
+reasoning, corroborated by the statements extorted in the torture
+chamber, he showed the efficacy of bells in putting the hellish legions
+to flight.(247) This continued, therefore, an accepted tenet,
+developed in every nation, and coming to its climax near the end of the
+seventeenth century. At that period--the period of Isaac Newton--Father
+Augustine de Angelis, rector of the Clementine College at Rome,
+published under the highest Church authority his lectures upon
+meteorology. Coming from the centre of Catholic Christendom, at so late
+a period, they are very important as indicating what had been developed
+under the influence of theology during nearly seventeen hundred years.
+This learned head of a great college at the heart of Christendom taught
+that "the surest remedy against thunder is that which our Holy Mother
+the Church practises, namely, the ringing of bells when a thunderbolt
+impends: thence follows a twofold effect, physical and moral--a
+physical, because the sound variously disturbs and agitates the air, and
+by agitation disperses the hot exhalations and dispels the thunder; but
+the moral effect is the more certain, because by the sound the faithful
+are stirred to pour forth their prayers, by which they win from God the
+turning away of the thunderbolt." Here we see in this branch of thought,
+as in so many others, at the close of the seventeenth century, the dawn
+of rationalism. Father De Angelis now keeps demoniacal influence in
+the background. Little, indeed, is said of the efficiency of bells in
+putting to flight the legions of Satan: the wise professor is evidently
+preparing for that inevitable compromise which we see in the history of
+every science when it is clear that it can no longer be suppressed by
+ecclesiastical fulminations.(248)
+
+
+     (247) See Binsfeld, De Confessionbus Malef., pp. 308-314, edition of
+1623.
+
+
+     (248) For De Angelis, see his Lectiones Meteorol., p. 75.
+
+
+
+
+III. THE AGENCY OF WITCHES.
+
+
+But, while this comparatively harmless doctrine of thwarting the powers
+of the air by fetiches and bell-ringing was developed, there were
+evolved another theory, and a series of practices sanctioned by the
+Church, which must forever be considered as among the most fearful
+calamities in human history. Indeed, few errors have ever cost so much
+shedding of innocent blood over such wide territory and during so many
+generations. Out of the old doctrine--pagan and Christian--of evil
+agency in atmospheric phenomena was evolved the belief that certain men,
+women, and children may secure infernal aid to produce whirlwinds, hail,
+frosts, floods, and the like.
+
+As early as the ninth century one great churchman, Agobard, Archbishop
+of Lyons, struck a heavy blow at this superstition. His work, Against
+the Absurd Opinion of the Vulgar touching Hail and Thunder, shows him
+to have been one of the most devoted apostles of right reason whom human
+history has known. By argument and ridicule, and at times by a
+lofty eloquence, he attempted to breast this tide. One passage is of
+historical significance. He declares: "The wretched world lies now under
+the tyranny of foolishness; things are believed by Christians of
+such absurdity as no one ever could aforetime induce the heathen to
+believe."(249)
+
+
+     (249) For a very interesting statement of Agobard's position and
+work, with citations from his Liber contra insulsam vulgi opinionem
+de grandine et tonitruis, see Poole, Illustrations of the History of
+Mediaeval Thought, pp. 40 et seq. The works of Agobard are in vol. civ
+of Migne's Patrol. Lat.
+
+
+All in vain; the tide of superstition continued to roll on; great
+theologians developed it and ecclesiastics favoured it; until as we near
+the end of the medieval period the infallible voice of Rome is heard
+accepting it, and clinching this belief into the mind of Christianity.
+For, in 1437, Pope Eugene IV, by virtue of the teaching power conferred
+on him by the Almighty, and under the divine guarantee against any
+possible error in the exercise of it, issued a bull exhorting the
+inquisitors of heresy and witchcraft to use greater diligence against
+the human agents of the Prince of Darkness, and especially against those
+who have the power to produce bad weather. In 1445 Pope Eugene returned
+again to the charge, and again issued instructions and commands
+infallibly committing the Church to the doctrine. But a greater than
+Eugene followed, and stamped the idea yet more deeply into the mind of
+the Church. On the 7th of December, 1484, Pope Innocent VIII sent forth
+his bull Summis Desiderantes. Of all documents ever issued from Rome,
+imperial or papal, this has doubtless, first and last, cost the greatest
+shedding of innocent blood. Yet no document was ever more clearly
+dictated by conscience. Inspired by the scriptural command, "Thou
+shalt not suffer a witch to live," Pope Innocent exhorted the clergy of
+Germany to leave no means untried to detect sorcerers, and especially
+those who by evil weather destroy vineyards, gardens, meadows,
+and growing crops. These precepts were based upon various texts of
+Scripture, especially upon the famous statement in the book of Job; and,
+to carry them out, witch-finding inquisitors were authorized by the Pope
+to scour Europe, especially Germany, and a manual was prepared for their
+use--the Witch-Hammer, Malleus Maleficarum. In this manual, which was
+revered for centuries, both in Catholic and Protestant countries, as
+almost divinely inspired, the doctrine of Satanic agency in atmospheric
+phenomena was further developed, and various means of detecting and
+punishing it were dwelt upon.(250)
+
+
+     (250) For the bull of Pope Eugene, see Raynaldus, Annales Eccl., pp.
+1437, 1445. The Latin text of the bull Summis Desiderantes may now be
+found in the Malleus Maleficarum, in Binsfeld's De Confessionibus cited
+below, or in Roskoff's Geschichte des Teufles (Leipsic, 1869), vol.
+i, pp. 222-225. There is, so far as I know, no good analysis, in any
+English book, of the contents of the Witch-Hammer; but such may be
+found in Roskoff's Geschichte des Teufels, or in Soldan's Geschichte der
+Hexenprozesse. Its first dated edition is that of 1489; but Prof. Burr
+has shown that it was printed as early as 1486. It was, happily, never
+translated into any modern tongue.
+
+
+With the application of torture to thousands of women, in accordance
+with the precepts laid down in the Malleus, it was not difficult to
+extract masses of proof for this sacred theory of meteorology. The poor
+creatures, writhing on the rack, held in horror by those who had been
+nearest and dearest to them, anxious only for death to relieve their
+sufferings, confessed to anything and everything that would satisfy the
+inquisitors and judges. All that was needed was that the inquisitors
+should ask leading questions(251) and suggest satisfactory answers: the
+prisoners, to shorten the torture, were sure sooner or later to give the
+answer required, even though they knew that this would send them to the
+stake or scaffold. Under the doctrine of "excepted cases," there was no
+limit to torture for persons accused of heresy or witchcraft; even the
+safeguards which the old pagan world had imposed upon torture were thus
+thrown down, and the prisoner MUST confess.
+
+
+     (251) For still extant lists of such questions, see the Zeitschrift
+fur deutsche Culturgeschichte for 1858, pp. 522-528, or Diefenbach,
+Der Hexenwahn in Deutschland, pp. 15-17. Father Vincent of Berg (in his
+Enchiridium) gives a similar list for use by priests in the confession
+of the accused. Manuscript lists of this sort which have actually done
+service in the courts of Baden and Bavaria may be seen in the library of
+Cornell University.
+
+
+The theological literature of the Middle Ages was thus enriched with
+numberless statements regarding modes of Satanic influence on the
+weather. Pathetic, indeed, are the records; and none more so than the
+confessions of these poor creatures, chiefly women and children,
+during hundreds of years, as to their manner of raising hailstorms and
+tempests. Such confessions, by tens of thousands, are still to be found
+in the judicial records of Germany, and indeed of all Europe. Typical
+among these is one on which great stress was laid during ages, and for
+which the world was first indebted to one of these poor women. Crazed by
+the agony of torture, she declared that, returning with a demon through
+the air from the witches' sabbath, she was dropped upon the earth in the
+confusion which resulted among the hellish legions when they heard
+the bells sounding the Ave Maria. It is sad to note that, after a
+contribution so valuable to sacred science, the poor woman was condemned
+to the flames. This revelation speedily ripened the belief that,
+whatever might be going on at the witches' sabbath--no matter how
+triumphant Satan might be--at the moment of sounding the consecrated
+bells the Satanic power was paralyzed. This theory once started, proofs
+came in to support it, during a hundred years, from the torture chambers
+in all parts of Europe.
+
+Throughout the later Middle Ages the Dominicans had been the main agents
+in extorting and promulgating these revelations, but in the centuries
+following the Reformation the Jesuits devoted themselves with even
+more keenness and vigour to the same task. Some curious questions
+incidentally arose. It was mooted among the orthodox authorities whether
+the damage done by storms should or should not be assessed upon the
+property of convicted witches. The theologians inclined decidedly to the
+affirmative; the jurists, on the whole, to the negative.(252)
+
+
+     (252) For proofs of the vigour of the Jesuits in this persecution, see
+not only the histories of witchcraft, but also the Annuae litterae of
+the Jesuits themselves, passim.
+
+
+In spite of these tortures, lightning and tempests continued, and great
+men arose in the Church throughout Europe in every generation to point
+out new cruelties for the discovery of "weather-makers," and new methods
+for bringing their machinations to naught.
+
+But here and there, as early as the sixteenth century, we begin to see
+thinkers endeavouring to modify or oppose these methods. At that time
+Paracelsus called attention to the reverberation of cannon as explaining
+the rolling of thunder, but he was confronted by one of his greatest
+contemporaries. Jean Bodin, as superstitious in natural as he was
+rational in political science, made sport of the scientific theory,
+and declared thunder to be "a flaming exhalation set in motion by evil
+spirits, and hurled downward with a great crash and a horrible smell
+of sulphur." In support of this view, he dwelt upon the confessions
+of tortured witches, upon the acknowledged agency of demons in the
+Will-o'-the-wisp, and specially upon the passage in the one hundred and
+fourth Psalm, "Who maketh his angels spirits, his ministers a flaming
+fire."
+
+To resist such powerful arguments by such powerful men was dangerous
+indeed. In 1513, Pomponatius, professor at Padua, published a volume
+of Doubts as to the Fourth Book of Aristotle's Meteorologica, and also
+dared to question this power of devils; but he soon found it advisable
+to explain that, while as a PHILOSOPHER he might doubt, yet as
+a CHRISTIAN he of course believed everything taught by Mother
+Church--devils and all--and so escaped the fate of several others
+who dared to question the agency of witches in atmospheric and other
+disturbances.
+
+A few years later Agrippa of Nettesheim made a somewhat similar effort
+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.
+
+Yet not even then without a sore struggle against unreason. And it
+must here be noticed that this unreason was not all theological. The
+unreasoning heterodox when intrusted with irresponsible power can be as
+short-sighted and cruel as the unreasoning orthodox. Lavoisier, one of
+the best of our race, not only a great chemist but a true man, was
+sent to the scaffold by the Parisian mob, led by bigoted "liberals" and
+atheists, with the sneer that the republic had no need of savants. As
+to Priestley, who had devoted his life to science and to every good
+work among his fellow-men, the Birmingham mob, favoured by the Anglican
+clergymen who harangued them as "fellow-churchmen," wrecked his house,
+destroyed his library, philosophical instruments, and papers containing
+the results of long years of scientific research, drove him into exile,
+and would have murdered him if they could have laid their hands upon
+him. Nor was it entirely his devotion to rational liberty, nor even
+his disbelief in the doctrine of the Trinity, which brought on this
+catastrophe. That there was a deep distrust of his scientific pursuits,
+was evident when the leaders of the mob took pains to use his electrical
+apparatus to set fire to his papers.
+
+Still, though theological modes of thought continued to sterilize much
+effort in chemistry, the old influence was more and more thrown off,
+and truth sought more and more for truth's sake. "Black magic" with
+its Satanic machinery vanished, only reappearing occasionally
+among marvel-mongers and belated theologians. "White magic" became
+legerdemain.
+
+In the early years of the nineteenth century, physical research,
+though it went on with ever-increasing vigour, felt in various ways the
+reaction which followed the French Revolution. It was not merely under
+the Bourbons and Hapsburgs that resistance was offered; even in
+England the old spirit lingered long. As late as 1832, when the British
+Association for the Advancement of Science first visited Oxford, no
+less amiable a man than John Keble--at that time a power in the
+university--condemned indignantly the conferring of honorary degrees
+upon the leading men thus brought together. In a letter of that date to
+Dr. Pusey he complained bitterly, to use his own words, that "the Oxford
+doctors have truckled sadly to the spirit of the times in receiving the
+hotchpotch of philosophers as they did." It is interesting to know that
+among the men thus contemptuously characterized were Brewster, Faraday,
+and Dalton.
+
+Nor was this a mere isolated exhibition of feeling; it lasted many
+years, and was especially shown on both sides of the Atlantic in all
+higher institutions of learning where theology was dominant. Down to a
+period within the memory of men still in active life, students in the
+sciences, not only at Oxford and Cambridge but at Harvard and Yale, were
+considered a doubtful if not a distinctly inferior class, intellectually
+and socially--to be relegated to different instructors and buildings,
+and to receive their degrees on a different occasion and with different
+ceremonies from those appointed for students in literature. To the
+State University of Michigan, among the greater American institutions of
+learning which have never possessed or been possessed by a theological
+seminary, belongs the honour of first breaking down this wall of
+separation.
+
+But from the middle years of the century chemical science progressed
+with ever-accelerating force, and the work of Bunsen, Kirchhoff,
+Dalton, and Faraday has, in the last years of the century, led up to
+the establishment of Mendeleef's law, by which chemistry has become
+predictive, as astronomy had become predictive by the calculations of
+Newton, and biology by the discoveries of Darwin.
+
+While one succession of strong men were thus developing chemistry out
+of one form of magic, another succession were developing physics out of
+another form.
+
+First in this latter succession may be mentioned that line of thinkers
+who divined and reasoned out great physical laws--a line extending
+from Galileo and Kepler and Newton to Ohm and Faraday and Joule and
+Helmholtz. These, by revealing more and more clearly the reign of law,
+steadily undermined the older theological view of arbitrary influence
+in nature. Next should be mentioned the line of profound observers, from
+Galileo and Torricelli to Kelvin. These have as thoroughly undermined
+the old theologic substitution of phrases for facts. When Galileo
+dropped the differing weights from the Leaning Tower of Pisa, he began
+the end of Aristotelian authority in physics. When Torricelli balanced a
+column of mercury against a column of water and each of these against
+a column of air, he ended the theologic phrase that "nature abhors a
+vacuum." When Newton approximately determined the velocity of sound, he
+ended the theologic argument that we see the flash before we hear the
+roar because "sight is nobler than hearing." When Franklin showed that
+lightning is caused by electricity, and Ohm and Faraday proved that
+electricity obeys ascertained laws, they ended the theological idea of a
+divinity seated above the clouds and casting thunderbolts.
+
+Resulting from the labour of both these branches of physical science,
+we have the establishment of the great laws of the indestructibility
+of matter, the correlation of forces, and chemical affinity. Thereby is
+ended, with various other sacred traditions, the theological theory of
+a visible universe created out of nothing, so firmly imbedded in
+the theological thought of the Middle Ages and in the Westminster
+Catechism.(283)
+
+
+     (283) For a reappearance of the fundamental doctrines of black magic
+among theologians, see Rev. Dr. Jewett, Professor of Pastoral Theology
+in the Prot. Episc. Gen. Theolog. Seminary of New York, Diabolology: The
+Person and the Kingdom of Satan, New York, 1889. For their appearance
+among theosophists, see Eliphas Levi, Histoire de la Magie, especially
+the final chapters. For opposition to Boyle and chemistry studies at
+Oxford in the latter half of the seventeenth century, see the address
+of Prof. Dixon, F. R. S., before the British Association, 1894. For the
+recent progress of chemistry, and opposition to its earlier development
+at Oxford, see Lord Salisbury's address as President of the British
+Association, in 1894. For the Protestant survival of the mediaeval
+assertion that the universe was created out of nothing, see the
+Westminster Catechism, question 15.
+
+
+In our own time some attempt has been made to renew this war against
+the physical sciences. Joseph de Maistre, uttering his hatred of them,
+declaring that mankind has paid too dearly for them, asserting that they
+must be subjected to theology, likening them to fire--good when confined
+and dangerous when scattered about--has been one of the main leaders
+among those who can not relinquish the idea that our body of sacred
+literature should be kept a controlling text-book of science. The only
+effect of such teachings has been to weaken the legitimate hold of
+religion upon men.
+
+In Catholic countries exertion has of late years been mainly confined to
+excluding science or diluting it in university teachings. Early in the
+present century a great effort was made by Ferdinand VII of Spain.
+He simply dismissed the scientific professors from the University of
+Salamanca, and until a recent period there has been general exclusion
+from Spanish universities of professors holding to the Newtonian
+physics. So, too, the contemporary Emperor of Austria attempted
+indirectly something of the same sort; and at a still later period
+Popes Gregory XVI and Pius IX discouraged, if they did not forbid, the
+meetings of scientific associations in Italy. In France, war between
+theology and science, which had long been smouldering, came in the years
+1867 and 1868 to an outbreak. Toward the end of the last century, after
+the Church had held possession of advanced instruction for more than
+a thousand years, and had, so far as it was able, kept experimental
+science in servitude--after it had humiliated Buffon in natural science,
+thrown its weight against Newton in the physical sciences, and wrecked
+Turgot's noble plans for a system of public instruction--the French
+nation decreed the establishment of the most thorough and complete
+system of higher instruction in science ever known. It was kept under
+lay control and became one of the glories of France; but, emboldened by
+the restoration of the Bourbons in 1815, the Church began to undermine
+this hated system, and in 1868 had made such progress that all was ready
+for the final assault.
+
+Foremost among the leaders of the besieging party was the Bishop of
+Orleans, Dupanloup, a man of many winning characteristics and of great
+oratorical power. In various ways, and especially in an open letter, he
+had fought the "materialism" of science at Paris, and especially were
+his attacks levelled at Profs. Vulpian and See and the Minister of
+Public instruction, Duruy, a man of great merit, whose only crime was
+devotion to the improvement of education and to the promotion of the
+highest research in science.(284)
+
+
+     (284) For the exertions of the restored Bourbons to crush the
+universities of Spain, see Hubbard, Hist. Contemporaine de l'Espagne,
+Paris, 1878, chaps. i and ii. For Dupanloup, Lettre a un Cardinal, see
+the Revue de Therapeutique of 1868, p. 221.
+
+
+The main attack was made rather upon biological science than upon
+physics and chemistry, yet it was clear that all were involved together.
+
+The first onslaught was made in the French Senate, and the storming
+party in that body was led by a venerable and conscientious prelate,
+Cardinal de Bonnechose, Archbishop of Rouen. It was charged by him and
+his party that the tendencies of the higher scientific teaching at Paris
+were fatal to religion and morality. Heavy missiles were hurled--such
+phrases as "sapping the foundations," "breaking down the bulwarks,"
+and the like; and, withal, a new missile was used with much effect--the
+epithet "materialist."
+
+The results can be easily guessed: crowds came to the lecture-rooms of
+the attacked professors, and the lecture-room of Prof. See, the chief
+offender, was crowded to suffocation.
+
+A siege was begun in due form. A young physician was sent by the
+cardinal's party into the heterodox camp as a spy. Having heard one
+lecture of Prof. See, he returned with information that seemed to
+promise easy victory to the besieging party: he brought a terrible
+statement--one that seemed enough to overwhelm See, Vulpian, Duruy, and
+the whole hated system of public instruction in France--the statement
+that See had denied the existence of the human soul.
+
+Cardinal Bonnechose seized the tremendous weapon at once. Rising in his
+place in the Senate, he launched a most eloquent invective against the
+Minister of State who could protect such a fortress of impiety as the
+College of Medicine; and, as a climax, he asserted, on the evidence
+of his spy fresh from Prof. See's lecture-room, that the professor had
+declared, in his lecture of the day before, that so long as he had the
+honour to hold his professorship he would combat the false idea of the
+existence of the soul. The weapon seemed resistless and the wound fatal,
+but M. Duruy rose and asked to be heard.
+
+His statement was simply that he held in his hand documentary proofs
+that Prof. See never made such a declaration. He held the notes used by
+Prof. See in his lecture. Prof. See, it appeared, belonged to a school
+in medical science which combated certain ideas regarding medicine as an
+ART. The inflamed imagination of the cardinal's heresy-hunting emissary
+had, as the lecture-notes proved, led him to mistake the word "art" for
+"ame," and to exhibit Prof. See as treating a theological when he was
+discussing a purely scientific question. Of the existence of the soul
+the professor had said nothing.
+
+The forces of the enemy were immediately turned; they retreated in
+confusion, amid the laughter of all France; and a quiet, dignified
+statement as to the rights of scientific instructors by Wurtz, dean of
+the faculty, completed their discomfiture. Thus a well-meant attempt
+to check science simply ended in bringing ridicule on religion, and
+in thrusting still deeper into the minds of thousands of men that most
+mistaken of all mistaken ideas: the conviction that religion and science
+are enemies.(285)
+
+
+     (285) For a general account of the Vulpian and See matter, see Revue des
+Deux Mondes, 31 mai, 1868, "Chronique de la Quinzaine," pp. 763-765. As
+to the result on popular thought, may be noted the following comment on
+the affair by the Revue, which is as free as possible from anything
+like rabid anti-ecclesiastical ideas: "Elle a ete vraiment curieuse,
+instructive, assez triste et meme un peu amusante." For Wurtz's
+statement, see Revue de Therapeutique for 1868, p. 303.
+
+
+But justice forbids raising an outcry against Roman Catholicism for
+this. In 1864 a number of excellent men in England drew up a declaration
+to be signed by students in the natural sciences, expressing "sincere
+regret that researches into scientific truth are perverted by some in
+our time into occasion for casting doubt upon the truth and authenticity
+of the Holy Scriptures." Nine tenths of the leading scientific men of
+England refused to sign it; nor was this all: Sir John Herschel, Sir
+John Bowring, and Sir W. R. Hamilton administered, through the press,
+castigations which roused general indignation against the proposers of
+the circular, and Prof. De Morgan, by a parody, covered memorial and
+memorialists with ridicule. It was the old mistake, and the old result
+followed in the minds of multitudes of thoughtful young men.(286)
+
+
+     (286) De Morgan, Paradoxes, pp. 421-428; also Daubeny's Essays.
+
+
+And in yet another Protestant country this same mistake was made. In
+1868 several excellent churchmen in Prussia thought it their duty to
+meet for the denunciation of "science falsely so called." Two results
+followed: upon the great majority of these really self-sacrificing
+men--whose first utterances showed complete ignorance of the theories
+they attacked--there came quiet and widespread contempt; upon Pastor
+Knak, who stood forth and proclaimed views of the universe which he
+thought scriptural, but which most schoolboys knew to be childish,
+came a burst of good-natured derision from every quarter of the German
+nation.(287)
+
+
+     (287) See the Berlin newspapers for the summer of 1868, especially
+Kladderdatsch.
+
+
+But in all the greater modern nations warfare of this kind, after the
+first quarter of the nineteenth century, became more and more futile.
+While conscientious Roman bishops, and no less conscientious Protestant
+clergymen in Europe and America continued to insist that advanced
+education, not only in literature but in science, should be kept under
+careful control in their own sectarian universities and colleges,
+wretchedly one-sided in organization and inadequate in equipment; while
+Catholic clerical authorities in Spain were rejecting all professors
+holding the Newtonian theory, and in Austria and Italy all holding
+unsafe views regarding the Immaculate Conception, and while Protestant
+clerical authorities in Great Britain and America were keeping out
+of professorships men holding unsatisfactory views regarding the
+Incarnation, or Infant Baptism, or the Apostolic Succession, or
+Ordination by Elders, or the Perseverance of the Saints; and while both
+Catholic and Protestant ecclesiastics were openly or secretly weeding
+out of university faculties all who showed willingness to consider
+fairly the ideas of Darwin, a movement was quietly in progress destined
+to take instruction, and especially instruction in the physical
+and natural sciences, out of its old subordination to theology and
+ecclesiasticism.(288)
+
+
+     (288) Whatever may be thought of the system of philosophy advocated by
+President McCosh at Princeton, every thinking man must honor him for the
+large way in which he, at least, broke away from the traditions of that
+centre of thought; prevented, so far as he was able, persecution of
+scholars for holding to the Darwinian view; and paved the way for the
+highest researches in physical science in that university. For a most
+eloquent statement of the opposition of modern physical science to
+mediaeval theological views, as shown in the case of Sir Isaac Newton,
+see Dr. Thomas Chalmers, cited in Gore, Art of Scientific Discovery,
+London, 1878, p. 247.
+
+
+The most striking beginnings of this movement had been seen when, in the
+darkest period of the French Revolution, there was founded at Paris the
+great Conservatory of Arts and Trades, and when, in the early years
+of the nineteenth century, scientific and technical education spread
+quietly upon the Continent. By the middle of the century France and
+Germany were dotted with well-equipped technical and scientific schools,
+each having chemical and physical laboratories.
+
+The English-speaking lands lagged behind. In England, Oxford and
+Cambridge showed few if any signs of this movement, and in the United
+States, down to 1850, evidences of it were few and feeble. Very
+significant is it that, at that period, while Yale College had in
+its faculty Silliman and Olmsted--the professor of chemistry and the
+professor of physics most widely known in the United States--it had no
+physical or chemical laboratory in the modern sense, and confined its
+instruction in these subjects to examinations upon a text-book and the
+presentation of a few lectures. At the State University of Michigan,
+which had even then taken a foremost place in the higher education west
+of the Great Lakes, there was very meagre instruction in chemistry and
+virtually none in physics. This being the state of things in the middle
+of the century in institutions remarkably free from clerical control,
+it can be imagined what was the position of scientific instruction in
+smaller colleges and universities where theological considerations were
+entirely dominant.
+
+But in 1851, with the International Exhibition at London, began in Great
+Britain and America a movement in favour of scientific education; men
+of wealth and public spirit began making contributions to them, and thus
+came the growth of a new system of instruction in which Chemistry and
+Physics took just rank.
+
+By far the most marked feature in this movement was seen in America,
+when, in 1857, Justin S. Morrill, a young member of Congress from
+Vermont, presented the project of a law endowing from the public lands
+a broad national system of colleges in which scientific and technical
+studies should be placed on an equality with studies in classical
+literature, one such college to be established in every State of the
+Union. The bill, though opposed mainly by representatives from the
+Southern States, where doctrinaire politics and orthodox theology were
+in strong alliance with negro slavery, was passed by both Houses of
+Congress, but vetoed by President Buchanan, in whom the doctrinaire and
+orthodox spirit was incarnate. But Morrill persisted and again presented
+his bill, which was again carried in spite of the opposition of the
+Southern members, and again vetoed in 1859 by President Buchanan. Then
+came the civil war; but Morrill and his associates did not despair of
+the republic. In the midst of all the measures for putting vast armies
+into the field and for saving the Union from foreign interference as
+well as from domestic anarchy, they again passed the bill, and in 1862,
+in the darkest hour of the struggle for national existence, it became a
+law by the signature of President Lincoln.
+
+And here it should not be unrecorded, that, while the vast majority of
+the supporters of the measure were laymen, most efficient service was
+rendered by a clergyman, the Rev. Dr. Amos Brown, born in New Hampshire,
+but at that time an instructor in a little village of New York. His
+ideas were embodied in the bill, and his efforts did much for its
+passage.
+
+Thus was established, in every State of the American Union, at least one
+institution in which scientific and technical studies were given equal
+rank with classical, and promoted by laboratories for research in
+physical and natural science. Of these institutions there are now nearly
+fifty: all have proved valuable, and some of them, by the addition of
+splendid gifts from individuals and from the States in which they are
+situated, have been developed into great universities.
+
+Nor was this all. Many of the older universities and colleges thus
+received a powerful stimulus in the new direction. The great physical
+and chemical laboratories founded by gifts from public-spirited
+individuals, as at Harvard, Yale, and Chicago, or by enlightened State
+legislators, as in Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, California, Kansas,
+and Nebraska, have also become centres from which radiate influences
+favouring the unfettered search for truth as truth.
+
+This system has been long enough in operation to enable us to note in
+some degree its effects on religion, and these are certainly such as
+to relieve those who have feared that religion was necessarily bound up
+with the older instruction controlled by theology. While in Europe, by a
+natural reaction, the colleges under strict ecclesiastical control have
+sent forth the most powerful foes the Christian Church has ever known,
+of whom Voltaire and Diderot and Volney and Sainte-Beuve and Renan are
+types, no such effects have been noted in these newer institutions.
+While the theological way of looking at the universe has steadily
+yielded, there has been no sign of any tendency toward irreligion. On
+the contrary, it is the testimony of those best acquainted with the
+American colleges and universities during the last forty-five years that
+there has been in them a great gain, not only as regards morals, but as
+regards religion in its highest and best sense. The reason is not far
+to seek. Under the old American system the whole body of students at
+a university were confined to a single course, for which the majority
+cared little and very many cared nothing, and, as a result, widespread
+idleness and dissipation were inevitable. Under the new system,
+presenting various courses, and especially courses in various sciences,
+appealing to different tastes and aims, the great majority of students
+are interested, and consequently indolence and dissipation have steadily
+diminished. Moreover, in the majority of American institutions of
+learning down to the middle of the century, the main reliance for the
+religious culture of students was in the perfunctory presentation of
+sectarian theology, and the occasional stirring up of what were called
+"revivals," which, after a period of unhealthy stimulus, inevitably left
+the main body of students in a state of religious and moral reaction
+and collapse. This method is now discredited, and in the more important
+American universities it has become impossible. Religious truth, to
+secure the attention of the modern race of students in the better
+American institutions, is presented, not by "sensation preachers," but
+by thoughtful, sober-minded scholars. Less and less avail sectarian
+arguments; more and more impressive becomes the presentation of
+fundamental religious truths. The result is, that while young men care
+less and less for the great mass of petty, cut-and-dried sectarian
+formulas, they approach the deeper questions of religion with increasing
+reverence.
+
+While striking differences exist between the European universities and
+those of the United States, this at least may be said, that on both
+sides of the Atlantic the great majority of the leading institutions
+of learning are under the sway of enlightened public opinion as voiced
+mainly by laymen, and that, this being the case, the physical and
+natural sciences are henceforth likely to be developed normally,
+and without fear of being sterilized by theology or oppressed by
+ecclesiasticism.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.  FROM MIRACLES TO MEDICINE.
+
+
+
+
+I. THE EARLY AND SACRED THEORIES OF DISEASE.
+
+
+Nothing in the evolution of human thought appears more inevitable than
+the idea of supernatural intervention in producing and curing disease.
+The causes of disease are so intricate that they are reached only after
+ages of scientific labour. In those periods when man sees everywhere
+miracle and nowhere law,--when he attributes all things which he can not
+understand to a will like his own,--he naturally ascribes his diseases
+either to the wrath of a good being or to the malice of an evil being.
+
+This idea underlies the connection of the priestly class with the
+healing art: a connection of which we have survivals among rude tribes
+in all parts of the world, and which is seen in nearly every ancient
+civilization--especially in the powers over disease claimed in Egypt by
+the priests of Osiris and Isis, in Assyria by the priests of Gibil, in
+Greece by the priests of Aesculapius, and in Judea by the priests and
+prophets of Jahveh.
+
+In Egypt there is evidence, reaching back to a very early period, that
+the sick were often regarded as afflicted or possessed by demons; the
+same belief comes constantly before us in the great religions of India
+and China; and, as regards Chaldea, the Assyrian tablets recovered in
+recent years, while revealing the source of so many myths and legends
+transmitted to the modern world through the book of Genesis, show
+especially this idea of the healing of diseases by the casting out of
+devils. A similar theory was elaborated in Persia. Naturally, then, the
+Old Testament, so precious in showing the evolution of religious and
+moral truth among men, attributes such diseases as the leprosy of Miriam
+and Uzziah, the boils of Job, the dysentery of Jehoram, the withered
+hand of Jeroboam, the fatal illness of Asa, and many other ills, to the
+wrath of God or the malice of Satan; while, in the New Testament, such
+examples as the woman "bound by Satan," the rebuke of the fever, the
+casting out of the devil which was dumb, the healing of the person whom
+"the devil ofttimes casteth into the fire"--of which case one of
+the greatest modern physicians remarks that never was there a truer
+description of epilepsy--and various other episodes, show this same
+inevitable mode of thought as a refracting medium through which the
+teachings and doings of the Great Physician were revealed to future
+generations.
+
+In Greece, though this idea of an occult evil agency in producing bodily
+ills appeared at an early period, there also came the first beginnings,
+so far as we know, of a really scientific theory of medicine. Five
+hundred years before Christ, in the bloom period of thought--the
+period of Aeschylus, Phidias, Pericles, Socrates, and Plato--appeared
+Hippocrates, one of the greatest names in history. Quietly but
+thoroughly he broke away from the old tradition, developed scientific
+thought, and laid the foundations of medical science upon experience,
+observation, and reason so deeply and broadly that his teaching remains
+to this hour among the most precious possessions of our race.
+
+His thought was passed on to the School of Alexandria, and there medical
+science was developed yet further, especially by such men as Herophilus
+and Erasistratus. Under their lead studies in human anatomy began by
+dissection; the old prejudice which had weighed so long upon science,
+preventing that method of anatomical investigation without which there
+can be no real results, was cast aside apparently forever.(289)
+
+
+     (289) For extended statements regarding medicine in Egypt, Judea, and
+Eastern nations generally, see Sprengel, Histoire de la Medecine, and
+Haeser; and for more succinct accounts, Baas, Geschichte der Medicin,
+pp. 15-29; also Isensee; also Fredault, Histoire de la Medecine, chap.
+i. For the effort in Egyptian medicine to deal with demons and witches,
+see Heinrich Brugsch, Die Aegyptologie, Leipsic, 1891, p. 77; and for
+references to the Papyrus Ebers, etc., pp. 155, 407, and following. For
+fear of dissection and prejudices against it in Egypt, like those in
+mediaeval Europe, see Maspero and Sayce, Dawn of Civilization, p. 216.
+For the derivation of priestly medicine in Egypt, see Baas, pp. 16, 22.
+For the fame of Egyptian medicine at Rome, see Sharpe, History of Egypt,
+vol. ii, pp. 151, 184. For Assyria, see especially George Smith in
+Delitzsch's German translation, p. 34, and F. Delitzsch's appendix, p.
+27. On the cheapness and commonness of miracles of healing in antiquity,
+see Sharpe, quoting St. Jerome, vol. ii, pp. 276, 277. As to the
+influence of Chaldean ideas of magic and disease, see Lecky, History of
+European Morals, vol. i, p. 404 and note. But, on the other hand, see
+reference in Homer to diseases caused by a "demon." For the evolution of
+medicine before and after Hippocrates, see Sprengel. For a good summing
+up of the work of Hippocrates, see Baas, p. 201. For the necessary
+passage of medicine in its early stages under priestly control, see
+Cabanis, The Revolution of Medical Science, London, 1806, chap. ii. On
+Jewish ideas regarding demons, and their relation to sickness, see Toy,
+Judaism and Christianity, Boston, 1891, pp. 168 et seq. For avoidance
+of dissections of human subjects even by Galen and his disciples, see
+Maurice Albert, Les Medecins Grecs a Rome, Paris, 1894, chap. xi. For
+Herophilus, Erasistratus, and the School of Alexandria, see Sprengel,
+vol. i, pp. 433, 434 et seq.
+
+
+But with the coming in of Christianity a great new chain of events
+was set in motion which modified this development most profoundly. The
+influence of Christianity on the healing art was twofold: there was
+first a blessed impulse--the thought, aspiration, example, ideals, and
+spirit of Jesus of Nazareth. This spirit, then poured into the world,
+flowed down through the ages, promoting self-sacrifice for the sick
+and wretched. Through all those succeeding centuries, even through the
+rudest, hospitals and infirmaries sprang up along this blessed stream.
+Of these were the Eastern establishments for the cure of the sick at
+the earliest Christian periods, the Infirmary of Monte Cassino and the
+Hotel-Dieu at Lyons in the sixth century, the Hotel-Dieu at Paris in the
+seventh, and the myriad refuges for the sick and suffering which sprang
+up in every part of Europe during the following centuries. Vitalized by
+this stream, all medieval growths of mercy bloomed luxuriantly. To
+say nothing of those at an earlier period, we have in the time of the
+Crusades great charitable organizations like the Order of St. John of
+Jerusalem, and thenceforward every means of bringing the spirit of Jesus
+to help afflicted humanity. So, too, through all those ages we have
+a succession of men and women devoting themselves to works of mercy,
+culminating during modern times in saints like Vincent de Paul, Francke,
+Howard, Elizabeth Fry, Florence Nightingale, and Muhlenberg.
+
+But while this vast influence, poured forth from the heart of the
+Founder of Christianity, streamed through century after century,
+inspiring every development of mercy, there came from those who
+organized the Church which bears his name, and from those who afterward
+developed and directed it, another stream of influence--a theology drawn
+partly from prehistoric conceptions of unseen powers, partly from ideas
+developed in the earliest historic nations, but especially from the
+letter of the Hebrew and Christian sacred books.
+
+The theology deveLoped out of our sacred literature in relation to the
+cure of disease was mainly twofold: first, there was a new and strong
+evolution of the old idea that physical disease is produced by the
+wrath of God or the malice of Satan, or by a combination of both, which
+theology was especially called in to explain; secondly, there were
+evolved theories of miraculous methods of cure, based upon modes of
+appeasing the Divine anger, or of thwarting Satanic malice.
+
+Along both these streams of influence, one arising in the life of Jesus,
+and the other in the reasonings of theologians, legends of miracles grew
+luxuriantly. It would be utterly unphilosophical to attribute these as
+a whole to conscious fraud. Whatever part priestcraft may have taken
+afterward in sundry discreditable developments of them, the mass of
+miraculous legends, Century after century, grew up mainly in good
+faith, and as naturally as elms along water-courses or flowers upon the
+prairie.
+
+
+
+
+II. GROWTH OF LEGENDS OF HEALING.
+
+--THE LIFE OF XAVIER AS A TYPICAL EXAMPLE.
+
+
+Legends of miracles have thus grown about the lives of all great
+benefactors of humanity in early ages, and about saints and devotees.
+Throughout human history the lives of such personages, almost without
+exception, have been accompanied or followed by a literature in
+which legends of miraculous powers form a very important part--a part
+constantly increasing until a different mode of looking at nature and
+of weighing testimony causes miracles to disappear. While modern thought
+holds the testimony to the vast mass of such legends in all ages as
+worthless, it is very widely acknowledged that great and gifted beings
+who endow the earth with higher religious ideas, gaining the deepest
+hold upon the hearts and minds of multitudes, may at times exercise such
+influence upon those about them that the sick in mind or body are helped
+or healed.
+
+We have within the modern period very many examples which enable us to
+study the evolution of legendary miracles. Out of these I will select
+but one, which is chosen because it is the life of one of the most
+noble and devoted men in the history of humanity, one whose biography
+is before the world with its most minute details--in his own letters,
+in the letters of his associates, in contemporary histories, and in a
+multitude of biographies: this man is St. Francis Xavier. From these
+sources I draw the facts now to be given, but none of them are of
+Protestant origin; every source from which I shall draw is Catholic and
+Roman, and published under the sanction of the Church.
+
+Born a Spanish noble, Xavier at an early age cast aside all ordinary
+aims, devoted himself to study, was rapidly advanced to a professorship
+at Paris, and in this position was rapidly winning a commanding
+influence, when he came under the sway of another Spaniard even greater,
+though less brilliantly endowed, than himself--Ignatius Loyola, founder
+of the Society of Jesus. The result was that the young professor
+sacrificed the brilliant career on which he had entered at the French
+capital, went to the far East as a simple missionary, and there devoted
+his remaining years to redeeming the lowest and most wretched of our
+race.
+
+Among the various tribes, first in lower India and afterward in Japan,
+he wrought untiringly--toiling through village after village, collecting
+the natives by the sound of a hand-bell, trying to teach them the
+simplest Christian formulas; and thus he brought myriads of them to a
+nominal Confession of the Christian faith. After twelve years of such
+efforts, seeking new conquests for religion, he sacrificed his life on
+the desert island of San Chan.
+
+During his career as a missionary he wrote great numbers of letters,
+which were preserved and have since been published; and these, with the
+letters of his contemporaries, exhibit clearly all the features of his
+life. His own writings are very minute, and enable us to follow him
+fully. No account of a miracle wrought by him appears either in his own
+letters or in any contemporary document.(290) At the outside, but two
+or three things occurred in his whole life, as exhibited so fully by
+himself and his contemporaries, for which the most earnest devotee could
+claim anything like Divine interposition; and these are such as may be
+read in the letters of very many fervent missionaries, Protestant as
+well as Catholic. For example, in the beginning of his career, during a
+journey in Europe with an ambassador, one of the servants in fording a
+stream got into deep water and was in danger of drowning. Xavier tells
+us that the ambassador prayed very earnestly, and that the man finally
+struggled out of the stream. But within sixty years after his death, at
+his canonization, and by various biographers, this had been magnified
+into a miracle, and appears in the various histories dressed out in
+glowing colours. Xavier tells us that the ambassador prayed for the
+safety of the young man; but his biographers tell us that it was Xavier
+who prayed, and finally, by the later writers, Xavier is represented as
+lifting horse and rider out of the stream by a clearly supernatural act.
+
+
+     (290) This statement was denied with much explosive emphasis by a writer
+in the Catholic World for September and October, 1891, but he brought
+no FACT to support this denial. I may perhaps be allowed to remind the
+reverend writer that since the days of Pascal, whose eminence in the
+Church he will hardly dispute, the bare assertion even of a Jesuit
+father against established facts needs some support other than mere
+scurrility.
+
+
+Still another claim to miracle is based upon his arriving at Lisbon
+and finding his great colleague, Simon Rodriguez, ill of fever. Xavier
+informs us in a very simple way that Rodriguez was so overjoyed to see
+him that the fever did not return. This is entirely similar to the cure
+which Martin Luther wrought upon Melanchthon. Melanchthon had broken
+down and was supposed to be dying, when his joy at the long-delayed
+visit of Luther brought him to his feet again, after which he lived for
+many years.
+
+Again, it is related that Xavier, finding a poor native woman very
+ill, baptized her, saying over her the prayers of the Church, and she
+recovered.
+
+Two or three occurrences like these form the whole basis for the
+miraculous account, so far as Xavier's own writings are concerned.
+
+Of miracles in the ordinary sense of the word there is in these letters
+of his no mention. Though he writes of his doings with especial detail,
+taking evident pains to note everything which he thought a sign of
+Divine encouragement, he says nothing of his performing miracles,
+and evidently knows nothing of them. This is clearly not due to his
+unwillingness to make known any token of Divine favour. As we have seen,
+he is very prompt to report anything which may be considered an answer
+to prayer or an evidence of the power of religious means to improve the
+bodily or spiritual health of those to whom he was sent.
+
+Nor do the letters of his associates show knowledge of any miracles
+wrought by him. His brother missionaries, who were in constant and loyal
+fellowship with him, make no allusions to them in their communications
+with each other or with their brethren in Europe.
+
+Of this fact we have many striking evidences. Various collections of
+letters from the Jesuit missionaries in India and the East generally,
+during the years of Xavier's activity, were published, and in not one of
+these letters written during Xavier's lifetime appears any account of
+a miracle wrought by him. As typical of these collections we may take
+perhaps the most noted of all, that which was published about twenty
+years after Xavier's death by a Jesuit father, Emanuel Acosta.
+
+The letters given in it were written by Xavier and his associates not
+only from Goa, which was the focus of all missionary effort and the
+centre of all knowledge regarding their work in the East, but from
+all other important points in the great field. The first of them were
+written during the saint's lifetime, but, though filled with every sort
+of detail regarding missionary life and work, they say nothing regarding
+any miracles by Xavier.
+
+The same is true of various other similar collections published during
+the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In not one of them does any
+mention of a miracle by Xavier appear in a letter from India or the East
+contemporary with him.
+
+This silence regarding his miracles was clearly not due to any "evil
+heart of unbelief." On the contrary, these good missionary fathers were
+prompt to record the slightest occurrence which they thought evidence of
+the Divine favour: it is indeed touching to see how eagerly they grasp
+at the most trivial things which could be thus construed.
+
+Their ample faith was fully shown. One of them, in Acosta's collection,
+sends a report that an illuminated cross had been recently seen in the
+heavens; another, that devils had been cast out of the natives by the
+use of holy water; another, that various cases of disease had been
+helped and even healed by baptism; and sundry others sent reports that
+the blind and dumb had been restored, and that even lepers had been
+cleansed by the proper use of the rites of the Church; but to Xavier no
+miracles are imputed by his associates during his life or during several
+years after his death.
+
+On the contrary, we find his own statements as to his personal
+limitations, and the difficulties arising from them, fully confirmed
+by his brother workers. It is interesting, for example, in view of the
+claim afterward made that the saint was divinely endowed for his mission
+with the "gift of tongues," to note in these letters confirmation of
+Xavier's own statement utterly disproving the existence of any such
+Divine gift, and detailing the difficulties which he encountered from
+his want of knowing various languages, and the hard labour which he
+underwent in learning the elements of the Japanese tongue.
+
+Until about ten years after Xavier's death, then, as Emanuel Acosta's
+publication shows, the letters of the missionaries continued without any
+indication of miracles performed by the saint. Though, as we shall see
+presently, abundant legends had already begun to grow elsewhere, not
+one word regarding these miracles came as yet from the country which,
+according to later accounts accepted and sanctioned by the Church, was
+at this very period filled with miracles; not the slightest indication
+of them from the men who were supposed to be in the very thick of these
+miraculous manifestations.
+
+But this negative evidence is by no means all. There is also positive
+evidence--direct testimony from the Jesuit order itself--that Xavier
+wrought no miracles.
+
+For not only did neither Xavier nor his co-workers know anything of the
+mighty works afterward attributed to him, but the highest contemporary
+authority on the whole subject, a man in the closest correspondence with
+those who knew most about the saint, a member of the Society of Jesus
+in the highest standing and one of its accepted historians, not only
+expressly tells us that Xavier wrought no miracles, but gives the
+reasons why he wrought none.
+
+This man was Joseph Acosta, a provincial of the Jesuit order, its
+visitor in Aragon, superior at Valladolid, and finally rector of the
+University of Salamanca. In 1571, nineteen years after Xavier's
+death, Acosta devoted himself to writing a work mainly concerning the
+conversion of the Indies, and in this he refers especially and with the
+greatest reverence to Xavier, holding him up as an ideal and his work as
+an example.
+
+But on the same page with this tribute to the great missionary Acosta
+goes on to discuss the reasons why progress in the world's conversion is
+not so rapid as in the early apostolic times, and says that an especial
+cause why apostolic preaching could no longer produce apostolic results
+"lies in the missionaries themselves, because there is now no power of
+working miracles." He then asks, "Why should our age be so completely
+destitute of them?" This question he answers at great length, and one of
+his main contentions is that in early apostolic times illiterate men had
+to convert the learned of the world, whereas in modern times the case
+is reversed, learned men being sent to convert the illiterate; and hence
+that "in the early times miracles were necessary, but in our time they
+are not."
+
+This statement and argument refer, as we have seen, directly to Xavier
+by name, and to the period covered by his activity and that of the other
+great missionaries of his time. That the Jesuit order and the Church at
+large thought this work of Acosta trustworthy is proved by the fact
+that it was published at Salamanca a few years after it was written,
+and republished afterward with ecclesiastical sanction in France.(291)
+Nothing shows better than the sequel how completely the evolution of
+miraculous accounts depends upon the intellectual atmosphere of any land
+and time, and how independent it is of fact.
+
+
+     (291)The work of Joseph Acosta is in the Cornell University Library,
+its title being as follows: De Natura Novi Orbis libri duo et De
+Promulgatione Evangelii apud Barbaros, sive De Procuranda Indorum
+Salute, libri sex, autore Jesepho Acosta, presbytero Societis Jesu. I.
+H. S. Salmanticas, apud Guillelmum Foquel, MDLXXXIX. For the passages
+cited directly contradicting the working of miracles by Xavier and his
+associates, see lib. ii, cap. ix, of which the title runs, Cur
+Miracula in Conversione gentium non fiant nunc, ut olim, a Christi
+praedicatoribus, especially pp. 242-245; also lib. ii, cap. viii, pp.
+237 et seq. For a passage which shows that Xavier was not then at all
+credited with "the miraculous gift of tongues," see lib. i, cap. vii,
+p. 173. Since writing the above, my attention has been called to the
+alleged miraculous preservation of Xavier's body claimed in sundry
+letters contemporary with its disinterment at San Chan and reinterment
+at Goa. There is no reason why this preservation in itself need be
+doubted, and no reason why it should be counted miraculous. Such
+exceptional preservation of bodies has been common enough in all ages,
+and, alas for the claims of the Church, quite as common of pagans or
+Protestants as of good Catholics. One of the most famous cases is
+that of the fair Roman maiden, Julia, daughter of Claudius, over whose
+exhumation at Rome, in 1485, such ado was made by the sceptical scholars
+of the Renaissance. Contemporary observers tell us enthusiastically that
+she was very beautiful, perfectly preserved, "the bloom of youth still
+upom her cheeks," and exhaling a "sweet odour"; but this enthusiasm was
+so little to the taste of Pope Innocent VIII that he had her reburied
+secretly by night. Only the other day, in June of the year 1895, there
+was unearthed at Stade, in Hanover, the "perfectly preserved" body of
+a soldier of the eighth century. So, too, I might mention the bodies
+preserved at the church of St. Thomas at Strasburg, beneath the
+Cathedral of Bremen, and elsewhere during hundreds of years past; also
+the cases of "adiposeration" in various American cemeteries, which never
+grow less wonderful by repetition from mouth to mouth and in the public
+prints. But, while such preservation is not incredible or even strange,
+there is much reason why precisely in the case of a saint like St.
+Francis Xavier the evidence for it should be received with especial
+caution. What the touching fidelity of disciples may lead them to
+believe and proclaim regarding an adored leader in a time when faith
+is thought more meritorious than careful statement, and miracle more
+probable than the natural course of things, is seen, for example,
+in similar pious accounts regarding the bodies of many other saints,
+especially that of St. Carlo Borromeo, so justly venerated by the Church
+for his beautiful and charitable life. And yet any one looking at the
+relics of various saints, especially those of St. Carlo, preserved with
+such tender care in the crypt of Milan Cathedral, will see that they
+have shared the common fate, being either mummified or reduced to
+skeletons; and this is true in all cases, as far as my observation has
+extended. What even a great theologian can be induced to believe
+and testify in a somewhat similar matter, is seen in St. Augustine's
+declaration that the flesh of the peacock, which in antiquity and in the
+early Church was considered a bird somewhat supernaturally endowed, is
+incorruptible. The saint declares that he tested it and found it so (see
+the De Civitate dei, xxi, c. 4, under the passage beginning Quis enim
+Deus). With this we may compare the testimony of the pious author of
+Sir John Mandeville's Travels, that iron floats upon the Dead Sea while
+feathers sink in it, and that he would not have believed this had he not
+seen it. So, too, testimony to the "sweet odour" diffused by the exhumed
+remains of the saint seem to indicate feeling rather than fact--those
+highly wrought feelings of disciples standing by--the same feeling which
+led those who visited St. Simon Stylites on his heap of ordure, and
+other hermits unwashed and living in filth, to dwell upon the delicious
+"odour of sanctity" pervading the air. In point, perhaps, is Louis
+Veuillot's idealization of the "parfum de Rome," in face of the fact, to
+which the present writer and thousands of others can testify, that
+under Papal rule Rome was materially one of the most filthy cities in
+Christendom. For the case of Julia, see the contemporary letter printed
+by Janitschek, Gesellschaft der Renaissance in Italien, p. 120, note
+167; also Infessura, Diarium Rom. Urbis, in Muratori, tom. iii, pt. 2,
+col. 1192, 1193, and elsewhere; also Symonds, Renaissance in Italy: Age
+of Despots, p. 22. For the case at Stade, see press dispatch from Berlin
+in newspapers of June 24, 25, 1895. The copy of Emanuel Acosta I have
+mainly used is that in the Royal Library at Munich, De Japonicus rebus
+epistolarum libri iii, item recogniti; et in Latinum ex Hispanico
+sermone conversi, Dilingae, MDLXXI. I have since obtained and used the
+work now in the library of Cornell University, being the letters and
+commentary published by Emanuel Acosta and attached to Maffei's book on
+the History of the Indies, published at Antwerp in 1685. For the first
+beginnings of miracles wrought by Xavier, as given in the letters of
+the missionaries, see that of Almeida, lib. ii, p. 183. Of other
+collections, or selections from collections, of letters which fail to
+give any indication of miracles wrought by Xavier during his life,
+see Wytfliet and Magin, Histoire Universelle des Indes Occidentales et
+Orientales, et de la Conversion des Indiens, Douay, 1611. Though several
+letters of Xavier and his fellow-missionaries are given, dated at the
+very period of his alleged miracles, not a trace of miracles appears in
+these. Also Epistolae Japonicae de multorum in variis Insulis Gentilium
+ad Christi fidem Conversione, Lovanii, 1570. These letters were written
+by Xavier and his companions from the East Indies and Japan, and cover
+the years from 1549 to 1564. Though these refer frequently to Xavier,
+there is no mention of a miracle wrought by him in any of them written
+during his lifetime.
+
+
+For, shortly after Xavier's heroic and beautiful death in 1552, stories
+of miracles wrought by him began to appear. At first they were few and
+feeble; and two years later Melchior Nunez, Provincial of the Jesuits
+in the Portuguese dominions, with all the means at his command, and a
+correspondence extending throughout Eastern Asia, had been able to hear
+of but three. These were entirely from hearsay. First, John Deyro said
+he knew that Xavier had the gift of prophecy; but, unfortunately,
+Xavier himself had reprimanded and cast off Deyro for untruthfulness and
+cheatery. Secondly, it was reported vaguely that at Cape Comorin many
+persons affirmed that Xavier had raised a man from the dead. Thirdly,
+Father Pablo de Santa Fe had heard that in Japan Xavier had restored
+sight to a blind man. This seems a feeble beginning, but little by
+little the stories grew, and in 1555 De Quadros, Provincial of the
+Jesuits in Ethiopia, had heard of nine miracles, and asserted that
+Xavier had healed the sick and cast out devils. The next year, being
+four years after Xavier's death, King John III of Portugal, a very
+devout man, directed his viceroy Barreto to draw up and transmit to him
+an authentic account of Xavier's miracles, urging him especially to do
+the work "with zeal and speedily." We can well imagine what treasures of
+grace an obsequious viceroy, only too anxious to please a devout king,
+could bring together by means of the hearsay of ignorant, compliant
+natives through all the little towns of Portuguese India.
+
+But the letters of the missionaries who had been co-workers or immediate
+successors of Xavier in his Eastern field were still silent as regards
+any miracles by him, and they remained silent for nearly ten years. In
+the collection of letters published by Emanuel Acosta and others no hint
+at any miracles by him is given, until at last, in 1562, fully ten years
+after Xavier's death, the first faint beginnings of these legends appear
+in them.
+
+At that time the Jesuit Almeida, writing at great length to the
+brethren, stated that he had found a pious woman who believed that a
+book left behind by Xavier had healed sick folk when it was laid upon
+them, and that he had met an old man who preserved a whip left by the
+saint which, when properly applied to the sick, had been found good both
+for their bodies and their souls. From these and other small beginnings
+grew, always luxuriant and sometimes beautiful, the vast mass of legends
+which we shall see hereafter.
+
+This growth was affectionately garnered by the more zealous and less
+critical brethren in Europe until it had become enormous; but it appears
+to have been thought of little value by those best able to judge.
+
+For when, in 1562, Julius Gabriel Eugubinus delivered a solemn oration
+on the condition and glory of the Church, before the papal legates and
+other fathers assembled at the Council of Trent, while he alluded to
+a multitude of things showing the Divine favour, there was not the
+remotest allusion to the vast multitude of miracles which, according to
+the legends, had been so profusely lavished on the faithful during many
+years, and which, if they had actually occurred, formed an argument of
+prodigious value in behalf of the special claims of the Church.
+
+The same complete absence of knowledge of any such favours vouchsafed
+to the Church, or at least of any belief in them, appears in that great
+Council of Trent among the fathers themselves. Certainly there, if
+anywhere, one might on the Roman theory expect Divine illumination in a
+matter of this kind. The presence of the Holy Spirit in the midst of it
+was especially claimed, and yet its members, with all their spiritual
+as well as material advantages for knowing what had been going on in the
+Church during the previous thirty years, and with Xavier's own friend
+and colleague, Laynez, present to inform them, show not the slightest
+sign of any suspicion of Xavier's miracles. We have the letters of
+Julius Gabriel to the foremost of these fathers assembled at Trent, from
+1557 onward for a considerable time, and we have also a multitude of
+letters written from the Council by bishops, cardinals, and even by the
+Pope himself, discussing all sorts of Church affairs, and in not one
+of these is there evidence of the remotest suspicion that any of these
+reports, which they must have heard, regarding Xavier's miracles, were
+worthy of mention.
+
+Here, too, comes additional supplementary testimony of much
+significance. With these orations and letters, Eugubinus gives a Latin
+translation of a letter, "on religious affairs in the Indies," written
+by a Jesuit father twenty years after Xavier's death. Though the letter
+came from a field very distant from that in which Xavier laboured, it
+was sure, among the general tokens of Divine favour to the Church and
+to the order, on which it dwelt, to have alluded to miracles wrought by
+Xavier had there been the slightest ground for believing in them; but no
+such allusion appears.(292)
+
+
+     (292) For the work referred to, see Julii Gabrielii Eugubini orationum
+et epistolarum, etc., libri duo (et) Epitola de rebus Indicis a quodam
+Societatis Jesu presbytero, etc., Venetiis, 1569. The Epistola begins at
+fol. 44.
+
+
+So, too, when in 1588, thirty-six years after Xavier's death, the Jesuit
+father Maffei, who had been especially conversant with Xavier's career
+in the East, published his History of India, though he gave a biography
+of Xavier which shows fervent admiration for his subject, he dwelt very
+lightly on the alleged miracles. But the evolution of miraculous legends
+still went on. Six years later, in 1594, Father Tursellinus published
+his Life of Xavier, and in this appears to have made the first large
+use of the information collected by the Portuguese viceroy and the
+more zealous brethren. This work shows a vast increase in the number
+of miracles over those given by all sources together up to that time.
+Xavier is represented as not only curing the sick, but casting out
+devils, stilling the tempest, raising the dead, and performing miracles
+of every sort.
+
+In 1622 came the canonization proceedings at Rome. Among the speeches
+made in the presence of Pope Gregory XV, supporting the claims of Xavier
+to saintship, the most important was by Cardinal Monte. In this the
+orator selects out ten great miracles from those performed by Xavier
+during his lifetime and describes them minutely. He insists that on a
+certain occasion Xavier, by the sign of the cross, made sea-water fresh,
+so that his fellow-passengers and the crew could drink it; that he
+healed the sick and raised the dead in various places; brought back a
+lost boat to his ship; was on one occasion lifted from the earth
+bodily and transfigured before the bystanders; and that, to punish a
+blaspheming town, he caused an earthquake and buried the offenders in
+cinders from a volcano: this was afterward still more highly developed,
+and the saint was represented in engravings as calling down fire from
+heaven and thus destroying the town.
+
+The most curious miracle of all is the eighth on the cardinal's list.
+Regarding this he states that, Xavier having during one of his voyages
+lost overboard a crucifix, it was restored to him after he had reached
+the shore by a crab.
+
+The cardinal also dwelt on miracles performed by Xavier's relics after
+his death, the most original being that sundry lamps placed before the
+image of the saint and filled with holy water burned as if filled with
+oil.
+
+This latter account appears to have deeply impressed the Pope, for in
+the Bull of Canonization issued by virtue of his power of teaching
+the universal Church infallibly in all matters pertaining to faith and
+morals, His Holiness dwells especially upon the miracle of the lamp
+filled with holy water and burning before Xavier's image.
+
+Xavier having been made a saint, many other Lives of him appeared, and,
+as a rule, each surpassed its predecessor in the multitude of miracles.
+In 1622 appeared that compiled and published under the sanction of
+Father Vitelleschi, and in it not only are new miracles increased, but
+some old ones are greatly improved. One example will suffice to show the
+process. In his edition of 1596, Tursellinus had told how, Xavier one
+day needing money, and having asked Vellio, one of his friends, to
+let him have some, Vellio gave him the key of a safe containing thirty
+thousand gold pieces. Xavier took three hundred and returned the key
+to Vellio; whereupon Vellio, finding only three hundred pieces gone,
+reproached Xavier for not taking more, saying that he had expected to
+give him half of all that the strong box contained. Xavier, touched by
+this generosity, told Vellio that the time of his death should be made
+known to him, that he might have opportunity to repent of his sins and
+prepare for eternity. But twenty-six years later the Life of Xavier
+published under the sanction of Vitelleschi, giving the story, says that
+Vellio on opening the safe found that ALL HIS MONEY remained as he had
+left it, and that NONE AT ALL had disappeared; in fact, that there had
+been a miraculous restitution. On his blaming Xavier for not taking the
+money, Xavier declares to Vellio that not only shall he be apprised of
+the moment of his death, but that the box shall always be full of money.
+Still later biographers improved the account further, declaring that
+Xavier promised Vellio that the strong box should always contain money
+sufficient for all his needs. In that warm and uncritical atmosphere
+this and other legends grew rapidly, obedient to much the same laws
+which govern the evolution of fairy tales.(293)
+
+
+     (293) The writer in the Catholic World, already mentioned, rather
+rashly asserts that there is no such Life of Xavier as that I have
+above quoted. The reverend Jesuit father has evidently glanced over the
+bibliographies of Carayon and De Backer, and, not finding it there
+under the name of Vitelleschi, has spared himself further trouble. It
+is sufficient to say that the book may be seen by him in the library of
+Cornell University. Its full title is as follows: Compendio della Vita
+del s. p. Francesco Xaviero dell Campagnia di Giesu, Canonizato con
+s. Ignatio Fondatore dell' istessa Religione dalla Santita di N. S.
+Gregorio XV. Composto, e dato in luce per ordine del Reverendiss. P
+Mutio Vitelleschi Preposito Generale della Comp. di Giesu. In Venetia,
+MDCXXII, Appresso Antonio Pinelli. Con Licenza de' Superiori. My critic
+hazards a guess that the book may be a later edition of Torsellino
+(Tursellinus), but here again he is wrong. It is entirely a different
+book, giving in its preface a list of sources comprising eleven
+authorities besides Torsellino.
+
+
+In 1682, one hundred and thirty years after Xavier's death, appeared his
+biography by Father Bouhours; and this became a classic. In it the old
+miracles of all kinds were enormously multiplied, and many new ones
+given. Miracles few and small in Tursellinus became many and great in
+Bouhours. In Tursellinus, Xavier during his life saves one person from
+drowning, in Bouhours he saves during his life three; in Tursellinus,
+Xavier during his life raises four persons from the dead, in Bouhours
+fourteen; in Tursellinus there is one miraculous supply of water, in
+Bouhours three; in Tursellinus there is no miraculous draught of fishes,
+in Bouhours there is one; in Tursellinus, Xavier is transfigured twice,
+in Bouhours five times: and so through a long series of miracles which,
+in the earlier lives appearing either not at all or in very moderate
+form, are greatly increased and enlarged by Tursellinus, and finally
+enormously amplified and multiplied by Father Bouhours.
+
+And here it must be borne in mind that Bouhours, writing ninety years
+after Tursellinus, could not have had access to any new sources. Xavier
+had been dead one hundred and thirty years, and of course all the
+natives upon whom he had wrought his miracles, and their children and
+grandchildren, were gone. It can not then be claimed that Bouhours had
+the advantage of any new witnesses, nor could he have had anything
+new in the way of contemporary writings; for, as we have seen, the
+missionaries of Xavier's time wrote nothing regarding his miracles, and
+certainly the ignorant natives of India and Japan did not commit any
+account of his miracles to writing. Nevertheless, the miracles of
+healing given in Bouhours were more numerous and brilliant than ever.
+But there was far more than this. Although during the lifetime of Xavier
+there is neither in his own writings nor in any contemporary account any
+assertion of a resurrection from the dead wrought by him, we find that
+shortly after his death stories of such resurrections began to appear.
+A simple statement of the growth of these may throw some light on the
+evolution of miraculous accounts generally. At first it was affirmed
+that some people at Cape Comorin said that he had raised one person;
+then it was said that there were two persons; then in various
+authors--Emanuel Acosta, in his commentaries written as an afterthought
+nearly twenty years after Xavier's death, De Quadros, and others--the
+story wavers between one and two cases; finally, in the time of
+Tursellinus, four cases had been developed. In 1622, at the canonization
+proceedings, three were mentioned; but by the time of Father Bouhours
+there were fourteen--all raised from the dead by Xavier himself during
+his lifetime--and the name, place, and circumstances are given with much
+detail in each case.(294)
+
+
+     (294) The writer in the Catholic World, already referred to, has based
+an attack here upon a misconception--I will not call it a deliberate
+misrepresentation--of his own by stating that these resurrections
+occurred after Xavier's death, and were due to his intercession or the
+use of his relics. The statement of the Jesuit father is utterly without
+foundation, as a simple reference to Bouhours will show. I take the
+liberty of commending to his attention The Life of St. Francis Xavier,
+by Father Dominic Bouhours, translated by James Dryden, Dublin, 1838.
+For examples of raising the dead by the saint DURING HIS LIFETIME, see
+pp. 69, 82, 93, 111, 218, 307, 316, 321--fourteen cases in all.
+
+
+It seems to have been felt as somewhat strange at first that Xavier
+had never alluded to any of these wonderful miracles; but ere long a
+subsidiary legend was developed, to the effect that one of the brethren
+asked him one day if he had raised the dead, whereat he blushed deeply
+and cried out against the idea, saying: "And so I am said to have raised
+the dead! What a misleading man I am! Some men brought a youth to me
+just as if he were dead, who, when I commanded him to arise in the name
+of Christ, straightway arose."
+
+Noteworthy is the evolution of other miracles. Tursellinus, writing in
+1594, tells us that on the voyage from Goa to Malacca, Xavier having
+left the ship and gone upon an island, was afterward found by the
+persons sent in search of him so deeply absorbed in prayer as to be
+unmindful of all things about him. But in the next century Father
+Bouhours develops the story as follows: "The servants found the man of
+God raised from the ground into the air, his eyes fixed upon heaven, and
+rays of light about his countenance."
+
+Instructive, also, is a comparison between the successive accounts of
+his noted miracle among the Badages at Travancore, in 1544 Xavier in
+his letters makes no reference to anything extraordinary; and Emanuel
+Acosta, in 1571, declares simply that "Xavier threw himself into the
+midst of the Christians, that reverencing him they might spare the
+rest." The inevitable evolution of the miraculous goes on; and twenty
+years later Tursellinus tells us that, at the onslaught of the Badages,
+"they could not endure the majesty of his countenance and the splendour
+and rays which issued from his eyes, and out of reverence for him they
+spared the others." The process of incubation still goes on during
+ninety years more, and then comes Father Bouhours's account. Having
+given Xavier's prayer on the battlefield, Bouhours goes on to say that
+the saint, crucifix in hand, rushed at the head of the people toward the
+plain where the enemy was marching, and "said to them in a threatening
+voice, 'I forbid you in the name of the living God to advance farther,
+and on His part command you to return in the way you came.' These few
+words cast a terror into the minds of those soldiers who were at the
+head of the army; they remained confounded and without motion. They who
+marched afterward, seeing that the foremost did not advance, asked the
+reason of it. The answer was returned from the front ranks that they had
+before their eyes an unknown person habited in black, of more than human
+stature, of terrible aspect, and darting fire from his eyes.... They were
+seized with amazement at the sight, and all of them fled in precipitate
+confusion."
+
+Curious, too, is the after-growth of the miracle of the crab restoring
+the crucifix. In its first form Xavier lost the crucifix in the sea,
+and the earlier biographers dwell on the sorrow which he showed in
+consequence; but the later historians declare that the saint threw the
+crucifix into the sea in order to still a tempest, and that, after his
+safe getting to land, a crab brought it to him on the shore. In this
+form we find it among illustrations of books of devotion in the next
+century.
+
+But perhaps the best illustration of this evolution of Xavier's miracles
+is to be found in the growth of another legend; and it is especially
+instructive because it grew luxuriantly despite the fact that it was
+utterly contradicted in all parts of Xavier's writings as well as in the
+letters of his associates and in the work of the Jesuit father, Joseph
+Acosta.
+
+Throughout his letters, from first to last, Xavier constantly dwells
+upon his difficulties with the various languages of the different tribes
+among whom he went. He tells us how he surmounted these difficulties:
+sometimes by learning just enough of a language to translate into it
+some of the main Church formulas; sometimes by getting the help of
+others to patch together some pious teachings to be learned by rote;
+sometimes by employing interpreters; and sometimes by a mixture of
+various dialects, and even by signs. On one occasion he tells us that a
+very serious difficulty arose, and that his voyage to China was delayed
+because, among other things, the interpreter he had engaged had failed
+to meet him.
+
+In various Lives which appeared between the time of his death and
+his canonization this difficulty is much dwelt upon; but during the
+canonization proceedings at Rome, in the speeches then made, and finally
+in the papal bull, great stress was laid upon the fact that Xavier
+possessed THE GIFT OF TONGUES. It was declared that he spoke to the
+various tribes with ease in their own languages. This legend of Xavier's
+miraculous gift of tongues was especially mentioned in the papal bull,
+and was solemnly given forth by the pontiff as an infallible statement
+to be believed by the universal Church. Gregory XV having been prevented
+by death from issuing the Bull of Canonization, it was finally issued by
+Urban VIII; and there is much food for reflection in the fact that the
+same Pope who punished Galileo, and was determined that the Inquisition
+should not allow the world to believe that the earth revolves about
+the sun, thus solemnly ordered the world, under pain of damnation, to
+believe in Xavier's miracles, including his "gift of tongues," and the
+return of the crucifix by the pious crab. But the legend was developed
+still further: Father Bouhours tells us, "The holy man spoke very well
+the language of those barbarians without having learned it, and had no
+need of an interpreter when he instructed." And, finally, in our
+own time, the Rev. Father Coleridge, speaking of the saint among the
+natives, says, "He could speak the language excellently, though he had
+never learned it."
+
+In the early biography, Tursellinus writes. "Nothing was a greater
+impediment to him than his ignorance of the Japanese tongues; for, ever
+and anon, when some uncouth expression offended their fastidious and
+delicate ears, the awkward speech of Francis was a cause of laughter."
+But Father Bouhours, a century later, writing of Xavier at the same
+period, says, "He preached in the afternoon to the Japanese in their
+language, but so naturally and with so much ease that he could not be
+taken for a foreigner."
+
+And finally, in 1872, Father Coleridge, of the Society of Jesus,
+speaking of Xavier at this time, says, "He spoke freely, flowingly,
+elegantly, as if he had lived in Japan all his life."
+
+Nor was even this sufficient: to make the legend complete, it was
+finally declared that, when Xavier addressed the natives of various
+tribes, each heard the sermon in his own language in which he was born.
+
+All this, as we have seen, directly contradicts not only the plain
+statements of Xavier himself, and various incidental testimonies in the
+letters of his associates, but the explicit declaration of Father Joseph
+Acosta. The latter historian dwells especially on the labour which
+Xavier was obliged to bestow on the study of the Japanese and other
+languages, and says, "Even if he had been endowed with the apostolic
+gift of tongues, he could not have spread more widely the glory of
+Christ."(295)
+
+
+     (295) For the evolution of the miracles of Xavier, see his Letters, with
+Life, published by Leon Pages, Paris, 1855; also Maffei, Historiarum
+Indicarum libri xvi, Venice, 1589; also the lives by Tursellinus,
+various editions, beginning with that of 1594; Vitelleschi, 1622;
+Bouhours, 1683; Massei, second edition, 1682 (Rome), and others;
+Bartoli, Baltimore, 1868; Coleridge, 1872. In addition to these, I have
+compared, for a more extended discussion of this subject hereafter,
+a very great number of editions of these and other biographies of
+the saint, with speeches at the canonization, the bull of Gregory XV,
+various books of devotion, and a multitude of special writings, some
+of them in manuscript, upon the glories of the saint, including a large
+mass of material at the Royal Library in Munich and in the British
+Museum. I have relied entirely upon Catholic authors, and have
+not thought it worth while to consult any Protestant author. The
+illustration of the miracle of the crucifix and the crab in its final
+form is given in La Devotion de Dix Vendredis a l'Honneur de St.
+Francois Xavier, Bruxelles, 1699, Fig. 24: the pious crab is represented
+as presenting the crucifix by which a journey of forty leagues he has
+brought from the depths of the ocean to Xavier, who walks upon the
+shore. The book is in the Cornell University Library. For the letter
+of King John to Barreto, see Leon Pages's Lettres de Francois Xavier,
+Paris, 1855, vol. ii, p. 465. For the miracle among the Badages, compare
+Tursellinus, lib. ii, c. x, p. 16, with Bouhours, Dryden's translation,
+pp. 146, 147. For the miracle of the gift of tongues, in its higher
+development, see Bouhours, p. 235, and Coleridge, vo. i, pp. 151, 154,
+and vol. ii, p. 551
+
+
+It is hardly necessary to attribute to the orators and biographers
+generally a conscious attempt to deceive. The simple fact is, that as
+a rule they thought, spoke, and wrote in obedience to the natural
+laws which govern the luxuriant growth of myth and legend in the warm
+atmosphere of love and devotion which constantly arises about great
+religious leaders in times when men have little or no knowledge of
+natural law, when there is little care for scientific evidence, and when
+he who believes most is thought most meritorious.(296)
+
+
+     (296) Instances can be given of the same evolution of miraculous legend
+in our own time. To say nothing of the sacred fountain at La Salette,
+which preserves its healing powers in spite of the fact that the miracle
+that gave rise to them has twice been pronounced fraudulent by the
+French courts, and to pass without notice a multitude of others, not
+only in Catholic but in Protestant countries, the present writer may
+allude to one which in the year 1893 came under his own observation.
+On arriving in St. Petersburg to begin an official residence there,
+his attention was arrested by various portraits of a priest of the
+Russo-Greek Church; they were displayed in shop windows and held an
+honoured place in many private dwellings. These portraits ranged from
+lifelike photographs, which showed a plain, shrewd, kindly face, to
+those which were idealized until they bore a strong resemblance to the
+conventional representations of Jesus of Nazareth. On making inquiries,
+the writer found that these portraits represented Father Ivan, of
+Cronstadt, a priest noted for his good works, and very widely believed
+to be endowed with the power of working miracles.
+
+One day, in one of the most brilliant reception rooms of the northern
+capital, the subject of Father Ivan's miracles having been introduced, a
+gentleman in very high social position and entirely trustworthy spoke as
+follows: "There is something very surprising about these miracles. I am
+slow to believe in them, but I know the following to be a fact: The
+late Metropolitan Archbishop of St. Petersburg loved quiet, and was
+very adverse to anything which could possibly cause scandal. Hearing
+of Father Ivan's miracles, he summoned him to his presence and solemnly
+commanded him to abstain from all of the things which had given rise to
+his reported miracles, and with this injunction, dismissed him. Hardly
+had the priest left the room when the archbishop was struck with
+blindness and remained in this condition until the priest returned and
+removed his blindness by intercessory prayers." When the present writer
+asked the person giving this account if he directly knew these facts,
+he replied that he was, of course, not present when the miracle was
+wrought, but that he had the facts immediately from persons who knew all
+the parties concerned and were cognizant directly of the circumstances
+of the case.
+
+Some time afterward, the present writer being at an afternoon reception
+at one of the greater embassies, the same subject was touched upon, when
+an eminent general spoke as follows: "I am not inclined to believe in
+miracles, in fact am rather sceptical, but the proofs of those wrought
+by Father Ivan are overwhelming." He then went on to say that the late
+Metropolitan Archbishop was a man who loved quiet and disliked scandal;
+and that on this account he had summoned Father Ivan to his palace and
+ordered him to put an end to the conduct which had caused the reports
+concerning his miraculous powers, and then, with a wave of the arm,
+had dismissed him. The priest left the room, and from that moment the
+archbishop's arm was paralyzed, and it remained so until the penitent
+prelate summoned the priest again, by whose prayers the arm was restored
+to its former usefulness. There was present at the time another person
+besides the writer who had heard the previous statement as to the
+blindness of the archbishop, and on their both questioning the general
+if he were sure that the archbishop's arm was paralyzed, as stated, he
+declared that he could not doubt it, as he had it directly from persons
+entirely trustworthy, who were cognizant of all the facts.
+
+Some time later, the present writer, having an interview with the most
+eminent lay authority in the Greek Church, a functionary whose duties
+had brought him into almost daily contact with the late archbishop,
+asked him which of these stories was correct. This gentleman answered
+immediately: "Neither; I saw the archbishop constantly, and no such
+event occurred; he was never paralyzed and never blind."
+
+The same gentleman went on to say that, in his belief, Father Ivan had
+shown remarkable powers in healing the sick, and the greatest charity in
+relieving the distressed. It was made clearly evident that Father Ivan
+is a saintlike man, devoted to the needy and distressed and exercising
+an enormous influence over them--an influence so great that crowds
+await him whenever he visits the capital. In the atmosphere of Russian
+devotion myths and legends grow luxuriantly about him, nor is belief in
+him confined to the peasant class. In the autumn of 1894 he was summoned
+to the bedside of the Emperor Alexander III. Unfortunately for the peace
+of Europe, his intercession at that time proved unavailing.
+
+
+These examples will serve to illustrate the process which in thousands
+of cases has gone on from the earliest days of the Church until a very
+recent period. Everywhere miraculous cures became the rule rather than
+the exception throughout Christendom.
+
+
+
+
+III. THE MEDIAEVAL MIRACLES OF HEALING CHECK MEDICAL SCIENCE.
+
+
+So it was that, throughout antiquity, during the early history of the
+Church, throughout the Middle Ages, and indeed down to a comparatively
+recent period, testimony to miraculous interpositions which would now
+be laughed at by a schoolboy was accepted by the leaders of thought. St.
+Augustine was certainly one of the strongest minds in the early Church,
+and yet we find him mentioning, with much seriousness, a story that
+sundry innkeepers of his time put a drug into cheese which metamorphosed
+travellers into domestic animals, and asserting that the peacock is so
+favoured by the Almighty that its flesh will not decay, and that he has
+tested it and knows this to be a fact. With such a disposition regarding
+the wildest stories, it is not surprising that the assertion of St.
+Gregory of Nazianzen, during the second century, as to the cures wrought
+by the martyrs Cosmo and Damian, was echoed from all parts of Europe
+until every hamlet had its miracle-working saint or relic.
+
+The literature of these miracles is simply endless. To take our own
+ancestors alone, no one can read the Ecclesiastical History of Bede, or
+Abbot Samson's Miracles of St. Edmund, or the accounts given by Eadmer
+and Osbern of the miracles of St. Dunstan, or the long lists of those
+wrought by Thomas a Becket, or by any other in the army of English
+saints, without seeing the perfect naturalness of this growth. This
+evolution of miracle in all parts of Europe came out of a vast preceding
+series of beliefs, extending not merely through the early Church but far
+back into paganism. Just as formerly patients were cured in the temples
+of Aesculapius, so they were cured in the Middle Ages, and so they are
+cured now at the shrines of saints. Just as the ancient miracles were
+solemnly attested by votive tablets, giving names, dates, and details,
+and these tablets hung before the images of the gods, so the medieval
+miracles were attested by similar tablets hung before the images of the
+saints; and so they are attested to-day by similar tablets hung before
+the images of Our Lady of La Salette or of Lourdes. Just as faith in
+such miracles persisted, in spite of the small percentage of cures at
+those ancient places of healing, so faith persists to-day, despite the
+fact that in at least ninety per cent of the cases at Lourdes prayers
+prove unavailing. As a rule, the miracles of the sacred books were
+taken as models, and each of those given by the sacred chroniclers was
+repeated during the early ages of the Church and through the medieval
+period with endless variations of circumstance, but still with curious
+fidelity to the original type.
+
+It should be especially kept in mind that, while the vast majority
+of these were doubtless due to the myth-making faculty and to that
+development of legends which always goes on in ages ignorant of the
+relation between physical causes and effects, some of the miracles of
+healing had undoubtedly some basis in fact. We in modern times have
+seen too many cures performed through influences exercised upon the
+imagination, such as those of the Jansenists at the Cemetery of St.
+Medard, of the Ultramontanes at La Salette and Lourdes, of the Russian
+Father Ivan at St. Petersburg, and of various Protestant sects at Old
+Orchard and elsewhere, as well as at sundry camp meetings, to doubt that
+some cures, more or less permanent, were wrought by sainted personages
+in the early Church and throughout the Middle Ages.(297)
+
+
+     (297) For the story of travellers converted into domestic animals, see
+St. Augustine, De Civ. Dei, liber xviii, chaps. xvii, xviii, in Migne,
+tom. xli, p.574. For Gregory of Nazianen and the similarity of these
+Christian cures in general character to those wrought in the temples
+of Aesculapius, see Sprengel, vol. ii, pp. 145, 146. For the miracles
+wrought at the shrine of St. Edmund, see Samsonis Abbatis Opus de
+Miraculis Sancti Aedmundi, in the Master of the Rolls' series, passim,
+but especially chaps. xiv and xix for miracles of healing wrought on
+those who drank out of the saint's cup. For the mighty works of St.
+Dunstan, see the Mirac. Sancti Dunstani, auctore Eadmero and auctore
+Osberno, in the Master of the Rolls' series. As to Becket, see the
+Materials for the History of Thomas Becket, in the same series, and
+especially the lists of miracles--the mere index of them in the first
+volume requires thirteen octavo pages. For St. Martin of Tours, see the
+Guizot collection of French Chronicles. For miracle and shrine cures
+chronicled by Bede, see his Ecclesiastical History, passim, but
+especially from page 110 to page 267. For similarity between the ancient
+custom of allowing invalids to sleep in the temples of Serapis and the
+mediaeval custom of having them sleep in the church of St. Anthony of
+Padua and other churches, see Meyer, Aberglaube des Mittelalters, Basel,
+1884, chap. iv. For the effect of "the vivid belief in supernatural
+action which attaches itself to the tombs of the saints," etc., as "a
+psychic agent of great value," see Littre, Medecine et Medecins, p. 131.
+For the Jansenist miracles at Paris, see La Verite des Miracles operes
+par l'Intercession de M. de Paris, par Montgeron, Utrecht, 1737, and
+especially the cases of Mary Anne Couronneau, Philippe Sargent,
+and Gautier de Pezenas. For some very thoughtful remarks as to the
+worthlessness of the testimony to miracles presented during the
+canonization proceedings at Rome, see Maury, Legendes Pieuses, pp. 4-7.
+
+
+There are undoubtedly serious lesions which yield to profound emotion
+and vigorous exertion born of persuasion, confidence, or excitement. The
+wonderful power of the mind over the body is known to every observant
+student. Mr. Herbert Spencer dwells upon the fact that intense feeling
+or passion may bring out great muscular force. Dr. Berdoe reminds us
+that "a gouty man who has long hobbled about on his crutch, finds his
+legs and power to run with them if pursued by a wild bull"; and that
+"the feeblest invalid, under the influence of delirium or other
+strong excitement, will astonish her nurse by the sudden accession of
+strength."(298)
+
+
+     (298) For the citation in the text, as well as for a brief but
+remarkably valuable discussion of the power of the mind over the body
+in disease, see Dr. Berdoe's Medical View of the Miracles at Lourdes, in
+The Nineteenth Century for October, 1895.
+
+
+But miraculous cures were not ascribed to persons merely. Another
+growth, developed by the early Church mainly from germs in our sacred
+books, took shape in miracles wrought by streams, by pools of water, and
+especially by relics. Here, too, the old types persisted, and just as
+we find holy and healing wells, pools, and streams in all other ancient
+religions, so we find in the evolution of our own such examples as
+Naaman the Syrian cured of leprosy by bathing in the river Jordan, the
+blind man restored to sight by washing in the pool of Siloam, and the
+healing of those who touched the bones of Elisha, the shadow of St.
+Peter, or the handkerchief of St. Paul.
+
+St. Cyril, St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, and other great fathers of the
+early Church, sanctioned the belief that similar efficacy was to be
+found in the relics of the saints of their time; hence, St. Ambrose
+declared that "the precepts of medicine are contrary to celestial
+science, watching, and prayer," and we find this statement reiterated
+from time to time throughout the Middle Ages. From this idea was evolved
+that fetichism which we shall see for ages standing in the way of
+medical science.
+
+Theology, developed in accordance with this idea, threw about all cures,
+even those which resulted from scientific effort, an atmosphere of
+supernaturalism. The vividness with which the accounts of miracles in
+the sacred books were realized in the early Church continued the idea of
+miraculous intervention throughout the Middle Ages. The testimony of
+the great fathers of the Church to the continuance of miracles is
+overwhelming; but everything shows that they so fully expected miracles
+on the slightest occasion as to require nothing which in these days
+would be regarded as adequate evidence.
+
+In this atmosphere of theologic thought medical science was at once
+checked. The School of Alexandria, under the influence first of Jews and
+later of Christians, both permeated with Oriental ideas, and taking into
+their theory of medicine demons and miracles, soon enveloped everything
+in mysticism. In the Byzantine Empire of the East the same cause
+produced the same effect; the evolution of ascertained truth in
+medicine, begun by Hippocrates and continued by Herophilus, seemed lost
+forever. Medical science, trying to advance, was like a ship becalmed
+in the Sargasso Sea: both the atmosphere about it and the medium through
+which it must move resisted all progress. Instead of reliance upon
+observation, experience, experiment, and thought, attention was turned
+toward supernatural agencies.(299)
+
+
+     (299) For the mysticism which gradually enveloped the School of
+Alexandria, see Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire, De l'Ecole d'Alexandrie,
+Paris, 1845, vol. vi, p. 161. For the effect of the new doctrines on the
+Empire of the East, see Sprengel, vol. ii, p. 240. As to the more common
+miracles of healing and the acknowledgment of non-Christian miracles of
+healing by Christian fathers, see Fort, p. 84.
+
+
+
+
+
+IV. THE ATTRIBUTION OF DISEASE TO SATANIC INFLUENCE.
+
+--"PASTORAL MEDICINE" CHECKS SCIENTIFIC EFFORT.
+
+
+Especially prejudicial to a true development of medical science among
+the first Christians was their attribution of disease to diabolic
+influence. As we have seen, this idea had come from far, and, having
+prevailed in Chaldea, Egypt, and Persia, had naturally entered into the
+sacred books of the Hebrews. Moreover, St. Paul had distinctly declared
+that the gods of the heathen were devils; and everywhere the early
+Christians saw in disease the malignant work of these dethroned powers
+of evil. The Gnostic and Manichaean struggles had ripened the theologic
+idea that, although at times diseases are punishments by the Almighty,
+the main agency in them is Satanic. The great fathers and renowned
+leaders of the early Church accepted and strengthened this idea. Origen
+said: "It is demons which produce famine, unfruitfulness, corruptions
+of the air, pestilences; they hover concealed in clouds in the lower
+atmosphere, and are attracted by the blood and incense which the heathen
+offer to them as gods." St. Augustine said: "All diseases of
+Christians are to be ascribed to these demons; chiefly do they torment
+fresh-baptized Christians, yea, even the guiltless, newborn infants."
+Tertullian insisted that a malevolent angel is in constant attendance
+upon every person. Gregory of Nazianzus declared that bodily pains are
+provoked by demons, and that medicines are useless, but that they are
+often cured by the laying on of consecrated hands. St. Nilus and
+St. Gregory of Tours, echoing St. Ambrose, gave examples to show
+the sinfulness of resorting to medicine instead of trusting to the
+intercession of saints. St. Bernard, in a letter to certain monks,
+warned them that to seek relief from disease in medicine was in harmony
+neither with their religion nor with the honour and purity of their
+order. This view even found its way into the canon law, which declared
+the precepts of medicine contrary to Divine knowledge. As a rule, the
+leaders of the Church discouraged the theory that diseases are due to
+natural causes, and most of them deprecated a resort to surgeons and
+physicians rather than to supernatural means.(300)
+
+
+     (300) For Chaldean, Egyptian, and Persian ideas as to the diabolic
+origin of disease, see authorities already cited, especially Maspero
+and Sayce. For Origen, see the Contra Celsum, lib. viii, chap. xxxi. For
+Augustine, see De Divinatione Daemonum, chap. iii (p.585 of Migne, vol.
+xl). For Turtullian and Gregory of Nazianzus, see citations in Sprengel
+and in Fort, p. 6. For St. Nilus, see his life, in the Bollandise Acta
+Sanctorum. For Gregory of Tours, see his Historia Francorum, lib. v,
+cap. 6, and his De Mirac. S. Martini, lib. ii, cap. 60. I owe these
+citations to Mr. Lea (History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages,
+vol. iii, p. 410, note). For the letter of St. Bernard to the monks of
+St. Anastasius, see his Epistola in Migne, tom. 182, pp. 550, 551. For
+the canon law, see under De Consecratione, dist. v, c. xxi, "Contraria
+sunt divinae cognitioni praecepta medicinae: a jejunio revocant,
+lucubrare non sinunt, ab omni intentione meditiationis abducunt." For
+the turning of the Greek mythology into a demonology as largely due
+to St. Paul, see I Corinthians x, 20: "The things which the Gentiles
+sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God."
+
+
+Out of these and similar considerations was developed the vast system of
+"pastoral medicine," so powerful not only through the Middle Ages, but
+even in modern times, both among Catholics and Protestants. As to its
+results, we must bear in mind that, while there is no need to attribute
+the mass of stories regarding miraculous cures to conscious fraud,
+there was without doubt, at a later period, no small admixture of belief
+biased by self-interest, with much pious invention and suppression of
+facts. Enormous revenues flowed into various monasteries and churches
+in all parts of Europe from relics noted for their healing powers. Every
+cathedral, every great abbey, and nearly every parish church claimed
+possession of healing relics. While, undoubtedly, a childlike faith
+was at the bottom of this belief, there came out of it unquestionably
+a great development of the mercantile spirit. The commercial value
+of sundry relics was often very high. In the year 1056 a French
+ruler pledged securities to the amount of ten thousand solidi for the
+production of the relics of St. Just and St. Pastor, pending a legal
+decision regarding the ownership between him and the Archbishop
+of Narbonne. The Emperor of Germany on one occasion demanded, as a
+sufficient pledge for the establishment of a city market, the arm of St.
+George. The body of St. Sebastian brought enormous wealth to the Abbey
+of Soissons; Rome, Canterbury, Treves, Marburg, every great city, drew
+large revenues from similar sources, and the Venetian Republic ventured
+very considerable sums in the purchase of relics.
+
+Naturally, then, corporations, whether lay or ecclesiastical, which drew
+large revenue from relics looked with little favour on a science which
+tended to discredit their investments.
+
+Nowhere, perhaps, in Europe can the philosophy of this development of
+fetichism be better studied to-day than at Cologne. At the cathedral,
+preserved in a magnificent shrine since about the twelfth century, are
+the skulls of the Three Kings, or Wise Men of the East, who, guided by
+the star of Bethlehem, brought gifts to the Saviour. These relics
+were an enormous source of wealth to the cathedral chapter during many
+centuries. But other ecclesiastical bodies in that city were both
+pious and shrewd, and so we find that not far off, at the church of St.
+Gereon, a cemetery has been dug up, and the bones distributed over the
+walls as the relics of St. Gereon and his Theban band of martyrs! Again,
+at the neighbouring church of St. Ursula, we have the later spoils of
+another cemetery, covering the interior walls of the church as the bones
+of St. Ursula and her eleven thousand virgin martyrs: the fact that many
+of them, as anatomists now declare, are the bones of MEN does not appear
+in the Middle Ages to have diminished their power of competing with the
+relics at the other shrines in healing efficiency.
+
+No error in the choice of these healing means seems to have diminished
+their efficacy. When Prof. Buckland, the eminent osteologist and
+geologist, discovered that the relics of St. Rosalia at Palermo, which
+had for ages cured diseases and warded off epidemics, were the bones
+of a goat, this fact caused not the slightest diminution in their
+miraculous power.
+
+Other developments of fetich cure were no less discouraging to the
+evolution of medical science. Very important among these was the Agnus
+Dei, or piece of wax from the Paschal candles, stamped with the figure
+of a lamb and consecrated by the Pope. In 1471 Pope Paul II expatiated
+to the Church on the efficacy of this fetich in preserving men from
+fire, shipwreck, tempest, lightning, and hail, as well as in assisting
+women in childbirth; and he reserved to himself and his successors
+the manufacture of it. Even as late as 1517 Pope Leo X issued, for a
+consideration, tickets bearing a cross and the following inscription:
+"This cross measured forty times makes the height of Christ in
+his humanity. He who kisses it is preserved for seven days from
+falling-sickness, apoplexy, and sudden death."
+
+Naturally, the belief thus sanctioned by successive heads of the Church,
+infallible in all teaching regarding faith and morals, created a demand
+for amulets and charms of all kinds; and under this influence we find
+a reversion to old pagan fetiches. Nothing, on the whole, stood more
+constantly in the way of any proper development of medical science than
+these fetich cures, whose efficacy was based on theological reasoning
+and sanctioned by ecclesiastical policy. It would be expecting too much
+from human nature to imagine that pontiffs who derived large revenues
+from the sale of the Agnus Dei, or priests who derived both wealth
+and honours from cures wrought at shrines under their care, or lay
+dignitaries who had invested heavily in relics, should favour the
+development of any science which undermined their interests.(301)
+
+
+     (301) See Fort's Medical Economy during the Middle Ages, pp. 211-213;
+also the Handbooks of Murray and Baedeker for North Germany, and various
+histories of medicine passim; also Collin de Plancy and scores of
+others. For the discovery that the relics of St. Rosaria at Palermo are
+simply the bones of a goat, see Gordon, Life of Buckland, pp. 94-96.
+For an account of the Agnes Dei, see Rydberg, pp. 62, 63; and for
+"Conception Billets," pp. 64 and 65. For Leo X's tickets, see Hausser
+(professor at Heidelberg), Period of Reformation, English translation,
+p. 17.
+
+
+
+
+
+V. THEOLOGICAL OPPOSITION TO ANATOMICAL STUDIES.
+
+
+Yet a more serious stumbling-block, hindering the beginnings of modern
+medicine and surgery, was a theory regarding the unlawfulness of
+meddling with the bodies of the dead. This theory, like so many others
+which the Church cherished as peculiarly its own, had really been
+inherited from the old pagan civilizations. So strong was it in Egypt
+that the embalmer was regarded as accursed; traces of it appear in
+Greco-Roman life, and hence it came into the early Church, where it was
+greatly strengthened by the addition of perhaps the most noble of mystic
+ideas--the recognition of the human body as the temple of the Holy
+Spirit. Hence Tertullian denounced the anatomist Herophilus as a
+butcher, and St. Augustine spoke of anatomists generally in similar
+terms.
+
+But this nobler conception was alloyed with a medieval superstition even
+more effective, when the formula known as the Apostles' Creed had, in
+its teachings regarding the resurrection of the body, supplanted the
+doctrine laid down by St. Paul. Thence came a dread of mutilating
+the body in such a way that some injury might result to its final
+resurrection at the Last Day, and additional reasons for hindering
+dissections in the study of anatomy.
+
+To these arguments against dissection was now added another--one which
+may well fill us with amazement. It is the remark of the foremost of
+recent English philosophical historians, that of all organizations in
+human history the Church of Rome has caused the greatest spilling of
+innocent blood. No one conversant with history, even though he admit all
+possible extenuating circumstances, and honour the older Church for the
+great services which can undoubtedly be claimed for her, can deny this
+statement. Strange is it, then, to note that one of the main objections
+developed in the Middle Ages against anatomical studies was the maxim
+that "the Church abhors the shedding of blood."
+
+On this ground, in 1248, the Council of Le Mans forbade surgery
+to monks. Many other councils did the same, and at the end of the
+thirteenth century came the most serious blow of all; for then it was
+that Pope Boniface VIII, without any of that foresight of consequences
+which might well have been expected in an infallible teacher, issued
+a decretal forbidding a practice which had come into use during the
+Crusades, namely, the separation of the flesh from the bones of the dead
+whose remains it was desired to carry back to their own country.
+
+The idea lying at the bottom of this interdiction was in all probability
+that which had inspired Tertullian to make his bitter utterance against
+Herophilus; but, be that as it may, it soon came to be considered as
+extending to all dissection, and thereby surgery and medicine were
+crippled for more than two centuries; it was the worst blow they ever
+received, for it impressed upon the mind of the Church the belief
+that all dissection is sacrilege, and led to ecclesiastical mandates
+withdrawing from the healing art the most thoughtful and cultivated men
+of the Middle Ages and giving up surgery to the lowest class of nomadic
+charlatans.
+
+So deeply was this idea rooted in the mind of the universal Church that
+for over a thousand years surgery was considered dishonourable: the
+greatest monarchs were often unable to secure an ordinary surgical
+operation; and it was only in 1406 that a better beginning was made,
+when the Emperor Wenzel of Germany ordered that dishonour should no
+longer attach to the surgical profession.(302)
+
+
+     (302) As to religious scruples against dissection, and abhorrence of
+the Paraschites, or embalmer, see Maspero and Sayce, The Dawn of
+Civilization, p. 216. For denunciation of surgery by the Church
+authorities, see Sprengel, vol. ii, pp. 432-435; also Fort, pp. 452 et
+seq.; and for the reasoning which led the Church to forbid surgery to
+priests, see especially Fredault, Histoire de la Medecine, p. 200. As
+to the decretal of Boniface VIII, the usual statement is that he forbade
+all dissections. While it was undoubtedly construed universally to
+prohibit dissections for anatomical purposes, its declared intent was as
+stated in the text; that it was constantly construed against anatomical
+investigations can not for a moment be denied. This construction is
+taken for granted in the great Histoire Litteraire de la France, founded
+by the Benedictines, certainly a very high authority as to the main
+current of opinion in the Church. For the decretal of Boniface VIII, see
+the Corpus Juris Canonici. I have also used the edition of Paris, 1618,
+where it may be found on pp. 866, 867. See also, in spite of the special
+pleading of Giraldi, the Benedictine Hist. Lit. de la France, tome xvi,
+p. 98.
+
+
+
+
+
+VI. NEW BEGINNINGS OF MEDICAL SCIENCE.
+
+
+In spite of all these opposing forces, the evolution of medical science
+continued, though but slowly. In the second century of the Christian
+era Galen had made himself a great authority at Rome, and from Rome had
+swayed the medical science of the world: his genius triumphed over
+the defects of his method; but, though he gave a powerful impulse to
+medicine, his dogmatism stood in its way long afterward.
+
+The places where medicine, such as it thus became, could be applied,
+were at first mainly the infirmaries of various monasteries, especially
+the larger ones of the Benedictine order: these were frequently
+developed into hospitals. Many monks devoted themselves to such medical
+studies as were permitted, and sundry churchmen and laymen did much to
+secure and preserve copies of ancient medical treatises. So, too, in the
+cathedral schools established by Charlemagne and others, provision was
+generally made for medical teaching; but all this instruction, whether
+in convents or schools, was wretchedly poor. It consisted not
+in developing by individual thought and experiment the gifts of
+Hippocrates, Aristotle, and Galen, but almost entirely in the
+parrot-like repetition of their writings.
+
+But, while the inherited ideas of Church leaders were thus unfavourable
+to any proper development of medical science, there were two bodies of
+men outside the Church who, though largely fettered by superstition,
+were far less so than the monks and students of ecclesiastical schools:
+these were the Jews and Mohammedans. The first of these especially had
+inherited many useful sanitary and hygienic ideas, which had probably
+been first evolved by the Egyptians, and from them transmitted to the
+modern world mainly through the sacred books attributed to Moses.
+
+The Jewish scholars became especially devoted to medical science. To
+them is largely due the building up of the School of Salerno, which we
+find flourishing in the tenth century. Judged by our present standards
+its work was poor indeed, but compared with other medical instruction
+of the time it was vastly superior: it developed hygienic principles
+especially, and brought medicine upon a higher plane.
+
+Still more important is the rise of the School of Montpellier; this
+was due almost entirely to Jewish physicians, and it developed medical
+studies to a yet higher point, doing much to create a medical profession
+worthy of the name throughout southern Europe.
+
+As to the Arabians, we find them from the tenth to the fourteenth
+century, especially in Spain, giving much thought to medicine, and to
+chemistry as subsidiary to it. About the beginning of the ninth century,
+when the greater Christian writers were supporting fetich by theology,
+Almamon, the Moslem, declared, "They are the elect of God, his best
+and most useful servants, whose lives are devoted to the improvement of
+their rational faculties." The influence of Avicenna, the translator
+of the works of Aristotle, extended throughout all Europe during the
+eleventh century. The Arabians were indeed much fettered by tradition
+in medical science, but their translations of Hippocrates and Galen
+preserved to the world the best thus far developed in medicine, and
+still better were their contributions to pharmacy: these remain of value
+to the present hour.(303)
+
+
+     (303) For the great services rendered to the development of medicine by
+the Jews, see Monteil, Medecine en France, p. 58; also the historians of
+medicine generally. For the quotation from Almamon, see Gibbon, vol.
+x, p. 42. For the services of both Jews and Arabians, see Bedarride,
+Histoire des Juifs, p. 115; also Sismondi, Histoire des Francais, tome
+i, p. 191. For the Arabians, especially, see Rosseeuw Saint-Hilaire,
+Histoire d'Espagne, Paris, 1844, vol. iii, pp. 191 et seq. For
+the tendency of the Mosaic books to insist on hygienic rather than
+therapeutical treatment, and its consequences among Jewish physicians,
+see Sprengel, but especially Fredault, p.14.
+
+
+Various Christian laymen also rose above the prevailing theologic
+atmosphere far enough to see the importance of promoting scientific
+development. First among these we may name the Emperor Charlemagne; he
+and his great minister, Alcuin, not only promoted medical studies in the
+schools they founded, but also made provision for the establishment of
+botanic gardens in which those herbs were especially cultivated which
+were supposed to have healing virtues. So, too, in the thirteenth
+century, the Emperor Frederick II, though under the ban of the Pope,
+brought together in his various journeys, and especially in his
+crusading expeditions, many Greek and Arabic manuscripts, and took
+special pains to have those which concerned medicine preserved and
+studied; he also promoted better ideas of medicine and embodied them in
+laws.
+
+Men of science also rose, in the stricter sense of the word, even in
+the centuries under the most complete sway of theological thought and
+ecclesiastical power; a science, indeed, alloyed with theology, but
+still infolding precious germs. Of these were men like Arnold of
+Villanova, Bertrand de Gordon, Albert of Bollstadt, Basil Valentine,
+Raymond Lully, and, above all, Roger Bacon; all of whom cultivated
+sciences subsidiary to medicine, and in spite of charges of sorcery,
+with possibilities of imprisonment and death, kept the torch of
+knowledge burning, and passed it on to future generations.(304)
+
+
+     (304) For the progress of sciences subsidiary to medicine even in the
+darkest ages, see Fort, pp. 374, 375; also Isensee, Geschichte der
+Medicin, pp. 225 et seq.; also Monteil, p. 89; Heller, Geschichte der
+Physik, vol. i, bk. 3; also Kopp, Geschichte der Chemie. For Frederick
+II and his Medicinal-Gesetz, see Baas, p. 221, but especially Von
+Raumer, Geschichte der Hohenstaufen, Leipsic, 1872, vol. iii, p. 259.
+
+
+From the Church itself, even when the theological atmosphere was
+most dense, rose here and there men who persisted in something like
+scientific effort. As early as the ninth century, Bertharius, a monk of
+Monte Cassino, prepared two manuscript volumes of prescriptions selected
+from ancient writers; other monks studied them somewhat, and, during
+succeeding ages, scholars like Hugo, Abbot of St. Denis,--Notker, monk
+of St. Gall,--Hildegard, Abbess of Rupertsberg,--Milo, Archbishop of
+Beneventum,--and John of St. Amand, Canon of Tournay, did something for
+medicine as they understood it. Unfortunately, they generally understood
+its theory as a mixture of deductions from Scripture with dogmas from
+Galen, and its practice as a mixture of incantations with fetiches.
+Even Pope Honorius III did something for the establishment of medical
+schools; but he did so much more to place ecclesiastical and theological
+fetters upon teachers and taught, that the value of his gifts may well
+be doubted. All germs of a higher evolution of medicine were for ages
+well kept under by the theological spirit. As far back as the sixth
+century so great a man as Pope Gregory I showed himself hostile to the
+development of this science. In the beginning of the twelfth century the
+Council of Rheims interdicted the study of law and physic to monks, and
+a multitude of other councils enforced this decree. About the middle of
+the same century St. Bernard still complained that monks had too much to
+do with medicine; and a few years later we have decretals like those of
+Pope Alexander III forbidding monks to study or practise it. For
+many generations there appear evidences of a desire among the more
+broad-minded churchmen to allow the cultivation of medical science among
+ecclesiastics: Popes like Clement III and Sylvester II seem to have
+favoured this, and we even hear of an Archbishop of Canterbury skilled
+in medicine; but in the beginning of the thirteenth century the Fourth
+Council of the Lateran forbade surgical operations to be practised by
+priests, deacons, and subdeacons; and some years later Honorius III
+reiterated this decree and extended it. In 1243 the Dominican order
+forbade medical treatises to be brought into their monasteries, and
+finally all participation of ecclesiastics in the science and art of
+medicine was effectually prevented.(305)
+
+
+     (305) For statements as to these decrees of the highest Church and
+monastic authorities against medicine and surgery, see Sprengel, Baas,
+Geschichte der Medicin, p. 204, and elsewhere; also Buckle, Posthumous
+Works, vol. ii, p. 567. For a long list of Church dignitaries who
+practised a semi-theological medicine in the Middle Ages, see Baas,
+pp. 204, 205. For Bertharius, Hildegard, and others mentioned, see also
+Sprengel and other historians of medicine. For clandestine study and
+practice of medicine by sundry ecclesiastics in spite of the prohibition
+by the Church, see Von Raumer, Hohenstaufen, vol. vi, p. 438. For some
+remarks on this subject by an eminent and learned ecclesiastic,
+see Ricker, O. S. B., professor in the University of Vienna,
+Pastoral-Psychiatrie, 1894, pp. 12,13.
+
+
+
+
+
+VII. THEOLOGICAL DISCOURAGEMENT OF MEDICINE.
+
+
+While various churchmen, building better than they knew, thus did
+something to lay foundations for medical study, the Church authorities,
+as a rule, did even more to thwart it among the very men who, had they
+been allowed liberty, would have cultivated it to the highest advantage.
+
+Then, too, we find cropping out every where the feeling that, since
+supernatural means are so abundant, there is something irreligious
+in seeking cure by natural means: ever and anon we have appeals to
+Scripture, and especially to the case of King Asa, who trusted to
+physicians rather than to the priests of Jahveh, and so died. Hence it
+was that St. Bernard declared that monks who took medicine were guilty
+of conduct unbecoming to religion. Even the School of Salerno was held
+in aversion by multitudes of strict churchmen, since it prescribed rules
+for diet, thereby indicating a belief that diseases arise from natural
+causes and not from the malice of the devil: moreover, in the medical
+schools Hippocrates was studied, and he had especially declared that
+demoniacal possession is "nowise more divine, nowise more infernal, than
+any other disease." Hence it was, doubtless, that the Lateran Council,
+about the beginning of the thirteenth century, forbade physicians,
+under pain of exclusion from the Church, to undertake medical treatment
+without calling in ecclesiastical advice.
+
+This view was long cherished in the Church, and nearly two hundred and
+fifty years later Pope Pius V revived it by renewing the command of Pope
+Innocent and enforcing it with penalties. Not only did Pope Pius order
+that all physicians before administering treatment should call in "a
+physician of the soul," on the ground, as he declares, that "bodily
+infirmity frequently arises from sin," but he ordered that, if at the
+end of three days the patient had not made confession to a priest, the
+medical man should cease his treatment, under pain of being deprived of
+his right to practise, and of expulsion from the faculty if he were a
+professor, and that every physician and professor of medicine should
+make oath that he was strictly fulfilling these conditions.
+
+Out of this feeling had grown up another practice, which made the
+development of medicine still more difficult--the classing of scientific
+men generally with sorcerers and magic-mongers: from this largely rose
+the charge of atheism against physicians, which ripened into a proverb,
+"Where there are three physicians there are two atheists."(306)
+
+
+     (306) "Ubi sunt tres medici ibi sunt duo athei." For the bull of Pius V,
+see the Bullarium Romanum, ed. Gaude, Naples, 1882, tom. vii, pp. 430,
+431.
+
+
+Magic was so common a charge that many physicians seemed to believe
+it themselves. In the tenth century Gerbert, afterward known as
+Pope Sylvester II, was at once suspected of sorcery when he showed a
+disposition to adopt scientific methods; in the eleventh century this
+charge nearly cost the life of Constantine Africanus when he broke from
+the beaten path of medicine; in the thirteenth, it gave Roger Bacon, one
+of the greatest benefactors of mankind, many years of imprisonment, and
+nearly brought him to the stake: these cases are typical of very many.
+
+Still another charge against physicians who showed a talent for
+investigation was that of Mohammedanism and Averroism; and Petrarch
+stigmatized Averroists as "men who deny Genesis and bark at
+Christ."(307)
+
+
+     (307) For Averroes, see Renan, Averroes et l'Averroisme, Paris, 1861,
+pp. 327-335. For a perfectly just statement of the only circumstances
+which can justify a charge of atheism, see Rev. Dr. Deems, in Popular
+Science Monthly, February, 1876.
+
+
+The effect of this widespread ecclesiastical opposition was, that for
+many centuries the study of medicine was relegated mainly to the lowest
+order of practitioners. There was, indeed, one orthodox line of medical
+evolution during the later Middle Ages: St. Thomas Aquinas insisted that
+the forces of the body are independent of its physical organization,
+and that therefore these forces are to be studied by the scholastic
+philosophy and the theological method, instead of by researches into the
+structure of the body; as a result of this, mingled with survivals of
+various pagan superstitions, we have in anatomy and physiology such
+doctrines as the increase and decrease of the brain with the phases
+of the moon, the ebb and flow of human vitality with the tides of the
+ocean, the use of the lungs to fan the heart, the function of the liver
+as the seat of love, and that of the spleen as the centre of wit.
+
+Closely connected with these methods of thought was the doctrine of
+signatures. It was reasoned that the Almighty must have set his sign
+upon the various means of curing disease which he has provided: hence
+it was held that bloodroot, on account of its red juice, is good for the
+blood; liverwort, having a leaf like the liver, cures diseases of the
+liver; eyebright, being marked with a spot like an eye, cures diseases
+of the eyes; celandine, having a yellow juice, cures jaundice; bugloss,
+resembling a snake's head, cures snakebite; red flannel, looking like
+blood, cures blood-taints, and therefore rheumatism; bear's grease,
+being taken from an animal thickly covered with hair, is recommended to
+persons fearing baldness.(308)
+
+
+     (308) For a summary of the superstitions which arose under the
+theological doctrine of signatures, see Dr. Eccles's admirable little
+tract on the Evolution of Medical Science, p. 140; see also Scoffern,
+Science and Folk Lore, p. 76.
+
+
+Still another method evolved by this theological pseudoscience was that
+of disgusting the demon with the body which he tormented--hence the
+patient was made to swallow or apply to himself various unspeakable
+ordures, with such medicines as the livers of toads, the blood of frogs
+and rats, fibres of the hangman's rope, and ointment made from the
+body of gibbeted criminals. Many of these were survivals of heathen
+superstitions, but theologic reasoning wrought into them an orthodox
+significance. As an example of this mixture of heathen with Christian
+magic, we may cite the following from a medieval medical book as a
+salve against "nocturnal goblin visitors": "Take hop plant, wormwood,
+bishopwort, lupine, ash-throat, henbane, harewort, viper's bugloss,
+heathberry plant, cropleek, garlic, grains of hedgerife, githrife, and
+fennel. Put these worts into a vessel, set them under the altar, sing
+over them nine masses, boil them in butter and sheep's grease, add much
+holy salt, strain through a cloth, throw the worts into running water.
+If any ill tempting occur to a man, or an elf or goblin night visitors
+come, smear his body with this salve, and put it on his eyes, and cense
+him with incense, and sign him frequently with the sign of the cross.
+His condition will soon be better."(309)
+
+
+     (309) For a list of unmentionable ordures used in Germany near the end
+of the seventeenth century, see Lammert, Volksmedizin und medizinischer
+Aberglaube in Bayern, Wurzburg, 1869, p. 34, note. For the English
+prescription given, see Cockayne, Leechdoms, Wort-cunning, and
+Star-craft of Early England, in the Master of the Rolls' series,
+London, 1865, vol. ii, pp. 345 and following. Still another of these
+prescriptions given by Cockayne covers three or four octavo pages. For
+very full details of this sort of sacred pseudo-science in Germany, with
+accounts of survivals of it at the present time, see Wuttke, Prof. der
+Theologie in Halle, Der Deutsche Volksaberglaube der Gegenwart, Berlin,
+1869, passim. For France, see Rambaud, Histoire de la Civilisation
+francaise, pp. 371 et seq.
+
+
+As to surgery, this same amalgamation of theology with survivals of
+pagan beliefs continued to check the evolution of medical science down
+to the modern epoch. The nominal hostility of the Church to the shedding
+of blood withdrew, as we have seen, from surgical practice the great
+body of her educated men; hence surgery remained down to the fifteenth
+century a despised profession, its practice continued largely in
+the hands of charlatans, and down to a very recent period the
+name "barber-surgeon" was a survival of this. In such surgery, the
+application of various ordures relieved fractures; the touch of the
+hangman cured sprains; the breath of a donkey expelled poison; friction
+with a dead man's tooth cured toothache.(310)
+
+
+     (310) On the low estate of surgery during the Middle Ages, see
+the histories of medicine already cited, and especially Kotelmann,
+Gesundheitspflege im Mittelalter, Hamburg, 1890, pp. 216 et seq.
+
+
+The enormous development of miracle and fetich cures in the Church
+continued during century after century, and here probably lay the main
+causes of hostility between the Church on the one hand and the better
+sort of physicians on the other; namely, in the fact that the Church
+supposed herself in possession of something far better than scientific
+methods in medicine. Under the sway of this belief a natural and
+laudable veneration for the relics of Christian martyrs was developed
+more and more into pure fetichism.
+
+Thus the water in which a single hair of a saint had been dipped was
+used as a purgative; water in which St. Remy's ring had been dipped
+cured fevers; wine in which the bones of a saint had been dipped cured
+lunacy; oil from a lamp burning before the tomb of St. Gall cured
+tumours; St. Valentine cured epilepsy; St. Christopher, throat diseases;
+St. Eutropius, dropsy; St. Ovid, deafness; St. Gervase, rheumatism; St.
+Apollonia, toothache; St. Vitus, St. Anthony, and a multitude of other
+saints, the maladies which bear their names. Even as late as 1784 we
+find certain authorities in Bavaria ordering that any one bitten by a
+mad dog shall at once put up prayers at the shrine of St. Hubert, and
+not waste his time in any attempts at medical or surgical cure.(311)
+In the twelfth century we find a noted cure attempted by causing the
+invalid to drink water in which St. Bernard had washed his hands.
+Flowers which had rested on the tomb of a saint, when steeped in water,
+were supposed to be especially efficacious in various diseases. The
+pulpit everywhere dwelt with unction on the reality of fetich cures, and
+among the choice stories collected by Archbishop Jacques de Vitry for
+the use of preachers was one which, judging from its frequent recurrence
+in monkish literature, must have sunk deep into the popular mind: "Two
+lazy beggars, one blind, the other lame, try to avoid the relics of St.
+Martin, borne about in procession, so that they may not be healed
+and lose their claim to alms. The blind man takes the lame man on his
+shoulders to guide him, but they are caught in the crowd and healed
+against their will."(312)
+
+
+     (311) See Baas, p. 614; also Biedermann.
+
+
+     (312) For the efficacy of flowers, see the Bollandist Lives of the
+Saints, cited in Fort, p. 279; also pp. 457, 458. For the story of those
+unwillingly cured, see the Exempla of Jacques de Vitry, edited by Prof.
+T. F. Crane, of Cornell University, London, 1890, pp. 52, 182.
+
+
+Very important also throughout the Middle Ages were the medical
+virtues attributed to saliva. The use of this remedy had early Oriental
+sanction. It is clearly found in Egypt. Pliny devotes a considerable
+part of one of his chapters to it; Galen approved it; Vespasian, when he
+visited Alexandria, is said to have cured a blind man by applying saliva
+to his eves; but the great example impressed most forcibly upon the
+medieval mind was the use of it ascribed in the fourth Gospel to Jesus
+himself: thence it came not only into Church ceremonial, but largely
+into medical practice.(313)
+
+
+     (313) As to the use of saliva in medicine, see Story, Castle of St.
+Angelo, and Other Essays, London, 1877, pp. 208 and elsewhere. For
+Pliny, Galen, and others, see the same, p. 211; see also the book of
+Tobit, chap. xi, 2-13. For the case of Vespasian, see Suetonius, Life of
+Vespasian; also Tacitus, Historiae, lib. iv, c. 81. For its use by St.
+Francis Xavier, see Coleridge, Life and Letters of St. Francis Xavier,
+London, 1872.
+
+
+As the theological atmosphere thickened, nearly every country had its
+long list of saints, each with a special power over some one organ or
+disease. The clergy, having great influence over the medical schools,
+conscientiously mixed this fetich medicine with the beginnings of
+science. In the tenth century, even at the School of Salerno, we find
+that the sick were cured not only by medicine, but by the relics of St.
+Matthew and others.
+
+Human nature, too, asserted itself, then as now, by making various
+pious cures fashionable for a time and then allowing them to become
+unfashionable. Just as we see the relics of St. Cosmo and St. Damian in
+great vogue during the early Middle Ages, but out of fashion and without
+efficacy afterward, so we find in the thirteenth century that the bones
+of St. Louis, having come into fashion, wrought multitudes of cures,
+while in the fourteenth, having become unfashionable, they ceased to
+act, and gave place for a time to the relics of St. Roch of Montpellier
+and St. Catherine of Sienna, which in their turn wrought many cures
+until they too became out of date and yielded to other saints. Just so
+in modern times the healing miracles of La Salette have lost prestige in
+some measure, and those of Lourdes have come into fashion.(314)
+
+
+     (314) For one of these lists of saints curing diseaes, see Pettigrew,
+On Superstitions connected with Medicine; for another, see Jacob,
+Superstitions Populaires, pp. 96-100; also Rydberg, p. 69; also Maury,
+Rambaud, and others. For a comparison of fashions in miracles with
+fashions in modern healing agents, see Littre, Medecine et Medecins, pp.
+118, 136 and elsewhere; also Sprengel, vol. ii, p. 143.
+
+
+Even such serious matters as fractures, calculi, and difficult
+parturition, in which modern science has achieved some of its greatest
+triumphs, were then dealt with by relics; and to this hour the ex votos
+hanging at such shrines as those of St. Genevieve at Paris, of St.
+Antony at Padua, of the Druid image at Chartres, of the Virgin at
+Einsiedeln and Lourdes, of the fountain at La Salette, are survivals of
+this same conception of disease and its cure.
+
+So, too, with a multitude of sacred pools, streams, and spots of earth.
+In Ireland, hardly a parish has not had one such sacred centre; in
+England and Scotland there have been many; and as late as 1805 the
+eminent Dr. Milner, of the Roman Catholic Church, gave a careful
+and earnest account of a miraculous cure wrought at a sacred well in
+Flintshire. In all parts of Europe the pious resort to wells and springs
+continued long after the close of the Middle Ages, and has not entirely
+ceased to-day. It is not at all necessary to suppose intentional
+deception in the origin and maintenance of all fetich cures. Although
+two different judicial investigations of the modern miracles at La
+Salette have shown their origin tainted with fraud, and though the
+recent restoration of the Cathedral of Trondhjem has revealed the fact
+that the healing powers of the sacred spring which once brought such
+great revenues to that shrine were assisted by angelic voices spoken
+through a tube in the walls, not unlike the pious machinery discovered
+in the Temple of Isis at Pompeii, there is little doubt that the great
+majority of fountain and even shrine cures, such as they have been, have
+resulted from a natural law, and that belief in them was based on honest
+argument from Scripture. For the theological argument which thus stood
+in the way of science was simply this: if the Almighty saw fit to raise
+the dead man who touched the bones of Elisha, why should he not restore
+to life the patient who touches at Cologne the bones of the Wise Men of
+the East who followed the star of the Nativity? If Naaman was cured by
+dipping himself in the waters of the Jordan, and so many others by
+going down into the Pool of Siloam, why should not men still be cured by
+bathing in pools which men equally holy with Elisha have consecrated?
+If one sick man was restored by touching the garments of St. Paul, why
+should not another sick man be restored by touching the seamless coat of
+Christ at Treves, or the winding-sheet of Christ at Besancon? And out of
+all these inquiries came inevitably that question whose logical answer
+was especially injurious to the development of medical science: Why
+should men seek to build up scientific medicine and surgery,
+when relics, pilgrimages, and sacred observances, according to an
+overwhelming mass of concurrent testimony, have cured and are curing
+hosts of sick folk in all parts of Europe? (315)
+
+
+     (315) For sacred fountains in modern times, see Pettigrew, as above,
+p. 42; also Dalyell, Darker Superstitions of Scotland, pp. 82 and
+following; also Montalembert, Les Moines d'Occident, tome iii, p. 323,
+note. For those in Ireland, with many curious details, see S. C. Hall,
+Ireland, its Scenery and Character, London, 1841, vol. i, p. 282, and
+passim. For the case in Flintshire, see Authentic Documents relative to
+the Miraculous Cure of Winifred White, of the Town of Wolverhampton, at
+Holywell, Flintshire, on the 28th of June, 1805, by John Milner, D. D.,
+Vicar Apostolic, etc., London, 1805. For sacred wells in France, see
+Chevart, Histoire de Chartres, vol. i, pp. 84-89, and French local
+histories generally. For superstitions attaching to springs in Germany,
+see Wuttke, Volksaberglaube, Sections 12 and 356. For one of the most
+exquisitely wrought works of modern fiction, showing perfectly the
+recent evolution of miraculous powers at a fashionable spring in France,
+see Gustave Droz, Autour d'une Source. The reference to the old pious
+machinery at Trondhjem is based upon personal observation by the present
+writer in August, 1893.
+
+
+Still another development of the theological spirit, mixed with
+professional exclusiveness and mob prejudice, wrought untold injury.
+Even to those who had become so far emancipated from allegiance to
+fetich cures as to consult physicians, it was forbidden to consult those
+who, as a rule, were the best. From a very early period of European
+history the Jews had taken the lead in medicine; their share in founding
+the great schools of Salerno and Montpellier we have already noted, and
+in all parts of Europe we find them acknowledged leaders in the healing
+art. The Church authorities, enforcing the spirit of the time, were
+especially severe against these benefactors: that men who openly
+rejected the means of salvation, and whose souls were undeniably lost,
+should heal the elect seemed an insult to Providence; preaching friars
+denounced them from the pulpit, and the rulers in state and church,
+while frequently secretly consulting them, openly proscribed them.
+
+Gregory of Tours tells us of an archdeacon who, having been partially
+cured of disease of the eyes by St. Martin, sought further aid from a
+Jewish physician, with the result that neither the saint nor the Jew
+could help him afterward. Popes Eugene IV, Nicholas V, and Calixtus III
+especially forbade Christians to employ them. The Trullanean Council in
+the eighth century, the Councils of Beziers and Alby in the thirteenth,
+the Councils of Avignon and Salamanca in the fourteenth, the Synod
+of Bamberg and the Bishop of Passau in the fifteenth, the Council
+of Avignon in the sixteenth, with many others, expressly forbade the
+faithful to call Jewish physicians or surgeons; such great preachers as
+John Geiler and John Herolt thundered from the pulpit against them
+and all who consulted them. As late as the middle of the seventeenth
+century, when the City Council of Hall, in Wurtemberg, gave some
+privileges to a Jewish physician "on account of his admirable experience
+and skill," the clergy of the city joined in a protest, declaring that
+"it were better to die with Christ than to be cured by a Jew doctor
+aided by the devil." Still, in their extremity, bishops, cardinals,
+kings, and even popes, insisted on calling in physicians of the hated
+race.(316)
+
+
+     (316) For the general subject of the influence of theological idea upon
+medicine, see Fort, History of Medical Economy during the Middle
+Ages, New York, 1883, chaps. xiii and xviii; also Colin de Plancy,
+Dictionnaire des Reliques, passim; also Rambaud, Histoire de la
+Civilisation francaise, Paris, 1885, vol. i, chap. xviii; also Sprengel,
+vol. ii, p. 345, and elsewhere; also Baas and others. For proofs that
+the School of Salerno was not founded by the monks, Benedictine or
+other, but by laymen, who left out a faculty of theology from their
+organization, see Haeser, Lehrbuch der Geschichte der Medicin, vol. i,
+p. 646; also Baas. For a very strong statement that married professors,
+women, and Jews were admitted to professional chairs, see Baas, pp.
+208 et seq.; also summary by Dr. Payne, article in the Encyc. Brit.
+Sprengel's old theory that the school was founded by Benedictines
+seems now entirely given up; see Haeser and Bass on the subject; also
+Daremberg, La Medecine, p. 133. For the citation from Gregory of Tours,
+see his Hist. Francorum, lib. vi. For the eminence of Jewish physicians
+and proscription of them, see Beugnot, Les Juifs d'Occident, Paris,
+1824, pp. 76-94; also Bedarride, Les Juifs en France, en Italie, et
+en Espagne, chaps. v, viii, x, and xiii; also Renouard, Histoire de
+la Medecine, Paris, 1846, tome i, p. 439; also especially Lammert,
+Volksmedizin, etc., in Bayern, p. 6, note. For Church decrees against
+them, see the Acta Conciliorum, ed. Hardouin, vol. x, pp. 1634, 1700,
+1870, 1873, etc. For denunciations of them by Geiler and others, see
+Kotelmann, Gesundheitspflege im Mittelalter, pp. 194, 195. For a list of
+kings and popes who persisted in having Jewish physicians and for other
+curious information of the sort, see Prof. Levi of Vercelli, Cristiani
+ed Ebrei nel Medio Evo, pp. 200-207; and for a very valuable summary,
+see Lecky, History of Rationalism in Europe, vol. ii, pp. 265-271.
+
+
+
+
+
+VIII. FETICH CURES UNDER PROTESTANTISM.--THE ROYAL TOUCH.
+
+
+The Reformation made no sudden change in the sacred theory of medicine.
+Luther, as is well known, again and again ascribed his own diseases to
+"devils' spells," declaring that "Satan produces all the maladies which
+afflict mankind, for he is the prince of death," and that "he poisons
+the air"; but that "no malady comes from God." From that day down to
+the faith cures of Boston, Old Orchard, and among the sect of "Peculiar
+People" in our own time, we see the results among Protestants of seeking
+the cause of disease in Satanic influence and its cure in fetichism.
+
+Yet Luther, with his sturdy common sense, broke away from one belief
+which has interfered with the evolution of medicine from the dawn of
+Christianity until now. When that troublesome declaimer, Carlstadt,
+declared that "whoso falls sick shall use no physic, but commit his case
+to God, praying that His will be done," Luther asked, "Do you eat when
+you are hungry?" and the answer being in the affirmative, he continued,
+"Even so you may use physic, which is God's gift just as meat and drink
+is, or whatever else we use for the preservation of life." Hence it was,
+doubtless, that the Protestant cities of Germany were more ready than
+others to admit anatomical investigation by proper dissections.(317)
+
+
+     (317) For Luther's belief and his answer to Carlstadt, see his Table
+Talk, especially in Hazlitt's edition, pp. 250-257; also his letters
+passim. For recent "faith cures," see Dr. Buckley's articles on Faith
+Healing and Kindred Phenomena, in The Century, 1886. For the greater
+readiness of Protestant cities to facilitate dissections, see Toth,
+Andreas Vesalius, p. 33.
+
+
+Perhaps the best-known development of a theological view in the
+Protestant Church was that mainly evolved in England out of a French
+germ of theological thought--a belief in the efficacy of the royal touch
+in sundry diseases, especially epilepsy and scrofula, the latter being
+consequently known as the king's evil. This mode of cure began, so
+far as history throws light upon it, with Edward the Confessor in the
+eleventh century, and came down from reign to reign, passing from the
+Catholic saint to Protestant debauchees upon the English throne, with
+ever-increasing miraculous efficacy.
+
+Testimony to the reality of these cures is overwhelming. As a simple
+matter of fact, there are no miracles of healing in the history of the
+human race more thoroughly attested than those wrought by the touch
+of Henry VIII, Elizabeth, the Stuarts, and especially of that chosen
+vessel, Charles II. Though Elizabeth could not bring herself fully to
+believe in the reality of these cures, Dr. Tooker, the Queen's chaplain,
+afterward Dean of Lichfield, testifies fully of his own knowledge to the
+cures wrought by her, as also does William Clowes, the Queen's surgeon.
+Fuller, in his Church History, gives an account of a Roman Catholic
+who was thus cured by the Queen's touch and converted to Protestantism.
+Similar testimony exists as to cures wrought by James I. Charles I also
+enjoyed the same power, in spite of the public declaration against its
+reality by Parliament. In one case the King saw a patient in the crowd,
+too far off to be touched, and simply said, "God bless thee and grant
+thee thy desire"; whereupon, it is asserted, the blotches and humours
+disappeared from the patient's body and appeared in the bottle of
+medicine which he held in his hand; at least so says Dr. John Nicholas,
+Warden of Winchester College, who declares this of his own knowledge to
+be every word of it true.
+
+But the most incontrovertible evidence of this miraculous gift is found
+in the case of Charles II, the most thoroughly cynical debauchee who
+ever sat on the English throne before the advent of George IV. He
+touched nearly one hundred thousand persons, and the outlay for gold
+medals issued to the afflicted on these occasions rose in some years
+as high as ten thousand pounds. John Brown, surgeon in ordinary to his
+Majesty and to St. Thomas's Hospital, and author of many learned works
+on surgery and anatomy, published accounts of sixty cures due to the
+touch of this monarch; and Sergeant-Surgeon Wiseman devotes an entire
+book to proving the reality of these cures, saying, "I myself have been
+frequent witness to many hundreds of cures performed by his Majesty's
+touch alone without any assistance of chirurgery, and these many of
+them had tyred out the endeavours of able chirurgeons before they came
+thither." Yet it is especially instructive to note that, while in no
+other reign were so many people touched for scrofula, and in none were
+so many cures vouched for, in no other reign did so many people die of
+that disease: the bills of mortality show this clearly, and the reason
+doubtless is the general substitution of supernatural for scientific
+means of cure. This is but one out of many examples showing the havoc
+which a scientific test always makes among miracles if men allow it to
+be applied.
+
+To James II the same power continued; and if it be said, in the words
+of Lord Bacon, that "imagination is next of kin to miracle--a working
+faith," something else seems required to account for the testimony
+of Dr. Heylin to cures wrought by the royal touch upon babes in their
+mothers' arms. Myth-making and marvel-mongering were evidently at work
+here as in so many other places, and so great was the fame of these
+cures that we find, in the year before James was dethroned, a pauper at
+Portsmouth, New Hampshire, petitioning the General Assembly to enable
+him to make the voyage to England in order that he may be healed by the
+royal touch.
+
+The change in the royal succession does not seem to have interfered with
+the miracle; for, though William III evidently regarded the whole
+thing as a superstition, and on one occasion is said to have touched
+a patient, saying to him, "God give you better health and more sense,"
+Whiston assures us that this person was healed, notwithstanding
+William's incredulity.
+
+As to Queen Anne, Dr. Daniel Turner, in his Art of Surgery, relates
+that several cases of scrofula which had been unsuccessfully treated
+by himself and Dr. Charles Bernard, sergeant-surgeon to her Majesty,
+yielded afterward to the efficacy of the Queen's touch. Naturally does
+Collier, in his Ecclesiastical History, say regarding these cases that
+to dispute them "is to come to the extreme of scepticism, to deny our
+senses and be incredulous even to ridiculousness." Testimony to the
+reality of these cures is indeed overwhelming, and a multitude of most
+sober scholars, divines, and doctors of medicine declared the evidence
+absolutely convincing. That the Church of England accepted the doctrine
+of the royal touch is witnessed by the special service provided in the
+Prayer-Book of that period for occasions when the King exercised this
+gift. The ceremony was conducted with great solemnity and pomp: during
+the reading of the service and the laying on of the King's hands, the
+attendant bishop or priest recited the words, "They shall lay their
+hands on the sick, and they shall recover"; afterward came special
+prayers, the Epistle and Gospel, with the blessing, and finally his
+Majesty washed his royal hands in golden vessels which high noblemen
+held for him.
+
+In France, too, the royal touch continued, with similar testimony to
+its efficacy. On a certain Easter Sunday, that pious king, Louis XIV,
+touched about sixteen hundred persons at Versailles.
+
+This curative power was, then, acknowledged far and wide, by Catholics
+and Protestants alike, upon the Continent, in Great Britain, and in
+America; and it descended not only in spite of the transition of the
+English kings from Catholicism to Protestantism, but in spite of
+the transition from the legitimate sovereignty of the Stuarts to the
+illegitimate succession of the House of Orange. And yet, within a
+few years after the whole world held this belief, it was dead; it had
+shrivelled away in the growing scientific light at the dawn of the
+eighteenth century.(318)
+
+
+     (318) For the royal touch, see Becket, Free and Impartial Inquiry into
+the Antiquity and Efficacy of Touching for the King's Evil, 1772, cited
+in Pettigrew, p. 128, and elsewhere; also Scoffern, Science and Folk
+Lore, London, 1870, pp. 413 and following; also Adams, The Healing
+Art, London, 1887, vol. i, pp. 53-60; and especially Lecky, History of
+European Morals, vol. i, chapter on The Conversion of Rome; also his
+History of England in the Eighteenth Century, vol. i, chap. i. For
+curious details regarding the mode of conducting the ceremony, see
+Evelyn's Diary; also Lecky, as above. For the royal touch in France, and
+for a claim to its possession in feudal times by certain noble families,
+see Rambaud, Hist. de la Civ. francaise, p. 375.
+
+
+
+
+
+IX. THE SCIENTIFIC STRUGGLE FOR ANATOMY.
+
+
+We may now take up the evolution of medical science out of the medieval
+view and its modern survivals. All through the Middle Ages, as we have
+seen, some few laymen and ecclesiastics here and there, braving the
+edicts of the Church and popular superstition, persisted in
+medical study and practice: this was especially seen at the greater
+universities, which had become somewhat emancipated from ecclesiastical
+control. In the thirteenth century the University of Paris gave a strong
+impulse to the teaching of medicine, and in that and the following
+century we begin to find the first intelligible reports of medical cases
+since the coming in of Christianity.
+
+In the thirteenth century also the arch-enemy of the papacy, the Emperor
+Frederick II, showed his free-thinking tendencies by granting, from
+time to time, permissions to dissect the human subject. In the centuries
+following, sundry other monarchs timidly followed his example: thus John
+of Aragon, in 1391, gave to the University of Lerida the privilege of
+dissecting one dead criminal every three years.(319)
+
+
+     (319) For the promotion of medical science and practice, especially in
+the thirteenth century, by the universities, see Baas, pp. 222-224.
+
+
+During the fifteenth century and the earlier years of the sixteenth the
+revival of learning, the invention of printing, and the great voyages
+of discovery gave a new impulse to thought, and in this medical science
+shared: the old theological way of thinking was greatly questioned,
+and gave place in many quarters to a different way of looking at the
+universe.
+
+In the sixteenth century Paracelsus appears--a great genius, doing much
+to develop medicine beyond the reach of sacred and scholastic tradition,
+though still fettered by many superstitions. More and more, in spite of
+theological dogmas, came a renewal of anatomical studies by dissection
+of the human subject. The practice of the old Alexandrian School was
+thus resumed. Mundinus, Professor of Medicine at Bologna early in the
+fourteenth century, dared use the human subject occasionally in his
+lectures; but finally came a far greater champion of scientific truth,
+Andreas Vesalius, founder of the modern science of anatomy. The battle
+waged by this man is one of the glories of our race.
+
+From the outset Vesalius proved himself a master. In the search for real
+knowledge he risked the most terrible dangers, and especially the charge
+of sacrilege, founded upon the teachings of the Church for ages. As
+we have seen, even such men in the early Church as Tertullian and St.
+Augustine held anatomy in abhorrence, and the decretal of Pope Boniface
+VIII was universally construed as forbidding all dissection, and as
+threatening excommunication against those practising it. Through
+this sacred conventionalism Vesalius broke without fear; despite
+ecclesiastical censure, great opposition in his own profession, and
+popular fury, he studied his science by the only method that could
+give useful results. No peril daunted him. To secure material for his
+investigations, he haunted gibbets and charnel-houses, braving the fires
+of the Inquisition and the virus of the plague. First of all men
+he began to place the science of human anatomy on its solid modern
+foundations--on careful examination and observation of the human
+body: this was his first great sin, and it was soon aggravated by one
+considered even greater.
+
+Perhaps the most unfortunate thing that has ever been done for
+Christianity is the tying it to forms of science which are doomed and
+gradually sinking. Just as, in the time of Roger Bacon, excellent men
+devoted all their energies to binding Christianity to Aristotle; just
+as, in the time of Reuchlin and Erasmus, they insisted on binding
+Christianity to Thomas Aquinas; so, in the time of Vesalius, such men
+made every effort to link Christianity to Galen. The cry has been the
+same in all ages; it is the same which we hear in this age for curbing
+scientific studies: the cry for what is called "sound learning." Whether
+standing for Aristotle against Bacon, or for Aquinas against Erasmus, or
+for Galen against Vesalius, the cry is always for "sound learning": the
+idea always has been that the older studies are "SAFE."
+
+At twenty-eight years of age Vesalius gave to the world his great
+work on human anatomy. With it ended the old and began the new; its
+researches, by their thoroughness, were a triumph of science; its
+illustrations, by their fidelity, were a triumph of art.
+
+To shield himself, as far as possible, in the battle which he foresaw
+must come, Vesalius dedicated the work to the Emperor Charles V, and in
+his preface he argues for his method, and against the parrot repetitions
+of the mediaeval text-books; he also condemns the wretched anatomical
+preparations and specimens made by physicians who utterly refused to
+advance beyond the ancient master. The parrot-like repeaters of Galen
+gave battle at once. After the manner of their time their first missiles
+were epithets; and, the vast arsenal of these having been exhausted,
+they began to use sharper weapons--weapons theologic.
+
+In this case there were especial reasons why the theological authorities
+felt called upon to intervene. First, there was the old idea prevailing
+in the Church that the dissection of the human body is forbidden to
+Christians: this was used with great force against Vesalius, but he at
+first gained a temporary victory; for, a conference of divines having
+been asked to decide whether dissection of the human body is sacrilege,
+gave a decision in the negative.
+
+The reason was simple: the great Emperor Charles V had made Vesalius his
+physician and could not spare him; but, on the accession of Philip II
+to the throne of Spain and the Netherlands, the whole scene changed.
+Vesalius now complained that in Spain he could not obtain even a human
+skull for his anatomical investigations: the medical and theological
+reactionists had their way, and to all appearance they have, as a rule,
+had it in Spain ever since. As late as the last years of the eighteenth
+century an observant English traveller found that there were no
+dissections before medical classes in the Spanish universities, and that
+the doctrine of the circulation of the blood was still denied, more than
+a century and a half after Sarpi and Harvey had proved it.
+
+Another theological idea barred the path of Vesalius. Throughout
+the Middle Ages it was believed that there exists in man a bone
+imponderable, incorruptible, incombustible--the necessary nucleus of
+the resurrection body. Belief in a resurrection of the physical body,
+despite St. Paul's Epistle to the Corinthians, had been incorporated
+into the formula evolved during the early Christian centuries and known
+as the Apostles' Creed, and was held throughout Christendom, "always,
+everywhere, and by all." This hypothetical bone was therefore held
+in great veneration, and many anatomists sought to discover it; but
+Vesalius, revealing so much else, did not find it. He contented himself
+with saying that he left the question regarding the existence of such a
+bone to the theologians. He could not lie; he did not wish to fight the
+Inquisition; and thus he fell under suspicion.
+
+The strength of this theological point may be judged from the fact that
+no less eminent a surgeon than Riolan consulted the executioner to find
+out whether, when he burned a criminal, all the parts were consumed;
+and only then was the answer received which fatally undermined this
+superstition. Yet, in 1689 we find it still lingering in France,
+stimulating opposition in the Church to dissection. Even as late as the
+eighteenth century, Bernouilli having shown that the living human body
+constantly undergoes a series of changes, so that all its particles are
+renewed in a given number of years, so much ill feeling was drawn upon
+him, from theologians, who saw in this statement danger to the doctrine
+of the resurrection of the body, that for the sake of peace he struck
+out his argument on this subject from his collected works.(320)
+
+
+     (320) For permissions to dissect the human subject, given here and there
+during the Middle Ages, see Roth's Andreas Vesalius, Berlin, 1892, pp.
+3, 13 et seq. For religious antipathies as a factor in the persecution
+of Vesalius, see the biographies by Boerhaave and Albinos, 1725;
+Burggraeve's Etudes, 1841; also Haeser, Kingsley, and the latest
+and most thorough of all, Roth, as above. Even Goethals, despite the
+timidity natural to a city librarian in a town like Brussels, in which
+clerical power is strong and relentless, feels obliged to confess that
+there was a certain admixture of religious hatred in the treatment
+of Vesalius. See his Notice Biographique sur Andre Vesale. For the
+resurrection bones, see Roth, as above, pp. 154, 155, and notes. For
+Vesalius, see especially Portal, Hist. de l'Anatomie et de la Chirurgie,
+Paris, 1770, tome i, p. 407. For neglect of dissection and opposition
+to Harvey's discovery in Spain, see Townsend's Travels, edition of 1792,
+cited in Buckle, History of Civilization in England, vol. ii, pp. 74,
+75. Also Henry Morley, in his Clement Marot, and Other Essays. For
+Bernouilli and his trouble with the theologians, see Wolf, Biographien
+zur Culturgeschichte der Schweiz, vol. ii, p. 95. How different
+Mundinus's practice of dissection was from that of Vesalius may be seen
+by Cuvier's careful statement that the entire number of dissections by
+the former was three; the usual statement is that there were but two.
+See Cuvier, Hist. des Sci. Nat., tome ii, p. 7; also Sprengel, Fredault,
+Hallam, and Littre. Also Whewell, Hist. of the Inductive Sciences, vol.
+iii, p. 328; also, for a very full statement regarding the agency of
+Mundinus in the progress of Anatomy, see Portal, vol. i, pp. 209-216.
+
+
+Still other encroachments upon the theological view were made by the new
+school of anatomists, and especially by Vesalius. During the Middle Ages
+there had been developed various theological doctrines regarding the
+human body; these were based upon arguments showing what the body OUGHT
+TO BE, and naturally, when anatomical science showed what it IS, these
+doctrines fell. An example of such popular theological reasoning is seen
+in a widespread belief of the twelfth century, that, during the year in
+which the cross of Christ was captured by Saladin, children, instead of
+having thirty or thirty-two teeth as before, had twenty or twenty-two.
+So, too, in Vesalius's time another doctrine of this sort was dominant:
+it had long been held that Eve, having been made by the Almighty from a
+rib taken out of Adam's side, there must be one rib fewer on one side
+of every man than on the other. This creation of Eve was a favourite
+subject with sculptors and painters, from Giotto, who carved it upon
+his beautiful Campanile at Florence, to the illuminators of missals, and
+even to those who illustrated Bibles and religious books in the first
+years after the invention of printing; but Vesalius and the anatomists
+who followed him put an end among thoughtful men to this belief in the
+missing rib, and in doing this dealt a blow at much else in the sacred
+theory. Naturally, all these considerations brought the forces of
+ecclesiasticism against the innovators in anatomy.(321)
+
+
+     (321) As to the supposed change in the number of teeth, see the Gesta
+Philippi Augusti Francorum Regis,... descripta a magistro Rigardo, 1219,
+edited by Father Francois Duchesne, in Histories Francorum Scriptores,
+tom. v, Paris, 1649, p. 24. For representations of Adam created by the
+Almighty out of a pile of dust, and of Eve created from a rib of Adam,
+see the earlier illustrations in the Nuremberg Chronicle. As to the
+relation of anatomy to theology as regards to Adam's rib, see Roth, pp.
+154, 155.
+
+
+A new weapon was now forged: Vesalius was charged with dissecting a
+living man, and, either from direct persecution, as the great majority
+of authors assert, or from indirect influences, as the recent apologists
+for Philip II admit, he became a wanderer: on a pilgrimage to the Holy
+Land, apparently undertaken to atone for his sin, he was shipwrecked,
+and in the prime of his life and strength he was lost to the world.
+
+And yet not lost. In this century a great painter has again given him to
+us. By the magic of Hamann's pencil Vesalius again stands on earth,
+and we look once more into his cell. Its windows and doors, bolted and
+barred within, betoken the storm of bigotry which rages without; the
+crucifix, toward which he turns his eyes, symbolizes the spirit in which
+he labours; the corpse of the plague-stricken beneath his hand ceases
+to be repulsive; his very soul seems to send forth rays from the canvas,
+which strengthen us for the good fight in this age.(322)
+
+
+     (322) The original painting of Vesalius at work in his cell, by Hamann,
+is now at Cornell University.
+
+
+His death was hastened, if not caused, by men who conscientiously
+supposed that he was injuring religion: his poor, blind foes aided in
+destroying one of religion's greatest apostles. What was his influence
+on religion? He substituted, for the repetition of worn-out theories,
+a conscientious and reverent search into the works of the great Power
+giving life to the universe; he substituted, for representations of the
+human structure pitiful and unreal, representations revealing truths
+most helpful to the whole human race.
+
+The death of this champion seems to have virtually ended the contest.
+Licenses to dissect soon began to be given by sundry popes to
+universities, and were renewed at intervals of from three to four years,
+until the Reformation set in motion trains of thought which did much to
+release science from this yoke.(323)
+
+
+     (323) For a curious example of weapons drawn from Galen and used against
+Vesalius, see Lewes, Life of Goethe, p. 343, note. For proofs that I
+have not overestimated Vesalius, see Portal, ubi supra. Portal speaks of
+him as "le genie le plus droit qu'eut l'Europe"; and again, "Vesale me
+parait un des plus grands hommes qui ait existe." For the charge
+that anatomists dissected living men--against men of science before
+Vesalius's time--see Littre's chapter on Anatomy. For the increased
+liberty given anatomy by the Reformation, see Roth's Vesalius, p. 33.
+
+
+
+
+
+X. THEOLOGICAL OPPOSITION TO INOCULATION, VACCINATION, AND THE USE OF
+ANAESTHETICS.
+
+I hasten now to one of the most singular struggles of medical science
+during modern times. Early in the last century Boyer presented
+inoculation as a preventive of smallpox in France, and thoughtful
+physicians in England, inspired by Lady Montagu and Maitland, followed
+his example. Ultra-conservatives in medicine took fright at once on both
+sides of the Channel, and theology was soon finding profound reasons
+against the new practice. The French theologians of the Sorbonne
+solemnly condemned it; the English theologians were most loudly
+represented by the Rev. Edward Massey, who in 1772 preached and
+published a sermon entitled The Dangerous and Sinful Practice of
+Inoculation. In this he declared that Job's distemper was probably
+confluent smallpox; that he had been inoculated doubtless by the devil;
+that diseases are sent by Providence for the punishment of sin; and that
+the proposed attempt to prevent them is "a diabolical operation."
+Not less vigorous was the sermon of the Rev. Mr. Delafaye, entitled
+Inoculation an Indefensible Practice. This struggle went on for thirty
+years. It is a pleasure to note some churchmen--and among them Madox,
+Bishop of Worcester--giving battle on the side of right reason; but as
+late as 1753 we have a noted rector at Canterbury denouncing inoculation
+from his pulpit in the primatial city, and many of his brethren
+following his example.
+
+The same opposition was vigorous in Protestant Scotland. A large body of
+ministers joined in denouncing the new practice as "flying in the face
+of Providence," and "endeavouring to baffle a Divine judgment."
+
+On our own side of the ocean, also, this question had to be fought out.
+About the year 1721 Dr. Zabdiel Boylston, a physician in Boston, made an
+experiment in inoculation, one of his first subjects being his own son.
+He at once encountered bitter hostility, so that the selectmen of the
+city forbade him to repeat the experiment. Foremost among his opponents
+was Dr. Douglas, a Scotch physician, supported by the medical profession
+and the newspapers. The violence of the opposing party knew no bounds;
+they insisted that inoculation was "poisoning," and they urged the
+authorities to try Dr. Boylston for murder. Having thus settled his case
+for this world, they proceeded to settle it for the next, insisting that
+"for a man to infect a family in the morning with smallpox and to
+pray to God in the evening against the disease is blasphemy"; that the
+smallpox is "a judgment of God on the sins of the people," and that
+"to avert it is but to provoke him more"; that inoculation is "an
+encroachment on the prerogatives of Jehovah, whose right it is to wound
+and smite." Among the mass of scriptural texts most remote from any
+possible bearing on the subject one was employed which was equally
+cogent against any use of healing means in any disease--the words of
+Hosea: "He hath torn, and he will heal us; he hath smitten, and he will
+bind us up."
+
+So bitter was this opposition that Dr. Boylston's life was in danger; it
+was considered unsafe for him to be out of his house in the evening; a
+lighted grenade was even thrown into the house of Cotton Mather, who had
+favoured the new practice, and had sheltered another clergyman who had
+submitted himself to it.
+
+To the honour of the Puritan clergy of New England, it should be said
+that many of them were Boylston's strongest supporters. Increase and
+Cotton Mather had been among the first to move in favour of inoculation,
+the latter having called Boylston's attention to it; and at the very
+crisis of affairs six of the leading clergymen of Boston threw their
+influence on Boylston's side and shared the obloquy brought upon him.
+Although the gainsayers were not slow to fling into the faces of the
+Mathers their action regarding witchcraft, urging that their credulity
+in that matter argued credulity in this, they persevered, and among the
+many services rendered by the clergymen of New England to their country
+this ought certainly to be remembered; for these men had to withstand,
+shoulder to shoulder with Boylston and Benjamin Franklin, the
+same weapons which were hurled at the supporters of inoculation in
+Europe--charges of "unfaithfulness to the revealed law of God."
+
+The facts were soon very strong against the gainsayers: within a year
+or two after the first experiment nearly three hundred persons had been
+inoculated by Boylston in Boston and neighbouring towns, and out of
+these only six had died; whereas, during the same period, out of nearly
+six thousand persons who had taken smallpox naturally, and had received
+only the usual medical treatment, nearly one thousand had died. Yet even
+here the gainsayers did not despair, and, when obliged to confess the
+success of inoculation, they simply fell back upon a new argument,
+and answered: "It was good that Satan should be dispossessed of his
+habitation which he had taken up in men in our Lord's day, but it was
+not lawful that the children of the Pharisees should cast him out by the
+help of Beelzebub. We must always have an eye to the matter of what we
+do as well as the result, if we intend to keep a good conscience toward
+God." But the facts were too strong; the new practice made its way in
+the New World as in the Old, though bitter opposition continued, and in
+no small degree on vague scriptural grounds, for more than twenty years
+longer.(324)
+
+
+     (324) For the general subject, see Sprengel, Histoire de la Medecine,
+vol. vi, pp. 39-80. For the opposition of the Paris faculty of Theology
+to inoculation, see the Journal de Barbier, vol. vi, p. 294; also the
+Correspondance de Grimm et Diderot, vol. iii, pp. 259 et seq. For bitter
+denunciations of inoculation by the English clergy, and for the noble
+stand against them by Madox, see Baron, Life of Jenner, vol. i, pp. 231,
+232, and vol. ii, pp. 39, 40. For the strenuous opposition of the same
+clergy, see Weld, History of the Royal Society, vol. i, p. 464, note;
+also, for its comical side, see Nichol's Literary Illustrations, vol.
+v, p. 800. For the same matter in Scotland, see Lecky's History of the
+Eighteenth Century, vol. ii, p. 83. For New England, see Green, History
+of Medicine in Massachusetts, Boston, 1881, pp. 58 et seq; also chapter
+x of the Memorial History of Boston, by the same author and O. W.
+Holmes. For a letter of Dr. Franklin's, see Massachusetts Historical
+Collections, second series, vol. vii, p. 17. Several most curious
+publications issued during the heat of the inoculation controversy have
+been kindly placed in my hands by the librarians of Harvard College and
+of the Massachusetts Historical Society, among them A Reply to Increase
+Mather, by John Williams, Boston, printed by J. Franklin, 1721, from
+which the above scriptural arguments are cited. For the terrible
+virulence of the smallpox in New England up to the introduction of the
+inoculation, see McMaster, History of the People of the United States,
+first edition, vol. i, p. 30.
+
+
+The steady evolution of scientific medicine brings us next to Jenner's
+discovery of vaccination. Here, too, sundry vague survivals of
+theological ideas caused many of the clergy to side with retrograde
+physicians. Perhaps the most virulent of Jenner's enemies was one of his
+professional brethren, Dr. Moseley, who placed on the title-page of his
+book, Lues Bovilla, the motto, referring to Jenner and his followers,
+"Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do": this book of
+Dr. Moseley was especially indorsed by the Bishop of Dromore. In 1798
+an Anti-vaccination Society was formed by physicians and clergymen,
+who called on the people of Boston to suppress vaccination, as "bidding
+defiance to Heaven itself, even to the will of God," and declared that
+"the law of God prohibits the practice." As late as 1803 the Rev. Dr.
+Ramsden thundered against vaccination in a sermon before the University
+of Cambridge, mingling texts of Scripture with calumnies against
+Jenner; but Plumptre and the Rev. Rowland Hill in England, Waterhouse in
+America, Thouret in France, Sacco in Italy, and a host of other good
+men and true, pressed forward, and at last science, humanity, and right
+reason gained the victory. Most striking results quickly followed.
+The diminution in the number of deaths from the terrible scourge was
+amazing. In Berlin, during the eight years following 1783, over four
+thousand children died of the smallpox; while during the eight years
+following 1814, after vaccination had been largely adopted, out of a
+larger number of deaths there were but five hundred and thirty-five
+from this disease. In Wurtemberg, during the twenty-four years following
+1772, one in thirteen of all the children died of smallpox, while
+during the eleven years after 1822 there died of it only one in sixteen
+hundred. In Copenhagen, during twelve years before the introduction of
+vaccination, fifty-five hundred persons died of smallpox, and during the
+sixteen years after its introduction only one hundred and fifty-eight
+persons died of it throughout all Denmark. In Vienna, where the average
+yearly mortality from this disease had been over eight hundred, it was
+steadily and rapidly reduced, until in 1803 it had fallen to less than
+thirty; and in London, formerly so afflicted by this scourge, out of
+all her inhabitants there died of it in 1890 but one. As to the world
+at large, the result is summed up by one of the most honoured English
+physicians of our time, in the declaration that "Jenner has saved, is
+now saving, and will continue to save in all coming ages, more lives in
+one generation than were destroyed in all the wars of Napoleon."
+
+It will have been noticed by those who have read this history thus far
+that the record of the Church generally was far more honourable in this
+struggle than in many which preceded it: the reason is not difficult to
+find; the decline of theology enured to the advantage of religion, and
+religion gave powerful aid to science.
+
+Yet there have remained some survivals both in Protestantism and in
+Catholicism which may be regarded with curiosity. A small body of
+perversely ingenious minds in the medical profession in England have
+found a few ardent allies among the less intellectual clergy. The Rev.
+Mr. Rothery and the Rev. Mr. Allen, of the Primitive Methodists, have
+for sundry vague theological reasons especially distinguished themselves
+by opposition to compulsory vaccination; but it is only just to say
+that the great body of the English clergy have for a long time taken the
+better view.
+
+Far more painful has been the recent history of the other great branch
+of the Christian Church--a history developed where it might have been
+least expected: the recent annals of the world hardly present a more
+striking antithesis between Religion and Theology.
+
+On the religious side few things in the history of the Roman Church have
+been more beautiful than the conduct of its clergy in Canada during
+the great outbreak of ship-fever among immigrants at Montreal about the
+middle of the present century. Day and night the Catholic priesthood of
+that city ministered fearlessly to those victims of sanitary ignorance;
+fear of suffering and death could not drive these ministers from their
+work; they laid down their lives cheerfully while carrying comfort to
+the poorest and most ignorant of our kind: such was the record of their
+religion. But in 1885 a record was made by their theology. In that year
+the smallpox broke out with great virulence in Montreal. The Protestant
+population escaped almost entirely by vaccination; but multitudes of
+their Catholic fellow-citizens, under some vague survival of the old
+orthodox ideas, refused vaccination; and suffered fearfully. When at
+last the plague became so serious that travel and trade fell off greatly
+and quarantine began to be established in neighbouring cities, an effort
+was made to enforce compulsory vaccination. The result was, that large
+numbers of the Catholic working population resisted and even threatened
+bloodshed. The clergy at first tolerated and even encouraged this
+conduct: the Abbe Filiatrault, priest of St. James's Church, declared in
+a sermon that, "if we are afflicted with smallpox, it is because we had
+a carnival last winter, feasting the flesh, which has offended the Lord;
+it is to punish our pride that God has sent us smallpox." The clerical
+press went further: the Etendard exhorted the faithful to take up arms
+rather than submit to vaccination, and at least one of the secular
+papers was forced to pander to the same sentiment. The Board of Health
+struggled against this superstition, and addressed a circular to the
+Catholic clergy, imploring them to recommend vaccination; but, though
+two or three complied with this request, the great majority were either
+silent or openly hostile. The Oblate Fathers, whose church was situated
+in the very heart of the infected district, continued to denounce
+vaccination; the faithful were exhorted to rely on devotional exercises
+of various sorts; under the sanction of the hierarchy a great procession
+was ordered with a solemn appeal to the Virgin, and the use of the
+rosary was carefully specified.
+
+Meantime, the disease, which had nearly died out among the Protestants,
+raged with ever-increasing virulence among the Catholics; and, the truth
+becoming more and more clear, even to the most devout, proper measures
+were at last enforced and the plague was stayed, though not until there
+had been a fearful waste of life among these simple-hearted believers,
+and germs of scepticism planted in the hearts of their children which
+will bear fruit for generations to come.(325)
+
+
+     (325) For the opposition of concientious men to vaccination in England,
+see Baron, Life of Jenner, as above; also vol. ii, p. 43; also Dun's
+Life of Simpson, London, 1873, pp. 248, 249; also Works of Sir J. Y.
+Simpson, vol. ii. For a multitude of statistics ahowing the diminution
+of smallpox after the introduction of vaccination, see Russell, p.
+380. For the striking record in London for 1890, see an article in the
+Edinburgh review for January, 1891. The general statement referred to
+was made in a speech some years since by Sir Spencer Wells. For recent
+scattered cases of feeble opposition to vaccination by Protestant
+ministers, see William White, The Great Delusion, London, 1885, passim.
+For opposition of the Roman Catholic clergy and peasantry in Canada
+to vaccination during the smallpox plague of 1885, see the English,
+Canadian, and American newspapers, but especially the very temperate and
+accurate correspondence in the New York Evening Post during September
+and October of that year.
+
+
+Another class of cases in which the theologic spirit has allied itself
+with the retrograde party in medical science is found in the history of
+certain remedial agents; and first may be named cocaine. As early as the
+middle of the sixteenth century the value of coca had been discovered
+in South America; the natives of Peru prized it highly, and two eminent
+Jesuits, Joseph Acosta and Antonio Julian, were converted to this view.
+But the conservative spirit in the Church was too strong; in 1567 the
+Second Council of Lima, consisting of bishops from all parts of South
+America, condemned it, and two years later came a royal decree declaring
+that "the notions entertained by the natives regarding it are an
+illusion of the devil."
+
+As a pendant to this singular mistake on the part of the older Church
+came another committed by many Protestants. In the early years of the
+seventeenth century the Jesuit missionaries in South America learned
+from the natives the value of the so-called Peruvian bark in the
+treatment of ague; and in 1638, the Countess of Cinchon, Regent of Peru,
+having derived great benefit from the new remedy, it was introduced into
+Europe. Although its alkaloid, quinine, is perhaps the nearest approach
+to a medical specific, and has diminished the death rate in certain
+regions to an amazing extent, its introduction was bitterly opposed
+by many conservative members of the medical profession, and in this
+opposition large numbers of ultra-Protestants joined, out of hostility
+to the Roman Church. In the heat of sectarian feeling the new remedy
+was stigmatized as "an invention of the devil"; and so strong was this
+opposition that it was not introduced into England until 1653, and even
+then its use was long held back, owing mainly to anti-Catholic feeling.
+
+What the theological method on the ultra-Protestant side could do to
+help the world at this very time is seen in the fact that, while this
+struggle was going on, Hoffmann was attempting to give a scientific
+theory of the action of the devil in causing Job's boils. This effort
+at a quasi-scientific explanation which should satisfy the theological
+spirit, comical as it at first seems, is really worthy of serious
+notice, because it must be considered as the beginning of that
+inevitable effort at compromise which we see in the history of every
+science when it begins to appear triumphant.(326)
+
+
+     (326) For the opposition of the South American Church authorities to
+the introduction of coca, etc., see Martindale, Coca, Cocaine, and its
+Salts, London, 1886, p. 7. As to theological and sectarian resistance to
+quinine, see Russell, pp. 194, 253; also Eccles; also Meryon, History of
+Medicine, London, 1861, vol. i, p. 74, note. For the great decrease in
+deaths by fever after the use of Peruvian bark began, see statistical
+tables given in Russell, p. 252; and for Hoffmann's attempt at
+compromise, ibid., p. 294.
+
+
+But I pass to a typical conflict in our days, and in a Protestant
+country. In 1847, James Young Simpson, a Scotch physician, who afterward
+rose to the highest eminence in his profession, having advocated the use
+of anaesthetics in obstetrical cases, was immediately met by a storm
+of opposition. This hostility flowed from an ancient and time-honoured
+belief in Scotland. As far back as the year 1591, Eufame Macalyane, a
+lady of rank, being charged with seeking the aid of Agnes Sampson for
+the relief of pain at the time of the birth of her two sons, was burned
+alive on the Castle Hill of Edinburgh; and this old theological view
+persisted even to the middle of the nineteenth century. From pulpit
+after pulpit Simpson's use of chloroform was denounced as impious
+and contrary to Holy Writ; texts were cited abundantly, the ordinary
+declaration being that to use chloroform was "to avoid one part of
+the primeval curse on woman." Simpson wrote pamphlet after pamphlet to
+defend the blessing which he brought into use; but he seemed about to be
+overcome, when he seized a new weapon, probably the most absurd by
+which a great cause was ever won: "My opponents forget," he said, "the
+twenty-first verse of the second chapter of Genesis; it is the record of
+the first surgical operation ever performed, and that text proves that
+the Maker of the universe, before he took the rib from Adam's side for
+the creation of Eve, caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam." This was
+a stunning blow, but it did not entirely kill the opposition; they had
+strength left to maintain that the "deep sleep of Adam took place before
+the introduction of pain into the world--in a state of innocence."
+But now a new champion intervened--Thomas Chalmers: with a few pungent
+arguments from his pulpit he scattered the enemy forever, and the
+greatest battle of science against suffering was won. This victory was
+won not less for religion. Wisely did those who raised the monument
+at Boston to one of the discoverers of anaesthetics inscribe upon its
+pedestal the words from our sacred text, "This also cometh forth from
+the Lord of hosts, which is wonderful in counsel, and excellent in
+working."(327)
+
+
+     (327) For the case of Eufame Macalyane, se Dalyell, Darker Superstitions
+of Scotland, pp. 130, 133. For the contest of Simpson with Scotch
+ecclesiatical authorities, see Duns, Life of Sir J. Y. Simpson, London,
+1873, pp. 215-222, and 256-260.
+
+
+
+
+
+XI. FINAL BREAKING AWAY OF THE THEOLOGICAL THEORY IN MEDICINE.
+
+
+While this development of history was going on, the central idea on
+which the whole theologic view rested--the idea of diseases as resulting
+from the wrath of God or malice of Satan--was steadily weakened;
+and, out of the many things which show this, one may be selected as
+indicating the drift of thought among theologians themselves.
+
+Toward the end of the eighteenth century the most eminent divines of
+the American branch of the Anglican Church framed their Book of Common
+Prayer. Abounding as it does in evidences of their wisdom and piety, few
+things are more noteworthy than a change made in the exhortation to the
+faithful to present themselves at the communion. While, in the old form
+laid down in the English Prayer Book, the minister was required to warn
+his flock not "to kindle God's wrath" or "provoke him to plague us with
+divers diseases and sundry kinds of death," from the American form all
+this and more of similar import in various services was left out.
+
+Since that day progress in medical science has been rapid indeed, and at
+no period more so than during the last half of the nineteenth century.
+
+The theological view of disease has steadily faded, and the theological
+hold upon medical education has been almost entirely relaxed. In three
+great fields, especially, discoveries have been made which have done
+much to disperse the atmosphere of miracle. First, there has come
+knowledge regarding the relation between imagination and medicine,
+which, though still defective, is of great importance. This relation has
+been noted during the whole history of the science. When the soldiers
+of the Prince of Orange, at the siege of Breda in 1625, were dying of
+scurvy by scores, he sent to the physicians "two or three small vials
+filled with a decoction of camomile, wormwood, and camphor, gave out
+that it was a very rare and precious medicine--a medicine of such virtue
+that two or three drops sufficed to impregnate a gallon of water,
+and that it had been obtained from the East with great difficulty and
+danger." This statement, made with much solemnity, deeply impressed the
+soldiers; they took the medicine eagerly, and great numbers recovered
+rapidly. Again, two centuries later, young Humphry Davy, being employed
+to apply the bulb of the thermometer to the tongues of certain patients
+at Bristol after they had inhaled various gases as remedies for
+disease, and finding that the patients supposed this application of the
+thermometer-bulb was the cure, finally wrought cures by this application
+alone, without any use of the gases whatever. Innumerable cases of this
+sort have thrown a flood of light upon such cures as those wrought by
+Prince Hohenlohe, by the "metallic tractors," and by a multitude of
+other agencies temporarily in vogue, but, above all, upon the miraculous
+cures which in past ages have been so frequent and of which a few
+survive.
+
+The second department is that of hypnotism. Within the last half-century
+many scattered indications have been collected and supplemented by
+thoughtful, patient investigators of genius, and especially by Braid in
+England and Charcot in France. Here, too, great inroads have been made
+upon the province hitherto sacred to miracle, and in 1888 the cathedral
+preacher, Steigenberger, of Augsburg, sounded an alarm. He declared his
+fears "lest accredited Church miracles lose their hold upon the public,"
+denounced hypnotism as a doctrine of demons, and ended with the singular
+argument that, inasmuch as hypnotism is avowedly incapable of explaining
+all the wonders of history, it is idle to consider it at all. But
+investigations in hypnotism still go on, and may do much in the
+twentieth century to carry the world yet further from the realm of the
+miraculous.
+
+In a third field science has won a striking series of victories.
+Bacteriology, beginning in the researches of Leeuwenhoek in the
+seventeenth century, continued by O. F. Muller in the eighteenth, and
+developed or applied with wonderful skill by Ehrenberg, Cohn, Lister,
+Pasteur, Koch, Billings, Bering, and their compeers in the nineteenth,
+has explained the origin and proposed the prevention or cure of various
+diseases widely prevailing, which until recently have been generally
+held to be "inscrutable providences." Finally, the closer study of
+psychology, especially in its relations to folklore, has revealed
+processes involved in the development of myths and legends: the
+phenomena of "expectant attention," the tendency to marvel-mongering,
+and the feeling of "joy in believing."
+
+In summing up the history of this long struggle between science and
+theology, two main facts are to be noted: First, that in proportion as
+the world approached the "ages of faith" it receded from ascertained
+truth, and in proportion as the world has receded from the "ages
+of faith" it has approached ascertained truth; secondly, that, in
+proportion as the grasp of theology Upon education tightened, medicine
+declined, and in proportion as that grasp has relaxed, medicine has been
+developed.
+
+The world is hardly beyond the beginning of medical discoveries, yet
+they have already taken from theology what was formerly its strongest
+province--sweeping away from this vast field of human effort that belief
+in miracles which for more than twenty centuries has been the main
+stumbling-block in the path of medicine; and in doing this they have
+cleared higher paths not only for science, but for religion.(328)
+
+
+     (328) For the rescue of medical education from the control of theology,
+especially in France, see Rambaud, La Civilisation Contemporaine en
+France, pp. 682, 683. For miraculous cures wrought by imagination,
+see Tuke, Influence of Mind on Body, vol. ii. For opposition to the
+scientific study of hypnotism, see Hypnotismus und Wunder: ein Vortrag,
+mit Weiterungen, von Max Steigenberger, Domprediger, Augsburg, 1888,
+reviewed in Science, Feb. 15, 1889, p. 127. For a recent statement
+regarding the development of studies in hypnotism, see Liegeois, De
+la Suggestion et du Somnambulisme dans leurs rapports avec la
+Jurisprudence, Paris, 1889, chap. ii. As to joy in believing and
+exaggerating marvels, see in the London Graphic for January 2, 1892,
+an account of Hindu jugglers by "Professor" Hofmann, himself an expert
+conjurer. He shows that the Hindu performances have been grossly and
+persistently exaggerated in the accounts of travellers; that they are
+easily seen through, and greatly inferior to the jugglers' tricks seen
+every day in European capitals. The eminent Prof. De Gubernatis, who
+also had witnessed the Hindu performances, assured the present writer
+that the current accounts of them were monstrously exaggerated. As
+to the miraculous in general, the famous Essay of Hume holds a most
+important place in the older literature of the subject; but, for perhaps
+the most remarkable of all discussions of it, see Conyers Middleton, D.
+D., A Free Inquiry into the Miraculous Powers which are supposed to have
+subsisted in the Christian Church, London, 1749. For probably the most
+judicially fair discussion, see Lecky, History of European Morals, vol.
+i, chap. iii; also his Rationalism in Europe, vol. i, chaps. i and ii;
+and for perhaps the boldest and most suggestive of recent statements,
+see Max Muller, Physical Religion, being the Gifford Lectures before the
+University of Glasgow for 1890, London, 1891, lecture xiv. See also, for
+very cogent statements and arguments, Matthew Arnold's Literature
+and Dogma, especially chap. v, and, for a recent utterance of great
+clearness and force, Prof. Osler's Address before the Johns Hopkins
+University, given in Science for March 27, 1891.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV. FROM FETICH TO HYGIENE.
+
+
+
+
+I. THE THEOLOGICAL VIEW OF EPIDEMICS AND SANITATION.
+
+
+A very striking feature in recorded history has been the recurrence
+of great pestilences. Various indications in ancient times show their
+frequency, while the famous description of the plague of Athens given
+by Thucydides, and the discussion of it by Lucretius, exemplify their
+severity. In the Middle Ages they raged from time to time throughout
+Europe: such plagues as the Black Death and the sweating sickness swept
+off vast multitudes, the best authorities estimating that of the former,
+at the middle of the fourteenth century, more than half the population
+of England died, and that twenty-five millions of people perished in
+various parts of Europe. In 1552 sixty-seven thousand patients died of
+the plague at Paris alone, and in 1580 more than twenty thousand. The
+great plague in England and other parts of Europe in the seventeenth
+century was also fearful, and that which swept the south of Europe in
+the early part of the eighteenth century, as well as the invasions by
+the cholera at various times during the nineteenth, while less
+terrible than those of former years, have left a deep impress upon the
+imaginations of men.
+
+From the earliest records we find such pestilences attributed to the
+wrath or malice of unseen powers. This had been the prevailing view even
+in the most cultured ages before the establishment of Christianity: in
+Greece and Rome especially, plagues of various sorts were attributed
+to the wrath of the gods; in Judea, the scriptural records of various
+plagues sent upon the earth by the Divine fiat as a punishment for sin
+show the continuance of this mode of thought. Among many examples and
+intimations of this in our sacred literature, we have the epidemic which
+carried off fourteen thousand seven hundred of the children of Israel,
+and which was only stayed by the prayers and offerings of Aaron, the
+high priest; the destruction of seventy thousand men in the pestilence
+by which King David was punished for the numbering of Israel, and
+which was only stopped when the wrath of Jahveh was averted by
+burnt-offerings; the plague threatened by the prophet Zechariah, and
+that delineated in the Apocalypse. From these sources this current of
+ideas was poured into the early Christian Church, and hence it has been
+that during nearly twenty centuries since the rise of Christianity,
+and down to a period within living memory, at the appearance of
+any pestilence the Church authorities, instead of devising sanitary
+measures, have very generally preached the necessity of immediate
+atonement for offences against the Almighty.
+
+This view of the early Church was enriched greatly by a new development
+of theological thought regarding the powers of Satan and evil angels,
+the declaration of St. Paul that the gods of antiquity were devils being
+cited as its sufficient warrant.(329)
+
+
+     (329) For plague during the Peloponnesian war, see Thucydides, vol. ii,
+pp.47-55, and vol. iii, p. 87. For a general statement regarding this
+and other plagues in ancient times, see Lucretius, vol. vi, pp. 1090 et
+seq.; and for a translation, see vol. i, p. 179, in Munro's edition
+of 1886. For early views of sanitary science in Greece and Rome, see
+Forster's Inquiry, in The Pamphleteer, vol. xxiv, p. 404. For the
+Greek view of the interference of the gods in disease, especially in
+pestilence, see Grote's History of Greece, vol. i, pp. 251, 485,
+and vol. vi, p. 213; see also Herodotus, lib. iii, c. xxxviii, and
+elsewhere. For the Hebrew view of the same interference by the Almighty,
+see especially Numbers xi, 4-34; also xvi, 49; I Samuel xxiv; also Psalm
+cvi, 29; also the well-known texts in Zechariah and Revelation. For St.
+Paul's declaration that the gods of the heathen are devils, see I Cor.
+x, 20. As to the earlier origin of the plague in Egypt, see Haeser,
+'Lehrbuch der Geschichte der Medicin und der epidemischen Krankheiten,
+Jena, 1875-'82, vol. iii, pp. 15 et seq.
+
+
+Moreover, comets, falling stars, and earthquakes were thought, upon
+scriptural authority, to be "signs and wonders"--evidences of the
+Divine wrath, heralds of fearful visitations; and this belief, acting
+powerfully upon the minds of millions, did much to create a panic-terror
+sure to increase epidemic disease wherever it broke forth.
+
+The main cause of this immense sacrifice of life is now known to have
+been the want of hygienic precaution, both in the Eastern centres, where
+various plagues were developed, and in the European towns through which
+they spread. And here certain theological reasonings came in to resist
+the evolution of a proper sanitary theory. Out of the Orient had been
+poured into the thinking of western Europe the theological idea that the
+abasement of man adds to the glory of God; that indignity to the body
+may secure salvation to the soul; hence, that cleanliness betokens pride
+and filthiness humility. Living in filth was regarded by great numbers
+of holy men, who set an example to the Church and to society, as an
+evidence of sanctity. St. Jerome and the Breviary of the Roman Church
+dwell with unction on the fact that St. Hilarion lived his whole life
+long in utter physical uncleanliness; St. Athanasius glorifies St.
+Anthony because he had never washed his feet; St. Abraham's most
+striking evidence of holiness was that for fifty years he washed neither
+his hands nor his feet; St. Sylvia never washed any part of her body
+save her fingers; St. Euphraxia belonged to a convent in which the nuns
+religiously abstained from bathing. St. Mary of Egypt was eminent for
+filthiness; St. Simnon Stylites was in this respect unspeakable--the
+least that can be said is, that he lived in ordure and stench
+intolerable to his visitors. The Lives of the Saints dwell with
+complacency on the statement that, when sundry Eastern monks showed a
+disposition to wash themselves, the Almighty manifested his displeasure
+by drying up a neighbouring stream until the bath which it had supplied
+was destroyed.
+
+The religious world was far indeed from the inspired utterance
+attributed to John Wesley, that "cleanliness is near akin to godliness."
+For century after century the idea prevailed that filthiness was akin to
+holiness; and, while we may well believe that the devotion of the clergy
+to the sick was one cause why, during the greater plagues, they lost so
+large a proportion of their numbers, we can not escape the conclusion
+that their want of cleanliness had much to do with it. In France, during
+the fourteenth century, Guy de Chauliac, the great physician of
+his time, noted particularly that certain Carmelite monks suffered
+especially from pestilence, and that they were especially filthy. During
+the Black Death no less than nine hundred Carthusian monks fell victims
+in one group of buildings.
+
+Naturally, such an example set by the venerated leaders of thought
+exercised great influence throughout society, and all the more because
+it justified the carelessness and sloth to which ordinary humanity is
+prone. In the principal towns of Europe, as well as in the country at
+large, down to a recent period, the most ordinary sanitary precautions
+were neglected, and pestilences continued to be attributed to the
+wrath of God or the malice of Satan. As to the wrath of God, a new and
+powerful impulse was given to this belief in the Church toward the
+end of the sixth century by St. Gregory the Great. In 590, when he was
+elected Pope, the city of Rome was suffering from a dreadful pestilence:
+the people were dying by thousands; out of one procession imploring the
+mercy of Heaven no less than eighty persons died within an hour:
+what the heathen in an earlier epoch had attributed to Apollo was now
+attributed to Jehovah, and chroniclers tell us that fiery darts were
+seen flung from heaven into the devoted city. But finally, in the midst
+of all this horror, Gregory, at the head of a penitential procession,
+saw hovering over the mausoleum of Hadrian the figure of the archangel
+Michael, who was just sheathing a flaming sword, while three angels
+were heard chanting the Regina Coeli. The legend continues that the Pope
+immediately broke forth into hallelujahs for this sign that the plague
+was stayed, and, as it shortly afterward became less severe, a chapel
+was built at the summit of the mausoleum and dedicated to St. Michael;
+still later, above the whole was erected the colossal statue of the
+archangel sheathing his sword, which still stands to perpetuate the
+legend. Thus the greatest of Rome's ancient funeral monuments was made
+to bear testimony to this medieval belief; the mausoleum of Hadrian
+became the castle of St. Angelo. A legend like this, claiming to
+date from the greatest of the early popes, and vouched for by such an
+imposing monument, had undoubtedly a marked effect upon the dominant
+theology throughout Europe, which was constantly developing a great body
+of thought regarding the agencies by which the Divine wrath might be
+averted.
+
+First among these agencies, naturally, were evidences of devotion,
+especially gifts of land, money, or privileges to churches, monasteries,
+and shrines--the seats of fetiches which it was supposed had wrought
+cures or might work them. The whole evolution of modern history, not
+only ecclesiastical but civil, has been largely affected by the wealth
+transferred to the clergy at such periods. It was noted that in the
+fourteenth century, after the great plague, the Black Death, had passed,
+an immensely increased proportion of the landed and personal property of
+every European country was in the hands of the Church. Well did a great
+ecclesiastic remark that "pestilences are the harvests of the ministers
+of God."(330)
+
+
+     (330) For triumphant mention of St. Hilarion's filth, see the Roman
+Breviary for October 21st; and for details, see S. Hieronymus, Vita S.
+Hilarionis Eremitae, in Migne, Patrologia, vol. xxiii. For Athanasius's
+reference to St. Anthony's filth, see works of St. Athanasius in the
+Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, second series, vol. iv, p. 209. For the
+filthiness of the other saints named, see citations from the Lives of
+the Saints, in Lecky's History of European Morals, vol. ii, pp. 117,
+118. For Guy de Chauliac's observation on the filthiness of Carmelite
+monks and their great losses by pestilence, see Meryon, History of
+Medicine, vol. i, p. 257. For the mortality among the Carthusian monks
+in time of plague, see Mrs. Lecky's very interesting Visit to the Grand
+Chartreuse, in The Nineteenth Century for March, 1891. For the plague
+at Rome in 590, the legend regarding the fiery darts, mentioned by Pope
+Gregory himself, and that of the castle of St. Angelo, see Gregorovius,
+Geschichte der Stadt Rom im Mittelalter, vol. ii, pp. 26-35; also Story,
+Castle of St. Angelo, etc., chap. ii. For the remark that "pestilences
+are the harvest of the ministers of God," see reference to Charlevoix,
+in Southey, History of Brazil, vol. ii, p. 254, cited in Buckle, vol. i,
+p. 130, note.
+
+
+Other modes of propitiating the higher powers were penitential
+processions, the parading of images of the Virgin or of saints through
+plague-stricken towns, and fetiches innumerable. Very noted in the
+thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were the processions of the
+flagellants, trooping through various parts of Europe, scourging their
+naked bodies, shrieking the penitential psalms, and often running from
+wild excesses of devotion to the maddest orgies.
+
+Sometimes, too, plagues were attributed to the wrath of lesser heavenly
+powers. Just as, in former times, the fury of "far-darting Apollo" was
+felt when his name was not respectfully treated by mortals, so, in 1680,
+the Church authorities at Rome discovered that the plague then raging
+resulted from the anger of St. Sebastian because no monument had been
+erected to him. Such a monument was therefore placed in the Church of
+St. Peter ad Vincula, and the plague ceased.
+
+So much for the endeavour to avert the wrath of the heavenly powers.
+On the other hand, theological reasoning no less subtle was used in
+thwarting the malice of Satan. This idea, too, came from far. In the
+sacred books of India and Persia, as well as in our own, we find the
+same theory of disease, leading to similar means of cure. Perhaps
+the most astounding among Christian survivals of this theory and its
+resultant practices was seen during the plague at Rome in 1522. In that
+year, at that centre of divine illumination, certain people, having
+reasoned upon the matter, came to the conclusion that this great scourge
+was the result of Satanic malice; and, in view of St. Paul's declaration
+that the ancient gods were devils, and of the theory that the ancient
+gods of Rome were the devils who had the most reason to punish that city
+for their dethronement, and that the great amphitheatre was the chosen
+haunt of these demon gods, an ox decorated with garlands, after the
+ancient heathen manner, was taken in procession to the Colosseum and
+solemnly sacrificed. Even this proved vain, and the Church authorities
+then ordered expiatory processions and ceremonies to propitiate the
+Almighty, the Virgin, and the saints, who had been offended by this
+temporary effort to bribe their enemies.
+
+But this sort of theological reasoning developed an idea far more
+disastrous, and this was that Satan, in causing pestilences, used as his
+emissaries especially Jews and witches. The proof of this belief in
+the case of the Jews was seen in the fact that they escaped with a
+less percentage of disease than did the Christians in the great plague
+periods. This was doubtless due in some measure to their remarkable
+sanitary system, which had probably originated thousands of years
+before in Egypt, and had been handed down through Jewish lawgivers and
+statesmen. Certainly they observed more careful sanitary rules and
+more constant abstinence from dangerous foods than was usual among
+Christians; but the public at large could not understand so simple a
+cause, and jumped to the conclusion that their immunity resulted
+from protection by Satan, and that this protection was repaid and the
+pestilence caused by their wholesale poisoning of Christians. As a
+result of this mode of thought, attempts were made in all parts of
+Europe to propitiate the Almighty, to thwart Satan, and to stop the
+plague by torturing and murdering the Jews. Throughout Europe during
+great pestilences we hear of extensive burnings of this devoted people.
+In Bavaria, at the time of the Black Death, it is computed that twelve
+thousand Jews thus perished; in the small town of Erfurt the number is
+said to have been three thousand; in Strasburg, the Rue Brulee remains
+as a monument to the two thousand Jews burned there for poisoning the
+wells and causing the plague of 1348; at the royal castle of Chinon,
+near Tours, an immense trench was dug, filled with blazing wood, and
+in a single day one hundred and sixty Jews were burned. Everywhere in
+continental Europe this mad persecution went on; but it is a pleasure
+to say that one great churchman, Pope Clement VI, stood against this
+popular unreason, and, so far as he could bring his influence to bear on
+the maddened populace, exercised it in favour of mercy to these supposed
+enemies of the Almighty.(331)
+
+
+     (331) For an early conception in India of the Divinity acting through
+medicine, see The Bhagavadgita, translated by Telang, p. 82, in Max
+Muller's Sacred Books of the East. For the necessity of religious
+means of securing knowledge of medicine, see the Anugita, translated by
+Telang, in Max Muller's Sacred Books of the East, p. 388. For ancient
+Persian ideas of sickness as sent by the spirit of evil and to be cured
+by spells, but not excluding medicine and surgery, and for sickness
+generally as caused by the evil principle in demons, see the
+Zend-Avesta, Darmesteter's translation, introduction, passim, but
+especially p. xciii. For diseases wrought by witchcraft, see the same,
+pp. 230, 293. On the preferences of spells in healing over medicine and
+surgery, see Zend-Avesta, vol. i, pp. 85, 86. For healing by magic in
+ancient Greece, see, e. g., the cure of Ulysses in the Odyssey, "They
+stopped the black blood by a spell" (Odyssey, xxix, 457). For medicine
+in Egypt as partly priestly and partly in the hands of physicians, see
+Rawlinson's Herodotus, vol. ii, p. 136, note. For ideas of curing of
+disease by expulsion of demons still surviving among various tribes
+and nations of Asia, see J. G. Frazer, The Golden Bough: a Study of
+Comparative Religion, London, 1890, pp. 184-192. For the Flagellants and
+their processions at the time of the Black Death, see Lea, History
+of the Inquisition, New York, 1888, vol. ii, pp. 381 et seq. For the
+persecution of the Jews in time of pestilence, see ibid., p. 379 and
+following, with authorities in the notes. For the expulsion of the Jews
+from Padua, see the Acta Sanctorum, September, tom. viii, p. 893.
+
+
+Yet, as late as 1527, the people of Pavia, being threatened with plague,
+appealed to St. Bernardino of Feltro, who during his life had been a
+fierce enemy of the Jews, and they passed a decree promising that if
+the saint would avert the pestilence they would expel the Jews from the
+city. The saint apparently accepted the bargain, and in due time the
+Jews were expelled.
+
+As to witches, the reasons for believing them the cause of pestilence
+also came from far. This belief, too, had been poured mainly from
+Oriental sources into our sacred books and thence into the early Church,
+and was strengthened by a whole line of Church authorities, fathers,
+doctors, and saints; but, above all, by the great bull, Summis
+Desiderantes, issued by Pope Innocent VIII, in 1484. This utterance from
+the seat of St. Peter infallibly committed the Church to the idea that
+witches are a great cause of disease, storms, and various ills which
+afflict humanity; and the Scripture on which the action recommended
+against witches in this papal bull, as well as in so many sermons and
+treatises for centuries afterward, was based, was the famous text, "Thou
+shalt not suffer a witch to live." This idea persisted long, and the
+evolution of it is among the most fearful things in human history.(332)
+
+
+     (332) On the plagues generally, see Hecker, Epidemics of the Middle
+Ages, passim; but especially Haeser, as above, III. Band, pp. 1-202;
+also Sprengel, Baas, Isensee, et al. For brief statement showing
+the enormous loss of life in these plagues, see Littre, Medecine et
+Medecins, Paris, 1875, pp. 3 et seq. For a summary of the effects of
+the Black Plague throughout England, see Green's Short History of the
+English People, chap. v. For the mortality in the Paris hospitals,
+see Desmazes, Supplices, Prisons et Graces en France, Paris 1866. For
+striking descriptions of plague-stricken cities, see the well-known
+passages in Thucydides, Boccaccio, De Foe, and, above all, Manzoni's
+Promessi Sposi. For examples of averting the plagues by processions, see
+Leopold Delisle, Etudes sur la Condition de la Classe Agricole, etc., en
+Normandie au Moyen Age, p. 630; also Fort, chap. xxiii. For the anger of
+St. Sebastian as a cause of the plague at Rome, and its cessation when
+a monument had been erected to him, see Paulus Diaconus, cited in
+Gregorovius, vol. ii. p. 165. For the sacrifice of an ox in the
+Colosseum to the ancient gods as a means of averting the plague of 1522,
+at Rome, see Gregorovius, vol. viii, p. 390. As to massacres of the
+Jews in order to avert the wrath of God in pestilence, see L'Ecole et la
+Science, Paris, 1887, p. 178; also Hecker, and especially Hoeniger, Gang
+und Verbreitung des Schwarzen Todes in Deutschalnd, Berlin, 1889. For
+a long list of towns in which burnings of Jews took place for this
+imaginary cause, see pp. 7-11. As to absolute want of sanitary
+precautions, see Hecker, p. 292. As to condemnation by strong
+religionists of medical means in the plague, see Fort, p. 130. For a
+detailed account of the action of Popes Eugene IV, Innocent VIII, and
+other popes, against witchcraft, ascribing to it storms and diseases,
+and for the bull Summis Desiderantes, see the chapters on Meteorology
+and Magic in this series. The text of the bull is given in the Malleus
+Maleficarum, in Binsfield, and in Roskoff, Geschichte des Teufels,
+Leipzig, 1869, vol. i, pp. 222-225, and a good summary and analysis of
+it in Soldan, Geschichte der Hexenprocesse. For a concise and admirable
+statement of the contents and effects of the bull, see Lea, History of
+the Inquisition, vol. iii, pp. 40 et seq.; and for the best statement
+known to me of the general subject, Prof. George L. Burr's paper on
+The Literature of Witchcraft, read before the American Historical
+Association at Washington, 1890.
+
+
+In Germany its development was especially terrible. From the middle of
+the sixteenth century to the middle of the seventeenth, Catholic
+and Protestant theologians and ecclesiastics vied with each other in
+detecting witches guilty of producing sickness or bad weather; women
+were sent to torture and death by thousands, and with them, from time to
+time, men and children. On the Catholic side sufficient warrant for
+this work was found in the bull of Pope Innocent VIII, and the bishops'
+palaces of south Germany became shambles,--the lordly prelates of
+Salzburg, Wurzburg, and Bamberg taking the lead in this butchery.
+
+In north Germany Protestantism was just as conscientiously cruel. It
+based its theory and practice toward witches directly upon the Bible,
+and above all on the great text which has cost the lives of so many
+myriads of innocent men, women, and children, "Thou shalt not suffer a
+witch to live." Naturally the Protestant authorities strove to show that
+Protestantism was no less orthodox in this respect than Catholicism; and
+such theological jurists as Carpzov, Damhouder, and Calov did their work
+thoroughly. An eminent authority on this subject estimates the number of
+victims thus sacrificed during that century in Germany alone at over a
+hundred thousand.
+
+Among the methods of this witch activity especially credited in central
+and southern Europe was the anointing of city walls and pavements with
+a diabolical unguent causing pestilence. In 1530 Michael Caddo was
+executed with fearful tortures for thus besmearing the pavements of
+Geneva. But far more dreadful was the torturing to death of a large body
+of people at Milan, in the following century, for producing the plague
+by anointing the walls; and a little later similar punishments for the
+same crime were administered in Toulouse and other cities. The case in
+Milan may be briefly summarized as showing the ideas on sanitary science
+of all classes, from highest to lowest, in the seventeenth century. That
+city was then under the control of Spain; and, its authorities having
+received notice from the Spanish Government that certain persons
+suspected of witchcraft had recently left Madrid, and had perhaps gone
+to Milan to anoint the walls, this communication was dwelt upon in the
+pulpits as another evidence of that Satanic malice which the Church
+alone had the means of resisting, and the people were thus excited and
+put upon the alert. One morning, in the year 1630, an old woman, looking
+out of her window, saw a man walking along the street and wiping his
+fingers upon the walls; she immediately called the attention of another
+old woman, and they agreed that this man must be one of the diabolical
+anointers. It was perfectly evident to a person under ordinary
+conditions that this unfortunate man was simply trying to remove from
+his fingers the ink gathered while writing from the ink-horn which he
+carried in his girdle; but this explanation was too simple to satisfy
+those who first observed him or those who afterward tried him: a mob was
+raised and he was thrown into prison. Being tortured, he at first did
+not know what to confess; but, on inquiring from the jailer and others,
+he learned what the charge was, and, on being again subjected to torture
+utterly beyond endurance, he confessed everything which was suggested
+to him; and, on being tortured again and again to give the names of his
+accomplices, he accused, at hazard, the first people in the city whom
+he thought of. These, being arrested and tortured beyond endurance,
+confessed and implicated a still greater number, until members of the
+foremost families were included in the charge. Again and again all these
+unfortunates were tortured beyond endurance. Under paganism, the rule
+regarding torture had been that it should not be carried beyond human
+endurance; and we therefore find Cicero ridiculing it as a means of
+detecting crime, because a stalwart criminal of strong nerves might
+resist it and go free, while a physically delicate man, though innocent,
+would be forced to confess. Hence it was that under paganism a limit
+was imposed to the torture which could be administered; but, when
+Christianity had become predominant throughout Europe, torture was
+developed with a cruelty never before known. There had been evolved a
+doctrine of "excepted cases"--these "excepted cases" being especially
+heresy and witchcraft; for by a very simple and logical process of
+theological reasoning it was held that Satan would give supernatural
+strength to his special devotees--that is, to heretics and witches--and
+therefore that, in dealing with them, there should be no limit to the
+torture. The result was in this particular case, as in tens of thousands
+besides, that the accused confessed everything which could be suggested
+to them, and often in the delirium of their agony confessed far more
+than all that the zeal of the prosecutors could suggest. Finally, a
+great number of worthy people were sentenced to the most cruel death
+which could be invented. The records of their trials and deaths are
+frightful. The treatise which in recent years has first brought to
+light in connected form an authentic account of the proceedings in this
+affair, and which gives at the end engravings of the accused subjected
+to horrible tortures on their way to the stake and at the place of
+execution itself, is one of the most fearful monuments of theological
+reasoning and human folly.
+
+To cap the climax, after a poor apothecary had been tortured into a
+confession that he had made the magic ointment, and when he had been put
+to death with the most exquisite refinements of torture, his family were
+obliged to take another name, and were driven out from the city; his
+house was torn down, and on its site was erected "The Column of Infamy,"
+which remained on this spot until, toward the end of the eighteenth
+century, a party of young radicals, probably influenced by the reading
+of Beccaria, sallied forth one night and leveled this pious monument to
+the ground.
+
+Herein was seen the culmination and decline of the bull Summis
+Desiderantes. It had been issued by him whom a majority of the Christian
+world believes to be infallible in his teachings to the Church as
+regards faith and morals; yet here was a deliberate utterance in a
+matter of faith and morals which even children now know to be utterly
+untrue. Though Beccaria's book on Crimes and Punishments, with its
+declarations against torture, was placed by the Church authorities upon
+the Index, and though the faithful throughout the Christian world were
+forbidden to read it, even this could not prevent the victory of truth
+over this infallible utterance of Innocent VIII.(333)
+
+
+     (333) As to the fearful effects of the papal bull Summis Desiderantes in
+south Germany, as to the Protestant severities in north Germany, as to
+the immense number of women and children put to death for witchcraft
+in Germany generally for spreading storms and pestilence, and as to the
+monstrous doctrine of "excepted cases," see the standard authorities on
+witchcraft, especially Wachter, Beitrage zur Geschichte des Strafrechts,
+Soldan, Horst, Hauber, and Langin; also Burr, as above. In another
+series of chapters on The Warfare of Humanity with Theology, I hope to
+go more fully into the subject. For the magic spreading of the plague at
+Milan, see Manzoni, I Promessi Sposi and La Colonna Infame; and for
+the origin of the charges, with all the details of the trail, see the
+Precesso Originale degli Untori, Milan, 1839, passim, but especially
+the large folding plate at the end, exhibiting the tortures. For the
+after-history of the Column of Infamy, and for the placing of Beccaria's
+book on the Index, see Cantu, Vita di Beccaria. For the magic spreading
+of the plague in general, see Littre, pp. 492 and following.
+
+
+As the seventeenth century went on, ingenuity in all parts of Europe
+seemed devoted to new developments of fetichism. A very curious monument
+of this evolution in Italy exists in the Royal Gallery of Paintings at
+Naples, where may be seen several pictures representing the measures
+taken to save the city from the plague during the seventeenth century,
+but especially from the plague of 1656. One enormous canvas gives a
+curious example of the theological doctrine of intercession between man
+and his Maker, spun out to its logical length. In the background is the
+plague-stricken city: in the foreground the people are praying to the
+city authorities to avert the plague; the city authorities are praying
+to the Carthusian monks; the monks are praying to St. Martin, St. Bruno,
+and St. Januarius; these three saints in their turn are praying to the
+Virgin; the Virgin prays to Christ; and Christ prays to the Almighty.
+Still another picture represents the people, led by the priests,
+executing with horrible tortures the Jews, heretics, and witches who
+were supposed to cause the pestilence of 1656, while in the heavens
+the Virgin and St. Januarius are interceding with Christ to sheathe his
+sword and stop the plague.
+
+In such an atmosphere of thought it is no wonder that the death
+statistics were appalling. We hear of districts in which not more than
+one in ten escaped, and some were entirely depopulated.
+
+Such appeals to fetich against pestilence have continued in Naples down
+to our own time, the great saving power being the liquefaction of the
+blood of St. Januarius. In 1856 the present writer saw this miracle
+performed in the gorgeous chapel of the saint forming part of the
+Cathedral of Naples. The chapel was filled with devout worshippers of
+every class, from the officials in court dress, representing the Bourbon
+king, down to the lowest lazzaroni. The reliquary of silver-gilt, shaped
+like a large human head, and supposed to contain the skull of the saint,
+was first placed upon the altar; next, two vials containing a dark
+substance said to be his blood, having been taken from the wall, were
+also placed upon the altar near the head. As the priests said masses,
+they turned the vials from time to time, and the liquefaction being
+somewhat delayed, the great crowd of people burst out into more and more
+impassioned expostulation and petitions to the saint. Just in front
+of the altar were the lazzaroni who claimed to be descendants of the
+saint's family, and these were especially importunate: at such times
+they beg, they scold, they even threaten; they have been known to abuse
+the saint roundly, and to tell him that, if he did not care to show his
+favour to the city by liquefying his blood, St. Cosmo and St. Damian
+were just as good saints as he, and would no doubt be very glad to have
+the city devote itself to them. At last, on the occasion above referred
+to, the priest, turning the vials suddenly, announced that the saint had
+performed the miracle, and instantly priests, people, choir, and organ
+burst forth into a great Te Deum; bells rang, and cannon roared; a
+procession was formed, and the shrine containing the saint's relics was
+carried through the streets, the people prostrating themselves on both
+sides of the way and throwing showers of rose leaves upon the shrine
+and upon the path before it. The contents of these precious vials are an
+interesting relic indeed, for they represent to us vividly that period
+when men who were willing to go to the stake for their religious
+opinions thought it not wrong to save the souls of their fellowmen
+by pious mendacity and consecrated fraud. To the scientific eye this
+miracle is very simple: the vials contain, no doubt, one of those
+mixtures fusing at low temperature, which, while kept in its place
+within the cold stone walls of the church, remains solid, but upon being
+brought out into the hot, crowded chapel, and fondled by the warm hands
+of the priests, gradually softens and becomes liquid. It was curious
+to note, at the time above mentioned, that even the high functionaries
+representing the king looked at the miracle with awe: they evidently
+found "joy in believing," and one of them assured the present writer
+that the only thing which COULD cause it was the direct exercise of
+miraculous power.
+
+It may be reassuring to persons contemplating a visit to that beautiful
+capital in these days, that, while this miracle still goes on, it is
+no longer the only thing relied upon to preserve the public health. An
+unbelieving generation, especially taught by the recent horrors of the
+cholera, has thought it wise to supplement the power of St. Januarius by
+the "Risanamento," begun mainly in 1885 and still going on. The drainage
+of the city has thus been greatly improved, the old wells closed, and
+pure water introduced from the mountains. Moreover, at the last outburst
+of cholera a few years since, a noble deed was done which by its moral
+effect exercised a widespread healing power. Upon hearing of this
+terrific outbreak of pestilence, King Humbert, though under the ban of
+the Church, broke from all the entreaties of his friends and family,
+went directly into the plague-stricken city, and there, in the streets,
+public places, and hospitals, encouraged the living, comforted the sick
+and dying, and took means to prevent a further spread of the pestilence.
+To the credit of the Church it should also be said that the Cardinal
+Archbishop San Felice joined him in this.
+
+Miracle for miracle, the effect of this visit of the king seems to have
+surpassed anything that St. Januarius could do, for it gave confidence
+and courage which very soon showed their effects in diminishing the
+number of deaths. It would certainly appear that in this matter the king
+was more directly under Divine inspiration and guidance than was the
+Pope; for the fact that King Humbert went to Naples at the risk of his
+life, while Leo XIII remained in safety at the Vatican, impressed
+the Italian people in favour of the new regime and against the old as
+nothing else could have done.
+
+In other parts of Italy the same progress is seen under the new Italian
+government. Venice, Genoa, Leghorn, and especially Rome, which under the
+sway of the popes was scandalously filthy, are now among the cleanest
+cities in Europe. What the relics of St. Januarius, St. Anthony, and
+a multitude of local fetiches throughout Italy were for ages utterly
+unable to do, has been accomplished by the development of the simplest
+sanitary principles.
+
+Spain shows much the same characteristics of a country where theological
+considerations have been all-controlling for centuries. Down to the
+interference of Napoleon with that kingdom, all sanitary efforts
+were looked upon as absurd if not impious. The most sober accounts of
+travellers in the Spanish Peninsula until a recent period are sometimes
+irresistibly comic in their pictures of peoples insisting on maintaining
+arrangements more filthy than any which would be permitted in an
+American backwoods camp, while taking enormous pains to stop pestilence
+by bell-ringings, processions, and new dresses bestowed upon the local
+Madonnas; yet here, too, a healthful scepticism has begun to work for
+good. The outbreaks of cholera in recent years have done some little to
+bring in better sanitary measures.(334)
+
+
+     (334) As to the recourse to fetichism in Italy in time of plague, and
+the pictures showing the intercession of Januarius and other saints, I
+have relied on my own notes made at various visits to Naples. For the
+general subject, see Peter, Etudes Napolitaines, especially chapters
+v and vi. For detailed accounts of the liquefaction of St. Januarius's
+blood by eye-witnesses, one an eminent Catholic of the seventeenth
+century, and the other a distinguished Protestant of our own time,
+see Murray's Handbook for South Italy and Naples, description of the
+Cathedral of San Gennaro. For an interesting series of articles on the
+subject, see The Catholic World for September, October, and November,
+1871. For the incredible filthiness of the great cities of Spain, and
+the resistance of the people, down to a recent period, to the most
+ordinary regulations prompted by decency, see Bascome, History of
+the Epidemic Pestilences, especially pp. 119, 120. See also the
+Autobiography of D'Ewes, London, 1845, vol. ii, p. 446; also, for
+various citations, the second volume of Buckle, History of Civilization
+in England.
+
+
+
+
+II. GRADUAL DECAY OF THEOLOGICAL VIEWS REGARDING SANITATION.
+
+
+We have seen how powerful in various nations especially obedient to
+theology were the forces working in opposition to the evolution of
+hygiene, and we shall find this same opposition, less effective, it is
+true, but still acting with great power, in countries which had become
+somewhat emancipated from theological control. In England, during the
+medieval period, persecutions of Jews were occasionally resorted to, and
+here and there we hear of persecutions of witches; but, as torture was
+rarely used in England, there were, from those charged with producing
+plague, few of those torture-born confessions which in other countries
+gave rise to widespread cruelties. Down to the sixteenth and seventeenth
+centuries the filthiness in the ordinary mode of life in England was
+such as we can now hardly conceive: fermenting organic material was
+allowed to accumulate and become a part of the earthen floors of rural
+dwellings; and this undoubtedly developed the germs of many diseases. In
+his noted letter to the physician of Cardinal Wolsey, Erasmus describes
+the filth thus incorporated into the floors of English houses, and, what
+is of far more importance, he shows an inkling of the true cause of the
+wasting diseases of the period. He says, "If I entered into a chamber
+which had been uninhabited for months, I was immediately seized with a
+fever." He ascribed the fearful plague of the sweating sickness to this
+cause. So, too, the noted Dr. Caius advised sanitary precautions against
+the plague, and in after-generations, Mead, Pringle, and others urged
+them; but the prevailing thought was too strong, and little was done.
+Even the floor of the presence chamber of Queen Elizabeth in Greenwich
+Palace was "covered with hay, after the English fashion," as one of the
+chroniclers tells us.
+
+In the seventeenth century, aid in these great scourges was mainly
+sought in special church services. The foremost English churchmen during
+that century being greatly given to study of the early fathers of the
+Church; the theological theory of disease, so dear to the fathers, still
+held sway, and this was the case when the various visitations reached
+their climax in the great plague of London in 1665, which swept off more
+than a hundred thousand people from that city. The attempts at meeting
+it by sanitary measures were few and poor; the medical system of
+the time was still largely tinctured by superstitions resulting from
+medieval modes of thought; hence that plague was generally attributed to
+the Divine wrath caused by "the prophaning of the Sabbath." Texts from
+Numbers, the Psalms, Zechariah, and the Apocalypse were dwelt upon in
+the pulpits to show that plagues are sent by the Almighty to punish
+sin; and perhaps the most ghastly figure among all those fearful scenes
+described by De Foe is that of the naked fanatic walking up and down the
+streets with a pan of fiery coals upon his head, and, after the manner
+of Jonah at Nineveh, proclaiming woe to the city, and its destruction in
+forty days.
+
+That sin caused this plague is certain, but it was sanitary sin. Both
+before and after this culmination of the disease cases of plague were
+constantly occurring in London throughout the seventeenth century; but
+about the beginning of the eighteenth century it began to disappear. The
+great fire had done a good work by sweeping off many causes and centres
+of infection, and there had come wider streets, better pavements, and
+improved water supply; so that, with the disappearance of the plague,
+other diseases, especially dysenteries, which had formerly raged in the
+city, became much less frequent.
+
+But, while these epidemics were thus checked in London, others developed
+by sanitary ignorance raged fearfully both there and elsewhere, and of
+these perhaps the most fearful was the jail fever. The prisons of that
+period were vile beyond belief. Men were confined in dungeons rarely if
+ever disinfected after the death of previous occupants, and on corridors
+connecting directly with the foulest sewers: there was no proper
+disinfection, ventilation, or drainage; hence in most of the large
+prisons for criminals or debtors the jail fever was supreme, and from
+these centres it frequently spread through the adjacent towns. This was
+especially the case during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In
+the Black Assize at Oxford, in 1577, the chief baron, the sheriff, and
+about three hundred men died within forty hours. Lord Bacon declared the
+jail fever "the most pernicious infection next to the plague." In 1730,
+at the Dorsetshire Assize, the chief baron and many lawyers were killed
+by it. The High Sheriff of Somerset also took the disease and died. A
+single Scotch regiment, being infected from some prisoners, lost no less
+than two hundred. In 1750 the disease was so virulent at Newgate, in the
+heart of London, that two judges, the lord mayor, sundry aldermen, and
+many others, died of it.
+
+It is worth noting that, while efforts at sanitary dealing with this
+state of things were few, the theological spirit developed a new and
+special form of prayer for the sufferers and placed it in the Irish
+Prayer Book.
+
+These forms of prayer seem to have been the main reliance through the
+first half of the eighteenth century. But about 1750 began the work
+of John Howard, who visited the prisons of England, made known their
+condition to the world, and never rested until they were greatly
+improved. Then he applied the same benevolent activity to prisons in
+other countries, in the far East, and in southern Europe, and finally
+laid down his life, a victim to disease contracted on one of his
+missions of mercy; but the hygienic reforms he began were developed
+more and more until this fearful blot upon modern civilization was
+removed.(335)
+
+
+     (335) For Erasmus, see the letter cited in Bascome, History of Epidemic
+Pestilences, London, 1851. For the account of the condition of Queen
+Elizabeth's presence chamber, see the same, p. 206; see also the same
+for attempts at sanitation by Caius, Mead, Pringle, and others; also
+see Baas and various medical authorities. For the plague in London, see
+Green's History of the English People, chap. ix, sec. 2; and for a more
+detailed account, see Lingard, History of England, enlarged edition of
+1849, vol. ix, pp. 107 et seq. For full scientific discussion of this
+and other plagues from a medical point of view, see Creighton, History
+of Epidemics in Great Britain, vol. ii, chap. i. For the London plague
+as a punishment for Sabbath-breaking, see A Divine Tragedie lately
+acted, or A collection of sundry memorable examples of God's judgements
+upon Sabbath Breakers and other like libertines, etc., by the worthy
+divine, Mr. Henry Burton, 1641. The book gives fifty-six accounts of
+Sabbath-breakers sorely punished, generally struck dead, in England,
+with places, names, and dates. For a general account of the condition of
+London in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the diminution of
+the plague by the rebuilding of some parts of the city after the great
+fire, see Lecky, History of England in the Eighteenth Century, vol. i,
+pp. 592, 593. For the jail fever, see Lecky, vol. i, pp. 500-503.
+
+
+The same thing was seen in the Protestant colonies of America; but
+here, while plagues were steadily attributed to Divine wrath or
+Satanic malice, there was one case in which it was claimed that such
+a visitation was due to the Divine mercy. The pestilence among the
+INDIANS, before the arrival of the Plymouth Colony, was attributed in
+a notable work of that period to the Divine purpose of clearing New
+England for the heralds of the gospel; on the other hand, the plagues
+which destroyed the WHITE population were attributed by the same
+authority to devils and witches. In Cotton Mather's Wonder of the
+Invisible World, published at Boston in 1693, we have striking examples
+of this. The great Puritan divine tells us:
+
+"Plagues are some of those woes, with which the Divil troubles us. It
+is said of the Israelites, in 1 Cor. 10. 10. THEY WERE DESTROYED OF THE
+DESTROYER. That is, they had the Plague among them. 'Tis the Destroyer,
+or the Divil, that scatters Plagues about the World: Pestilential and
+Contagious Diseases, 'tis the Divel, who do's oftentimes Invade us with
+them. 'Tis no uneasy thing, for the Divel, to impregnate the Air
+about us, with such Malignant Salts, as meeting with the Salt of
+our Microcosm, shall immediately cast us into that Fermentation and
+Putrefaction, which will utterly dissolve All the Vital Tyes within us;
+Ev'n as an Aqua Fortis, made with a conjunction of Nitre and Vitriol,
+Corrodes what it Siezes upon. And when the Divel has raised those
+Arsenical Fumes, which become Venomous. Quivers full of Terrible Arrows,
+how easily can he shoot the deleterious Miasms into those Juices or
+Bowels of Men's Bodies, which will soon Enflame them with a Mortal Fire!
+Hence come such Plagues, as that Beesome of Destruction which within our
+memory swept away such a throng of people from one English City in one
+Visitation: and hence those Infectious Feavers, which are but so many
+Disguised Plagues among us, Causing Epidemical Desolations."
+
+Mather gives several instances of witches causing diseases, and speaks
+of "some long Bow'd down under such a Spirit of Infirmity" being
+"Marvelously Recovered upon the Death of the Witches," of which he gives
+an instance. He also cites a case where a patient "was brought unto
+death's door and so remained until the witch was taken and carried
+away by the constable, when he began at once to recover and was soon
+well."(336)
+
+
+     (336) For the passages from Cotton Mather, see his book as cited, pp.
+17, 18, also 134, 145. Johnson declares that "by this meanes Christ...
+not only made roome for His people to plant, but also tamed the hard
+and cruell hearts of these barbarous Indians, insomuch that a halfe a
+handful of His people landing not long after in Plymouth Plantation,
+found little resistance." See The History of New England, by Edward
+Johnson, London, 1654. Reprinted in the Massachusetts Historical
+Society's Collection, second series, vol. i, p. 67.
+
+
+In France we see, during generation after generation, a similar history
+evolved; pestilence after pestilence came, and was met by various
+fetiches. Noteworthy is the plague at Marseilles near the beginning of
+the last century. The chronicles of its sway are ghastly. They speak
+of great heaps of the unburied dead in the public places, "forming
+pestilential volcanoes"; of plague-stricken men and women in delirium
+wandering naked through the streets; of churches and shrines thronged
+with great crowds shrieking for mercy; of other crowds flinging
+themselves into the wildest debauchery; of robber bands assassinating
+the dying and plundering the dead; of three thousand neglected children
+collected in one hospital and then left to die; and of the death-roll
+numbering at last fifty thousand out of a population of less than ninety
+thousand.
+
+In the midst of these fearful scenes stood a body of men and women
+worthy to be held in eternal honour--the physicians from Paris and
+Montpellier; the mayor of the city, and one or two of his associates;
+but, above all, the Chevalier Roze and Bishop Belzunce. The history of
+these men may well make us glory in human nature; but in all this noble
+group the figure of Belzunce is the most striking. Nobly and firmly,
+when so many others even among the regular and secular ecclesiastics
+fled, he stood by his flock: day and night he was at work in the
+hospitals, cheering the living, comforting the dying, and doing what was
+possible for the decent disposal of the dead. In him were united the
+two great antagonistic currents of religion and of theology. As a
+theologian he organized processions and expiatory services, which, it
+must be confessed, rather increased the disease than diminished it;
+moreover, he accepted that wild dream of a hysterical nun--the worship
+of the material, physical sacred heart of Jesus--and was one of the
+first to consecrate his diocese to it; but, on the other hand, the
+religious spirit gave in him one of its most beautiful manifestations in
+that or any other century; justly have the people of Marseilles placed
+his statue in the midst of their city in an attitude of prayer and
+blessing.
+
+In every part of Europe and America, down to a recent period, we find
+pestilences resulting from carelessness or superstition still called
+"inscrutable providences." As late as the end of the eighteenth century,
+when great epidemics made fearful havoc in Austria, the main means
+against them seem to have been grovelling before the image of St.
+Sebastian and calling in special "witch-doctors"--that is, monks who
+cast out devils. To seek the aid of physicians was, in the neighbourhood
+of these monastic centres, very generally considered impious, and the
+enormous death rate in such neighbourhoods was only diminished in the
+present century, when scientific hygiene began to make its way.
+
+The old view of pestilence had also its full course in Calvinistic
+Scotland; the only difference being that, while in Roman Catholic
+countries relief was sought by fetiches, gifts, processions, exorcisms,
+burnings of witches, and other works of expiation, promoted by priests;
+in Scotland, after the Reformation, it was sought in fast-days and
+executions of witches promoted by Protestant elders. Accounts of the
+filthiness of Scotch cities and villages, down to a period well within
+this century, seem monstrous. All that in these days is swept into the
+sewers was in those allowed to remain around the houses or thrown into
+the streets. The old theological theory, that "vain is the help of man,"
+checked scientific thought and paralyzed sanitary endeavour. The result
+was natural: between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries thirty
+notable epidemics swept the country, and some of them carried off
+multitudes; but as a rule these never suggested sanitary improvement;
+they were called "visitations," attributed to Divine wrath against human
+sin, and the work of the authorities was to announce the particular
+sin concerned and to declaim against it. Amazing theories were thus
+propounded--theories which led to spasms of severity; and, in some of
+these, offences generally punished much less severely were visited with
+death. Every pulpit interpreted the ways of God to man in such seasons
+so as rather to increase than to diminish the pestilence. The effect of
+thus seeking supernatural causes rather than natural may be seen in such
+facts as the death by plague of one fourth of the whole population of
+the city of Perth in a single year of the fifteenth century, other towns
+suffering similarly both then and afterward.
+
+Here and there, physicians more wisely inspired endeavoured to push
+sanitary measures, and in 1585 attempts were made to clean the streets
+of Edinburgh; but the chroniclers tell us that "the magistrates and
+ministers gave no heed." One sort of calamity, indeed, came in as a
+mercy--the great fires which swept through the cities, clearing and
+cleaning them. Though the town council of Edinburgh declared the noted
+fire of 1700 "a fearful rebuke of God," it was observed that, after it
+had done its work, disease and death were greatly diminished.(337)
+
+
+     (337) For the plague at Marseilles and its depopulation, see Henri
+Martin, Histoire de France, vol. xv, especially document cited in
+appendix; also Gibbon, Decline and Fall, chap. xliii; also Rambaud. For
+the resort to witch doctors in Austria against pestilence, down to
+the end of the eighteenth century, see Biedermann, Deutschland im
+Achtzehnten Jahrhundert. For the resort to St. Sebastian, see the
+widespread editions of the Vita et Gesta Sancti Sebastiani, contra
+pestem patroni, prefaced with commendations from bishops and other high
+ecclesiastics. The edition in the Cornell University Library is that of
+Augsburg, 1693. For the reign of filth and pestilence in Scotland, see
+Charles Rogers, D. D., Social Life in Scotland, Edinburgh, 1884, vol. i,
+pp. 305-316; see also Buckle's second volume.
+
+
+
+
+
+III. THE TRIUMPH OF SANITARY SCIENCE.
+
+
+But by those standing in the higher places of thought some glimpses of
+scientific truth had already been obtained, and attempts at compromise
+between theology and science in this field began to be made, not only by
+ecclesiastics, but first of all, as far back as the seventeenth century,
+by a man of science eminent both for attainments and character--Robert
+Boyle. Inspired by the discoveries in other fields, which had swept away
+so much of theological thought, he could no longer resist the conviction
+that some epidemics are due--in his own words--"to a tragical concourse
+of natural causes"; but he argued that some of these may be the result
+of Divine interpositions provoked by human sins. As time went on,
+great difficulties showed themselves in the way of this
+compromise--difficulties theological not less than difficulties
+scientific. To a Catholic it was more and more hard to explain the
+theological grounds why so many orthodox cities, firm in the faith,
+were punished, and so many heretical cities spared; and why, in regions
+devoted to the Church, the poorer people, whose faith in theological
+fetiches was unquestioning, died in times of pestilence like flies,
+while sceptics so frequently escaped. Difficulties of the same sort
+beset devoted Protestants; they, too, might well ask why it was that the
+devout peasantry in their humble cottages perished, while so much
+larger a proportion of the more sceptical upper classes were untouched.
+Gradually it dawned both upon Catholic and Protestant countries that, if
+any sin be punished by pestilence, it is the sin of filthiness; more and
+more it began to be seen by thinking men of both religions that
+Wesley's great dictum stated even less than the truth; that not only
+was "cleanliness akin to godliness," but that, as a means of keeping
+off pestilence, it was far superior to godliness as godliness was then
+generally understood.(338)
+
+
+     (338) For Boyle's attempt at compromise, see Discourse on the Air, in
+his works, vol. iv, pp. 288, 289, cited by Buckle, vol. i, pp. 128, 129,
+note.
+
+
+The recent history of sanitation in all civilized countries shows
+triumphs which might well fill us with wonder, did there not rise within
+us a far greater wonder that they were so long delayed. Amazing is it to
+see how near the world has come again and again to discovering the key
+to the cause and cure of pestilence. It is now a matter of the simplest
+elementary knowledge that some of the worst epidemics are conveyed in
+water. But this fact seems to have been discovered many times in human
+history. In the Peloponnesian war the Athenians asserted that their
+enemies had poisoned their cisterns; in the Middle Ages the people
+generally declared that the Jews had poisoned their wells; and as late
+as the cholera of 1832 the Parisian mob insisted that the water-carriers
+who distributed water for drinking purposes from the Seine, polluted as
+it was by sewage, had poisoned it, and in some cases murdered them
+on this charge: so far did this feeling go that locked covers were
+sometimes placed upon the water-buckets. Had not such men as Roger
+Bacon and his long line of successors been thwarted by theological
+authority,--had not such men as Thomas Aquinas, Vincent of Beauvais, and
+Albert the Great been drawn or driven from the paths of science into the
+dark, tortuous paths of theology, leading no whither,--the world to-day,
+at the end of the nineteenth century, would have arrived at the solution
+of great problems and the enjoyment of great results which will only
+be reached at the end of the twentieth century, and even in generations
+more remote. Diseases like typhoid fever, influenza and pulmonary
+consumption, scarlet fever, diphtheria, pneumonia, and la grippe, which
+now carry off so many most precious lives, would have long since ceased
+to scourge the world.
+
+Still, there is one cause for satisfaction: the law governing the
+relation of theology to disease is now well before the world, and it is
+seen in the fact that, just in proportion as the world progressed from
+the sway of Hippocrates to that of the ages of faith, so it progressed
+in the frequency and severity of great pestilences; and that, on the
+other hand, just in proportion as the world has receded from that period
+when theology was all-pervading and all-controlling, plague after plague
+has disappeared, and those remaining have become less and less frequent
+and virulent.(339)
+
+
+     (339) For the charge of poisoning water and producing pestilence among
+the Greeks, see Grote, History of Greece, vol. vi, p. 213. For a similar
+charge against the Jews in the Middle Ages, see various histories
+already cited; and for the great popular prejudice against
+water-carriers at Paris in recent times, see the larger recent French
+histories.
+
+
+The recent history of hygiene in all countries shows a long series of
+victories, and these may well be studied in Great Britain and the United
+States. In the former, though there had been many warnings from eminent
+physicians, and above all in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
+from men like Caius, Mead, and Pringle, the result was far short of
+what might have been gained; and it was only in the year 1838 that
+a systematic sanitary effort was begun in England by the public
+authorities. The state of things at that time, though by comparison
+with the Middle Ages happy, was, by comparison with what has since been
+gained, fearful: the death rate among all classes was high, but among
+the poor it was ghastly. Out of seventy-seven thousand paupers in London
+during the years 1837 and 1838, fourteen thousand were suffering from
+fever, and of these nearly six thousand from typhus. In many other parts
+of the British Islands the sanitary condition was no better. A noble
+body of men grappled with the problem, and in a few years one of these
+rose above his fellows--the late Edwin Chadwick. The opposition to his
+work was bitter, and, though many churchmen aided him, the support given
+by theologians and ecclesiastics as a whole was very far short of what
+it should have been. Too many of them were occupied in that most costly
+and most worthless of all processes, "the saving of souls" by the
+inculcation of dogma. Yet some of the higher ecclesiastics and many of
+the lesser clergy did much, sometimes risking their lives, and one of
+them, Sidney Godolphin Osborne, deserves lasting memory for his struggle
+to make known the sanitary wants of the peasantry.
+
+Chadwick began to be widely known in 1848 as a member of the Board of
+Health, and was driven out for a time for overzeal; but from one point
+or another, during forty years, he fought the opposition, developed the
+new work, and one of the best exhibits of its results is shown in his
+address before the Sanitary Conference at Brighton in 1888. From this
+and other perfectly trustworthy sources some idea may be gained of the
+triumph of the scientific over the theological method of dealing with
+disease, whether epidemic or sporadic.
+
+In the latter half of the seventeenth century the annual mortality of
+London is estimated at not less than eighty in a thousand; about the
+middle of this century it stood at twenty-four in a thousand; in 1889
+it stood at less than eighteen in a thousand; and in many parts the
+most recent statistics show that it has been brought down to fourteen
+or fifteen in a thousand. A quarter of a century ago the death rate from
+disease in the Royal Guards at London was twenty in a thousand; in 1888
+it had been reduced to six in a thousand. In the army generally it
+had been seventeen in a thousand, but it has been reduced until it now
+stands at eight. In the old Indian army it had been sixty-nine in a
+thousand, but of late it has been brought down first to twenty, and
+finally to fourteen. Mr. Chadwick in his speech proved that much more
+might be done, for he called attention to the German army, where the
+death rate from disease has been reduced to between five and six in a
+thousand. The Public Health Act having been passed in 1875, the death
+rate in England among men fell, between 1871 and 1880, more than four in
+a thousand, and among women more than six in a thousand. In the decade
+between 1851 and 1860 there died of diseases attributable to defective
+drainage and impure water over four thousand persons in every million
+throughout England: these numbers have declined until in 1888 there died
+less than two thousand in every million. The most striking diminution
+of the deaths from such causes was found in 1891, in the case of typhoid
+fever, that diminution being fifty per cent. As to the scourge
+which, next to plagues like the Black Death, was formerly the most
+dreaded--smallpox--there died of it in London during the year 1890 just
+one person. Drainage in Bristol reduced the death rate by consumption
+from 4.4 to 2.3; at Cardiff, from 3.47 to 2.31; and in all England and
+Wales, from 2.68 in 1851 to 1.55 in 1888.
+
+What can be accomplished by better sanitation is also seen to-day by a
+comparison between the death rate among the children outside and inside
+the charity schools. The death rate among those outside in 1881 was
+twelve in a thousand; while inside, where the children were under
+sanitary regulations maintained by competent authorities, it has been
+brought down first to eight, then to four, and finally to less than
+three in a thousand.
+
+In view of statistics like these, it becomes clear that Edwin Chadwick
+and his compeers among the sanitary authorities have in half a century
+done far more to reduce the rate of disease and death than has been done
+in fifteen hundred years by all the fetiches which theological reasoning
+could devise or ecclesiastical power enforce.
+
+Not less striking has been the history of hygiene in France: thanks
+to the decline of theological control over the universities, to the
+abolition of monasteries, and to such labours in hygienic research and
+improvement as those of Tardieu, Levy, and Bouchardat, a wondrous change
+has been wrought in public health. Statistics carefully kept show that
+the mean length of human life has been remarkably increased. In the
+eighteenth century it was but twenty-three years; from 1825 to 1830
+it was thirty-two years and eight months; and since 1864, thirty-seven
+years and six months.
+
+
+
+
+IV. THE RELATION OF SANITARY SCIENCE TO RELIGION.
+
+
+The question may now arise whether this progress in sanitary science has
+been purchased at any real sacrifice of religion in its highest sense.
+One piece of recent history indicates an answer to this question.
+The Second Empire in France had its head in Napoleon III, a noted
+Voltairean. At the climax of his power he determined to erect an Academy
+of Music which should be the noblest building of its kind. It was
+projected on a scale never before known, at least in modern times, and
+carried on for years, millions being lavished upon it. At the same
+time the emperor determined to rebuild the Hotel-Dieu, the great Paris
+hospital; this, too, was projected on a greater scale than anything
+of the kind ever before known, and also required millions. But in
+the erection of these two buildings the emperor's determination was
+distinctly made known, that with the highest provision for aesthetic
+enjoyment there should be a similar provision, moving on parallel lines,
+for the relief of human suffering. This plan was carried out to the
+letter: the Palace of the Opera and the Hotel-Dieu went on with equal
+steps, and the former was not allowed to be finished before the latter.
+Among all the "most Christian kings" of the house of Bourbon who had
+preceded him for five hundred years, history shows no such obedience to
+the religious and moral sense of the nation. Catharine de' Medici and
+her sons, plunging the nation into the great wars of religion, never
+showed any such feeling; Louis XIV, revoking the Edict of Nantes for the
+glory of God, and bringing the nation to sorrow during many generations,
+never dreamed of making the construction of his palaces and public
+buildings wait upon the demands of charity. Louis XV, so subservient
+to the Church in all things, never betrayed the slightest consciousness
+that, while making enormous expenditures to gratify his own and the
+national vanity, he ought to carry on works, pari passu, for charity.
+Nor did the French nation, at those periods when it was most largely
+under the control of theological considerations, seem to have any
+inkling of the idea that nation or monarch should make provision for
+relief from human suffering, to justify provision for the sumptuous
+enjoyment of art: it was reserved for the second half of the nineteenth
+century to develop this feeling so strongly, though quietly, that
+Napoleon III, notoriously an unbeliever in all orthodoxy, was obliged to
+recognise it and to set this great example.
+
+Nor has the recent history of the United States been less fruitful in
+lessons. Yellow fever, which formerly swept not only Southern cities but
+even New York and Philadelphia, has now been almost entirely warded off.
+Such epidemics as that in Memphis a few years since, and the immunity of
+the city from such visitations since its sanitary condition was changed
+by Mr. Waring, are a most striking object lesson to the whole country.
+Cholera, which again and again swept the country, has ceased to be
+feared by the public at large. Typhus fever, once so deadly, is now
+rarely heard of. Curious is it to find that some of the diseases which
+in the olden time swept off myriads on myriads in every country, now
+cause fewer deaths than some diseases thought of little account, and
+for the cure of which people therefore rely, to their cost, on quackery
+instead of medical science.
+
+This development of sanitary science and hygiene in the United States
+has also been coincident with a marked change in the attitude of the
+American pulpit as regards the theory of disease. In this country, as
+in others, down to a period within living memory, deaths due to want of
+sanitary precautions were constantly dwelt upon in funeral sermons as
+"results of national sin," or as "inscrutable Providences." That view
+has mainly passed away among the clergy of the more enlightened parts of
+the country, and we now find them, as a rule, active in spreading useful
+ideas as to the prevention of disease. The religious press has been
+especially faithful in this respect, carrying to every household more
+just ideas of sanitary precautions and hygienic living.
+
+The attitude even of many among the most orthodox rulers in church and
+state has been changed by facts like these. Lord Palmerston refusing the
+request of the Scotch clergy that a fast day be appointed to ward off
+cholera, and advising them to go home and clean their streets,--the
+devout Emperor William II forbidding prayer-meetings in a similar
+emergency, on the ground that they led to neglect of practical human
+means of help,--all this is in striking contrast to the older methods.
+
+Well worthy of note is the ground taken in 1893, at Philadelphia, by
+an eminent divine of the Protestant Episcopal Church. The Bishop of
+Pennsylvania having issued a special call to prayer in order to ward off
+the cholera, this clergyman refused to respond to the call, declaring
+that to do so, in the filthy condition of the streets then prevailing in
+Philadelphia, would be blasphemous.
+
+In summing up the whole subject, we see that in this field, as in so
+many others, the triumph of scientific thought has gradually done much
+to evolve in the world not only a theology but also a religious spirit
+more and more worthy of the goodness of God and of the destiny of
+man.(340)
+
+
+     (340) On the improvement in sanitation in London and elsewhere in the
+north of Europe, see the editorial and Report of the Conference on
+Sanitation at Brighton, given in the London Times of August 27, 1888.
+For the best authorities on the general subject in England, see Sir John
+Simon on English Sanitary Institutions, 1890; also his published Health
+Reports for 1887, cited in the Edinburgh Review for January, 1891. See
+also Parkes's Hygiene, passim. For the great increase in the mean length
+of life in France under better hygienic conditions, see Rambaud, La
+Civilisation contemporaine en France, p. 682. For the approach to
+depopulation at Memphis, under the cesspool system in 1878, see Parkes,
+Hygiene, American appendix, p. 397. For the facts brought out in the
+investigation of the department of the city of New York by the Committee
+of the State Senate, of which the present writer was a member, see New
+York Senate Documents for 1865. For decrease of death rate in New York
+city under the new Board of Health, beginning in 1866, and especially
+among children, see Buck, Hygiene and Popular Health, New York, 1879,
+vol. ii, p. 573; and for wise remarks on religious duties during
+pestilence, see ibid., vol. ii, p. 579. For a contrast between the old
+and new ideas regarding pestilences, see Charles Kingsley in Fraser's
+Magazine, vol. lviii, p. 134; also the sermon of Dr. Burns, in 1875,
+at the Cathedral of Glasgow before the Social Science Congress. For a
+particularly bright and valuable statement of the triumphs of modern
+sanitation, see Mrs. Plunkett's article in The Popular Science Monthly
+for June, 1891. For the reply of Lord Palmerston to the Scotch clergy,
+see the well-known passage in Buckle. For the order of the Emperor
+William, see various newspapers for September, 1892, and especially
+Public Opinion for September 24th.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.  FROM "DEMONIACAL POSSESSION" TO INSANITY.
+
+
+
+
+I. THEOLOGICAL IDEAS OF LUNACY AND ITS TREATMENT.
+
+
+Of all the triumphs won by science for humanity, few have been
+farther-reaching in good effects than the modern treatment of the
+insane. But this is the result of a struggle long and severe between
+two great forces. On one side have stood the survivals of various
+superstitions, the metaphysics of various philosophies, the dogmatism of
+various theologies, the literal interpretation of various sacred books,
+and especially of our own--all compacted into a creed that insanity is
+mainly or largely demoniacal possession; on the other side has stood
+science, gradually accumulating proofs that insanity is always the
+result of physical disease.
+
+I purpose in this chapter to sketch, as briefly as I may, the history of
+this warfare, or rather of this evolution of truth out of error.
+
+Nothing is more simple and natural, in the early stages of civilization,
+than belief in occult, self-conscious powers of evil. Troubles and
+calamities come upon man; his ignorance of physical laws forbids him
+to attribute them to physical causes; he therefore attributes them
+sometimes to the wrath of a good being, but more frequently to the
+malice of an evil being.
+
+Especially is this the case with diseases. The real causes of disease
+are so intricate that they are reached only after ages of scientific
+labour; hence they, above all, have been attributed to the influence of
+evil spirits.(341)
+
+
+     (341) On the general attribution of disease to demoniacal influence, see
+Sprenger, History of Medicine, passim (note, for a later attitude, vol.
+ii, pp. 150-170, 178); Calmeil, De la Folie, Paris, 1845, vol. i, pp.
+104, 105; Esquirol, Des Maladies Mentales, Paris, 1838, vol. i, p. 482;
+also Tylor, Primitive Culture. For a very plain and honest statement of
+this view in our own sacred books, see Oort, Hooykaas, and Kuenen,
+The Bible for Young People, English translation, chap. v, p. 167 and
+following; also Farrar's Life of Christ, chap. xvii. For this idea
+in Greece and elsewhere, see Maury, La Magie, etc., vol. iii, p. 276,
+giving, among other citations, one from book v of the Odyssey. On the
+influence of Platonism, see Esquirol and others, as above--the main
+passage cited is from the Phaedo. For the devotion of the early fathers
+and doctors to this idea, see citations from Eusebius, Lactantius, St.
+Jerome, St. Augustine, St. John Chrysostom, St. Gregory Nazianzen,
+in Tissot, L'Imagination, p. 369; also Jacob (i.e., Paul Lecroix),
+Croyances Populaires, p. 183. For St. Augustine, see also his De
+Civitate Dei, lib. xxii, chap. vii, and his Enarration in Psal., cxxxv,
+1. For the breaking away of the religious orders in Italy from the
+entire supremacy of this idea, see Becavin, L'Ecole de Salerne, Paris,
+1888; also Daremberg, Histoire de la Medecine. Even so late as the
+Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther maintained (Table Talk, Hazlitt's
+translation, London, 1872, pp. 250, 256) that "Satan produces all the
+maladies which afflict mankind."
+
+
+But, if ordinary diseases were likely to be attributed to diabolical
+agency, how much more diseases of the brain, and especially the more
+obscure of these! These, indeed, seemed to the vast majority of mankind
+possible only on the theory of Satanic intervention: any approach to a
+true theory of the connection between physical causes and mental results
+is one of the highest acquisitions of science.
+
+Here and there, during the whole historic period, keen men had obtained
+an inkling of the truth; but to the vast multitude, down to the end of
+the seventeenth century, nothing was more clear than that insanity is,
+in many if not in most cases, demoniacal possession.
+
+Yet at a very early date, in Greece and Rome, science had asserted
+itself, and a beginning had been made which seemed destined to bring
+a large fruitage of blessings.(342) In the fifth century before the
+Christian era, Hippocrates of Cos asserted the great truth that all
+madness is simply disease of the brain, thereby beginning a development
+of truth and mercy which lasted nearly a thousand years. In the first
+century after Christ, Aretaeus carried these ideas yet further, observed
+the phenomena of insanity with great acuteness, and reached yet more
+valuable results. Near the beginning of the following century, Soranus
+went still further in the same path, giving new results of research, and
+strengthening scientific truth. Toward the end of the same century a new
+epoch was ushered in by Galen, under whom the same truth was developed
+yet further, and the path toward merciful treatment of the insane made
+yet more clear. In the third century Celius Aurelianus received this
+deposit of precious truth, elaborated it, and brought forth the great
+idea which, had theology, citing biblical texts, not banished it, would
+have saved fifteen centuries of cruelty--an idea not fully recognised
+again till near the beginning of the present century--the idea that
+insanity is brain disease, and that the treatment of it must be gentle
+and kind. In the sixth century Alexander of Tralles presented still more
+fruitful researches, and taught the world how to deal with melancholia;
+and, finally, in the seventh century, this great line of scientific men,
+working mainly under pagan auspices, was closed by Paul of Aegina, who
+under the protection of Caliph Omar made still further observations,
+but, above all, laid stress on the cure of madness as a disease, and on
+the absolute necessity of mild treatment.
+
+
+     (342) It is significant of this scientific attitude that the Greek word
+for superstition means, literally, fear of gods or demons.
+
+
+Such was this great succession in the apostolate of science: evidently
+no other has ever shown itself more directly under Divine grace,
+illumination, and guidance. It had given to the world what might have
+been one of its greatest blessings.(343)
+
+
+     (343) For authorities regarding this development of scientific truth
+and mercy in antiquity, see especially Krafft-Ebing, Lehrbuch des
+Psychiatrie, Stuttgart, 1888, p. 40 and the pages following; Trelat,
+Recherches Historiques sur la Folie, Paris, 1839; Semelaigne,
+L'Alienation mentale dans l'Antiquitie, Paris, 1869; Dagron, Des
+Alienes, Paris, 1875; also Calmeil, De la Folie, Sprenger, and
+especially Isensee, Geschichte der Medicin, Berlin, 1840.
+
+
+This evolution of divine truth was interrupted by theology. There set
+into the early Church a current of belief which was destined to bring
+all these noble acquisitions of science and religion to naught, and,
+during centuries, to inflict tortures, physical and mental, upon
+hundreds of thousands of innocent men and women--a belief which held
+its cruel sway for nearly eighteen centuries; and this belief was that
+madness was mainly or largely possession by the devil.
+
+This idea of diabolic agency in mental disease had grown luxuriantly
+in all the Oriental sacred literatures. In the series of Assyrian
+mythological tablets in which we find those legends of the Creation, the
+Fall, the Flood, and other early conceptions from which the Hebrews so
+largely drew the accounts wrought into the book of Genesis, have been
+discovered the formulas for driving out the evil spirits which cause
+disease. In the Persian theology regarding the struggle of the great
+powers of good and evil this idea was developed to its highest point.
+From these and other ancient sources the Jews naturally received this
+addition to their earlier view: the Mocker of the Garden of Eden became
+Satan, with legions of evil angels at his command; and the theory of
+diabolic causes of mental disease took a firm place in our sacred books.
+Such cases in the Old Testament as the evil spirit in Saul, which we
+now see to have been simply melancholy--and, in the New Testament,
+the various accounts of the casting out of devils, through which is
+refracted the beautiful and simple story of that power by which Jesus of
+Nazareth soothed perturbed minds by his presence or quelled outbursts
+of madness by his words, give examples of this. In Greece, too, an
+idea akin to this found lodgment both in the popular belief and in the
+philosophy of Plato and Socrates; and though, as we have seen, the great
+leaders in medical science had taught with more or less distinctness
+that insanity is the result of physical disease, there was a strong
+popular tendency to attribute the more troublesome cases of it to
+hostile spiritual influence.(344)
+
+
+     (344) For the exorcism against disease found at Ninevah, see G. Smith,
+Delitzsch's German translation, p. 34. For a very interesting passage
+regarding the representaion of a diabolic personage on a Babylonian
+bronze, and for a very frank statement regarding the transmission of
+ideas regarding Satanic power to our sacred books, see Sayce, Herodotus,
+appendix ii, p. 393. It is, indeed, extremely doubtful whether Plato
+himself or his contemporaries knew anything of evil demons, this
+conception probably coming into the Greek world, as into the Latin,
+with the Oriental influences that began to prevail about the time of the
+birth of Christ; but to the early Christians, a demon was a demon, and
+Plato's, good or bad, were pagan, and therefore devils. The Greek word
+"epilepsy" is itself a survival of the old belief, fossilized in a word,
+since its literal meaning refers to the SEIZURE of the patient by evil
+spirits.
+
+
+From all these sources, but especially from our sacred books and the
+writings of Plato, this theory that mental disease is caused largely
+or mainly by Satanic influence passed on into the early Church. In the
+apostolic times no belief seems to have been more firmly settled. The
+early fathers and doctors in the following age universally accepted it,
+and the apologists generally spoke of the power of casting out devils as
+a leading proof of the divine origin of the Christian religion.
+
+This belief took firm hold upon the strongest men. The case of St.
+Gregory the Great is typical. He was a pope of exceedingly broad mind
+for his time, and no one will think him unjustly reckoned one of the
+four Doctors of the Western Church. Yet he solemnly relates that a
+nun, having eaten some lettuce without making the sign of the cross,
+swallowed a devil, and that, when commanded by a holy man to come forth,
+the devil replied: "How am I to blame? I was sitting on the lettuce,
+and this woman, not having made the sign of the cross, ate me along with
+it."(345)
+
+
+     (345) For a striking statement of the Jewish belief in diabolical
+interference, see Josephus, De Bello Judaico, vii, 6, iii; also his
+Antiquities, vol. viii, Whiston's translation. On the "devil cast out,"
+in Mark ix, 17-29, as undoubtedly a case of epilepsy, see Cherullier,
+Essai sur l'Epilepsie; also Maury, art. Demonique in the Encyclopedie
+Moderne. In one text, at least, the popular belief is perfectly shown as
+confounding madness and possession: "He hath a devil, and is mad," John
+x, 20. Among the multitude of texts, those most relied upon were Matthew
+viii, 28, and Luke x, 17; and for the use of fetiches in driving out
+evil spirits, the account of the cures wrought by touching the garments
+of St. Paul in Acts xix, 12. On the general subject, see authorities
+already given, and as a typical passage, Tertullian, Ad. Scap., ii.
+For the very gross view taken by St. Basil, see Cudworth, Intellectual
+System, vol. ii, p. 648; also Archdeacon Farrar's Life of Christ. For
+the case related by St. Gregory the Great with comical details, see the
+Exempla of Archbishop Jacques de Vitrie, edited by Prof. T. F. Crane,
+of Cornell University, p. 59, art. cxxx. For a curious presentation
+of Greek views, see Lelut, Le demon Socrate, Paris, 1856; and for
+the transmission of these to Christianity, see the same, p. 201 and
+following.
+
+
+As a result of this idea, the Christian Church at an early period in
+its existence virtually gave up the noble conquests of Greek and Roman
+science in this field, and originated, for persons supposed to be
+possessed, a regular discipline, developed out of dogmatic theology.
+But during the centuries before theology and ecclesiasticism had become
+fully dominant this discipline was, as a rule, gentle and useful.
+The afflicted, when not too violent, were generally admitted to the
+exercises of public worship, and a kindly system of cure was attempted,
+in which prominence was given to holy water, sanctified ointments, the
+breath or spittle of the priest, the touching of relics, visits to holy
+places, and submission to mild forms of exorcism. There can be no doubt
+that many of these things, when judiciously used in that spirit of love
+and gentleness and devotion inherited by the earlier disciples from "the
+Master," produced good effects in soothing disturbed minds and in aiding
+their cure.
+
+Among the thousands of fetiches of various sorts then resorted to may
+be named, as typical, the Holy Handkerchief of Besancon. During many
+centuries multitudes came from far and near to touch it; for, it was
+argued, if touching the garments of St. Paul at Ephesus had cured the
+diseased, how much more might be expected of a handkerchief of the Lord
+himself!
+
+With ideas of this sort was mingled a vague belief in medical treatment,
+and out of this mixture were evolved such prescriptions as the
+following:
+
+"If an elf or a goblin come, smear his forehead with this salve, put it
+on his eyes, cense him with incense, and sign him frequently with the
+sign of the cross."
+
+"For a fiend-sick man: When a devil possesses a man, or controls him
+from within with disease, a spew-drink of lupin, bishopswort, henbane,
+garlic. Pound these together, add ale and holy water."
+
+And again: "A drink for a fiend-sick man, to be drunk out of a church
+bell: Githrife, cynoglossum, yarrow, lupin, flower-de-luce, fennel,
+lichen, lovage. Work up to a drink with clear ale, sing seven masses
+over it, add garlic and holy water, and let the possessed sing the Beati
+Immaculati; then let him drink the dose out of a church bell, and let
+the priest sing over him the Domine Sancte Pater Omnipotens."(346)
+
+
+     (346) See Cockayne, Leechdoms, Wort-cunning, and Star-Craft of Early
+England in the Rolls Series, vol. ii, p. 177; also pp. 355, 356. For the
+great value of priestly saliva, see W. W. Story's essays.
+
+
+Had this been the worst treatment of lunatics developed in the
+theological atmosphere of the Middle Ages, the world would have
+been spared some of the most terrible chapters in its history; but,
+unfortunately, the idea of the Satanic possession of lunatics led to
+attempts to punish the indwelling demon. As this theological theory and
+practice became more fully developed, and ecclesiasticism more powerful
+to enforce it, all mildness began to disappear; the admonitions
+to gentle treatment by the great pagan and Moslem physicians were
+forgotten, and the treatment of lunatics tended more and more toward
+severity: more and more generally it was felt that cruelty to madmen was
+punishment of the devil residing within or acting upon them.
+
+A few strong churchmen and laymen made efforts to resist this tendency.
+As far back as the fourth century, Nemesius, Bishop of Emesa,
+accepted the truth as developed by pagan physicians, and aided them
+in strengthening it. In the seventh century, a Lombard code embodied a
+similar effort. In the eighth century, one of Charlemagne's capitularies
+seems to have had a like purpose. In the ninth century, that great
+churchman and statesman, Agobard, Archbishop of Lyons, superior to his
+time in this as in so many other things, tried to make right reason
+prevail in this field; and, near the beginning of the tenth century,
+Regino, Abbot of Prum, in the diocese of Treves, insisted on treating
+possession as disease. But all in vain; the current streaming most
+directly from sundry texts in the Christian sacred books, and swollen by
+theology, had become overwhelming.(347)
+
+
+     (347) For a very thorough and interesting statement on the general
+subject, see Kirchhoff, Beziehungen des Damonen- und Hexenwesens zur
+deutschen Irrenpflege in the Allgemeine Zeitschrift fur Psychiatrie,
+Berlin, 1888, Bd. xliv, Heft 25. For Roman Catholic authority, see Addis
+and Arnold, Catholic Dictionary, article Energumens. For a brief and
+eloquent summary, see Krefft-Ebing, Lehrbuch der Psychiatrie, as above;
+and for a clear view of the transition from pagan mildness in the care
+of the insane to severity and cruelty under the Christian Church, see
+Maudsley, The Pathology of the Mind, London, 1879, p. 523. See also
+Buchmann, Die undfreie und die freie Kirche, Bresleau, 1873, p. 251.
+For other citations, see Kirchoff, as above, pp. 334-346. For Bishop
+Nemesius, see Trelat, p. 48. For an account of Agobard's general
+position in regard to this and allied superstitions, see Reginald Lane
+Poole's Illustrations of the History of Medieval Thought, London, 1884.
+
+
+The first great tributary poured into this stream, as we approach the
+bloom of the Middle Ages, appears to have come from the brain of Michael
+Psellus. Mingling scriptural texts, Platonic philosophy, and theological
+statements by great doctors of the Church, with wild utterances obtained
+from lunatics, he gave forth, about the beginning of the twelfth
+century, a treatise on The Work of Demons. Sacred science was vastly
+enriched thereby in various ways; but two of his conclusions, the
+results of his most profound thought, enforced by theologians and
+popularized by preachers, soon took special hold upon the thinking
+portion of the people at large. The first of these, which he easily
+based upon Scripture and St. Basil, was that, since all demons suffer by
+material fire and brimstone, they must have material bodies; the second
+was that, since all demons are by nature cold, they gladly seek a genial
+warmth by entering the bodies of men and beasts.(348)
+
+
+     (348) See Baas and Werner, cited by Kirchhoff, as above; also Lecky,
+Rationalism in Europe, vol. i, p. 68, and note, New York, 1884. As to
+Basil's belief in the corporeality of devils, see his Commentary on
+Isaiah, cap. i.
+
+
+Fed by this stream of thought, and developed in the warm atmosphere of
+medieval devotion, the idea of demoniacal possession as the main source
+of lunacy grew and blossomed and bore fruit in noxious luxuriance.
+
+There had, indeed, come into the Middle Ages an inheritance of
+scientific thought. The ideas of Hippocrates, Celius Aurelianus,
+Galen, and their followers, were from time to time revived; the Arabian
+physicians, the School of Salerno, such writers as Salicetus and Guy de
+Chauliac, and even some of the religious orders, did something to keep
+scientific doctrines alive; but the tide of theological thought was
+too strong; it became dangerous even to seem to name possible limits to
+diabolical power. To deny Satan was atheism; and perhaps nothing did so
+much to fasten the epithet "atheist" upon the medical profession as the
+suspicion that it did not fully acknowledge diabolical interference
+in mental disease. Following in the lines of the earlier fathers, St.
+Anselm, Abelard, St. Thomas Aquinas, Vincent of Beauvais, all the great
+doctors in the medieval Church, some of them in spite of occasional
+misgivings, upheld the idea that insanity is largely or mainly
+demoniacal possession, basing their belief steadily on the sacred
+Scriptures; and this belief was followed up in every quarter by more
+and more constant citation of the text "Thou shalt not suffer a witch
+to live." No other text of Scripture--save perhaps one--has caused the
+shedding of so much innocent blood.
+
+As we look over the history of the Middle Ages, we do, indeed, see
+another growth from which one might hope much; for there were two great
+streams of influence in the Church, and never were two powers more
+unlike each other.
+
+On one side was the spirit of Christianity, as it proceeded from the
+heart and mind of its blessed Founder, immensely powerful in aiding the
+evolution of religious thought and effort, and especially of provision
+for the relief of suffering by religious asylums and tender care.
+Nothing better expresses this than the touching words inscribed upon a
+great medieval hospital, "Christo in pauperibus suis." But on the other
+side was the theological theory--proceeding, as we have seen, from the
+survival of ancient superstitions, and sustained by constant reference
+to the texts in our sacred books--that many, and probably most, of the
+insane were possessed by the devil or in league with him, and that the
+cruel treatment of lunatics was simply punishment of the devil and his
+minions. By this current of thought was gradually developed one of
+the greatest masses of superstitious cruelty that has ever afflicted
+humanity. At the same time the stream of Christian endeavour, so far
+as the insane were concerned, was almost entirely cut off. In all the
+beautiful provision during the Middle Ages for the alleviation of human
+suffering, there was for the insane almost no care. Some monasteries,
+indeed, gave them refuge. We hear of a charitable work done for them at
+the London Bethlehem Hospital in the thirteenth century, at Geneva in
+the fifteenth, at Marseilles in the sixteenth, by the Black Penitents in
+the south of France, by certain Franciscans in northern France, by the
+Alexian Brothers on the Rhine, and by various agencies in other parts of
+Europe; but, curiously enough, the only really important effort in the
+Christian Church was stimulated by the Mohammedans. Certain monks, who
+had much to do with them in redeeming Christian slaves, found in the
+fifteenth century what John Howard found in the eighteenth, that the
+Arabs and Turks made a large and merciful provision for lunatics, such
+as was not seen in Christian lands; and this example led to better
+establishments in Spain and Italy.
+
+All honour to this work and to the men who engaged in it; but, as a
+rule, these establishments were few and poor, compared with those for
+other diseases, and they usually degenerated into "mad-houses," where
+devils were cast out mainly by cruelty.(349)
+
+
+     (349) For a very full and learned, if somewhat one-sided, account of the
+earlier effects of this stream of charitable thought, see Tollemer, Des
+Origines de la Charite Catholique, Paris, 1858. It is instructive to
+note that, while this book is very full in regard to the action of the
+Church on slavery and on provision for the widows and orphans, the sick,
+infirm, captives, and lepers, there is hardly a trace of any care for
+the insane. This same want is incidentally shown by a typical example
+in Kriegk, Aerzte, Heilanstalten und Geisteskranke im mittelalterlichen
+Frankfurt, Frankfurt a. M., 1863, pp. 16, 17; also Kirschhof, pp. 396,
+397. On the general subject, see Semelaigne, as above, p. 214; also
+Calmeil, vol. i, pp. 116, 117. For the effect of Muslem example in Spain
+and Italy, see Krafft-Ebing, as above, p. 45, note.
+
+
+The first main weapon against the indwelling Satan continued to be the
+exorcism; but under the influence of inferences from Scripture farther
+and farther fetched, and of theological reasoning more and more subtle,
+it became something very different from the gentle procedure of earlier
+times, and some description of this great weapon at the time of its
+highest development will throw light on the laws which govern the growth
+of theological reasoning, as well as upon the main subject in hand.
+
+A fundamental premise in the fully developed exorcism was that,
+according to sacred Scripture, a main characteristic of Satan is pride.
+Pride led him to rebel; for pride he was cast down; therefore the first
+thing to do, in driving him out of a lunatic, was to strike a fatal blow
+at his pride,--to disgust him.
+
+This theory was carried out logically, to the letter. The treatises
+on the subject simply astound one by their wealth of blasphemous and
+obscene epithets which it was allowable for the exorcist to use in
+casting out devils. The Treasury of Exorcisms contains hundreds of pages
+packed with the vilest epithets which the worst imagination could invent
+for the purpose of overwhelming the indwelling Satan.(350)
+
+
+     (350) Thesaurus Exorcismorum atque Conjurationum terribilium,
+potentissimorum, efficacissimorum, cum PRACTICA probatissima: quibus
+spiritus maligni, Daemones Maleficiaque omnia de Corporibus humanis
+obsessis, tanquam Flagellis Fustibusque fugantur, expelluntur,...
+Cologne, 1626. Many of the books of the exorcists were put upon the
+various indexes of the Church, but this, the richest collection of all,
+and including nearly all those condemned, was not prohibited until
+1709. Scarcely less startling manuals continued even later in use; and
+exorcisms adapted to every emergency may of course still be found in all
+the Benedictionals of the Church, even the latest. As an example, see
+the Manuale Benedictionum, published by the Bishop of Passau in 1849, or
+the Exorcismus in Satanam, etc., issued in 1890 by the present Pope, and
+now on sale at the shop of the Propoganda in Rome.
+
+
+Some of those decent enough to be printed in these degenerate days ran
+as follows:
+
+"Thou lustful and stupid one,... thou lean sow, famine-stricken and
+most impure,... thou wrinkled beast, thou mangy beast, thou beast of all
+beasts the most beastly,... thou mad spirit,... thou bestial and foolish
+drunkard,... most greedy wolf,... most abominable whisperer,... thou sooty
+spirit from Tartarus!... I cast thee down, O Tartarean boor, into the
+infernal kitchen!... Loathsome cobbler,... dingy collier,... filthy
+sow (scrofa stercorata),... perfidious boar,... envious crocodile,...
+malodorous drudge,... wounded basilisk,... rust-coloured asp,...
+swollen toad,... entangled spider,... lousy swine-herd (porcarie
+pedicose),... lowest of the low,... cudgelled ass," etc.
+
+But, in addition to this attempt to disgust Satan's pride with
+blackguardism, there was another to scare him with tremendous words. For
+this purpose, thunderous names, from Hebrew and Greek, were imported,
+such as Acharon, Eheye, Schemhamphora, Tetragrammaton, Homoousion,
+Athanatos, Ischiros, Aecodes, and the like.(351)
+
+
+     (351) See the Conjuratio on p. 300 of the Thesaurus, and the general
+directions given on pp. 251, 251.
+
+
+Efforts were also made to drive him out with filthy and rank-smelling
+drugs; and, among those which can be mentioned in a printed article,
+we may name asafoetida, sulphur, squills, etc., which were to be burned
+under his nose.
+
+Still further to plague him, pictures of the devil were to be spat upon,
+trampled under foot by people of low condition, and sprinkled with foul
+compounds.
+
+But these were merely preliminaries to the exorcism proper. In this
+the most profound theological thought and sacred science of the period
+culminated.
+
+Most of its forms were childish, but some rise to almost Miltonic
+grandeur. As an example of the latter, we may take the following:
+
+"By the Apocalypse of Jesus Christ, which God hath given to make
+known unto his servants those things which are shortly to be; and hath
+signified, sending by his angel,... I exorcise you, ye angels of untold
+perversity!
+
+"By the seven golden candlesticks,... and by one like unto the Son of
+man, standing in the midst of the candlesticks; by his voice, as the
+voice of many waters;... by his words, 'I am living, who was dead; and
+behold, I live forever and ever; and I have the keys of death and of
+hell,' I say unto you, Depart, O angels that show the way to eternal
+perdition!"
+
+Besides these, were long litanies of billingsgate, cursing, and
+threatening. One of these "scourging" exorcisms runs partly as follows:
+
+"May Agyos strike thee, as he did Egypt, with frogs!... May all the
+devils that are thy foes rush forth upon thee, and drag thee down to
+hell!... May... Tetragrammaton... drive thee forth and stone thee, as
+Israel did to Achan!... May the Holy One trample on thee and hang thee
+up in an infernal fork, as was done to the five kings of the
+Amorites!... May God set a nail to your skull, and pound it in with a
+hammer, as Jael did unto Sisera!... May... Sother... break thy head and
+cut off thy hands, as was done to the cursed Dagon!... May God hang thee
+in a hellish yoke, as seven men were hanged by the sons of Saul!" And so
+on, through five pages of close-printed Latin curses.(352)
+
+
+     (352) Thesaurus Exorcismorum, pp. 812-817.
+
+
+Occasionally the demon is reasoned with, as follows: "O obstinate,
+accursed, fly!... why do you stop and hold back, when you know that your
+strength is lost on Christ? For it is hard for thee to kick against the
+pricks; and, verily, the longer it takes you to go, the worse it will
+go with you. Begone, then: take flight, thou venomous hisser, thou lying
+worm, thou begetter of vipers!"(353)
+
+
+     (353) Ibid., p. 859.
+
+
+This procedure and its results were recognised as among the glories of
+the Church. As typical, we may mention an exorcism directed by a certain
+Bishop of Beauvais, which was so effective that five devils gave up
+possession of a sufferer and signed their names, each for himself and
+his subordinate imps, to an agreement that the possessed should be
+molested no more. So, too, the Jesuit fathers at Vienna, in 1583,
+gloried in the fact that in such a contest they had cast out twelve
+thousand six hundred and fifty-two living devils. The ecclesiastical
+annals of the Middle Ages, and, indeed, of a later period, abound in
+boasts of such "mighty works."(354)
+
+
+     (354) In my previous chapters, especially that on meteorology, I have
+quoted extensively from the original treatises, of which a very large
+collection is in my posession; but in this chapter I have mainly availed
+myself of the copious translations given by M. H. Dziewicki, in his
+excellent article in The Nineteenth Century for October, 1888, entitled
+Exorcizo Te. For valuable citations on the origin and spread of
+exorcism, see Lecky's European Morals (third English edition), vol. i,
+pp. 379-385.
+
+
+Such was the result of a thousand years of theological reasoning, by
+the strongest minds in Europe, upon data partly given in Scripture and
+partly inherited from paganism, regarding Satan and his work among men.
+
+Under the guidance of theology, always so severe against "science
+falsely so called," the world had come a long way indeed from the
+soothing treatment of the possessed by him who bore among the noblest
+of his titles that of "The Great Physician." The result was natural: the
+treatment of the insane fell more and more into the hands of the jailer,
+the torturer, and the executioner.
+
+To go back for a moment to the beginnings of this unfortunate
+development. In spite of the earlier and more kindly tendency in
+the Church, the Synod of Ancyra, as early as 314 A.D., commanded
+the expulsion of possessed persons from the Church; the Visigothic
+Christians whipped them; and Charlemagne, in spite of some good
+enactments, imprisoned them. Men and women, whose distempered minds
+might have been restored to health by gentleness and skill, were driven
+into hopeless madness by noxious medicines and brutality. Some few were
+saved as mere lunatics--they were surrendered to general carelessness,
+and became simply a prey to ridicule and aimless brutality; but vast
+numbers were punished as tabernacles of Satan.
+
+One of the least terrible of these punishments, and perhaps the most
+common of all, was that of scourging demons out of the body of a
+lunatic. This method commended itself even to the judgment of so
+thoughtful and kindly a personage as Sir Thomas More, and as late as the
+sixteenth century. But if the disease continued, as it naturally would
+after such treatment, the authorities frequently felt justified in
+driving out the demons by torture.(355)
+
+
+     (355) For prescription of the whipping-post by Sir Thomas More, see D.
+H. Tuke's History of Insanity in the British Isles, London, 1882, p. 41.
+
+
+Interesting monuments of this idea, so fruitful in evil, still exist.
+In the great cities of central Europe, "witch towers," where witches
+and demoniacs were tortured, and "fool towers," where the more gentle
+lunatics were imprisoned, may still be seen.
+
+In the cathedrals we still see this idea fossilized. Devils and imps,
+struck into stone, clamber upon towers, prowl under cornices, peer out
+from bosses of foliage, perch upon capitals, nestle under benches,
+flame in windows. Above the great main entrance, the most common of
+all representations still shows Satan and his imps scowling, jeering,
+grinning, while taking possession of the souls of men and scourging
+them with serpents, or driving them with tridents, or dragging them
+with chains into the flaming mouth of hell. Even in the most hidden and
+sacred places of the medieval cathedral we still find representations
+of Satanic power in which profanity and obscenity run riot. In these
+representations the painter and the glass-stainer vied with the
+sculptor. Among the early paintings on canvas a well-known example
+represents the devil in the shape of a dragon, perched near the head of
+a dying man, eager to seize his soul as it issues from his mouth, and
+only kept off by the efforts of the attendant priest. Typical are the
+colossal portrait of Satan, and the vivid picture of the devils cast
+out of the possessed and entering into the swine, as shown in the
+cathedral-windows of Strasburg. So, too, in the windows of Chartres
+Cathedral we see a saint healing a lunatic: the saint, with a long
+devil-scaring formula in Latin issuing from his mouth; and the lunatic,
+with a little detestable hobgoblin, horned, hoofed, and tailed, issuing
+from HIS mouth. These examples are but typical of myriads in cathedrals
+and abbeys and parish churches throughout Europe; and all served to
+impress upon the popular mind a horror of everything called diabolic,
+and a hatred of those charged with it. These sermons in stones preceded
+the printed book; they were a sculptured Bible, which preceded Luther's
+pictorial Bible.(356)
+
+
+     (356) I cite these instances out of a vast number which I have
+personally noted in visits to various cathedrals. For striking examples
+of mediaeval grotesques, see Wright's History of Caricature and the
+Grotesque, London, 1875; Langlois's Stalles de la Cathedrale de Rouen,
+1838; Adeline's Les Sculptures Grotesques et Symboliques, Rouen,
+1878; Viollet le Duc, Dictionnaire de l'Architecture; Gailhabaud, Sur
+l'Architecture, etc. For a reproduction of an illuminated manuscript in
+which devils fly out of the mouths of the possessed under the influence
+of exorcisms, see Cahier and Martin, Nouveaux Melanges d' Archeologie
+for 1874, p. 136; and for a demon emerging from a victim's mouth in a
+puff of smoke at the command of St. Francis Xavier, see La Devotion de
+Dix Vendredis, etc., Plate xxxii.
+
+
+Satan and his imps were among the principal personages in every popular
+drama, and "Hell's Mouth" was a piece of stage scenery constantly
+brought into requisition. A miracle-play without a full display of the
+diabolic element in it would have stood a fair chance of being pelted
+from the stage.(357)
+
+
+     (357) See Wright, History of Caricature and the Grotesque; F. J.
+Mone, Schauspiele des Mittelalters, Carlsruhe, 1846; Dr. Karl Hase,
+Miracle-Plays and Sacred Dramas, Boston,1880 (translation from the
+German). Examples of the miracle-plays may be found in Marriott's
+Collection of English Miracle-Plays, 1838; in Hone's Ancient Mysteries;
+in T. Sharpe's Dissertaion on the Pageants.. . anciently performed at
+Coventry, Coventry, 1828; in the publications of the Shakespearean and
+other societies. See especially The Harrowing of Hell, a miracle-play,
+edited from the original now in the British Museum, by T. O. Halliwell,
+London, 1840. One of the items still preserved is a sum of money paid
+for keeping a fire burning in hell's mouth. Says Hase (as above, p. 42):
+"In wonderful satyrlike masquerade, in which neither horns, tails,
+nor hoofs were ever... wanting, the devil prosecuted on the stage his
+business of fetching souls," which left the mouths of the dying "in the
+form of small images."
+
+
+Not only the popular art but the popular legends embodied these ideas.
+The chroniclers delighted in them; the Lives of the Saints abounded in
+them; sermons enforced them from every pulpit. What wonder, then, that
+men and women had vivid dreams of Satanic influence, that dread of it
+was like dread of the plague, and that this terror spread the disease
+enormously, until we hear of convents, villages, and even large
+districts, ravaged by epidemics of diabolical possession!(358)
+
+
+     (358) I shall discuss these epidemics of possession, which form a
+somewhat distinct class of phenomena, in the next chapter.
+
+
+And this terror naturally bred not only active cruelty toward those
+supposed to be possessed, but indifference to the sufferings of those
+acknowledged to be lunatics. As we have already seen, while ample and
+beautiful provision was made for every other form of human suffering,
+for this there was comparatively little; and, indeed, even this little
+was generally worse than none. Of this indifference and cruelty we
+have a striking monument in a single English word--a word originally
+significant of gentleness and mercy, but which became significant of
+wild riot, brutality, and confusion--Bethlehem Hospital became "Bedlam."
+
+Modern art has also dwelt upon this theme, and perhaps the most
+touching of all its exhibitions is the picture by a great French master,
+representing a tender woman bound to a column and exposed to the jeers,
+insults, and missiles of street ruffians.(359)
+
+
+     (359) The typical picture representing a priest's struggle with the
+devil is in the city gallery of Rouen. The modern picture is Robert
+Fleury's painting in the Luxembourg Gallery at Paris.
+
+
+Here and there, even in the worst of times, men arose who attempted to
+promote a more humane view, but with little effect. One expositor of St.
+Matthew, having ventured to recall the fact that some of the insane were
+spoken of in the New Testament as lunatics and to suggest that their
+madness might be caused by the moon, was answered that their madness
+was not caused by the moon, but by the devil, who avails himself of the
+moonlight for his work.(360)
+
+
+     (360) See Geraldus Cambrensis, cited by Tuke, as above, pp. 8, 9.
+
+
+One result of this idea was a mode of cure which especially aggravated
+and spread mental disease: the promotion of great religious processions.
+Troops of men and women, crying, howling, imploring saints, and beating
+themselves with whips, visited various sacred shrines, images, and
+places in the hope of driving off the powers of evil. The only result
+was an increase in the numbers of the diseased.
+
+For hundreds of years this idea of diabolic possession was steadily
+developed. It was believed that devils entered into animals, and animals
+were accordingly exorcised, tried, tortured, convicted, and executed.
+The great St. Ambrose tells us that a priest, while saying mass, was
+troubled by the croaking of frogs in a neighbouring marsh; that he
+exorcised them, and so stopped their noise. St. Bernard, as the monkish
+chroniclers tell us, mounting the pulpit to preach in his abbey, was
+interrupted by a cloud of flies; straightway the saint uttered the
+sacred formula of excommunication, when the flies fell dead upon the
+pavement in heaps, and were cast out with shovels! A formula of exorcism
+attributed to a saint of the ninth century, which remained in use down
+to a recent period, especially declares insects injurious to crops to
+be possessed of evil spirits, and names, among the animals to be
+excommunicated or exorcised, mice, moles, and serpents. The use of
+exorcism against caterpillars and grasshoppers was also common. In the
+thirteenth century a Bishop of Lausanne, finding that the eels in Lake
+Leman troubled the fishermen, attempted to remove the difficulty by
+exorcism, and two centuries later one of his successors excommunicated
+all the May-bugs in the diocese. As late as 1731 there appears an entry
+on the Municipal Register of Thonon as follows: "RESOLVED, That this
+town join with other parishes of this province in obtaining from Rome
+an excommunication against the insects, and that it will contribute pro
+rata to the expenses of the same."
+
+Did any one venture to deny that animals could be possessed by Satan,
+he was at once silenced by reference to the entrance of Satan into the
+serpent in the Garden of Eden, and to the casting of devils into swine
+by the Founder of Christianity himself.(361)
+
+
+     (361) See Menabrea, Proces au Moyen Age contre les Animaux, Chambery,
+1846, pp. 31 and following; also Desmazes, Supplices, Prisons et Grace
+en France, pp. 89, 90, and 385-395. For a formula and ceremonies used in
+excommunicating insects, see Rydberg, pp. 75 and following.
+
+
+One part of this superstition most tenaciously held was the belief that
+a human being could be transformed into one of the lower animals. This
+became a fundamental point. The most dreaded of predatory animals in the
+Middle Ages were the wolves. Driven from the hills and forests in the
+winter by hunger, they not only devoured the flocks, but sometimes came
+into the villages and seized children. From time to time men and women
+whose brains were disordered dreamed that they had been changed into
+various animals, and especially into wolves. On their confessing this,
+and often implicating others, many executions of lunatics resulted;
+moreover, countless sane victims, suspected of the same impossible
+crime, were forced by torture to confess it, and sent unpitied to the
+stake. The belief in such a transformation pervaded all Europe, and
+lasted long even in Protestant countries. Probably no article in
+the witch creed had more adherents in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and
+seventeenth centuries than this. Nearly every parish in Europe had its
+resultant horrors.
+
+The reformed Church in all its branches fully accepted the doctrines of
+witchcraft and diabolic possession, and developed them still further.
+No one urged their fundamental ideas more fully than Luther. He did,
+indeed, reject portions of the witchcraft folly; but to the influence of
+devils he not only attributed his maladies, but his dreams, and nearly
+everything that thwarted or disturbed him. The flies which lighted upon
+his book, the rats which kept him awake at night, he believed to be
+devils; the resistance of the Archbishop of Mayence to his ideas, he
+attributed to Satan literally working in that prelate's heart; to his
+disciples he told stories of men who had been killed by rashly resisting
+the devil. Insanity, he was quite sure, was caused by Satan, and he
+exorcised sufferers. Against some he appears to have advised stronger
+remedies; and his horror of idiocy, as resulting from Satanic influence,
+was so great, that on one occasion he appears to have advised the
+killing of an idiot child, as being the direct offspring of Satan. Yet
+Luther was one of the most tender and loving of men; in the whole range
+of literature there is hardly anything more touching than his words and
+tributes to children. In enforcing his ideas regarding insanity, he laid
+stress especially upon the question of St. Paul as to the bewitching of
+the Galatians, and, regarding idiocy, on the account in Genesis of the
+birth of children whose fathers were "sons of God" and whose mothers
+were "daughters of men." One idea of his was especially characteristic.
+The descent of Christ into hell was a frequent topic of discussion in
+the Reformed Church. Melanchthon, with his love of Greek studies, held
+that the purpose of the Saviour in making such a descent was to make
+himself known to the great and noble men of antiquity--Plato, Socrates,
+and the rest; but Luther insisted that his purpose was to conquer Satan
+in a hand-to-hand struggle.
+
+This idea of diabolic influence pervaded his conversation, his
+preaching, his writings, and spread thence to the Lutheran Church in
+general. Calvin also held to the same theory, and, having more power
+with less kindness of heart than Luther, carried it out with yet
+greater harshness. Beza was especially severe against those who believed
+insanity to be a natural malady, and declared, "Such persons are refuted
+both by sacred and profane history."
+
+Under the influence, then, of such infallible teachings, in the older
+Church and in the new, this superstition was developed more and more
+into cruelty; and as the biblical texts, popularized in the sculptures
+and windows and mural decorations of the great medieval cathedrals, had
+done much to develop it among the people, so Luther's translation of
+the Bible, especially in the numerous editions of it illustrated with
+engravings, wrought with enormous power to spread and deepen it. In
+every peasant's cottage some one could spell out the story of the devil
+bearing Christ through the air and placing him upon the pinnacle of
+the Temple--of the woman with seven devils--of the devils cast into
+the swine. Every peasant's child could be made to understand the quaint
+pictures in the family Bible or the catechism which illustrated vividly
+all those texts. In the ideas thus deeply implanted, the men who in
+the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries struggled against this mass of
+folly and cruelty found the worst barrier to right reason.(362)
+
+
+     (362) For Luther, see, among the vast number of similar passages in his
+works, the Table Talk, Hazlitt's translation, pp. 251, 252. As to
+the grotesques in mediaeval churches, the writer of this article, in
+visiting the town church of Wittenberg, noticed, just opposite the
+pulpit where Luther so often preached, a very spirited figure of an
+imp peering out upon the congregation. One can but suspect that this
+mediaeval survival frequently suggested Luther's favourite topic during
+his sermons. For Beza, see his Notes on the New Testament, Matthew iv,
+24.
+
+
+Such was the treatment of demoniacs developed by theology, and such the
+practice enforced by ecclesiasticism for more than a thousand years.
+
+How an atmosphere was spread in which this belief began to dissolve
+away, how its main foundations were undermined by science, and how there
+came in gradually a reign of humanity, will now be related.
+
+
+
+
+II. BEGINNINGS OF A HEALTHFUL SCEPTICISM.
+
+
+We have now seen the culmination of the old procedure regarding
+insanity, as it was developed under theology and enforced by
+ecclesiasticism; and we have noted how, under the influence of Luther
+and Calvin, the Reformation rather deepened than weakened the faith in
+the malice and power of a personal devil. Nor was this, in the Reformed
+churches any more than in the old, mere matter of theory. As in the
+early ages of Christianity, its priests especially appealed, in proof
+of the divine mission, to their power over the enemy of mankind in the
+bodies of men, so now the clergy of the rival creeds eagerly sought
+opportunities to establish the truth of their own and the falsehood of
+their opponents' doctrines by the visible casting out of devils. True,
+their methods differed somewhat: where the Catholic used holy water and
+consecrated wax, the Protestant was content with texts of Scripture
+and importunate prayer; but the supplementary physical annoyance of the
+indwelling demon did not greatly vary. Sharp was the competition for the
+unhappy objects of treatment. Each side, of course, stoutly denied all
+efficacy to its adversaries' efforts, urging that any seeming victory
+over Satan was due not to the defeat but to the collusion of the fiend.
+As, according to the Master himself, "no man can by Beelzebub cast out
+devils," the patient was now in greater need of relief than before; and
+more than one poor victim had to bear alternately Lutheran, Roman, and
+perhaps Calvinistic exorcism.(363)
+
+
+     (363) For instances of this competition, see Freytag, Aus dem Jahrh. d.
+Reformation, pp. 359-375. The Jesuit Stengel, in his De judiciis divinis
+(Ingolstadt, 1651), devotes a whole chapter to an exorcism, by the great
+Canisius, of a spirit that had baffled Protestant conjuration. Among
+the most jubilant Catholic satires of the time are those exulting in
+Luther's alleged failure as an exorcist.
+
+
+But far more serious in its consequences was another rivalry to which in
+the sixteenth century the clergy of all creeds found themselves subject.
+The revival of the science of medicine, under the impulse of the new
+study of antiquity, suddenly bade fair to take out of the hands of the
+Church the profession of which she had enjoyed so long and so profitable
+a monopoly. Only one class of diseases remained unquestionably
+hers--those which were still admitted to be due to the direct personal
+interference of Satan--and foremost among these was insanity.(364) It
+was surely no wonder that an age of religious controversy and excitement
+should be exceptionally prolific in ailments of the mind; and, to men
+who mutually taught the utter futility of that baptismal exorcism by
+which the babes of their misguided neighbours were made to renounce
+the devil and his works, it ought not to have seemed strange that his
+victims now became more numerous.(365) But so simple an explanation did
+not satisfy these physicians of souls; they therefore devised a simpler
+one: their patients, they alleged, were bewitched, and their increase
+was due to the growing numbers of those human allies of Satan known as
+witches.
+
+
+     (364) For the attitude of the Catholic clergy, the best sources are the
+confidential Jesuit Litterae Annuae. To this day the numerous treatises
+on "pastoral medicine" in use in the older Church devote themselves
+mainly to this sort of warfare with the devil.
+
+
+     (365) Baptismal exorcism continued in use among the Lutherans till the
+eighteenth century, though the struggle over its abandonment had been
+long and sharp. See Krafft, Histories vom Exorcismo, Hamburg, 1750.
+
+
+Already, before the close of the fifteenth century, Pope Innocent VIII
+had issued the startling bull by which he called on the archbishops,
+bishops, and other clergy of Germany to join hands with his inquisitors
+in rooting out these willing bond-servants of Satan, who were said to
+swarm throughout all that country and to revel in the blackest crimes.
+Other popes had since reiterated the appeal; and, though none of these
+documents touched on the blame of witchcraft for diabolic possession,
+the inquisitors charged with their execution pointed it out most clearly
+in their fearful handbook, the Witch-Hammer, and prescribed the special
+means by which possession thus caused should be met. These teachings
+took firm root in religious minds everywhere; and during the great age
+of witch-burning that followed the Reformation it may well be doubted
+whether any single cause so often gave rise to an outbreak of the
+persecution as the alleged bewitchment of some poor mad or foolish or
+hysterical creature. The persecution, thus once under way, fed itself;
+for, under the terrible doctrine of "excepted cases," by which in the
+religious crimes of heresy and witchcraft there was no limit to the use
+of torture, the witch was forced to confess to accomplices, who in turn
+accused others, and so on to the end of the chapter.(366)
+
+
+     (366) The Jesuit Stengel, professor at Ingolstadt, who (in his great
+work, De judiciis divinis) urges, as reasons why a merciful God permits
+illness, his wish to glorify himself through the miracles wrought by his
+Church, and his desire to test the faith of men by letting them choose
+between the holy aid of the Church and the illicit resort to medicine,
+declares that there is a difference between simple possession and
+that brought by bewitchment, and insists that the latter is the more
+difficult to treat.
+
+
+The horrors of such a persecution, with the consciousness of an
+ever-present devil it breathed and the panic terror of him it
+inspired, could not but aggravate the insanity it claimed to cure.
+Well-authenticated, though rarer than is often believed, were the cases
+where crazed women voluntarily accused themselves of this impossible
+crime. One of the most eminent authorities on diseases of the mind
+declares that among the unfortunate beings who were put to death for
+witchcraft he recognises well-marked victims of cerebral disorders;
+while an equally eminent authority in Germany tells us that, in a most
+careful study of the original records of their trials by torture, he has
+often found their answers and recorded conversations exactly like those
+familiar to him in our modern lunatic asylums, and names some forms
+of insanity which constantly and un mistakably appear among those who
+suffered for criminal dealings with the devil.(367) The result of this
+widespread terror was naturally, therefore, a steady increase in mental
+disorders. A great modern authority tells us that, although modern
+civilization tends to increase insanity, the number of lunatics at
+present is far less than in the ages of faith and in the Reformation
+period. The treatment of the "possessed," as we find it laid down
+in standard treatises, sanctioned by orthodox churchmen and jurists,
+accounts for this abundantly. One sort of treatment used for those
+accused of witchcraft will also serve to show this--the "tortura
+insomniae." Of all things in brain-disease, calm and regular sleep is
+most certainly beneficial; yet, under this practice, these half-crazed
+creatures were prevented, night after night and day after day, from
+sleeping or even resting. In this way temporary delusion became chronic
+insanity, mild cases became violent, torture and death ensued, and the
+"ways of God to man" were justified.(368) But the most contemptible
+creatures in all those centuries were the physicians who took sides
+with religious orthodoxy. While we have, on the side of truth, Flade
+sacrificing his life, Cornelius Agrippa his liberty, Wier and Loos
+their hopes of preferment, Bekker his position, and Thomasius his ease,
+reputation, and friends, we find, as allies of the other side, a troop
+of eminently respectable doctors mixing Scripture, metaphysics, and
+pretended observations to support the "safe side" and to deprecate
+interference with the existing superstition, which seemed to them "a
+very safe belief to be held by the common people."(369)
+
+
+     (367) See D. H. Tuke, Chapters in the History of the Insane in the
+British Isles, London, 1822, p. 36; also Kirchhoff, p. 340. The forms
+of insanity especially mentioned are "dementia senilis" and epilepsy. A
+striking case of voluntary confession of witchcraft by a woman who lived
+to recover from the delusion is narrated in great detail by Reginald
+Scot, in his Discovery of Witchcraft, London, 1584. It is, alas, only
+too likely that the "strangeness" caused by slight and unrecognised
+mania led often to the accusation of witchcraft instead of to the
+suspicion of possession.
+
+
+     (368) See Kirchhoff, as above.
+
+
+     (369) For the arguments used by creatures of this sort, see Diefenbach,
+Der Hexenwahn vor und nach der Glaubensspaltung in Deutschland, pp.
+342-346. A long list of their infamous names is given on p. 345.
+
+
+Against one form of insanity both Catholics and Protestants were
+especially cruel. Nothing is more common in all times of religious
+excitement than strange personal hallucinations, involving the belief,
+by the insane patient, that he is a divine person. In the most striking
+representation of insanity that has ever been made, Kaulbach shows,
+at the centre of his wonderful group, a patient drawing attention to
+himself as the Saviour of the world.
+
+Sometimes, when this form of disease took a milder hysterical character,
+the subject of it was treated with reverence, and even elevated to
+sainthood: such examples as St. Francis of Assisi and St. Catherine of
+Siena in Italy, St. Bridget in Sweden, St. Theresa in Spain, St. Mary
+Alacoque in France, and Louise Lateau in Belgium, are typical. But more
+frequently such cases shocked public feeling, and were treated with
+especial rigour: typical of this is the case of Simon Marin, who in his
+insanity believed himself to be the Son of God, and was on that account
+burned alive at Paris and his ashes scattered to the winds.(370)
+
+
+     (370) As to the frequency among the insane of this form of belief, see
+Calmeil, vol. ii, p. 257; also Maudsley, Pathology of Mind, pp. 201,
+202, and 418-424; also Rambaud, Histoire de la Civilisation en France,
+vol. ii, p. 110. For the peculiar abberations of the saints above named
+and other ecstatics, see Maudsley, as above, pp. 71, 72, and 149, 150.
+Maudsley's chapters on this and cognate subjects are certainly among the
+most valuable contributions to modern thought. For a discussion of the
+most recent case, see Warlomont, Louise Lateau, Paris, 1875.
+
+
+The profundity of theologians and jurists constantly developed new
+theories as to the modes of diabolic entrance into the "possessed."
+One such theory was that Satan could be taken into the mouth with one's
+food--perhaps in the form of an insect swallowed on a leaf of salad, and
+this was sanctioned, as we have seen, by no less infallible an authority
+than Gregory the Great, Pope and Saint--Another theory was that Satan
+entered the body when the mouth was opened to breathe, and there are
+well-authenticated cases of doctors and divines who, when casting out
+evil spirits, took especial care lest the imp might jump into their own
+mouths from the mouth of the patient. Another theory was that the devil
+entered human beings during sleep; and at a comparatively recent period
+a King of Spain was wont to sleep between two monks, to keep off the
+devil.(371)
+
+
+     (371) As to the devil's entering into the mouth while eating, see
+Calmeil, as above, vol. ii, pp. 105, 106. As to the dread of Dr. Borde
+lest the evil spirit, when exorcised, might enter his own body, see
+Tuke, as above, p. 28. As to the King of Spain, see the noted chapter in
+Buckle's History of Civilization in England.
+
+
+The monasteries were frequent sources of that form of mental disease
+which was supposed to be caused by bewitchment. From the earliest period
+it is evident that monastic life tended to develop insanity. Such cases
+as that of St. Anthony are typical of its effects upon the strongest
+minds; but it was especially the convents for women that became the
+great breeding-beds of this disease. Among the large numbers of women
+and girls thus assembled--many of them forced into monastic seclusion
+against their will, for the reason that their families could give them
+no dower--subjected to the unsatisfied longings, suspicions, bickerings,
+petty jealousies, envies, and hatreds, so inevitable in convent
+life--mental disease was not unlikely to be developed at any moment.
+Hysterical excitement in nunneries took shapes sometimes comical, but
+more generally tragical. Noteworthy is it that the last places where
+executions for witchcraft took place were mainly in the neighbourhood of
+great nunneries; and the last famous victim, of the myriads executed
+in Germany for this imaginary crime, was Sister Anna Renata Singer,
+sub-prioress of a nunnery near Wurzburg.(372)
+
+
+     (372) Among the multitude of authorities on this point, see Kirchhoff,
+as above, p. 337; and for a most striking picture of this dark side of
+convent life, drawn, indeed, by a devoted Roman Catholic, see Manzoni's
+Promessi Sposi. On Anna Renata there is a striking essay by the late
+Johannes Scherr, in his Hammerschlage und Historien. On the general
+subject of hysteria thus developed, see the writings of Carpenter and
+Tuke; and as to its natural development in nunneries, see Maudsley,
+Responsibility in Mental Disease, p. 9. Especial attention will be paid
+to this in the chapter on Diabolism and Hysteria.
+
+
+The same thing was seen among young women exposed to sundry fanatical
+Protestant preachers. Insanity, both temporary and permanent, was thus
+frequently developed among the Huguenots of France, and has been thus
+produced in America, from the days of the Salem persecution down to the
+"camp meetings" of the present time.(373)
+
+
+     (373) This branch of the subject will be discussed more at length in a
+future chapter.
+
+
+At various times, from the days of St. Agobard of Lyons in the ninth
+century to Pomponatius in the sixteenth, protests or suggestions, more
+or less timid, had been made by thoughtful men against this system.
+Medicine had made some advance toward a better view, but the theological
+torrent had generally overwhelmed all who supported a scientific
+treatment. At last, toward the end of the sixteenth century, two men
+made a beginning of a much more serious attack upon this venerable
+superstition. The revival of learning, and the impulse to thought
+on material matters given during the "age of discovery," undoubtedly
+produced an atmosphere which made the work of these men possible. In the
+year 1563, in the midst of demonstrations of demoniacal possession by
+the most eminent theologians and judges, who sat in their robes and
+looked wise, while women, shrieking, praying, and blaspheming, were put
+to the torture, a man arose who dared to protest effectively that some
+of the persons thus charged might be simply insane; and this man was
+John Wier, of Cleves.
+
+His protest does not at this day strike us as particularly bold. In his
+books, De Praestigiis Daemonum and De Lamiis, he did his best not to
+offend religious or theological susceptibilities; but he felt obliged to
+call attention to the mingled fraud and delusion of those who claimed to
+be bewitched, and to point out that it was often not their accusers, but
+the alleged witches themselves, who were really ailing, and to urge that
+these be brought first of all to a physician.
+
+His book was at once attacked by the most eminent theologians. One of
+the greatest laymen of his time, Jean Bodin, also wrote with especial
+power against it, and by a plentiful use of scriptural texts gained
+to all appearance a complete victory: this superstition seemed thus
+fastened upon Europe for a thousand years more. But doubt was in the
+air, and, about a quarter of a century after the publication of Wier's
+book there were published in France the essays of a man by no means
+so noble, but of far greater genius--Michel de Montaigne. The general
+scepticism which his work promoted among the French people did much to
+produce an atmosphere in which the belief in witchcraft and demoniacal
+possession must inevitably wither. But this process, though real, was
+hidden, and the victory still seemed on the theological side.
+
+The development of the new truth and its struggle against the old error
+still went on. In Holland, Balthazar Bekker wrote his book against the
+worst forms of the superstition, and attempted to help the scientific
+side by a text from the Second Epistle of St. Peter, showing that the
+devils had been confined by the Almighty, and therefore could not
+be doing on earth the work which was imputed to them. But Bekker's
+Protestant brethren drove him from his pulpit, and he narrowly escaped
+with his life.
+
+The last struggles of a great superstition are very frequently the
+worst. So it proved in this case. In the first half of the seventeenth
+century the cruelties arising from the old doctrine were more numerous
+and severe than ever before. In Spain, Sweden, Italy, and, above all,
+in Germany, we see constant efforts to suppress the evolution of the new
+truth.
+
+But in the midst of all this reactionary rage glimpses of right reason
+began to appear. It is significant that at this very time, when the old
+superstition was apparently everywhere triumphant, the declaration
+by Poulet that he and his brother and his cousin had, by smearing
+themselves with ointment, changed themselves into wolves and devoured
+children, brought no severe punishment upon them. The judges sent him to
+a mad-house. More and more, in spite of frantic efforts from the pulpit
+to save the superstition, great writers and jurists, especially in
+France, began to have glimpses of the truth and courage to uphold it.
+Malebranche spoke against the delusion; Seguier led the French courts
+to annul several decrees condemning sorcerers; the great chancellor,
+D'Aguesseau, declared to the Parliament of Paris that, if they wished to
+stop sorcery, they must stop talking about it--that sorcerers are more
+to be pitied than blamed.(374)
+
+
+     (374) See Esquirol, Des Maladies mentales, vol. i, pp. 488, 489; vol.
+ii, p. 529.
+
+
+But just at this time, as the eighteenth century was approaching,
+the theological current was strengthened by a great ecclesiastic--the
+greatest theologian that France has produced, whose influence upon
+religion and upon the mind of Louis XIV was enormous--Bossuet, Bishop
+of Meaux. There had been reason to expect that Bossuet would at least do
+something to mitigate the superstition; for his writings show that, in
+much which before his day had been ascribed to diabolic possession,
+he saw simple lunacy. Unfortunately, the same adherence to the literal
+interpretation of Scripture which led him to oppose every other
+scientific truth developed in his time, led him also to attack this:
+he delivered and published two great sermons, which, while showing
+some progress in the form of his belief, showed none the less that the
+fundamental idea of diabolic possession was still to be tenaciously
+held. What this idea was may be seen in one typical statement: he
+declared that "a single devil could turn the earth round as easily as we
+turn a marble."(375)
+
+
+     (375) See the two sermons, Sur les Demons (which are virtually but two
+versions of the same sermon), in Bousset's works, edition of 1845,
+vol. iii, p. 236 et seq.; also Dziewicki, in The Nineteenth Century, as
+above. On Bousset's resistance to other scientific truths, especially
+in astronomy, geology, and political economy, see other chapters in this
+work.
+
+
+
+
+
+III. THE FINAL STRUGGLE AND VICTORY OF SCIENCE.--PINEL AND TUKE.
+
+
+The theological current, thus re-enforced, seemed to become again
+irresistible; but it was only so in appearance. In spite of it, French
+scepticism continued to develop; signs of quiet change among the mass of
+thinking men were appearing more and more; and in 1672 came one of
+great significance, for, the Parliament of Rouen having doomed fourteen
+sorcerers to be burned, their execution was delayed for two years,
+evidently on account of scepticism among officials; and at length the
+great minister of Louis XIV, Colbert, issued an edict checking such
+trials, and ordering the convicted to be treated for madness.
+
+Victory seemed now to incline to the standard of science, and in 1725 no
+less a personage than St. Andre, a court physician, dared to publish a
+work virtually showing "demoniacal possession" to be lunacy.
+
+The French philosophy, from the time of its early development in
+the eighteenth century under Montesquieu and Voltaire, naturally
+strengthened the movement; the results of post-mortem examinations of
+the brains of the "possessed" confirmed it; and in 1768 we see it take
+form in a declaration by the Parliament of Paris, that possessed persons
+were to be considered as simply diseased. Still, the old belief lingered
+on, its life flickering up from time to time in those parts of France
+most under ecclesiastical control, until in these last years of the
+nineteenth century a blow has been given it by the researches of Charcot
+and his compeers which will probably soon extinguish it. One evidence
+of Satanic intercourse with mankind especially, on which for many
+generations theologians had laid peculiar stress, and for which they
+had condemned scores of little girls and hundreds of old women to a most
+cruel death, was found to be nothing more than one of the many results
+of hysteria.(376)
+
+
+     (376) For Colbert's influence, see Dagron, p. 8; also Rambaud, as above,
+vol. ii, p. 155. For St. Andre, see Lacroix, as above, pp. 189, 190.
+For Charcot's researches into the disease now known as Meteorismus
+hystericus, but which was formerly regarded in the ecclesiastical courts
+as an evidence of pregnancy through relations with Satan, see Snell,
+Hexenprocesse un Geistesstorung, Munchen, 1891, chaps. xii and xiii.
+
+
+In England the same warfare went on. John Locke had asserted the truth,
+but the theological view continued to control public opinion. Most
+prominent among those who exercised great power in its behalf was John
+Wesley, and the strength and beauty of his character made his influence
+in this respect all the more unfortunate. The same servitude to the mere
+letter of Scripture which led him to declare that "to give up witchcraft
+is to give up the Bible," controlled him in regard to insanity. He
+insisted, on the authority of the Old Testament, that bodily diseases
+are sometimes caused by devils, and, upon the authority of the New
+Testament, that the gods of the heathen are demons; he believed that
+dreams, while in some cases caused by bodily conditions and passions,
+are shown by Scripture to be also caused by occult powers of evil; he
+cites a physician to prove that "most lunatics are really demoniacs." In
+his great sermon on Evil Angels, he dwells upon this point especially;
+resists the idea that "possession" may be epilepsy, even though ordinary
+symptoms of epilepsy be present; protests against "giving up to infidels
+such proofs of an invisible world as are to be found in diabolic
+possession"; and evidently believes that some who have been made
+hysterical by his own preaching are "possessed of Satan." On all this,
+and much more to the same effect, he insisted with all the power given
+to him by his deep religious nature, his wonderful familiarity with the
+Scriptures, his natural acumen, and his eloquence.
+
+But here, too, science continued its work. The old belief was steadily
+undermined, an atmosphere favourable to the truth was more and more
+developed, and the act of Parliament, in 1735, which banished the crime
+of witchcraft from the statute book, was the beginning of the end.
+
+In Germany we see the beginnings of a similar triumph for science. In
+Prussia, that sturdy old monarch, Frederick William I, nullified the
+efforts of the more zealous clergy and orthodox jurists to keep up the
+old doctrine in his dominions; throughout Protestant Germany, where
+it had raged most severely, it was, as a rule, cast out of the Church
+formulas, catechisms, and hymns, and became more and more a subject for
+jocose allusion. From force of habit, and for the sake of consistency,
+some of the more conservative theologians continued to repeat the
+old arguments, and there were many who insisted upon the belief as
+absolutely necessary to ordinary orthodoxy; but it is evident that it
+had become a mere conventionality, that men only believed that they
+believed it, and now a reform seemed possible in the treatment of the
+insane.(377)
+
+
+     (377) For John Locke, see King's Life of Locke, pp. 326, 327. For
+Wesley, out of his almost innumerable writings bearing on the subject,
+I may select the sermon on Evil Angels, and his Letter to Dr. Middleton;
+and in his collected works, there are many striking statements and
+arguments, especially in vols. iii, vi, and ix. See also Tyerman's Life
+of Wesley, vol. ii, pp. 260 et seq. Luther's great hymn, Ein' feste
+Burg, remained, of course, a prominent exception to the rule; but a
+popular proverb came to express the general feeling: "Auf Teufel reimt
+sich Zweifel." See Langin, as above, pp. 545, 546.
+
+
+In Austria, the government set Dr. Antonio Haen at making careful
+researches into the causes of diabolic possession. He did not think it
+best, in view of the power of the Church, to dispute the possibility
+or probability of such cases, but simply decided, after thorough
+investigation, that out of the many cases which had been brought to him,
+not one supported the belief in demoniacal influence. An attempt was
+made to follow up this examination, and much was done by men like
+Francke and Van Swieten, and especially by the reforming emperor, Joseph
+II, to rescue men and women who would otherwise have fallen victims to
+the prevalent superstition. Unfortunately, Joseph had arrayed against
+himself the whole power of the Church, and most of his good efforts
+seemed brought to naught. But what the noblest of the old race of German
+emperors could not do suddenly, the German men of science did gradually.
+Quietly and thoroughly, by proofs that could not be gainsaid, they
+recovered the old scientific fact established in pagan Greece and Rome,
+that madness is simply physical disease. But they now established it on
+a basis that can never again be shaken; for, in post-mortem examinations
+of large numbers of "possessed" persons, they found evidence of
+brain-disease. Typical is a case at Hamburg in 1729. An afflicted woman
+showed in a high degree all the recognised characteristics of diabolic
+possession: exorcisms, preachings, and sanctified remedies of every sort
+were tried in vain; milder medical means were then tried, and she so far
+recovered that she was allowed to take the communion before she died:
+the autopsy, held in the presence of fifteen physicians and a public
+notary, showed it to be simply a case of chronic meningitis. The work of
+German men of science in this field is noble indeed; a great succession,
+from Wier to Virchow, have erected a barrier against which all the
+efforts of reactionists beat in vain.(378)
+
+
+     (378) See Kirchhoff, pp. 181-187; also Langin, Religion und
+Hexenprozess, as above cited.
+
+
+In America, the belief in diabolic influence had, in the early colonial
+period, full control. The Mathers, so superior to their time in many
+things, were children of their time in this: they supported the belief
+fully, and the Salem witchcraft horrors were among its results; but the
+discussion of that folly by Calef struck it a severe blow, and a better
+influence spread rapidly throughout the colonies.
+
+By the middle of the eighteenth century belief in diabolic possession
+had practically disappeared from all enlightened countries, and during
+the nineteenth century it has lost its hold even in regions where the
+medieval spirit continues strongest. Throughout the Middle Ages, as we
+have seen, Satan was a leading personage in the miracle-plays, but
+in 1810 the Bavarian Government refused to allow the Passion Play at
+Ober-Ammergau if Satan was permitted to take any part in it; in spite of
+heroic efforts to maintain the old belief, even the childlike faith of
+the Tyrolese had arrived at a point which made a representation of Satan
+simply a thing to provoke laughter.
+
+Very significant also was the trial which took place at Wemding, in
+southern Germany, in 1892. A boy had become hysterical, and the Capuchin
+Father Aurelian tried to exorcise him, and charged a peasant's wife,
+Frau Herz, with bewitching him, on evidence that would have cost the
+woman her life at any time during the seventeenth century. Thereupon the
+woman's husband brought suit against Father Aurelian for slander.
+The latter urged in his defence that the boy was possessed of an evil
+spirit, if anybody ever was; that what had been said and done was in
+accordance with the rules and regulations of the Church, as laid down
+in decrees, formulas, and rituals sanctioned by popes, councils, and
+innumerable bishops during ages. All in vain. The court condemned the
+good father to fine and imprisonment. As in a famous English case,
+"hell was dismissed, with costs." Even more significant is the fact that
+recently a boy declared by two Bavarian priests to be possessed by
+the devil, was taken, after all Church exorcisms had failed, to Father
+Kneipp's hydropathic establishment and was there speedily cured.(379)
+
+
+     (379) For remarkably interesting articles showing the recent efforts
+of sundry priests in Italy and South Germany to revive the belief
+in diabolic possession--efforts in which the Bishop of Augsburg took
+part--see Prof. E. P. Evans, on Modern Instances of Diabolic Possession,
+and on Recent Recrudescence of Superstition in The Popular Science
+Monthly for Dec. 1892, and for Oct., Nov., 1895.
+
+Speaking of the part played by Satan at Ober-Ammergau, Hase says:
+"Formerly, seated on his infernal throne, surrounded by his hosts with
+Sin and Death, he opened the play,... and... retained throughout a
+considerable part; but he has been surrendered to the progress of that
+enlightenment which even the Bavarian highlands have not been able to
+escape" (p. 80).
+
+The especial point to be noted is, that from the miracle-play of the
+present day Satan and his works have disappeared. The present writer
+was unable to detect, in a representation of the Passion Play at
+Ober-Ammergau, in 1881, the slightest reference to diabolic interference
+with the course of events as represented from the Old Testament, or from
+the New, in a series of tableaux lasting, with a slight intermission,
+from nine in the morning to after four in the afternoon. With the most
+thorough exhibition of minute events in the life of Christ, and at times
+with hundreds of figures on the stage, there was not a person or a word
+which recalled that main feature in the mediaeval Church plays. The
+present writer also made a full collection of the photographs of
+tableaux, of engravings of music, and of works bearing upon these
+representations for twenty years before, and in none of these was there
+an apparent survival of the old belief.
+
+
+But, although the old superstition had been discarded, the inevitable
+conservatism in theology and medicine caused many old abuses to be
+continued for years after the theological basis for them had really
+disappeared. There still lingered also a feeling of dislike toward
+madmen, engendered by the early feeling of hostility toward them, which
+sufficed to prevent for many years any practical reforms.
+
+What that old theory had been, even under the most favourable
+circumstances and among the best of men, we have seen in the fact that
+Sir Thomas More ordered acknowledged lunatics to be publicly flogged;
+and it will be remembered that Shakespeare makes one of his characters
+refer to madmen as deserving "a dark house and a whip." What the old
+practice was and continued to be we know but too well. Taking Protestant
+England as an example--and it was probably the most humane--we have a
+chain of testimony. Toward the end of the sixteenth century, Bethlehem
+Hospital was reported too loathsome for any man to enter; in the
+seventeenth century, John Evelyn found it no better; in the eighteenth,
+Hogarth's pictures and contemporary reports show it to be essentially
+what it had been in those previous centuries.(380)
+
+
+     (380) On Sir Thomas More and the condition of Bedlam, see Tuke, History
+of the Insane in the British Isles, pp. 63-73. One of the passages of
+Shakespeare is in As You Like It, Act iii, scene 2. As to the survival
+of indifference to the sufferings of the insane so long after the belief
+which caused it had generally disappeared, see some excellent remarks in
+Maudsley's Responsibility in Mental Disease, London, 1885, pp. 10-12.
+
+The older English practice is thus quaintly described by Richard Carew
+(in his Survey of Cornwall, London, 1602, 1769): "In our forefathers'
+daies, when devotion as much exceeded knowledge, as knowledge now
+commeth short of devotion, there were many bowssening places, for curing
+of mad men, and amongst the rest, one at Alternunne in this Hundred,
+called S. Nunnespoole, which Saints Altar (it may be)... gave name to
+the church... The watter running from S. Nunnes well, fell into a square
+and close walled plot, which might bee filled at what depth they listed.
+Vpon this wall was the franticke person set to stand, his backe towards
+the poole, and from thence with a sudden blow in the brest, tumbled
+headlong into the pond; where a strong fellowe, provided for the nonce,
+tooke him, and tossed him vp and downe, alongst and athwart the water,
+vntill the patient, by forgoing strength, had somewhat forgot his fury.
+Then there was hee conveyed to the Church, and certain Masses sung over
+him; vpon which handling, if his right wits returned, S. Nunne had
+the thanks; but if there appeared any small amendment, he was bowsened
+againe, and againe, while there remayned in him any hope of life, for
+recovery."
+
+
+The first humane impulse of any considerable importance in this field
+seems to have been aroused in America. In the year 1751 certain members
+of the Society of Friends founded a small hospital for the insane, on
+better principles, in Pennsylvania. To use the language of its founders,
+it was intended "as a good work, acceptable to God." Twenty years later
+Virginia established a similar asylum, and gradually others appeared in
+other colonies.
+
+But it was in France that mercy was to be put upon a scientific basis,
+and was to lead to practical results which were to convert the world to
+humanity. In this case, as in so many others, from France was spread
+and popularized not only the scepticism which destroyed the theological
+theory, but also the devotion which built up the new scientific theory
+and endowed the world with a new treasure of civilization.
+
+In 1756 some physicians of the great hospital at Paris known as the
+Hotel-Dieu protested that the cruelties prevailing in the treatment of
+the insane were aggravating the disease; and some protests followed from
+other quarters. Little effect was produced at first; but just before the
+French Revolution, Tenon, La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, and others took
+up the subject, and in 1791 a commission was appointed to undertake a
+reform.
+
+By great good fortune, the man selected to lead in the movement was one
+who had already thrown his heart into it--Jean Baptiste Pinel. In 1792
+Pinel was made physician at Bicetre, one of the most extensive lunatic
+asylums in France, and to the work there imposed upon him he gave all
+his powers. Little was heard of him at first. The most terrible scenes
+of the French Revolution were drawing nigh; but he laboured on, modestly
+and devotedly--apparently without a thought of the great political storm
+raging about him.
+
+His first step was to discard utterly the whole theological doctrine of
+"possession," and especially the idea that insanity is the result of any
+subtle spiritual influence. He simply put in practice the theory that
+lunacy is the result of bodily disease.
+
+It is a curious matter for reflection, that but for this sway of the
+destructive philosophy of the eighteenth century, and of the Terrorists
+during the French Revolution, Pinel's blessed work would in all
+probability have been thwarted, and he himself excommunicated for heresy
+and driven from his position. Doubtless the same efforts would have been
+put forth against him which the Church, a little earlier, had put forth
+against inoculation as a remedy for smallpox; but just at that time
+the great churchmen had other things to think of besides crushing this
+particular heretic: they were too much occupied in keeping their own
+heads from the guillotine to give attention to what was passing in the
+head of Pinel. He was allowed to work in peace, and in a short time the
+reign of diabolism at Bicetre was ended. What the exorcisms and fetiches
+and prayers and processions, and drinking of holy water, and ringing of
+bells, had been unable to accomplish during eighteen hundred years, he
+achieved in a few months. His method was simple: for the brutality and
+cruelty which had prevailed up to that time, he substituted kindness and
+gentleness. The possessed were taken out of their dungeons, given sunny
+rooms, and allowed the liberty of pleasant ground for exercise; chains
+were thrown aside. At the same time, the mental power of each patient
+was developed by its fitting exercise, and disease was met with remedies
+sanctioned by experiment, observation, and reason. Thus was gained
+one of the greatest, though one of the least known, triumphs of modern
+science and humanity.
+
+The results obtained by Pinel had an instant effect, not only in France
+but throughout Europe: the news spread from hospital to hospital. At his
+death, Esquirol took up his work; and, in the place of the old training
+of judges, torturers, and executioners by theology to carry out its
+ideas in cruelty, there was now trained a school of physicians to
+develop science in this field and carry out its decrees in mercy.(381)
+
+
+     (381) For the services of Tenon and his associates, and also for the
+work of Pinel, see especially Esquirol, Des Maladies mentales, Paris,
+1838, vol. i, p. 35; and for the general subject, and the condition of
+the hospitals at this period, see Dagron, as above.
+
+
+A similar evolution of better science and practice took place in
+England. In spite of the coldness, and even hostility, of the greater
+men in the Established Church, and notwithstanding the scriptural
+demonstrations of Wesley that the majority of the insane were possessed
+of devils, the scientific method steadily gathered strength. In 1750
+the condition of the insane began to attract especial attention; it was
+found that mad-houses were swayed by ideas utterly indefensible, and
+that the practices engendered by these ideas were monstrous. As a rule,
+the patients were immured in cells, and in many cases were chained to
+the walls; in others, flogging and starvation played leading parts, and
+in some cases the patients were killed. Naturally enough, John Howard
+declared, in 1789, that he found in Constantinople a better insane
+asylum than the great St. Luke's Hospital in London. Well might he
+do so; for, ever since Caliph Omar had protected and encouraged the
+scientific investigation of insanity by Paul of Aegina, the Moslem
+treatment of the insane had been far more merciful than the system
+prevailing throughout Christendom.(382)
+
+
+     (382) See D. H. Tuke, as above, p. 110; also Trelat, as already cited.
+
+
+In 1792--the same year in which Pinel began his great work in
+France--William Tuke began a similar work in England. There seems
+to have been no connection between these two reformers; each wrought
+independently of the other, but the results arrived at were the same.
+So, too, in the main, were their methods; and in the little house of
+William Tuke, at York, began a better era for England.
+
+The name which this little asylum received is a monument both of the old
+reign of cruelty and of the new reign of humanity. Every old name for
+such an asylum had been made odious and repulsive by ages of misery; in
+a happy moment of inspiration Tuke's gentle Quaker wife suggested a new
+name; and, in accordance with this suggestion, the place became known as
+a "Retreat."
+
+From the great body of influential classes in church and state Tuke
+received little aid. The influence of the theological spirit was shown
+when, in that same year, Dr. Pangster published his Observations on
+Mental Disorders, and, after displaying much ignorance as to the
+causes and nature of insanity, summed up by saying piously, "Here our
+researches must stop, and we must declare that 'wonderful are the works
+of the Lord, and his ways past finding out.'" Such seemed to be the view
+of the Church at large: though the new "Retreat" was at one of the
+two great ecclesiastical centres of England, we hear of no aid or
+encouragement from the Archbishop of York or from his clergy. Nor was
+this the worst: the indirect influence of the theological habit of
+thought and ecclesiastical prestige was displayed in the Edinburgh
+Review. That great organ of opinion, not content with attacking Tuke,
+poured contempt upon his work, as well as on that of Pinel. A few of
+Tuke's brother and sister Quakers seem to have been his only reliance;
+and in a letter regarding his efforts at that time he says, "All men
+seem to desert me."(383)
+
+
+     (383) See D. H. Tuke, as above, p. 116-142, and 512; also the Edinburgh
+Review for April, 1803.
+
+
+In this atmosphere of English conservative opposition or indifference
+the work could not grow rapidly. As late as 1815, a member of Parliament
+stigmatized the insane asylums of England as the shame of the nation;
+and even as late as 1827, and in a few cases as late as 1850, there were
+revivals of the old absurdity and brutality. Down to a late period,
+in the hospitals of St. Luke and Bedlam, long rows of the insane were
+chained to the walls of the corridors. But Gardner at Lincoln, Donnelly
+at Hanwell, and a new school of practitioners in mental disease, took up
+the work of Tuke, and the victory in England was gained in practice as
+it had been previously gained in theory.
+
+There need be no controversy regarding the comparative merits of these
+two benefactors of our race, Pinel and Tuke. They clearly did their
+thinking and their work independently of each other, and thereby each
+strengthened the other and benefited mankind. All that remains to be
+said is, that while France has paid high honours to Pinel, as to one who
+did much to free the world from one of its most cruel superstitions and
+to bring in a reign of humanity over a wide empire, England has as yet
+made no fitting commemoration of her great benefactor in this field.
+York Minster holds many tombs of men, of whom some were blessings
+to their fellow-beings, while some were but "solemnly constituted
+impostors" and parasites upon the body politic; yet, to this hour, that
+great temple has received no consecration by a monument to the man who
+did more to alleviate human misery than any other who has ever entered
+it.
+
+But the place of these two men in history is secure. They stand with
+Grotius, Thomasius, and Beccaria--the men who in modern times have
+done most to prevent unmerited sorrow. They were not, indeed, called
+to suffer like their great compeers; they were not obliged to see their
+writings--among the most blessed gifts of God to man--condemned, as
+were those of Grotius and Beccaria by the Catholic Church, and those
+of Thomasius by a large section of the Protestant Church; they were
+not obliged to flee for their lives, as were Grotius and Thomasius; but
+their effort is none the less worthy. The French Revolution, indeed,
+saved Pinel, and the decay of English ecclesiasticism gave Tuke his
+opportunity; but their triumphs are none the less among the glories of
+our race; for they were the first acknowledged victors in a struggle of
+science for humanity which had lasted nearly two thousand years.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.  FROM DIABOLISM TO HYSTERIA.
+
+
+
+
+I. THE EPIDEMICS OF "POSSESSION."
+
+
+In the foregoing chapter I have sketched the triumph of science in
+destroying the idea that individual lunatics are "possessed by devils,"
+in establishing the truth that insanity is physical disease, and in
+substituting for superstitious cruelties toward the insane a treatment
+mild, kindly, and based upon ascertained facts.
+
+The Satan who had so long troubled individual men and women thus became
+extinct; henceforth his fossil remains only were preserved: they
+may still be found in the sculptures and storied windows of medieval
+churches, in sundry liturgies, and in popular forms of speech.
+
+But another Satan still lived--a Satan who wrought on a larger
+scale--who took possession of multitudes. For, after this triumph of
+the scientific method, there still remained a class of mental disorders
+which could not be treated in asylums, which were not yet fully
+explained by science, and which therefore gave arguments of much
+apparent strength to the supporters of the old theological view: these
+were the epidemics of "diabolic possession" which for so many centuries
+afflicted various parts of the world.
+
+When obliged, then, to retreat from their old position in regard to
+individual cases of insanity, the more conservative theologians promptly
+referred to these epidemics as beyond the domain of science--as clear
+evidences of the power of Satan; and, as the basis of this view, they
+cited from the Old Testament frequent references to witchcraft,
+and, from the New Testament, St. Paul's question as to the possible
+bewitching of the Galatians, and the bewitching of the people of Samaria
+by Simon the Magician.
+
+Naturally, such leaders had very many adherents in that class, so large
+in all times, who find that
+
+
+"To follow foolish precedents and wink With both our eyes, is easier
+than to think."(384)
+
+
+     (384) As to eminent physicians' finding a stumbling-block in hysterical
+mania, see Kirchhoff's article, p. 351, cited in previous chapter.
+
+
+It must be owned that their case seemed strong. Though in all human
+history, so far as it is closely known, these phenomena had appeared,
+and though every classical scholar could recall the wild orgies of
+the priests, priestesses, and devotees of Dionysus and Cybele, and the
+epidemic of wild rage which took its name from some of these, the great
+fathers and doctors of the Church had left a complete answer to any
+scepticism based on these facts; they simply pointed to St. Paul's
+declaration that the gods of the heathen were devils: these examples,
+then, could be transformed into a powerful argument for diabolic
+possession.(385)
+
+
+     (385) As to the Maenads, Corybantes, and the disease "Corybantism,"
+see, for accessible and adequate statements, Smith's Dictionary of
+Antiquities and Lewis and Short's Lexicon; also reference in Hecker's
+Essays upon the Black Death and the Dancing Mania. For more complete
+discussion, see Semelaigne, L'Alienation mentale dans l'Antiquite,
+Paris, 1869.
+
+
+But it was more especially the epidemics of diabolism in medieval and
+modern times which gave strength to the theological view, and from these
+I shall present a chain of typical examples.
+
+As early as the eleventh century we find clear accounts of diabolical
+possession taking the form of epidemics of raving, jumping, dancing,
+and convulsions, the greater number of the sufferers being women and
+children. In a time so rude, accounts of these manifestations would
+rarely receive permanent record; but it is very significant that even at
+the beginning of the eleventh century we hear of them at the extremes
+of Europe--in northern Germany and in southern Italy. At various times
+during that century we get additional glimpses of these exhibitions, but
+it is not until the beginning of the thirteenth century that we have a
+renewal of them on a large scale. In 1237, at Erfurt, a jumping disease
+and dancing mania afflicted a hundred children, many of whom died in
+consequence; it spread through the whole region, and fifty years later
+we hear of it in Holland.
+
+But it was the last quarter of the fourteenth century that saw its
+greatest manifestations. There was abundant cause for them. It was a
+time of oppression, famine, and pestilence: the crusading spirit, having
+run its course, had been succeeded by a wild, mystical fanaticism;
+the most frightful plague in human history--the Black Death--was
+depopulating whole regions--reducing cities to villages, and filling
+Europe with that strange mixture of devotion and dissipation which we
+always note during the prevalence of deadly epidemics on a large scale.
+
+It was in this ferment of religious, moral, and social disease that
+there broke out in 1374, in the lower Rhine region, the greatest,
+perhaps, of all manifestations of "possession"--an epidemic of dancing,
+jumping, and wild raving. The cures resorted to seemed on the whole to
+intensify the disease: the afflicted continued dancing for hours, until
+they fell in utter exhaustion. Some declared that they felt as if bathed
+in blood, some saw visions, some prophesied.
+
+Into this mass of "possession" there was also clearly poured a current
+of scoundrelism which increased the disorder.
+
+The immediate source of these manifestations seems to have been the wild
+revels of St. John's Day. In those revels sundry old heathen ceremonies
+had been perpetuated, but under a nominally Christian form: wild
+Bacchanalian dances had thus become a semi-religious ceremonial. The
+religious and social atmosphere was propitious to the development of
+the germs of diabolic influence vitalized in these orgies, and they
+were scattered far and wide through large tracts of the Netherlands
+and Germany, and especially through the whole region of the Rhine. At
+Cologne we hear of five hundred afflicted at once; at Metz of eleven
+hundred dancers in the streets; at Strasburg of yet more painful
+manifestations; and from these and other cities they spread through the
+villages and rural districts.
+
+The great majority of the sufferers were women, but there were many men,
+and especially men whose occupations were sedentary. Remedies were tried
+upon a large scale-exorcisms first, but especially pilgrimages to the
+shrine of St. Vitus. The exorcisms accomplished so little that popular
+faith in them grew small, and the main effect of the pilgrimages
+seemed to be to increase the disorder by subjecting great crowds to
+the diabolic contagion. Yet another curative means was seen in the
+flagellant processions--vast crowds of men, women, and children who
+wandered through the country, screaming, praying, beating themselves
+with whips, imploring the Divine mercy and the intervention of
+St. Vitus. Most fearful of all the main attempts at cure were the
+persecutions of the Jews. A feeling had evidently spread among
+the people at large that the Almighty was filled with wrath at
+the toleration of his enemies, and might be propitiated by their
+destruction: in the principal cities and villages of Germany, then, the
+Jews were plundered, tortured, and murdered by tens of thousands. No
+doubt that, in all this, greed was united with fanaticism; but the
+argument of fanaticism was simple and cogent; the dart which pierced the
+breast of Israel at that time was winged and pointed from its own
+sacred books: the biblical argument was the same used in various ages
+to promote persecution; and this was, that the wrath of the Almighty
+was stirred against those who tolerated his enemies, and that because
+of this toleration the same curse had now come upon Europe which the
+prophet Samuel had denounced against Saul for showing mercy to the
+enemies of Jehovah.
+
+It is but just to say that various popes and kings exerted themselves to
+check these cruelties. Although the argument of Samuel to Saul was used
+with frightful effect two hundred years later by a most conscientious
+pope in spurring on the rulers of France to extirpate the Huguenots, the
+papacy in the fourteenth century stood for mercy to the Jews. But
+even this intervention was long without effect; the tide of popular
+superstition had become too strong to be curbed even by the spiritual
+and temporal powers.(386)
+
+
+     (386) See Wellhausen, article Israel, in the Encyclopaedia Britannica,
+ninth edition; also the reprint of it in his History of Israel, London,
+1885, p. 546. On the general subject of the demoniacal epidemics, see
+Isensee, Geschichte der Medicin, vol. i, pp. 260 et seq.; also Hecker's
+essay. As to the history of Saul, as a curious landmark in the general
+development of the subject, see The Case of Saul, showing that his
+Disorder was a Real Spiritual Possession, by Granville Sharp, London,
+1807, passim. As to the citation of Saul's case by the reigning Pope to
+spur on the French kings against the Huguenots, I hope to give a list of
+authorities in a future chapter on The Church and International Law. For
+the general subject, with interesting details, see Laurent, Etudes sur
+l'Histoire de l'Humanities. See also Maury, La Magie et l'Astrologie
+dans l'Antiquite et au Moyen Age.
+
+
+Against this overwhelming current science for many generations could
+do nothing. Throughout the whole of the fifteenth century physicians
+appeared to shun the whole matter. Occasionally some more thoughtful
+man ventured to ascribe some phase of the disease to natural causes;
+but this was an unpopular doctrine, and evidently dangerous to those who
+developed it.
+
+Yet, in the beginning of the sixteenth century, cases of "possession" on
+a large scale began to be brought within the scope of medical research,
+and the man who led in this evolution of medical science was Paracelsus.
+He it was who first bade modern Europe think for a moment upon the idea
+that these diseases are inflicted neither by saints nor demons, and that
+the "dancing possession" is simply a form of disease, of which the cure
+may be effected by proper remedies and regimen.
+
+Paracelsus appears to have escaped any serious interference: it took
+some time, perhaps, for the theological leaders to understand that he
+had "let a new idea loose upon the planet," but they soon understood it,
+and their course was simple. For about fifty years the new idea was well
+kept under; but in 1563 another physician, John Wier, of Cleves, revived
+it at much risk to his position and reputation.(387)
+
+
+     (387) For Paracelsus, see Isensee, vol. i, chap. xi; also Pettigrew,
+Superstitions connected with the History and Practice of Medicine and
+Surgery, London, 1844, introductory chapter. For Wier, see authorities
+given in my previous chapter.
+
+
+Although the new idea was thus resisted, it must have taken some hold
+upon thoughtful men, for we find that in the second half of the same
+century the St. Vitus's dance and forms of demoniacal possession akin
+to it gradually diminished in frequency and were sometimes treated as
+diseases. In the seventeenth century, so far as the north of Europe is
+concerned, these displays of "possession" on a great scale had almost
+entirely ceased; here and there cases appeared, but there was no longer
+the wild rage extending over great districts and afflicting thousands of
+people. Yet it was, as we shall see, in this same seventeenth century,
+in the last expiring throes of this superstition, that it led to the
+worst acts of cruelty.(388)
+
+
+     (388) As to this diminution of widespread epidemic at the end of the
+sixteenth century, see citations from Schenck von Grafenberg in Hecker,
+as above; also Horst.
+
+
+While this Satanic influence had been exerted on so great a scale
+throughout northern Europe, a display strangely like it, yet strangely
+unlike it, had been going on in Italy. There, too, epidemics of dancing
+and jumping seized groups and communities; but they were attributed to
+a physical cause--the theory being that the bite of a tarantula in
+some way provoked a supernatural intervention, of which dancing was the
+accompaniment and cure.
+
+In the middle of the sixteenth century Fracastoro made an evident
+impression on the leaders of Italian opinion by using medical means in
+the cure of the possessed; though it is worthy of note that the medicine
+which he applied successfully was such as we now know could not by
+any direct effects of its own accomplish any cure: whatever effect it
+exerted was wrought upon the imagination of the sufferer. This form of
+"possession," then, passed out of the supernatural domain, and
+became known as "tarantism." Though it continued much longer than the
+corresponding manifestations in northern Europe, by the beginning of
+the eighteenth century it had nearly disappeared; and, though special
+manifestations of it on a small scale still break out occasionally, its
+main survival is the "tarantella," which the traveller sees danced at
+Naples as a catchpenny assault upon his purse.(389)
+
+
+     (389) See Hecker's Epidemics of the Middle Ages, pp. 87-104; also
+extracts and observations in Carpenter's Mental Physiology, London,
+1888, pp. 321-315; also Maudsley, Pathology of Mind, pp. 73 and
+following.
+
+
+But, long before this form of "possession" had begun to disappear, there
+had arisen new manifestations, apparently more inexplicable. As the
+first great epidemics of dancing and jumping had their main origin in a
+religious ceremony, so various new forms had their principal source in
+what were supposed to be centres of religious life--in the convents, and
+more especially in those for women.
+
+Out of many examples we may take a few as typical.
+
+In the fifteenth century the chroniclers assure us that, an inmate of
+a German nunnery having been seized with a passion for biting her
+companions, her mania spread until most, if not all, of her fellow-nuns
+began to bite each other; and that this passion for biting passed from
+convent to convent into other parts of Germany, into Holland, and even
+across the Alps into Italy.
+
+So, too, in a French convent, when a nun began to mew like a cat,
+others began mewing; the disease spread, and was only checked by severe
+measures.(390)
+
+
+     (390) See citation from Zimmermann's Solitude, in Carpenter, pp. 34,
+314.
+
+
+In the sixteenth century the Protestant Reformation gave new force to
+witchcraft persecutions in Germany, the new Church endeavouring to show
+that in zeal and power she exceeded the old. But in France influential
+opinion seemed not so favourable to these forms of diabolical influence,
+especially after the publication of Montaigne's Essays, in 1580, had
+spread a sceptical atmosphere over many leading minds.
+
+In 1588 occurred in France a case which indicates the growth of this
+sceptical tendency even in the higher regions of the french Church,
+In that year Martha Brossier, a country girl, was, it was claimed,
+possessed of the devil. The young woman was to all appearance under
+direct Satanic influence. She roamed about, begging that the demon
+might be cast out of her, and her imprecations and blasphemies brought
+consternation wherever she went. Myth-making began on a large scale;
+stories grew and sped. The Capuchin monks thundered from the pulpit
+throughout France regarding these proofs of the power of Satan: the
+alarm spread, until at last even jovial, sceptical King Henry IV was
+disquieted, and the reigning Pope was asked to take measures to ward off
+the evil.
+
+Fortunately, there then sat in the episcopal chair of Angers a prelate
+who had apparently imbibed something of Montaigne's scepticism--Miron;
+and, when the case was brought before him, he submitted it to the most
+time-honoured of sacred tests. He first brought into the girl's presence
+two bowls, one containing holy water, the other ordinary spring water,
+but allowed her to draw a false inference regarding the contents of
+each: the result was that at the presentation of the holy water the
+devils were perfectly calm, but when tried with the ordinary water they
+threw Martha into convulsions.
+
+The next experiment made by the shrewd bishop was to similar purpose.
+He commanded loudly that a book of exorcisms be brought, and under a
+previous arrangement, his attendants brought him a copy of Virgil. No
+sooner had the bishop begun to read the first line of the Aeneid than
+the devils threw Martha into convulsions. On another occasion a Latin
+dictionary, which she had reason to believe was a book of exorcisms,
+produced a similar effect.
+
+Although the bishop was thereby led to pronounce the whole matter a
+mixture of insanity and imposture, the Capuchin monks denounced this
+view as godless. They insisted that these tests really proved the
+presence of Satan--showing his cunning in covering up the proofs of his
+existence. The people at large sided with their preachers, and Martha
+was taken to Paris, where various exorcisms were tried, and the Parisian
+mob became as devoted to her as they had been twenty years before to
+the murderers of the Huguenots, as they became two centuries later to
+Robespierre, and as they more recently were to General Boulanger.
+
+But Bishop Miron was not the only sceptic. The Cardinal de Gondi,
+Archbishop of Paris, charged the most eminent physicians of the city,
+and among them Riolan, to report upon the case. Various examinations
+were made, and the verdict was that Martha was simply a hysterical
+impostor. Thanks, then, to medical science, and to these two enlightened
+ecclesiastics who summoned its aid, what fifty or a hundred years
+earlier would have been the centre of a widespread epidemic of
+possession was isolated, and hindered from producing a national
+calamity.
+
+In the following year this healthful growth of scepticism continued.
+Fourteen persons had been condemned to death for sorcery, but public
+opinion was strong enough to secure a new examination by a special
+commission, which reported that "the prisoners stood more in need of
+medicine than of punishment," and they were released.(391)
+
+
+     (391) For the Brossier case, see Clameil, La Folie, tome i, livre 3,
+c. 2. For the cases at Tours, see Madden, Phantasmata, vol. i, pp. 309,
+310.
+
+
+But during the seventeenth century, the clergy generally having exerted
+themselves heroically to remove this "evil heart of unbelief" so largely
+due to Montaigne, a theological reaction was brought on not only in
+France but in all parts of the Christian world, and the belief in
+diabolic possession, though certainly dying, flickered up hectic, hot,
+and malignant through the whole century. In 1611 we have a typical case
+at Aix. An epidemic of possession having occurred there, Gauffridi,
+a man of note, was burned at the stake as the cause of the trouble.
+Michaelis, one of the priestly exorcists, declared that he had driven
+out sixty-five hundred devils from one of the possessed. Similar
+epidemics occurred in various parts of the world.(392)
+
+
+     (392) See Dagron, chap. ii.
+
+
+Twenty years later a far more striking case occurred at Loudun, in
+western France, where a convent of Ursuline nuns was "afflicted by
+demons."
+
+The convent was filled mainly with ladies of noble birth, who, not
+having sufficient dower to secure husbands, had, according to the common
+method of the time, been made nuns.
+
+It is not difficult to understand that such an imprisonment of a
+multitude of women of different ages would produce some woeful effects.
+Any reader of Manzoni's Promessi Sposi, with its wonderful portrayal of
+the feelings and doings of a noble lady kept in a convent against
+her will, may have some idea of the rage and despair which must have
+inspired such assemblages in which pride, pauperism, and the attempted
+suppression of the instincts of humanity wrought a fearful work.
+
+What this work was may be seen throughout the Middle Ages; but it is
+especially in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that we find it
+frequently taking shape in outbursts of diabolic possession.(393)
+
+
+     (393) On monasteries as centres of "possession" and hysterical
+epidemics, see Figuier, Le Merveilleux, p. 40 and following; also
+Calmeil, Langin, Kirchhoff, Maudsley, and others. On similar results
+from excitement at Protestant meetings in Scotland and camp meetings in
+England and America, see Hecker's Essay, concluding chapters.
+
+
+In this case at Loudun, the usual evidences of Satanic influence
+appeared. One after another of the inmates fell into convulsions: some
+showed physical strength apparently supernatural; some a keenness
+of perception quite as surprising; many howled forth blasphemies and
+obscenities.
+
+Near the convent dwelt a priest--Urbain Grandier--noted for his
+brilliancy as a writer and preacher, but careless in his way of living.
+Several of the nuns had evidently conceived a passion for him, and in
+their wild rage and despair dwelt upon his name. In the same city, too,
+were sundry ecclesiastics and laymen with whom Grandier had fallen
+into petty neighbourhood quarrels, and some of these men held the main
+control of the convent.
+
+Out of this mixture of "possession" within the convent and malignity
+without it came a charge that Grandier had bewitched the young women.
+
+The Bishop of Poictiers took up the matter. A trial was held, and it
+was noted that, whenever Grandier appeared, the "possessed" screamed,
+shrieked, and showed every sign of diabolic influence. Grandier fought
+desperately, and appealed to the Archbishop of Bordeaux, De Sourdis. The
+archbishop ordered a more careful examination, and, on separating
+the nuns from each other and from certain monks who had been bitterly
+hostile to Grandier, such glaring discrepancies were found in their
+testimony that the whole accusation was brought to naught.
+
+But the enemies of Satan and of Grandier did not rest. Through their
+efforts Cardinal Richelieu, who appears to have had an old grudge
+against Grandier, sent a representative, Laubardemont, to make another
+investigation. Most frightful scenes were now enacted: the whole convent
+resounded more loudly than ever with shrieks, groans, howling, and
+cursing, until finally Grandier, though even in the agony of torture he
+refused to confess the crimes that his enemies suggested, was hanged and
+burned.
+
+From this centre the epidemic spread: multitudes of women and men were
+affected by it in various convents; several of the great cities of the
+south and west of France came under the same influence; the "possession"
+went on for several years longer and then gradually died out, though
+scattered cases have occurred from that day to this.(394)
+
+
+     (394) Among the many statements of Grandier's case, one of the best in
+English may be found in Trollope's Sketches from French History, London,
+1878. See also Bazin, Louis XIII.
+
+
+A few years later we have an even more striking example among the French
+Protestants. The Huguenots, who had taken refuge in the mountains of
+the Cevennes to escape persecution, being pressed more and more by
+the cruelties of Louis XIV, began to show signs of a high degree of
+religious exaltation. Assembled as they were for worship in wild and
+desert places, an epidemic broke out among them, ascribed by them to
+the Almighty, but by their opponents to Satan. Men, women, and children
+preached and prophesied. Large assemblies were seized with trembling.
+Some underwent the most terrible tortures without showing any signs of
+suffering. Marshal de Villiers, who was sent against them, declared that
+he saw a town in which all the women and girls, without exception,
+were possessed of the devil, and ran leaping and screaming through the
+streets. Cases like this, inexplicable to the science of the time, gave
+renewed strength to the theological view.(395)
+
+
+     (395) See Bersot, Mesmer et la Magnetisme animal, third edition, Paris,
+1864, pp. 95 et seq.
+
+
+Toward the end of the same century similar manifestations began to
+appear on a large scale in America.
+
+The life of the early colonists in New England was such as to give
+rapid growth to the germs of the doctrine of possession brought from
+the mother country. Surrounded by the dark pine forests; having as their
+neighbours Indians, who were more than suspected of being children of
+Satan; harassed by wild beasts apparently sent by the powers of evil
+to torment the elect; with no varied literature to while away the
+long winter evenings; with few amusements save neighbourhood quarrels;
+dwelling intently on every text of Scripture which supported their
+gloomy theology, and adopting its most literal interpretation, it is not
+strange that they rapidly developed ideas regarding the darker side of
+nature.(396)
+
+
+     (396) For the idea that America before the Pilgims had been especially
+given over to Satan, see the literature of the early Puritan period,
+and especially the poetry of Wigglesworth, treated in Tylor's History of
+American Literature, vol. ii, p. 25 et seq.
+
+
+This fear of witchcraft received a powerful stimulus from the treatises
+of learned men. Such works, coming from Europe, which was at that
+time filled with the superstition, acted powerfully upon conscientious
+preachers, and were brought by them to bear upon the people at large.
+Naturally, then, throughout the latter half of the seventeenth century
+we find scattered cases of diabolic possession. At Boston, Springfield,
+Hartford, Groton, and other towns, cases occurred, and here and there we
+hear of death-sentences.
+
+In the last quarter of the seventeenth century the fruit of these ideas
+began to ripen. In the year 1684 Increase Mather published his book,
+Remarkable Providences, laying stress upon diabolic possession and
+witchcraft. This book, having been sent over to England, exercised an
+influence there, and came back with the approval of no less a man than
+Richard Baxter: by this its power at home was increased.
+
+In 1688 a poor family in Boston was afflicted by demons: four children,
+the eldest thirteen years of age, began leaping and barking like dogs or
+purring like cats, and complaining of being pricked, pinched, and cut;
+and, to help the matter, an old Irishwoman was tried and executed.
+
+All this belief might have passed away like a troubled dream had it not
+become incarnate in a strong man. This man was Cotton Mather, the son of
+Increase Mather. Deeply religious, possessed of excellent abilities, a
+great scholar, anxious to promote the welfare of his flock in this world
+and in the next, he was far in advance of ecclesiastics generally on
+nearly all the main questions between science and theology. He came out
+of his earlier superstition regarding the divine origin of the Hebrew
+punctuation; he opposed the old theologic idea regarding the taking of
+interest for money; he favoured inoculation as a preventive of smallpox
+when a multitude of clergymen and laymen opposed it; he accepted
+the Newtonian astronomy despite the outcries against its "atheistic
+tendency"; he took ground against the time-honoured dogma that comets
+are "signs and wonders." He had, indeed, some of the defects of his
+qualities, and among them pedantic vanity, pride of opinion, and love
+of power; but he was for his time remarkably liberal and undoubtedly
+sincere. He had thrown off a large part of his father's theology, but
+one part of it he could not throw off: he was one of the best biblical
+scholars of his time, and he could not break away from the fact that
+the sacred Scriptures explicitly recognise witchcraft and demoniacal
+possession as realities, and enjoin against witchcraft the penalty
+of death. Therefore it was that in 1689 he published his Memorable
+Providences relating to Witchcrafts and Possessions. The book, according
+to its title-page, was "recommended by the Ministers of Boston and
+Charleston," and its stories soon became the familiar reading of men,
+women, and children throughout New England.
+
+Out of all these causes thus brought to bear upon public opinion
+began in 1692 a new outbreak of possession, which is one of the most
+instructive in history. The Rev. Samuel Parris was the minister of
+the church in Salem, and no pope ever had higher ideas of his own
+infallibility, no bishop a greater love of ceremony, no inquisitor a
+greater passion for prying and spying.(397)
+
+
+     (397) For curious examples of this, see Upham's History of Salem
+Witchcraft, vol. i.
+
+
+Before long Mr. Parris had much upon his hands. Many of his hardy,
+independent parishioners disliked his ways. Quarrels arose. Some of the
+leading men of the congregation were pitted against him. The previous
+minister, George Burroughs, had left the germs of troubles and
+quarrels, and to these were now added new complications arising from the
+assumptions of Parris. There were innumerable wranglings and lawsuits;
+in fact, all the essential causes for Satanic interference which we saw
+at work in and about the monastery at Loudun, and especially the turmoil
+of a petty village where there is no intellectual activity, and
+where men and women find their chief substitute for it in squabbles,
+religious, legal, political, social, and personal.
+
+In the darkened atmosphere thus charged with the germs of disease it
+was suddenly discovered that two young girls in the family of Mr. Parris
+were possessed of devils: they complained of being pinched, pricked,
+and cut, fell into strange spasms and made strange speeches--showing the
+signs of diabolic possession handed down in fireside legends or dwelt
+upon in popular witch literature--and especially such as had lately been
+described by Cotton Mather in his book on Memorable Providences. The
+two girls, having been brought by Mr. Parris and others to tell who
+had bewitched them, first charged an old Indian woman, and the poor old
+Indian husband was led to join in the charge. This at once afforded
+new scope for the activity of Mr. Parris. Magnifying his office, he
+immediately began making a great stir in Salem and in the country round
+about. Two magistrates were summoned. With them came a crowd, and a
+court was held at the meeting-house. The scenes which then took place
+would have been the richest of farces had they not led to events so
+tragical. The possessed went into spasms at the approach of those
+charged with witchcraft, and when the poor old men and women attempted
+to attest their innocence they were overwhelmed with outcries by the
+possessed, quotations of Scripture by the ministers, and denunciations
+by the mob. One especially--Ann Putnam, a child of twelve years--showed
+great precocity and played a striking part in the performances. The
+mania spread to other children; and two or three married women also,
+seeing the great attention paid to the afflicted, and influenced by that
+epidemic of morbid imitation which science now recognises in all such
+cases, soon became similarly afflicted, and in their turn made charges
+against various persons. The Indian woman was flogged by her master, Mr.
+Parris, until she confessed relations with Satan; and others were forced
+or deluded into confession. These hysterical confessions, the results
+of unbearable torture, or the reminiscences of dreams, which had been
+prompted by the witch legends and sermons of the period, embraced such
+facts as flying through the air to witch gatherings, partaking of witch
+sacraments, signing a book presented by the devil, and submitting to
+Satanic baptism. The possessed had begun with charging their possession
+upon poor and vagrant old women, but ere long, emboldened by their
+success, they attacked higher game, struck at some of the foremost
+people of the region, and did not cease until several of these were
+condemned to death, and every man, woman, and child brought under a
+reign of terror. Many fled outright, and one of the foremost citizens of
+Salem went constantly armed, and kept one of his horses saddled in the
+stable to flee if brought under accusation. The hysterical ingenuity of
+the possessed women grew with their success. They insisted that they saw
+devils prompting the accused to defend themselves in court. Did one of
+the accused clasp her hands in despair, the possessed clasped theirs;
+did the accused, in appealing to Heaven, make any gesture, the possessed
+simultaneously imitated it; did the accused in weariness drop her head,
+the possessed dropped theirs, and declared that the witch was trying
+to break their necks. The court-room resounded with groans, shrieks,
+prayers, and curses; judges, jury, and people were aghast, and even the
+accused were sometimes thus led to believe in their own guilt.
+
+Very striking in all these cases was the alloy of frenzy with trickery.
+In most of the madness there was method. Sundry witches charged by the
+possessed had been engaged in controversy with the Salem church people.
+Others of the accused had quarrelled with Mr. Parris. Still others had
+been engaged in old lawsuits against persons more or less connected with
+the girls. One of the most fearful charges, which cost the life of a
+noble and lovely woman, arose undoubtedly from her better style of dress
+and living. Old slumbering neighbourhood or personal quarrels bore in
+this way a strange fruitage of revenge; for the cardinal doctrine of a
+fanatic's creed is that his enemies are the enemies of God.
+
+Any person daring to hint the slightest distrust of the proceedings was
+in danger of being immediately brought under accusation of a league with
+Satan. Husbands and children were thus brought to the gallows for daring
+to disbelieve these charges against their wives and mothers. Some of
+the clergy were accused for endeavouring to save members of their
+churches.(398)
+
+
+     (398) This is admirably brought out by Upham, and the lawyerlike
+thoroughness with which he has examined all these hidden springs of the
+charges is one of the main things which render his book one of the
+most valuable contributions to the history and philosophy of demoniacal
+possession ever written.
+
+
+One poor woman was charged with "giving a look toward the great
+meeting-house of Salem, and immediately a demon entered the house and
+tore down a part of it." This cause for the falling of a bit of poorly
+nailed wainscoting seemed perfectly satisfactory to Dr. Cotton Mather,
+as well as to the judge and jury, and she was hanged, protesting her
+innocence. Still another lady, belonging to one of the most respected
+families of the region, was charged with the crime of witchcraft. The
+children were fearfully afflicted whenever she appeared near them. It
+seemed never to occur to any one that a bitter old feud between the
+Rev. Mr. Parris and the family of the accused might have prejudiced the
+children and directed their attention toward the woman. No account was
+made of the fact that her life had been entirely blameless; and yet,
+in view of the wretched insufficiency of proof, the jury brought in a
+verdict of not guilty. As they brought in this verdict, all the children
+began to shriek and scream, until the court committed the monstrous
+wrong of causing her to be indicted anew. In order to warrant this, the
+judge referred to one perfectly natural and harmless expression made
+by the woman when under examination. The jury at last brought her in
+guilty. She was condemned; and, having been brought into the church
+heavily ironed, was solemnly excommunicated and delivered over to Satan
+by the minister. Some good sense still prevailed, and the Governor
+reprieved her; but ecclesiastical pressure and popular clamour were too
+powerful. The Governor was induced to recall his reprieve, and she was
+executed, protesting her innocence and praying for her enemies.(399)
+
+
+     (399) See Drake, The Witchcraft Delusion in New England, vol. iii, pp.
+34 et seq.
+
+
+Another typical case was presented. The Rev. Mr. Burroughs, against whom
+considerable ill will had been expressed, and whose petty parish quarrel
+with the powerful Putnam family had led to his dismissal from his
+ministry, was named by the possessed as one of those who plagued them,
+one of the most influential among the afflicted being Ann Putnam. Mr.
+Burroughs had led a blameless life, the main thing charged against him
+by the Putnams being that he insisted strenuously that his wife should
+not go about the parish talking of her own family matters. He was
+charged with afflicting the children, convicted, and executed. At the
+last moment he repeated the Lord's Prayer solemnly and fully, which
+it was supposed that no sorcerer could do, and this, together with his
+straightforward Christian utterances at the execution, shook the faith
+of many in the reality of diabolic possession. Ere long it was known
+that one of the girls had acknowledged that she had belied some persons
+who had been executed, and especially Mr. Burroughs, and that she had
+begged forgiveness; but this for a time availed nothing. Persons who
+would not confess were tied up and put to a sort of torture which was
+effective in securing new revelations.
+
+In the case of Giles Corey the horrors of the persecution culminated.
+Seeing that his doom was certain, and wishing to preserve his family
+from attainder and their property from confiscation, he refused to
+plead. Though eighty years of age, he was therefore pressed to death,
+and when, in his last agonies, his tongue was pressed out of his mouth,
+the sheriff with his walking-stick thrust it back again.
+
+Everything was made to contribute to the orthodox view of possession. On
+one occasion, when a cart conveying eight condemned persons to the place
+of execution stuck fast in the mire, some of the possessed declared that
+they saw the devil trying to prevent the punishment of his associates.
+Confessions of witchcraft abounded; but the way in which these
+confessions were obtained is touchingly exhibited in a statement
+afterward made by several women. In explaining the reasons why, when
+charged with afflicting sick persons, they made a false confession, they
+said:
+
+"... By reason of that suddain surprizal, we knowing ourselves altogether
+Innocent of that Crime, we were all exceedingly astonished and amazed,
+and consternated and affrighted even out of our Reason; and our nearest
+and dearest Relations, seeing us in that dreadful condition, and knowing
+our great danger, apprehending that there was no other way to save our
+lives,... out of tender... pitty persuaded us to confess what we did
+confess. And indeed that Confession, that it is said we made, was no
+other than what was suggested to us by some Gentlemen; they telling us,
+that we were Witches, and they knew it, and we knew it, and they
+knew that we knew it, which made us think that it was so; and our
+understanding, our reason, and our faculties almost gone, we were not
+capable of judging our condition; as also the hard measures they used
+with us, rendered us uncapable of making our Defence, but said anything
+and everything which they desired, and most of what we said, was in
+effect a consenting to what they said...."(400)
+
+
+     (400) See Calef, in Drake, vol ii; also Upham.
+
+
+Case after case, in which hysteria, fanaticism, cruelty, injustice, and
+trickery played their part, was followed up to the scaffold. In a short
+time twenty persons had been put to a cruel death, and the number of
+the accused grew larger and larger. The highest position and the noblest
+character formed no barrier. Daily the possessed became more bold, more
+tricky, and more wild. No plea availed anything. In behalf of several
+women, whose lives had been of the purest and gentlest, petitions were
+presented, but to no effect. A scriptural text was always ready to aid
+in the repression of mercy: it was remembered that "Satan himself is
+transformed into an angel of light," and above all resounded the Old
+Testament injunction, which had sent such multitudes in Europe to the
+torture-chamber and the stake, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live."
+
+Such clergymen as Noyes, Parris, and Mather, aided by such judges
+as Stoughton and Hathorn, left nothing undone to stimulate these
+proceedings. The great Cotton Mather based upon this outbreak of disease
+thus treated his famous book, Wonders of the Invisible World, thanking
+God for the triumphs over Satan thus gained at Salem; and his book
+received the approbation of the Governor of the Province, the President
+of Harvard College, and various eminent theologians in Europe as well as
+in America.
+
+But, despite such efforts as these, observation, and thought upon
+observation, which form the beginning of all true science, brought in a
+new order of things. The people began to fall away. Justice Bradstreet,
+having committed thirty or forty persons, became aroused to the
+absurdity of the whole matter; the minister of Andover had the good
+sense to resist the theological view; even so high a personage as Lady
+Phips, the wife of the Governor, began to show lenity.
+
+Each of these was, in consequence of this disbelief, charged with
+collusion with Satan; but such charges seemed now to lose their force.
+
+In the midst of all this delusion and terrorism stood Cotton Mather firm
+as ever. His efforts to uphold the declining superstition were heroic.
+But he at last went one step too far. Being himself possessed of a mania
+for myth-making and wonder-mongering, and having described a case
+of witchcraft with possibly greater exaggeration than usual, he was
+confronted by Robert Calef. Calef was a Boston merchant, who appears
+to have united the good sense of a man of business to considerable
+shrewdness in observation, power in thought, and love for truth; and
+he began writing to Mather and others, to show the weak points in the
+system. Mather, indignant that a person so much his inferior dared
+dissent from his opinion, at first affected to despise Calef; but, as
+Calef pressed him more and more closely, Mather denounced him, calling
+him among other things "A Coal from Hell." All to no purpose: Calef
+fastened still more firmly upon the flanks of the great theologian.
+Thought and reason now began to resume their sway.
+
+The possessed having accused certain men held in very high respect,
+doubts began to dawn upon the community at large. Here was the
+repetition of that which had set men thinking in the German bishoprics
+when those under trial for witchcraft there had at last, in their
+desperation or madness, charged the very bishops and the judges upon
+the bench with sorcery. The party of reason grew stronger. The Rev. Mr.
+Parris was soon put upon the defensive: for some of the possessed began
+to confess that they had accused people wrongfully. Herculean efforts
+were made by certain of the clergy and devout laity to support the
+declining belief, but the more thoughtful turned more and more against
+it; jurymen prominent in convictions solemnly retracted their verdicts
+and publicly craved pardon of God and man. Most striking of all was the
+case of Justice Sewall. A man of the highest character, he had in view
+of authority deduced from Scripture and the principles laid down by the
+great English judges, unhesitatingly condemned the accused; but reason
+now dawned upon him. He looked back and saw the baselessness of the
+whole proceedings, and made a public statement of his errors. His diary
+contains many passages showing deep contrition, and ever afterward, to
+the end of his life, he was wont, on one day in the year, to enter into
+solitude, and there remain all the day long in fasting, prayer, and
+penitence.
+
+Chief-Justice Stoughton never yielded. To the last he lamented the "evil
+spirit of unbelief" which was thwarting the glorious work of freeing New
+England from demons.
+
+The church of Salem solemnly revoked the excommunications of the
+condemned and drove Mr. Parris from the pastorate. Cotton Mather
+passed his last years in groaning over the decline of the faith and the
+ingratitude of a people for whom he had done so much. Very significant
+is one of his complaints, since it shows the evolution of a more
+scientific mode of thought abroad as well as at home: he laments in his
+diary that English publishers gladly printed Calef's book, but would no
+longer publish his own, and he declares this "an attack upon the glory
+of the Lord."
+
+About forty years after the New England epidemic of "possession"
+occurred another typical series of phenomena in France. In 1727 there
+died at the French capital a simple and kindly ecclesiastic, the
+Archdeacon Paris. He had lived a pious, Christian life, and was endeared
+to multitudes by his charity; unfortunately, he had espoused the
+doctrine of Jansen on grace and free will, and, though he remained in
+the Gallican Church, he and those who thought like him were opposed by
+the Jesuits, and finally condemned by a papal bull.
+
+His remains having been buried in the cemetery of St. Medard, the
+Jansenists flocked to say their prayers at his grave, and soon miracles
+began to be wrought there. Ere long they were multiplied. The sick being
+brought and laid upon the tombstone, many were cured. Wonderful stories
+were attested by eye-witnesses. The myth-making tendency--the passion
+for developing, enlarging, and spreading tales of wonder--came into full
+play and was given free course.
+
+Many thoughtful men satisfied themselves of the truth of these
+representations. One of the foremost English scholars came over,
+examined into them, and declared that there could be no doubt as to the
+reality of the cures.
+
+This state of things continued for about four years, when, in 1731, more
+violent effects showed themselves. Sundry persons approaching the tomb
+were thrown into convulsions, hysterics, and catalepsy; these diseases
+spread, became epidemic, and soon multitudes were similarly afflicted.
+Both religious parties made the most of these cases. In vain did such
+great authorities in medical science as Hecquet and Lorry attribute the
+whole to natural causes: the theologians on both sides declared them
+supernatural--the Jansenists attributing them to God, the Jesuits to
+Satan.
+
+Of late years such cases have been treated in France with much
+shrewdness. When, about the middle of the present century, the Arab
+priests in Algiers tried to arouse fanaticism against the French
+Christians by performing miracles, the French Government, instead of
+persecuting the priests, sent Robert-Houdin, the most renowned juggler
+of his time, to the scene of action, and for every Arab miracle Houdin
+performed two: did an Arab marabout turn a rod into a serpent, Houdin
+turned his rod into two serpents; and afterward showed the people how he
+did it.
+
+So, too, at the last International Exposition, the French Government,
+observing the evil effects produced by the mania for table turning and
+tipping, took occasion, when a great number of French schoolmasters and
+teachers were visiting the exposition, to have public lectures given in
+which all the business of dark closets, hand-tying, materialization of
+spirits, presenting the faces of the departed, and ghostly portraiture
+was fully performed by professional mountebanks, and afterward as fully
+explained.
+
+So in this case. The Government simply ordered the gate of the cemetery
+to be locked, and when the crowd could no longer approach the tomb the
+miracles ceased. A little Parisian ridicule helped to end the matter. A
+wag wrote up over the gate of the cemetery.
+
+
+"De par le Roi, defense a Dieu  De faire des miracles dans ce lieu"--
+
+
+which, being translated from doggerel French into doggerel English, is--
+
+"By order of the king, the Lord must forbear  To work any more of his miracles here."
+
+
+But the theological spirit remained powerful. The French Revolution had
+not then intervened to bring it under healthy limits. The agitation
+was maintained, and, though the miracles and cases of possession were
+stopped in the cemetery, it spread. Again full course was given to
+myth-making and the retailing of wonders. It was said that men had
+allowed themselves to be roasted before slow fires, and had been
+afterward found uninjured; that some had enormous weights piled upon
+them, but had supernatural powers of resistance given them; and that, in
+one case, a voluntary crucifixion had taken place.
+
+This agitation was long, troublesome, and no doubt robbed many
+temporarily or permanently of such little brains as they possessed.
+It was only when the violence had become an old story and the charm of
+novelty had entirely worn off, and the afflicted found themselves
+no longer regarded with especial interest, that the epidemic died
+away.(401)
+
+
+     (401) See Madden, Phantasmata, chap. xiv; also Sir James Stephen,
+History of France, lecture xxvi; also Henry Martin, Histoire de France,
+vol. xv, pp. 168 et seq.; also Calmeil, liv. v, chap. xxiv; also
+Hecker's essay; and, for samples of myth-making, see the apocryphal
+Souvenirs de Crequy.
+
+
+But in Germany at that time the outcome of this belief was far more
+cruel. In 1749 Maria Renata Singer, sub-prioress of a convent at
+Wurzburg, was charged with bewitching her fellow-nuns. There was the
+usual story--the same essential facts as at Loudun--women shut up
+against their will, dreams of Satan disguised as a young man, petty
+jealousies, spites, quarrels, mysterious uproar, trickery, utensils
+thrown about in a way not to be accounted for, hysterical shrieking and
+convulsions, and, finally, the torture, confession, and execution of the
+supposed culprit.(402)
+
+
+     (402) See Soldan, Scherr, Diefenbach, and others.
+
+
+Various epidemics of this sort broke out from time to time in other
+parts of the world, though happily, as modern scepticism prevailed, with
+less cruel results.
+
+In 1760 some congregations of Calvinistic Methodists in Wales became so
+fervent that they began leaping for joy. The mania spread, and gave rise
+to a sect called the "Jumpers." A similar outbreak took place afterward
+in England, and has been repeated at various times and places since in
+our own country.(403)
+
+
+     (403) See Adam's Dictionary of All Religions, article on Jumpers; also
+Hecker.
+
+
+In 1780 came another outbreak in France; but this time it was not the
+Jansenists who were affected, but the strictly orthodox. A large number
+of young girls between twelve and nineteen years of age, having been
+brought together at the church of St. Roch, in Paris, with preaching
+and ceremonies calculated to arouse hysterics, one of them fell into
+convulsions. Immediately other children were similarly taken, until some
+fifty or sixty were engaged in the same antics. This mania spread to
+other churches and gatherings, proved very troublesome, and in some
+cases led to results especially painful.
+
+About the same period came a similar outbreak among the Protestants
+of the Shetland Isles. A woman having been seized with convulsions at
+church, the disease spread to others, mainly women, who fell into the
+usual contortions and wild shriekings. A very effective cure proved to
+be a threat to plunge the diseased into a neighbouring pond.
+
+
+
+
+II. BEGINNINGS OF HELPFUL SCEPTICISM.
+
+
+But near the end of the eighteenth century a fact very important for
+science was established. It was found that these manifestations do not
+arise in all cases from supernatural sources. In 1787 came the noted
+case at Hodden Bridge, in Lancashire. A girl working in a cotton
+manufactory there put a mouse into the bosom of another girl who had
+a great dread of mice. The girl thus treated immediately went into
+convulsions, which lasted twenty-four hours. Shortly afterward three
+other girls were seized with like convulsions, a little later six more,
+and then others, until, in all, twenty-four were attacked. Then came a
+fact throwing a flood of light upon earlier occurrences. This epidemic,
+being noised abroad, soon spread to another factory five miles distant.
+The patients there suffered from strangulation, danced, tore their hair,
+and dashed their heads against the walls. There was a strong belief that
+it was a disease introduced in cotton, but a resident physician amused
+the patients with electric shocks, and the disease died out.
+
+In 1801 came a case of like import in the Charite Hospital in Berlin.
+A girl fell into strong convulsions. The disease proved contagious,
+several others becoming afflicted in a similar way; but nearly all were
+finally cured, principally by the administration of opium, which appears
+at that time to have been a fashionable remedy.
+
+Of the same sort was a case at Lyons in 1851. Sixty women were working
+together in a shop, when one of them, after a bitter quarrel with
+her husband, fell into a violent nervous paroxysm. The other women,
+sympathizing with her, gathered about to assist her, but one after
+another fell into a similar condition, until twenty were thus
+prostrated, and a more general spread of the epidemic was only prevented
+by clearing the premises.(404)
+
+
+     (404) For these examples and others, see Tuke, Influence of the Mind
+upon the Body, vol. i, pp. 100, 277; also Hecker's essay.
+
+
+But while these cases seemed, in the eye of Science, fatal to the old
+conception of diabolic influence, the great majority of such epidemics,
+when unexplained, continued to give strength to the older view.
+
+In Roman Catholic countries these manifestations, as we have seen, have
+generally appeared in convents, or in churches where young girls are
+brought together for their first communion, or at shrines where miracles
+are supposed to be wrought.
+
+In Protestant countries they appear in times of great religious
+excitement, and especially when large bodies of young women are
+submitted to the influence of noisy and frothy preachers. Well-known
+examples of this in America are seen in the "Jumpers," "Jerkers," and
+various revival extravagances, especially among the negroes and "poor
+whites" of the Southern States.
+
+The proper conditions being given for the development of the
+disease--generally a congregation composed mainly of young women--any
+fanatic or overzealous priest or preacher may stimulate hysterical
+seizures, which are very likely to become epidemic.
+
+As a recent typical example on a large scale, I take the case of
+diabolic possession at Morzine, a French village on the borders of
+Switzerland; and it is especially instructive, because it was thoroughly
+investigated by a competent man of science.
+
+About the year 1853 a sick girl at Morzine, acting strangely, was
+thought to be possessed of the devil, and was taken to Besancon,
+where she seems to have fallen into the hands of kindly and sensible
+ecclesiastics, and, under the operation of the relics preserved in the
+cathedral there--especially the handkerchief of Christ--the devil was
+cast out and she was cured. Naturally, much was said of the affair among
+the peasantry, and soon other cases began to show themselves. The priest
+at Morzine attempted to quiet the matter by avowing his disbelief in
+such cases of possession; but immediately a great outcry was raised
+against him, especially by the possessed themselves. The matter was
+now widely discussed, and the malady spread rapidly; myth-making and
+wonder-mongering began; amazing accounts were thus developed and sent
+out to the world. The afflicted were said to have climbed trees like
+squirrels; to have shown superhuman strength; to have exercised the gift
+of tongues, speaking in German, Latin, and even in Arabic; to have
+given accounts of historical events they had never heard of; and to have
+revealed the secret thoughts of persons about them. Mingled with such
+exhibitions of power were outbursts of blasphemy and obscenity.
+
+But suddenly came something more miraculous, apparently, than all
+these wonders. Without any assigned cause, this epidemic of possession
+diminished and the devil disappeared.
+
+Not long after this, Prof. Tissot, an eminent member of the medical
+faculty at Dijon, visited the spot and began a series of researches, of
+which he afterward published a full account. He tells us that he found
+some reasons for the sudden departure of Satan which had never been
+published. He discovered that the Government had quietly removed one or
+two very zealous ecclesiastics to another parish, had sent the police
+to Morzine to maintain order, and had given instructions that those
+who acted outrageously should be simply treated as lunatics and sent
+to asylums. This policy, so accordant with French methods of
+administration, cast out the devil: the possessed were mainly cured, and
+the matter appeared ended.
+
+But Dr. Tissot found a few of the diseased still remaining, and he soon
+satisfied himself by various investigations and experiments that they
+were simply suffering from hysteria. One of his investigations is
+especially curious. In order to observe the patients more carefully, he
+invited some of them to dine with him, gave them without their knowledge
+holy water in their wine or their food, and found that it produced no
+effect whatever, though its results upon the demons when the possessed
+knew of its presence had been very marked. Even after large draughts of
+holy water had been thus given, the possessed remained afflicted, urged
+that the devil should be cast out, and some of them even went into
+convulsions; the devil apparently speaking from their mouths. It was
+evident that Satan had not the remotest idea that he had been thoroughly
+dosed with the most effective medicine known to the older theology.(405)
+
+
+     (405) For an amazing delineation of the curative and other virtues of
+holy water, see the Abbe Gaume, L'Eau benite au XIXme Siecle, Paris,
+1866.
+
+
+At last Tissot published the results of his experiments, and the
+stereotyped answer was soon made. It resembled the answer made by the
+clerical opponents of Galileo when he showed them the moons of Jupiter
+through his telescope, and they declared that the moons were created
+by the telescope. The clerical opponents of Tissot insisted that the
+non-effect of the holy water upon the demons proved nothing save the
+extraordinary cunning of Satan; that the archfiend wished it to be
+thought that he does not exist, and so overcame his repugnance to holy
+water, gulping it down in order to conceal his presence.
+
+Dr. Tissot also examined into the gift of tongues exercised by the
+possessed. As to German and Latin, no great difficulty was presented:
+it was by no means hard to suppose that some of the girls might have
+learned some words of the former language in the neighbouring Swiss
+cantons where German was spoken, or even in Germany itself; and as to
+Latin, considering that they had heard it from their childhood in the
+church, there seemed nothing very wonderful in their uttering some words
+in that language also. As to Arabic, had they really spoken it, that
+might have been accounted for by the relations of the possessed with
+Zouaves or Spahis from the French army; but, as Tissot could discover no
+such relations, he investigated this point as the most puzzling of all.
+
+On a close inquiry, he found that all the wonderful examples of speaking
+Arabic were reduced to one. He then asked whether there was any other
+person speaking or knowing Arabic in the town. He was answered that
+there was not. He asked whether any person had lived there, so far as
+any one could remember, who had spoken or understood Arabic, and he was
+answered in the negative.
+
+He then asked the witnesses how they knew that the language spoken
+by the girl was Arabic: no answer was vouchsafed him; but he was
+overwhelmed with such stories as that of a pig which, at sight of the
+cross on the village church, suddenly refused to go farther; and he was
+denounced thoroughly in the clerical newspapers for declining to accept
+such evidence.
+
+At Tissot's visit in 1863 the possession had generally ceased, and the
+cases left were few and quiet. But his visits stirred a new controversy,
+and its echoes were long and loud in the pulpits and clerical journals.
+Believers insisted that Satan had been removed by the intercession
+of the Blessed Virgin; unbelievers hinted that the main cause of
+the deliverance was the reluctance of the possessed to be shut up in
+asylums.
+
+Under these circumstances the Bishop of Annecy announced that he would
+visit Morzine to administer Confirmation, and word appears to have
+spread that he would give a more orthodox completion to the work already
+done, by exorcising the devils who remained. Immediately several new
+cases of possession appeared; young girls who had been cured were
+again affected; the embers thus kindled were fanned into a flame by a
+"mission" which sundry priests held in the parish to arouse the people
+to their religious duties--a mission in Roman Catholic countries being
+akin to a "revival" among some Protestant sects. Multitudes of young
+women, excited by the preaching and appeals of the clergy, were again
+thrown into the old disease, and at the coming of the good bishop it
+culminated.
+
+The account is given in the words of an eye-witness:
+
+"At the solemn entrance of the bishop into the church, the possessed
+persons threw themselves on the ground before him, or endeavoured to
+throw themselves upon him, screaming frightfully, cursing, blaspheming,
+so that the people at large were struck with horror. The possessed
+followed the bishop, hooted him, and threatened him, up to the middle
+of the church. Order was only established by the intervention of the
+soldiers. During the confirmation the diseased redoubled their howls and
+infernal vociferations, and tried to spit in the face of the bishop and
+to tear off his pastoral raiment. At the moment when the prelate gave
+his benediction a still more outrageous scene took place. The violence
+of the diseased was carried to fury, and from all parts of the church
+arose yells and fearful howling; so frightful was the din that tears
+fell from the eyes of many of the spectators, and many strangers were
+thrown into consternation."
+
+Among the very large number of these diseased persons there were only
+two men; of the remainder only two were of advanced age; the great
+majority were young women between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five
+years.
+
+The public authorities shortly afterward intervened, and sought to
+cure the disease and to draw the people out of their mania by singing,
+dancing, and sports of various sorts, until at last it was brought under
+control.(406)
+
+
+     (406) See Tissot, L'Imagination: ses Bienfaits et ses Egarements sutout
+dans le Domaine du Merveilleux, Paris, 1868, liv. iv, ch. vii, S 7:
+Les Possedees de Morzine; also Constans, Relation sur une Epidemie de
+Hystero-Demonopathies, Paris, 1863.
+
+
+Scenes similar to these, in their essential character, have arisen more
+recently in Protestant countries, but with the difference that what has
+been generally attributed by Roman Catholic ecclesiastics to Satan is
+attributed by Protestant ecclesiastics to the Almighty. Typical among
+the greater exhibitions of this were those which began in the Methodist
+chapel at Redruth in Cornwall--convulsions, leaping, jumping, until some
+four thousand persons were seized by it. The same thing is seen in the
+ruder parts of America at "revivals" and camp meetings. Nor in the
+ruder parts of America alone. In June, 1893, at a funeral in the city
+of Brooklyn, one of the mourners having fallen into hysterical fits,
+several other cases at once appeared in various parts of the church
+edifice, and some of the patients were so seriously affected that they
+were taken to a hospital.
+
+In still another field these exhibitions are seen, but more after a
+medieval pattern: in the Tigretier of Abyssinia we have epidemics of
+dancing which seek and obtain miraculous cures.
+
+Reports of similar manifestations are also sent from missionaries
+from the west coast of Africa, one of whom sees in some of them the
+characteristics of cases of possession mentioned in our Gospels, and is
+therefore inclined to attribute them to Satan.(407)
+
+
+     (407) For the cases in Brooklyn, see the New York Tribune of about June
+10, 1893. For the Tigretier, with especially interesting citations, see
+Hecker, chap. iii, sec. 1. For the cases in western Africa, see the Rev.
+J. L. Wilson, Western Africa, p. 217.
+
+
+
+
+
+III. THEOLOGICAL "RESTATEMENTS."--FINAL TRIUMPH OF THE SCIENTIFIC VIEW
+AND METHODS.
+
+
+But, happily, long before these latter occurrences, science had come
+into the field and was gradually diminishing this class of diseases.
+Among the earlier workers to this better purpose was the great Dutch
+physician Boerhaave. Finding in one of the wards in the hospital at
+Haarlem a number of women going into convulsions and imitating each
+other in various acts of frenzy, he immediately ordered a furnace of
+blazing coals into the midst of the ward, heated cauterizing irons, and
+declared that he would burn the arms of the first woman who fell into
+convulsions. No more cases occurred.(408)
+
+
+     (408) See Figuier, Histoire de Merveilleux, vol. i, p. 403.
+
+
+These and similar successful dealings of medical science with mental
+disease brought about the next stage in the theological development. The
+Church sought to retreat, after the usual manner, behind a compromise.
+Early in the eighteenth century appeared a new edition of the great work
+by the Jesuit Delrio which for a hundred years had been a text-book for
+the use of ecclesiastics in fighting witchcraft; but in this edition
+the part played by Satan in diseases was changed: it was suggested that,
+while diseases have natural causes, it is necessary that Satan enter
+the human body in order to make these causes effective. This work claims
+that Satan "attacks lunatics at the full moon, when their brains are
+full of humours"; that in other cases of illness he "stirs the black
+bile"; and that in cases of blindness and deafness he "clogs the eyes
+and ears." By the close of the century this "restatement" was evidently
+found untenable, and one of a very different sort was attempted in
+England.
+
+In the third edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, published in 1797,
+under the article Daemoniacs, the orthodox view was presented in the
+following words: "The reality of demoniacal possession stands upon the
+same evidence with the gospel system in general."
+
+This statement, though necessary to satisfy the older theological
+sentiment, was clearly found too dangerous to be sent out into the
+modern sceptical world without some qualification. Another view was
+therefore suggested, namely, that the personages of the New Testament
+"adopted the vulgar language in speaking of those unfortunate persons
+who were generally imagined to be possessed with demons." Two or three
+editions contained this curious compromise; but near the middle of the
+present century the whole discussion was quietly dropped.
+
+Science, declining to trouble itself with any of these views, pressed
+on, and toward the end of the century we see Dr. Rhodes at Lyons curing
+a very serious case of possession by the use of a powerful emetic; yet
+myth-making came in here also, and it was stated that when the emetic
+produced its effect people had seen multitudes of green and yellow
+devils cast forth from the mouth of the possessed.
+
+The last great demonstration of the old belief in England was made in
+1788. Near the city of Bristol at that time lived a drunken epileptic,
+George Lukins. In asking alms, he insisted that he was "possessed," and
+proved it by jumping, screaming, barking, and treating the company to a
+parody of the Te Deum.
+
+He was solemnly brought into the Temple Church, and seven clergymen
+united in the effort to exorcise the evil spirit. Upon their adjuring
+Satan, he swore "by his infernal den" that he would not come out of
+the man--"an oath," says the chronicler, "nowhere to be found but in
+Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, from which Lukins probably got it."
+
+But the seven clergymen were at last successful, and seven devils were
+cast out, after which Lukins retired, and appears to have been supported
+during the remainder of his life as a monument of mercy.
+
+With this great effort the old theory in England seemed practically
+exhausted.
+
+Science had evidently carried the stronghold. In 1876, at a little
+town near Amiens, in France, a young woman suffering with all the usual
+evidences of diabolic possession was brought to the priest. The priest
+was besought to cast out the devil, but he simply took her to the
+hospital, where, under scientific treatment, she rapidly became
+better.(409)
+
+
+     (409) See Figuier; also Collin de Plancy, Dictionnaire Infernale,
+article Posseses.
+
+
+The final triumph of science in this part of the great field has been
+mainly achieved during the latter half of the present century.
+
+Following in the noble succession of Paracelsus and John Hunter and
+Pinel and Tuke and Esquirol, have come a band of thinkers and workers
+who by scientific observation and research have developed new growths of
+truth, ever more and more precious.
+
+Among the many facts thus brought to bear upon this last stronghold
+of the Prince of Darkness, may be named especially those indicating
+"expectant attention"--an expectation of phenomena dwelt upon until the
+longing for them becomes morbid and invincible, and the creation of
+them perhaps unconscious. Still other classes of phenomena leading to
+epidemics are found to arise from a morbid tendency to imitation. Still
+other groups have been brought under hypnotism. Multitudes more have
+been found under the innumerable forms and results of hysteria. A study
+of the effects of the imagination upon bodily functions has also yielded
+remarkable results.
+
+And, finally, to supplement this work, have come in an array of
+scholars in history and literature who have investigated myth-making and
+wonder-mongering.
+
+Thus has been cleared away that cloud of supernaturalism which so long
+hung over mental diseases, and thus have they been brought within the
+firm grasp of science.(410)
+
+
+     (410) To go into even leading citations in this vast and beneficent
+literature would take me far beyond my plan and space, but I may
+name, among easily accessible authorities, Brierre de Boismont on
+Hallucinations, Hulme's translation, 1860; also James Braid, The Power
+of the Mind over the Body, London, 1846; Krafft-Ebing, Lehrbuch der
+Psychiatrie, Stuttgart, 1888; Tuke, Influence of the Mind on the Body,
+London, 1884; Maudsley, Pathology of the Mind, London, 1879; Carpenter,
+Mental Physiology, sixth edition, London, 1888; Lloyd Tuckey, Faith
+Cure, in The Nineteenth Century for December, 1888; Pettigrew,
+Superstitions connected with the Practice of Medicine and Surgery,
+London, 1844; Snell, Hexenprocesse und Geistesstorung, Munchen,
+1891. For a very valuable study of interesting cases, see The Law
+of Hypnotism, by Prof. R. S. Hyer, of the Southwestern University,
+Georgetown, Texas, 1895.
+
+As to myth-making and wonder-mongering, the general reader will find
+interesting supplementary accounts in the recent works of Andrew Lang
+and Baring-Gould.
+
+A very curious evidence of the effects of the myth-making tendency
+has recently come to the attention of the writer of this article.
+Periodically, for many years past, we have seen, in books of travel
+and in the newspapers, accounts of the wonderful performances of the
+jugglers in India; of the stabbing of a child in a small basket in the
+midst of an arena, and the child appearing alive in the surrounding
+crowd; of seeds planted, sprouted, and becoming well-grown trees under
+the hand of the juggler; of ropes thrown into the air and sustained by
+invisible force. Count de Gubernatis, the eminent professor and Oriental
+scholar at Florence, informed the present writer that he had recently
+seen and studied these exhibitions, and that, so far from being
+wonderful, they were much inferior to the jugglery so well known in all
+our Western capitals.
+
+
+Conscientious men still linger on who find comfort in holding fast
+to some shred of the old belief in diabolic possession. The sturdy
+declaration in the last century by John Wesley, that "giving up
+witchcraft is giving up the Bible," is echoed feebly in the latter
+half of this century by the eminent Catholic ecclesiastic in France who
+declares that "to deny possession by devils is to charge Jesus and his
+apostles with imposture," and asks, "How can the testimony of apostles,
+fathers of the Church, and saints who saw the possessed and so declared,
+be denied?" And a still fainter echo lingers in Protestant England.(411)
+
+
+     (411) See the Abbe Barthelemi, in the Dictionnaire de la Conversation;
+also the Rev. W. Scott's Doctrine of Evil Spirits proved, London, 1853;
+also the vigorous protest of Dean Burgon against the action of the New
+Testament revisers, in substituting the word "epileptic" for "lunatic"
+in Matthew xvii, 15, published in the Quarterly Review for January,
+1882.
+
+
+But, despite this conscientious opposition, science has in these latter
+days steadily wrought hand in hand with Christian charity in this field,
+to evolve a better future for humanity. The thoughtful physician and the
+devoted clergyman are now constantly seen working together; and it is
+not too much to expect that Satan, having been cast out of the insane
+asylums, will ere long disappear from monasteries and camp meetings,
+even in the most unenlightened regions of Christendom.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII. FROM BABEL TO COMPARATIVE PHILOLOGY.
+
+
+
+
+I. THE SACRED THEORY IN ITS FIRST FORM.
+
+
+Among the sciences which have served as entering wedges into the heavy
+mass of ecclesiastical orthodoxy--to cleave it, disintegrate it, and let
+the light of Christianity into it--none perhaps has done a more striking
+work than Comparative Philology. In one very important respect the
+history of this science differs from that of any other; for it is the
+only one whose conclusions theologians have at last fully adopted as
+the result of their own studies. This adoption teaches a great lesson,
+since, while it has destroyed theological views cherished during many
+centuries, and obliged the Church to accept theories directly contrary
+to the plain letter of our sacred books, the result is clearly seen to
+have helped Christianity rather than to have hurt it. It has certainly
+done much to clear our religious foundations of the dogmatic rust which
+was eating into their structure.
+
+How this result was reached, and why the Church has so fully accepted
+it, I shall endeavour to show in the present chapter. At a very early
+period in the evolution of civilization men began to ask questions
+regarding language; and the answers to these questions were naturally
+embodied in the myths, legends, and chronicles of their sacred books.
+
+Among the foremost of these questions were three: "Whence came
+language?" "Which was the first language?" "How came the diversity of
+language?"
+
+The answer to the first of these was very simple: each people naturally
+held that language was given it directly or indirectly by some special
+or national deity of its own; thus, to the Chaldeans by Oannes, to the
+Egyptians by Thoth, to the Hebrews by Jahveh.
+
+The Hebrew answer is embodied in the great poem which opens our sacred
+books. Jahveh talks with Adam and is perfectly understood; the serpent
+talks with Eve and is perfectly understood; Jahveh brings the animals
+before Adam, who bestows on each its name. Language, then, was God-given
+and complete. Of the fact that every language is the result of a growth
+process there was evidently, among the compilers of our sacred books, no
+suspicion.
+
+The answer to the second of these questions was no less simple. As,
+very generally, each nation believed its own chief divinity to be "a god
+above all gods,"--as each believed itself "a chosen people,"--as each
+believed its own sacred city the actual centre of the earth, so each
+believed its own language to be the first--the original of all. This
+answer was from the first taken for granted by each "chosen people," and
+especially by the Hebrews: throughout their whole history, whether the
+Almighty talks with Adam in the Garden or writes the commandments on
+Mount Sinai, he uses the same language--the Hebrew.
+
+The answer to the third of these questions, that regarding the diversity
+of languages, was much more difficult. Naturally, explanations of this
+diversity frequently gave rise to legends somewhat complicated.
+
+The "law of wills and causes," formulated by Comte, was exemplified here
+as in so many other cases. That law is, that, when men do not know the
+natural causes of things, they simply attribute them to wills like their
+own; thus they obtain a theory which provisionally takes the place of
+science, and this theory forms a basis for theology.
+
+Examples of this recur to any thinking reader of history. Before
+the simpler laws of astronomy were known, the sun was supposed to be
+trundled out into the heavens every day and the stars hung up in the
+firmament every night by the right hand of the Almighty. Before the
+laws of comets were known, they were thought to be missiles hurled by
+an angry God at a wicked world. Before the real cause of lightning was
+known, it was supposed to be the work of a good God in his wrath, or of
+evil spirits in their malice. Before the laws of meteorology were known,
+it was thought that rains were caused by the Almighty or his angels
+opening "the windows of heaven" to let down upon the earth "the waters
+that be above the firmament." Before the laws governing physical
+health were known, diseases were supposed to result from the direct
+interposition of the Almighty or of Satan. Before the laws governing
+mental health were known, insanity was generally thought to be diabolic
+possession. All these early conceptions were naturally embodied in the
+sacred books of the world, and especially in our own.(412)
+
+
+     (412) Any one who wishes to realize the mediaeval view of the direct
+personal attention of the Almighty to the universe, can perhaps do so
+most easily by looking over the engravings in the well-known Nuremberg
+Chronicle, representing him in the work of each of the six days, and
+resting afterward.
+
+
+So, in this case, to account for the diversity of tongues, the direct
+intervention of the Divine Will was brought in. As this diversity was
+felt to be an inconvenience, it was attributed to the will of a Divine
+Being in anger. To explain this anger, it was held that it must have
+been provoked by human sin.
+
+Out of this conception explanatory myths and legends grew as thickly and
+naturally as elms along water-courses; of these the earliest form known
+to us is found in the Chaldean accounts, and nowhere more clearly than
+in the legend of the Tower of Babel.
+
+The inscriptions recently found among the ruins of Assyria have thrown
+a bright light into this and other scriptural myths and legends: the
+deciphering of the characters in these inscriptions by Grotefend, and
+the reading of the texts by George Smith, Oppert, Sayce, and others,
+have given us these traditions more nearly in their original form than
+they appear in our own Scriptures.
+
+The Hebrew story of Babel, like so many other legends in the sacred
+books of the world, combined various elements. By a play upon words,
+such as the history of myths and legends frequently shows, it wrought
+into one fabric the earlier explanations of the diversities of human
+speech and of the great ruined tower at Babylon. The name Babel (bab-el)
+means "Gate of God" or "Gate of the Gods." All modern scholars of note
+agree that this was the real significance of the name; but the Hebrew
+verb which signifies TO CONFOUND resembles somewhat the word Babel, so
+that out of this resemblance, by one of the most common processes in
+myth formation, came to the Hebrew mind an indisputable proof that the
+tower was connected with the confusion of tongues, and this became part
+of our theological heritage.
+
+In our sacred books the account runs as follows:
+
+"And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.
+
+"And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a
+plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there.
+
+"And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them
+thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar.
+
+"And they said, Go to, let us build us a city, and a tower, whose top
+may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered
+abroad upon the face of the whole earth.
+
+"And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the
+children of men builded.
+
+"And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one
+language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained
+from them, which they have imagined to do.
+
+"Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may
+not understand one another's speech.
+
+"So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the
+earth: and they left off to build the city.
+
+"Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there
+confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord
+scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth." (Genesis xi, 1-9.)
+
+Thus far the legend had been but slightly changed from the earlier
+Chaldean form in which it has been found in the Assyrian inscriptions.
+Its character is very simple: to use the words of Prof. Sayce, "It takes
+us back to the age when the gods were believed to dwell in the visible
+sky, and when man, therefore, did his best to rear his altars as near
+them as possible." And this eminent divine might have added that it
+takes us back also to a time when it was thought that Jehovah, in order
+to see the tower fully, was obliged to come down from his seat above the
+firmament.
+
+As to the real reasons for the building of the towers which formed so
+striking a feature in Chaldean architecture--any one of which may easily
+have given rise to the explanatory myth which found its way into our
+sacred books--there seems a substantial agreement among leading scholars
+that they were erected primarily as parts of temples, but largely for
+the purpose of astronomical observations, to which the Chaldeans were
+so devoted, and to which their country, with its level surface and clear
+atmosphere, was so well adapted. As to the real cause of the ruin of
+such structures, one of the inscribed cylinders discovered in recent
+times, speaking of a tower which most of the archaeologists identify
+with the Tower of Babel, reads as follows:
+
+"The building named the Stages of the Seven Spheres, which was the Tower
+of Borsippa, had been built by a former king. He had completed forty-two
+cubits, but he did not finish its head. During the lapse of time, it
+had become ruined; they had not taken care of the exit of the waters,
+so that rain and wet had penetrated into the brickwork; the casing
+of burned brick had swollen out, and the terraces of crude brick are
+scattered in heaps."
+
+We can well understand how easily "the gods, assisted by the winds," as
+stated in the Chaldean legend, could overthrow a tower thus built.
+
+It may be instructive to compare with the explanatory myth developed
+first by the Chaldeans, and in a slightly different form by the Hebrews,
+various other legends to explain the same diversity of tongues. The
+Hindu legend of the confusion of tongues is as follows:
+
+"There grew in the centre of the earth the wonderful 'world tree,' or
+'knowledge tree.' It was so tall that it reached almost to heaven.
+It said in its heart, 'I shall hold my head in heaven and spread my
+branches over all the earth, and gather all men together under my
+shadow, and protect them, and prevent them from separating.' But Brahma,
+to punish the pride of the tree, cut off its branches and cast them down
+on the earth, when they sprang up as wata trees, and made differences of
+belief and speech and customs to prevail on the earth, to disperse men
+upon its surface."
+
+Still more striking is a Mexican legend: according to this, the giant
+Xelhua built the great Pyramid of Cholula, in order to reach heaven,
+until the gods, angry at his audacity, threw fire upon the building and
+broke it down, whereupon every separate family received a language of
+its own.
+
+Such explanatory myths grew or spread widely over the earth. A
+well-known form of the legend, more like the Chaldean than the Hebrew
+later form, appeared among the Greeks. According to this, the Aloidae
+piled Mount Ossa upon Olympus and Pelion upon Ossa, in their efforts to
+reach heaven and dethrone Jupiter.
+
+Still another form of it entered the thoughts of Plato. He held that in
+the golden age men and beasts all spoke the same language, but that
+Zeus confounded their speech because men were proud and demanded eternal
+youth and immortality.(413)
+
+
+     (413) For the identification of the Tower of Babel with the "Birs
+Nimrad" amid the ruins of the city of Borsippa, see Rawlinson; also
+Schrader, The Cuneiform Inscriptions and the Old Testament, London,
+1885, pp. 106-112 and following; and especially George Smith, Assyrian
+Discoveries, p. 59. For some of these inscriptions discovered and read
+by George Smith, see his Chaldean Account of Genesis, new York, 1876,
+pp. 160-162. For the statement regarding the origin of the word Babel,
+see Ersch and Gruber, article Babylon; also the Rev. Prof. A. H. Sayce
+in the latest edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica; also Colenso,
+Pentateuch Examined, part iv, p. 302; also John Fiske, Myths and
+Myth-makers, p. 72; also Lenormont, Histoire Ancienne de l'Orient,
+Paris, 1881, vol. i, pp. 115 et seq. As to the character and purpose of
+the great tower of the temple of Belus, see Smith's Bible Dictionary,
+article Babel, quoting Diodorus; also Rawlinson, especially in Journal
+of the Asiatic Society for 1861; also Sayce, Religion of the Ancient
+Babylonians (Hibbert Lectures for 1887), London, 1887, chap. ii and
+elsewhere, especially pages 96, 397, 407; also Max Duncker, History
+of Antiquity, Abbott's translation, vol. ii, chaps. ii, and iii.
+For similar legends in other parts of the world, see Delitzsch; also
+Humboldt, American Researches; also Brinton, Myths of the New World;
+also Colenso, as above. The Tower of Cholula is well known, having
+been described by Humboldt and Lord Kingsborough. For superb engravings
+showing the view of Babel as developed by the theological imagination,
+see Kircher, Turris Babel, Amsterdam, 1679. For the Law of Wills and
+Causes, with deductions from it well stated, see Beattie Crozier,
+Civilization and Progress, London, 1888, pp. 112, 178, 179, 273. For
+Plato, see the Politicus, p. 272, ed. Stephani, cited in Ersch and
+Gruber, article Babylon. For a good general statement, see Bible Myths,
+New York, 1883, chap. iii. For Aristotle's strange want of interest in
+any classification of the varieties of human speech, see Max Muller,
+Lectures on the Science of Language, London, 1864, series i, chap. iv,
+pp. 123-125.
+
+
+But naturally the version of the legend which most affected Christendom
+was that modification of the Chaldean form developed among the Jews and
+embodied in their sacred books. To a thinking man in these days it is
+very instructive. The coming down of the Almighty from heaven to see
+the tower and put an end to it by dispersing its builders, points to the
+time when his dwelling was supposed to be just above the firmament or
+solid vault above the earth: the time when he exercised his beneficent
+activity in such acts as opening "the windows of heaven" to give down
+rain upon the earth; in bringing out the sun every day and hanging up
+the stars every night to give light to the earth; in hurling comets, to
+give warning; in placing his bow in the cloud, to give hope; in, coming
+down in the cool of the evening to walk and talk with the man he had
+made; in making coats of skins for Adam and Eve; in enjoying the odour
+of flesh which Noah burned for him; in eating with Abraham under the
+oaks of Mamre; in wrestling with Jacob; and in writing with his own
+finger on the stone tables for Moses.
+
+So came the answer to the third question regarding language; and all
+three answers, embodied in our sacred books and implanted in the Jewish
+mind, supplied to the Christian Church the germs of a theological
+development of philology. These germs developed rapidly in the warm
+atmosphere of devotion and ignorance of natural law which pervaded the
+early Church, and there grew a great orthodox theory of language, which
+was held throughout Christendom, "always, everywhere, and by all," for
+nearly two thousand years, and to which, until the present century, all
+science has been obliged, under pains and penalties, to conform.
+
+There did, indeed, come into human thought at an early period some
+suggestions of the modern scientific view of philology. Lucretius had
+proposed a theory, inadequate indeed, but still pointing toward the
+truth, as follows: "Nature impelled man to try the various sounds of the
+tongue, and so struck out the names of things, much in the same way as
+the inability to speak is seen in its turn to drive children to the use
+of gestures." But, among the early fathers of the Church, the only one
+who seems to have caught an echo of this utterance was St. Gregory of
+Nyssa: as a rule, all the other great founders of Christian theology, as
+far as they expressed themselves on the subject, took the view that the
+original language spoken by the Almighty and given by him to men was
+Hebrew, and that from this all other languages were derived at the
+destruction of the Tower of Babel. This doctrine was especially upheld
+by Origen, St. Jerome, and St. Augustine. Origen taught that "the
+language given at the first through Adam, the Hebrew, remained among
+that portion of mankind which was assigned not to any angel, but
+continued the portion of God himself." St. Augustine declared that, when
+the other races were divided by their own peculiar languages, Heber's
+family preserved that language which is not unreasonably believed to
+have been the common language of the race, and that on this account it
+was henceforth called Hebrew. St. Jerome wrote, "The whole of antiquity
+affirms that Hebrew, in which the Old Testament is written, was the
+beginning of all human speech."
+
+Amid such great authorities as these even Gregory of Nyssa struggled in
+vain. He seems to have taken the matter very earnestly, and to have
+used not only argument but ridicule. He insists that God does not speak
+Hebrew, and that the tongue used by Moses was not even a pure dialect
+of one of the languages resulting from "the confusion." He makes man
+the inventor of speech, and resorts to raillery: speaking against his
+opponent Eunomius, he says that, "passing in silence his base and abject
+garrulity," he will "note a few things which are thrown into the midst
+of his useless or wordy discourse, where he represents God teaching
+words and names to our first parents, sitting before them like some
+pedagogue or grammar master." But, naturally, the great authority
+of Origen, Jerome, and Augustine prevailed; the view suggested by
+Lucretius, and again by St. Gregory of Nyssa, died, out; and "always,
+everywhere, and by all," in the Church, the doctrine was received that
+the language spoken by the Almighty was Hebrew,--that it was taught
+by him to Adam,--and that all other languages on the face of the earth
+originated from it at the dispersion attending the destruction of the
+Tower of Babel.(414)
+
+
+     (414) For Lucretius's statement, see the De Rerum Natura, lib. v,
+Munro's edition, with translation, Cambridge, 1886, vol. iii. p.
+141. For the opinion of Gregory of Nyssa, see Benfey, Geschichte der
+Sprachwissenschaft in Deutschland, Munchen, 1869, p. 179; and for the
+passage cited, see Gregory of Nyssa in his Contra Eunomium, xii, in
+Migne's Patr. Graeca, vol. ii, p. 1043. For St. Jerome, see his Epistle
+XVIII, in Migne's Patr. Lat., vol. xxii, p. 365. For citation from St.
+Augustine, see the City of God, Dod's translation, Edinburgh, 1871,
+vol. ii, p. 122. For citation from Origen, see his Homily XI, cited by
+Guichard in preface to L'Harmonie Etymologique, Paris, 1631, lib. xvi,
+chap. xi. For absolutely convincing proofs that the Jews derived the
+Babel and other legends of their sacred books fro the Chaldeans, see
+George Smith, Chaldean Account of Genesis, passim; but especially for a
+most candid though somewhat reluctant summing up, see p. 291.
+
+
+This idea threw out roots and branches in every direction, and so
+developed ever into new and strong forms. As all scholars now know,
+the vowel points in the Hebrew language were not adopted until at some
+period between the second and tenth centuries; but in the mediaeval
+Church they soon came to be considered as part of the great miracle,--as
+the work of the right hand of the Almighty; and never until the
+eighteenth century was there any doubt allowed as to the divine origin
+of these rabbinical additions to the text. To hesitate in believing that
+these points were dotted virtually by the very hand of God himself came
+to be considered a fearful heresy.
+
+The series of battles between theology and science in the field
+of comparative philology opened just on this point, apparently
+so insignificant: the direct divine inspiration of the rabbinical
+punctuation. The first to impugn this divine origin of these vocal
+points and accents appears to have been a Spanish monk, Raymundus
+Martinus, in his Pugio Fidei, or Poniard of the Faith, which he put
+forth in the thirteenth century. But he and his doctrine disappeared
+beneath the waves of the orthodox ocean, and apparently left no trace.
+For nearly three hundred years longer the full sacred theory held its
+ground; but about the opening of the sixteenth century another glimpse
+of the truth was given by a Jew, Elias Levita, and this seems to have
+had some little effect, at least in keeping the germ of scientific truth
+alive.
+
+The Reformation, with its renewal of the literal study of the
+Scriptures, and its transfer of all infallibility from the Church and
+the papacy to the letter of the sacred books, intensified for a time the
+devotion of Christendom to this sacred theory of language. The belief
+was strongly held that the writers of the Bible were merely pens in
+the hand of God (Dei calami.{;?} Hence the conclusion that not only the
+sense but the words, letters, and even the punctuation proceeded from
+the Holy Spirit. Only on this one question of the origin of the Hebrew
+points was there any controversy, and this waxed hot. It began to be
+especially noted that these vowel points in the Hebrew Bible did not
+exist in the synagogue rolls, were not mentioned in the Talmud, and
+seemed unknown to St. Jerome; and on these grounds some earnest men
+ventured to think them no part of the original revelation to Adam.
+Zwingli, so much before most of the Reformers in other respects,
+was equally so in this. While not doubting the divine origin and
+preservation of the Hebrew language as a whole, he denied the antiquity
+of the vocal points, demonstrated their unessential character, and
+pointed out the fact that St. Jerome makes no mention of them. His
+denial was long the refuge of those who shared this heresy.
+
+But the full orthodox theory remained established among the vast
+majority both of Catholics and Protestants. The attitude of the former
+is well illustrated in the imposing work of the canon Marini, which
+appeared at Venice in 1593, under the title of Noah's Ark: A New
+Treasury of the Sacred Tongue. The huge folios begin with the
+declaration that the Hebrew tongue was "divinely inspired at the very
+beginning of the world," and the doctrine is steadily maintained that
+this divine inspiration extended not only to the letters but to the
+punctuation.
+
+Not before the seventeenth century was well under way do we find a
+thorough scholar bold enough to gainsay this preposterous doctrine. This
+new assailant was Capellus, Professor of Hebrew at Saumur; but he dared
+not put forth his argument in France: he was obliged to publish it in
+Holland, and even there such obstacles were thrown in his way that it
+was ten years before he published another treatise of importance.
+
+The work of Capellus was received as settling the question by very many
+open-minded scholars, among whom was Hugo Grotius. But many theologians
+felt this view to be a blow at the sanctity and integrity of the sacred
+text; and in 1648 the great scholar, John Buxtorf the younger, rose
+to defend the orthodox citadel: in his Anticritica he brought all his
+stores of knowledge to uphold the doctrine that the rabbinical points
+and accents had been jotted down by the right hand of God.
+
+The controversy waxed hot: scholars like Voss and Brian Walton supported
+Capellus; Wasmuth and many others of note were as fierce against him.
+The Swiss Protestants were especially violent on the orthodox side;
+their formula consensus of 1675 declared the vowel points to be
+inspired, and three years later the Calvinists of Geneva, by a
+special canon, forbade that any minister should be received into their
+jurisdiction until he publicly confessed that the Hebrew text, as it
+to-day exists in the Masoretic copies, is, both as to the consonants and
+vowel points, divine and authentic.
+
+While in Holland so great a man as Hugo Grotius supported the view
+of Capellus, and while in France the eminent Catholic scholar Richard
+Simon, and many others, Catholic and Protestant, took similar ground
+against this divine origin of the Hebrew punctuation, there was arrayed
+against them a body apparently overwhelming. In France, Bossuet, the
+greatest theologian that France has ever produced, did his best to crush
+Simon. In Germany, Wasmuth, professor first at Rostock and afterward at
+Kiel, hurled his Vindiciae at the innovators. Yet at this very moment
+the battle was clearly won; the arguments of Capellus were irrefragable,
+and, despite the commands of bishops, the outcries of theologians,
+and the sneering of critics, his application of strictly scientific
+observation and reasoning carried the day.
+
+Yet a casual observer, long after the fate of the battle was really
+settled, might have supposed that it was still in doubt. As is not
+unusual in theologic controversies, attempts were made to galvanize the
+dead doctrine into an appearance of life. Famous among these attempts
+was that made as late as the beginning of the eighteenth century by two
+Bremen theologians, Hase and Iken. They put forth a compilation in two
+huge folios simultaneously at Leyden and Amsterdam, prominent in which
+work is the treatise on The Integrity of Scripture, by Johann Andreas
+Danzius, Professor of Oriental Languages and Senior Member of the
+Philosophical Faculty of Jena, and, to preface it, there was a formal
+and fulsome approval by three eminent professors of theology at Leyden.
+With great fervour the author pointed out that "religion itself depends
+absolutely on the infallible inspiration, both verbal and literal, of
+the Scripture text"; and with impassioned eloquence he assailed the
+blasphemers who dared question the divine origin of the Hebrew points.
+But this was really the last great effort. That the case was lost was
+seen by the fact that Danzius felt obliged to use other missiles than
+arguments, and especially to call his opponents hard names. From this
+period the old sacred theory as to the origin of the Hebrew points may
+be considered as dead and buried.
+
+
+
+
+II. THE SACRED THEORY OF LANGUAGE IN ITS SECOND FORM.
+
+
+But the war was soon to be waged on a wider and far more important
+field. The inspiration of the Hebrew punctuation having been given up,
+the great orthodox body fell back upon the remainder of the theory,
+and intrenched this more strongly than ever: the theory that the Hebrew
+language was the first of all languages--that which was spoken by the
+Almighty, given by him to Adam, transmitted through Noah to the world
+after the Deluge--and that the "confusion of tongues" was the origin of
+all other languages.
+
+In giving account of this new phase of the struggle, it is well to go
+back a little. From the Revival of Learning and the Reformation had come
+the renewed study of Hebrew in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries,
+and thus the sacred doctrine regarding the origin of the Hebrew language
+received additional authority. All the early Hebrew grammars, from that
+of Reuchlin down, assert the divine origin and miraculous claims of
+Hebrew. It is constantly mentioned as "the sacred tongue"--sancta
+lingua. In 1506, Reuchlin, though himself persecuted by a large faction
+in the Church for advanced views, refers to Hebrew as "spoken by the
+mouth of God."
+
+This idea was popularized by the edition of the Margarita Philosophica,
+published at Strasburg in 1508. That work, in its successive editions
+a mirror of human knowledge at the close of the Middle Ages and the
+opening of modern times, contains a curious introduction to the study of
+Hebrew, In this it is declared that Hebrew was the original speech
+"used between God and man and between men and angels." Its full-page
+frontispiece represents Moses receiving from God the tables of stone
+written in Hebrew; and, as a conclusive argument, it reminds us that
+Christ himself, by choosing a Hebrew maid for his mother, made that his
+mother tongue.
+
+It must be noted here, however, that Luther, in one of those outbursts
+of strong sense which so often appear in his career, enforced the
+explanation that the words "God said" had nothing to do with the
+articulation of human language. Still, he evidently yielded to the
+general view. In the Roman Church at the same period we have a typical
+example of the theologic method applied to philology, as we have seen it
+applied to other sciences, in the statement by Luther's great opponent,
+Cajetan, that the three languages of the inscription on the cross of
+Calvary "were the representatives of all languages, because the number
+three denotes perfection."
+
+In 1538 Postillus made a very important endeavour at a comparative study
+of languages, but with the orthodox assumption that all were derived
+from one source, namely, the Hebrew. Naturally, Comparative Philology
+blundered and stumbled along this path into endless absurdities. The
+most amazing efforts were made to trace back everything to the sacred
+language. English and Latin dictionaries appeared, in which every word
+was traced back to a Hebrew root. No supposition was too absurd in
+this attempt to square Science with Scripture. It was declared that, as
+Hebrew is written from right to left, it might be read either way, in
+order to produce a satisfactory etymology. The whole effort in all this
+sacred scholarship was, not to find what the truth is--not to see how
+the various languages are to be classified, or from what source they
+are really derived--but to demonstrate what was supposed necessary to
+maintain what was then held to be the truth of Scripture; namely, that
+all languages are derived from the Hebrew.
+
+This stumbling and blundering, under the sway of orthodox necessity, was
+seen among the foremost scholars throughout Europe. About the middle of
+the sixteenth century the great Swiss scholar, Conrad Gesner, beginning
+his Mithridates, says, "While of all languages Hebrew is the first and
+oldest, of all is alone pure and unmixed, all the rest are much mixed,
+for there is none which has not some words derived and corrupted from
+Hebrew."
+
+Typical, as we approach the end of the sixteenth century, are the
+utterances of two of the most noted English divines. First of these
+may be mentioned Dr. William Fulke, Master of Pembroke Hall, in the
+University of Cambridge. In his Discovery of the Dangerous Rock of the
+Romish Church, published in 1580, he speaks of "the Hebrew tongue,... the
+first tongue of the world, and for the excellency thereof called 'the
+holy tongue.'"
+
+Yet more emphatic, eight years later, was another eminent divine, Dr.
+William Whitaker, Regius Professor of Divinity and Master of St. John's
+College at Cambridge. In his Disputation on Holy Scripture, first
+printed in 1588, he says: "The Hebrew is the most ancient of all
+languages, and was that which alone prevailed in the world before the
+Deluge and the erection of the Tower of Babel. For it was this which
+Adam used and all men before the Flood, as is manifest from the
+Scriptures, as the fathers testify." He then proceeds to quote passages
+on this subject from St. Jerome, St. Augustine, and others, and cites
+St. Chrysostom in support of the statement that "God himself showed the
+model and method of writing when he delivered the Law written by his own
+finger to Moses."(415)
+
+
+     (415) For the whole scriptural argument, embracing the various texts on
+which the sacred science of Philology was founded, with the use made
+of such texts, see Benfey, Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft in
+Deutschland, Munchen, 1869, pp. 22-26. As to the origin of the vowel
+points, see Benfey, as above; he holds that they began to be inserted
+in the second century A.D., and that the process lasted until about the
+tenth. For Raymundus and his Pugio Fidei, see G. L. Bauer, Prolegomena
+to his revision of Glassius's Philologia Sacra, Leipsic, 1795,--see
+especially pp. 8-14, in tome ii of the work. For Zwingli, see Praef. in
+Apol. comp. Isaiae (Opera, iii). See also Morinus, De Lingua primaeva,
+p.447. For Marini, see his Arca Noe: Thesaurus Linguae Sanctae, Venet.,
+1593, and especially the preface. For general account of Capellus,
+see G. L. Bauer, in his Prolegomena, as above, vol. ii, pp. 8-14. His
+Arcanum Premetationis Revelatum was brought out at Leyden in 1624; his
+Critica Sacra ten years later. See on Capellus and Swiss theologues,
+Wolfius, Bibliotheca Nebr., tome ii, p. 27. For the struggle, see
+Schnedermann, Die Controverse des Ludovicus Capellus mit den Buxtorfen,
+Leipsic, 1879, cited in article Hebrew, in Encyclopaedia Britannica. For
+Wasmuth, see his Vindiciae Sanctae Hebraicae Scripturae, Rostock, 1664.
+For Reuchlin, see the dedicatory preface to his Rudimenta Hebraica,
+Pforzheim, 1506, folio, in which he speaks of the "in divina scriptura
+dicendi genus, quale os Dei locatum est." The statement in the Margarita
+Philosophica as to Hebrew is doubtless based on Reuchlin's Rudimenta
+Hebraica, which it quotes, and which first appeared in 1506. It is
+significant that this section disappeared from the Margarita in the
+following editions; but this disappearence is easily understood when we
+recall the fact that Gregory Reysch, its author, having become one
+of the Papal Commission to judge Reuchlin in his quarrel with the
+Dominicans, thought it prudent to side with the latter, and therefore,
+doubtless, considered it wise to suppress all evidence of Reuchlin's
+influence upon his beliefs. All the other editions of the Margarita in
+my possession are content with teaching, under the head of the Alphabet,
+that the Hebrew letters were invented by Adam. On Luther's view of
+the words "God said," see Farrar, Language and Languages. For a most
+valuable statement regarding the clashing opinions at the Reformation,
+see Max Muller, as above, lecture iv, p. 132. For the prevailing view
+among the Reformers, see Calovius, vol. i, p. 484, and Thulock, The
+Doctrine of Inspiration, in Theolog. Essays, Boston, 1867. Both Muller
+and Benfey note, as especially important, the difference between the
+Church view and the ancient heathen view regarding "barbarians." See
+Muller, as above, lecture iv, p. 127, and Benfey, as above, pp. 170 et
+seq. For a very remarkable list of Bibles printed at an early period,
+see Benfey, p. 569. On the attempts to trace all words back to Hebrew
+roots, see Sayce, Introduction to the Science of Language, chap. vi. For
+Gesner, see his Mithridates (de differentiis linguarum), Zurich, 1555.
+For a similar attempt to prove that Italian was also derived from
+Hebrew, see Giambullari, cited in Garlanda, p. 174. For Fulke, see
+the Parker Society's Publications, 1848, p. 224. For Whitaker, see his
+Disputation on Holy Scripture in the same series, pp. 112-114.
+
+
+This sacred theory entered the seventeenth century in full force, and
+for a time swept everything before it. Eminent commentators, Catholic
+and Protestant, accepted and developed it.
+
+Great prelates, Catholic and Protestant, stood guard over it, favouring
+those who supported it, doing their best to destroy those who would
+modify it.
+
+In 1606 Stephen Guichard built new buttresses for it in Catholic France.
+He explains in his preface that his intention is "to make the reader see
+in the Hebrew word not only the Greek and Latin, but also the Italian,
+the Spanish, the French, the German, the Flemish, the English, and many
+others from all languages." As the merest tyro in philology can now see,
+the great difficulty that Guichard encounters is in getting from the
+Hebrew to the Aryan group of languages. How he meets this difficulty may
+be imagined from his statement, as follows: "As for the derivation of
+words by addition, subtraction, and inversion of the letters, it is
+certain that this can and ought thus to be done, if we would find
+etymologies--a thing which becomes very credible when we consider that
+the Hebrews wrote from right to left and the Greeks and others from
+left to right. All the learned recognise such derivations as
+necessary;... and... certainly otherwise one could scarcely trace any
+etymology back to Hebrew."
+
+Of course, by this method of philological juggling, anything could be
+proved which the author thought necessary to his pious purpose.
+
+Two years later, Andrew Willett published at London his Hexapla,
+or Sixfold Commentary upon Genesis. In this he insists that the
+one language of all mankind in the beginning "was the Hebrew tongue
+preserved still in Heber's family." He also takes pains to say that the
+Tower of Babel "was not so called of Belus, as some have imagined, but
+of confusion, for so the Hebrew word ballal signifieth"; and he quotes
+from St. Chrysostom to strengthen his position.
+
+In 1627 Dr. Constantine l'Empereur was inducted into the chair of
+Philosophy of the Sacred Language in the University of Leyden. In his
+inaugural oration on The Dignity and Utility of the Hebrew Tongue, he
+puts himself on record in favour of the Divine origin and miraculous
+purity of that language. "Who," he says, "can call in question the fact
+that the Hebrew idiom is coeval with the world itself, save such as seek
+to win vainglory for their own sophistry?"
+
+Two years after Willett, in England, comes the famous Dr. Lightfoot, the
+most renowned scholar of his time in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin; but
+all his scholarship was bent to suit theological requirements. In his
+Erubhin, published in 1629, he goes to the full length of the sacred
+theory, though we begin to see a curious endeavour to get over some
+linguistic difficulties.
+
+One passage will serve to show both the robustness of his faith and the
+acuteness of his reasoning, in view of the difficulties which scholars
+now began to find in the sacred theory." Other commendations this tongue
+(Hebrew) needeth none than what it hath of itself; namely, for sanctity
+it was the tongue of God; and for antiquity it was the tongue of Adam.
+God the first founder, and Adam the first speaker of it.... It began with
+the world and the Church, and continued and increased in glory till the
+captivity in Babylon.... As the man in Seneca, that through sickness lost
+his memory and forgot his own name, so the Jews, for their sins, lost
+their language and forgot their own tongue.... Before the confusion of
+tongues all the world spoke their tongue and no other but since the
+confusion of the Jews they speak the language of all the world and not
+their own."
+
+But just at the middle of the century (1657) came in England a champion
+of the sacred theory more important than any of these--Brian Walton,
+Bishop of Chester. His Polyglot Bible dominated English scriptural
+criticism throughout the remainder of the century. He prefaces his
+great work by proving at length the divine origin of Hebrew, and
+the derivation from it of all other forms of speech. He declares it
+"probable that the first parent of mankind was the inventor of letters."
+His chapters on this subject are full of interesting details. He says
+that the Welshman, Davis, had already tried to prove the Welsh the
+primitive speech; Wormius, the Danish; Mitilerius, the German; but the
+bishop stands firmly by the sacred theory, informing us that "even in
+the New World are found traces of the Hebrew tongue, namely, in New
+England and in New Belgium, where the word Aguarda signifies earth,
+and the name Joseph is found among the Hurons." As we have seen, Bishop
+Walton had been forced to give up the inspiration of the rabbinical
+punctuation, but he seems to have fallen back with all the more tenacity
+on what remained of the great sacred theory of language, and to have
+become its leading champion among English-speaking peoples.
+
+At that same period the same doctrine was put forth by a great authority
+in Germany. In 1657 Andreas Sennert published his inaugural address
+as Professor of Sacred Letters and Dean of the Theological Faculty at
+Wittenberg. All his efforts were given to making Luther's old university
+a fortress of the orthodox theory. His address, like many others in
+various parts of Europe, shows that in his time an inaugural with any
+save an orthodox statement of the theological platform would not be
+tolerated. Few things in the past are to the sentimental mind more
+pathetic, to the philosophical mind more natural, and to the progressive
+mind more ludicrous, than addresses at high festivals of theological
+schools. The audience has generally consisted mainly of estimable
+elderly gentlemen, who received their theology in their youth, and who
+in their old age have watched over it with jealous care to keep it well
+protected from every fresh breeze of thought. Naturally, a theological
+professor inaugurated under such auspices endeavours to propitiate his
+audience. Sennert goes to great lengths both in his address and in his
+grammar, published nine years later; for, declaring the Divine origin of
+Hebrew to be quite beyond controversy, he says: "Noah received it from
+our first parents, and guarded it in the midst of the waters; Heber and
+Peleg saved it from the confusion of tongues."
+
+The same doctrine was no less loudly insisted upon by the greatest
+authority in Switzerland, Buxtorf, professor at Basle, who proclaimed
+Hebrew to be "the tongue of God, the tongue of angels, the tongue of the
+prophets"; and the effect of this proclamation may be imagined when we
+note in 1663 that his book had reached its sixth edition.
+
+It was re-echoed through England, Germany, France, and America, and,
+if possible, yet more highly developed. In England Theophilus Gale set
+himself to prove that not only all the languages, but all the learning
+of the world, had been drawn from the Hebrew records.
+
+This orthodox doctrine was also fully vindicated in Holland. Six
+years before the close of the seventeenth century, Morinus, Doctor of
+Theology, Professor of Oriental Languages, and pastor at Amsterdam,
+published his great work on Primaeval Language. Its frontispiece depicts
+the confusion of tongues at Babel, and, as a pendant to this, the
+pentecostal gift of tongues to the apostles. In the successive chapters
+of the first book he proves that language could not have come into
+existence save as a direct gift from heaven; that there is a primitive
+language, the mother of all the rest; that this primitive language still
+exists in its pristine purity; that this language is the Hebrew. The
+second book is devoted to proving that the Hebrew letters were divinely
+received, have been preserved intact, and are the source of all other
+alphabets. But in the third book he feels obliged to allow, in the face
+of the contrary dogma held, as he says, by "not a few most eminent
+men piously solicitous for the authority of the sacred text," that the
+Hebrew punctuation was, after all, not of Divine inspiration, but a late
+invention of the rabbis.
+
+France, also, was held to all appearance in complete subjection to the
+orthodox idea up to the end of the century. In 1697 appeared at Paris
+perhaps the most learned of all the books written to prove Hebrew the
+original tongue and source of all others. The Gallican Church was
+then at the height of its power. Bossuet as bishop, as thinker, and as
+adviser of Louis XIV, had crushed all opposition to orthodoxy. The Edict
+of Nantes had been revoked, and the Huguenots, so far as they could
+escape, were scattered throughout the world, destined to repay France
+with interest a thousandfold during the next two centuries. The bones of
+the Jansenists at Port Royal were dug up and scattered. Louis XIV stood
+guard over the piety of his people. It was in the midst of this series
+of triumphs that Father Louis Thomassin, Priest of the Oratory, issued
+his Universal Hebrew Glossary. In this, to use his own language, "the
+divinity, antiquity, and perpetuity of the Hebrew tongue, with its
+letters, accents, and other characters," are established forever and
+beyond all cavil, by proofs drawn from all peoples, kindreds, and
+nations under the sun. This superb, thousand-columned folio was issued
+from the royal press, and is one of the most imposing monuments of human
+piety and folly--taking rank with the treatises of Fromundus against
+Galileo, of Quaresmius on Lot's Wife, and of Gladstone on Genesis and
+Geology.
+
+The great theologic-philologic chorus was steadily maintained, and, as
+in a responsive chant, its doctrines were echoed from land to land. From
+America there came the earnest words of John Eliot, praising Hebrew
+as the most fit to be made a universal language, and declaring it the
+tongue "which it pleased our Lord Jesus to make use of when he spake
+from heaven unto Paul." At the close of the seventeenth century came
+from England a strong antiphonal answer in this chorus; Meric Casaubon,
+the learned Prebendary of Canterbury, thus declared: "One language, the
+Hebrew, I hold to be simply and absolutely the source of all." And, to
+swell the chorus, there came into it, in complete unison, the voice
+of Bentley--the greatest scholar of the old sort whom England has ever
+produced. He was, indeed, one of the most learned and acute critics of
+any age; but he was also Master of Trinity, Archdeacon of Bristol, held
+two livings besides, and enjoyed the honour of refusing the bishopric of
+Bristol, as not rich enough to tempt him. Noblesse oblige: that Bentley
+should hold a brief for the theological side was inevitable, and we
+need not be surprised when we hear him declaring: "We are sure, from the
+names of persons and places mentioned in Scripture before the Deluge,
+not to insist upon other arguments, that the Hebrew was the primitive
+language of mankind, and that it continued pure above three thousand
+years until the captivity in Babylon." The power of the theologic bias,
+when properly stimulated with ecclesiastical preferment, could hardly
+be more perfectly exemplified than in such a captivity of such a man as
+Bentley.
+
+Yet here two important exceptions should be noted. In England, Prideaux,
+whose biblical studies gave him much authority, opposed the dominant
+opinion; and in America, Cotton Mather, who in taking his Master's
+degree at Harvard had supported the doctrine that the Hebrew vowel
+points were of divine origin, bravely recanted and declared for the
+better view.(416)
+
+
+     (416) The quotation from Guichard is from L'Harmonie Etymologique des
+Langues,... dans laquelle par plusiers Antiquites et Etymologies
+de toute sorte, je demonstre evidemment que toutes les langues sont
+descendues de l'Hebraique; par M. Estienne Guichard, Paris, 1631. The
+first edition appeared in 1606. For Willett, see his Hexapla, London,
+1608, pp. 125-128. For the Address of L'Empereur, see his publication,
+Leyden, 1627. The quotation from Lightfoot, beginning "Other
+commendations," etc., is taken from his Erubhin, or Miscellanies,
+edition of 1629; see also his works, vol. iv, pp. 46, 47, London, 1822.
+For Bishop Brian Walton, see the Cambridge edition of his works, 1828,
+Prolegomena S 1 and 3. As to Walton's giving up the rabbinical points,
+he mentions in one of the latest editions of his works the fact that
+Isaac Casabon, Joseph Scaliger, Isaac Vossius, Grotius, Beza, Luther,
+Zwingli, Brentz, Oecolampadius, Calvin, and even some of the Popes were
+with him in this. For Sennert, see his Dissertation de Ebraicae S. S.
+Linguae Origine, etc., Wittenberg, 1657; also his Grammitica Orientalis,
+Wittenberg, 1666. For Buxtorf, see the preface to his Thesaurus
+Grammaticus Linguae Sanctae Hebraeae, sixth edition, 1663. For Gale,
+see his Court of the Gentiles, Oxford, 1672. For Morinus, see his
+Exercitationes de Lingua Primaeva, Utrecht, 1697. For Thomassin, see
+his Glossarium Universale Hebraicum, Paris, 1697. For John Eliot's
+utterance, see Mather's Magnalia, book iii, p. 184. For Meric Casaubon,
+see his De Lingua Anglia Vet., p. 160, cited by Massey, p. 16 of Origin
+and Progress of Letters. For Bentley, see his works, London, 1836, vol.
+ii, p. 11, and citations by Welsford, Mithridates Minor, p. 2. As to
+Bentley's position as a scholar, see the famous estimate in Macaulay's
+Essays. For a short but very interesting account of him, see Mark
+Pattison's article in vol. iii of the last edition of the Encyclopaedia
+Britannica. The postion of Pattison as an agnostic dignitary in the
+English Church eminently fitted him to understand Bentley's career, both
+as regards the orthodox and the scholastic world. For perhaps the
+most striking account of the manner in which Bentley lorded it in the
+scholastic world of his time, see Monk's Life of Bentley, vol. ii, chap.
+xvii, and especially his contemptuous reply to the judges, as given in
+vol. ii, pp. 211, 212. For Cotton Mather, see his biography by Samuel
+Mather, Boston, 1729, pp. 5, 6.
+
+
+But even this dissent produced little immediate effect, and at the
+beginning of the eighteenth century this sacred doctrine, based upon
+explicit statements of Scripture, seemed forever settled. As we have
+seen, strong fortresses had been built for it in every Christian land:
+nothing seemed more unlikely than that the little groups of scholars
+scattered through these various countries could ever prevail against
+them. These strongholds were built so firmly, and had behind them so
+vast an army of religionists of every creed, that to conquer them seemed
+impossible. And yet at that very moment their doom was decreed. Within
+a few years from this period of their greatest triumph, the garrisons of
+all these sacred fortresses were in hopeless confusion, and the armies
+behind them in full retreat; a little later, all the important orthodox
+fortresses and forces were in the hands of the scientific philologists.
+
+How this came about will be shown in the third part of this chapter.
+
+
+
+
+III. BREAKING DOWN OF THE THEOLOGICAL VIEW.
+
+
+We have now seen the steps by which the sacred theory of human language
+had been developed: how it had been strengthened in every land until
+it seemed to bid defiance forever to advancing thought; how it rested
+firmly upon the letter of Scripture, upon the explicit declarations of
+leading fathers of the Church, of the great doctors of the Middle Ages,
+of the most eminent theological scholars down to the beginning of the
+eighteenth century, and was guarded by the decrees of popes, kings,
+bishops, Catholic and Protestant, and the whole hierarchy of authorities
+in church and state.
+
+And yet, as we now look back, it is easy to see that even in that hour
+of its triumph it was doomed.
+
+The reason why the Church has so fully accepted the conclusions of
+science which have destroyed the sacred theory is instructive. The
+study of languages has been, since the Revival of Learning and the
+Reformation, a favourite study with the whole Western Church, Catholic
+and Protestant. The importance of understanding the ancient tongues in
+which our sacred books are preserved first stimulated the study, and
+Church missionary efforts have contributed nobly to supply the material
+for extending it, and for the application of that comparative method
+which, in philology as in other sciences, has been so fruitful. Hence it
+is that so many leading theologians have come to know at first hand
+the truths given by this science, and to recognise its fundamental
+principles. What the conclusions which they, as well as all other
+scholars in this field, have been absolutely forced to accept, I shall
+now endeavour to show.
+
+The beginnings of a scientific theory seemed weak indeed, but they were
+none the less effective. As far back as 1661, Hottinger, professor at
+Heidelberg, came into the chorus of theologians like a great bell in
+a chime; but like a bell whose opening tone is harmonious and whose
+closing tone is discordant. For while, at the beginning, Hottinger cites
+a formidable list of great scholars who had held the sacred theory of
+the origin of language, he goes on to note a closer resemblance to the
+Hebrew in some languages than in others, and explains this by declaring
+that the confusion of tongues was of two sorts, total and partial: the
+Arabic and Chaldaic he thinks underwent only a partial confusion; the
+Egyptian, Persian, and all the European languages a total one. Here
+comes in the discord; here gently sounds forth from the great chorus
+a new note--that idea of grouping and classifying languages which at a
+later day was to destroy utterly the whole sacred theory.
+
+But the great chorus resounded on, as we have seen, from shore to shore,
+until the closing years of the seventeenth century; then arose men
+who silenced it forever. The first leader who threw the weight of his
+knowledge, thought, and authority against it was Leibnitz. He declared,
+"There is as much reason for supposing Hebrew to have been the primitive
+language of mankind as there is for adopting the view of Goropius, who
+published a work at Antwerp in 1580 to prove that Dutch was the language
+spoken in paradise."
+
+In a letter to Tenzel, Leibnitz wrote, "To call Hebrew the primitive
+language is like calling the branches of a tree primitive branches, or
+like imagining that in some country hewn trunks could grow instead of
+trees." He also asked, "If the primeval language existed even up to the
+time of Moses, whence came the Egyptian language?"
+
+But the efficiency of Leibnitz did not end with mere suggestions. He
+applied the inductive method to linguistic study, made great efforts to
+have vocabularies collected and grammars drawn up wherever missionaries
+and travellers came in contact with new races, and thus succeeded in
+giving the initial impulse to at least three notable collections--that
+of Catharine the Great, of Russia; that of the Spanish Jesuit, Lorenzo
+Hervas; and, at a later period, the Mithridates of Adelung. The interest
+of the Empress Catharine in her collection of linguistic materials was
+very strong, and her influence is seen in the fact that Washington, to
+please her, requested governors and generals to send in materials from
+various parts of the United States and the Territories. The work of
+Hervas extended over the period from 1735 to 1809: a missionary in
+America, he enlarged his catalogue of languages to six volumes, which
+were published in Spanish in 1800, and contained specimens of more than
+three hundred languages, with the grammars of more than forty. It should
+be said to his credit that Hervas dared point out with especial care the
+limits of the Semitic family of languages, and declared, as a result of
+his enormous studies, that the various languages of mankind could not
+have been derived from the Hebrew.
+
+While such work was done in Catholic Spain, Protestant Germany was
+honoured by the work of Adelung. It contained the Lord's Prayer in
+nearly five hundred languages and dialects, and the comparison of these,
+early in the nineteenth century, helped to end the sway of theological
+philology.
+
+But the period which intervened between Leibnitz and this modern
+development was a period of philological chaos. It began mainly with the
+doubts which Leibnitz had forced upon Europe, and ended only with the
+beginning of the study of Sanskrit in the latter half of the eighteenth
+century, and with the comparisons made by means of the collections of
+Catharine, Hervas, and Adelung at the beginning of the nineteenth. The
+old theory that Hebrew was the original language had gone to pieces;
+but nothing had taken its place as a finality. Great authorities,
+like Buddeus, were still cited in behalf of the narrower belief; but
+everywhere researches, unorganized though they were, tended to destroy
+it. The story of Babel continued indeed throughout the whole eighteenth
+century to hinder or warp scientific investigation, and a very curious
+illustration of this fact is seen in the book of Lord Nelme on The
+Origin and Elements of Language. He declares that connected with the
+confusion was the cleaving of America from Europe, and he regards the
+most terrible chapters in the book of Job as intended for a description
+of the Flood, which in all probability Job had from Noah himself. Again,
+Rowland Jones tried to prove that Celtic was the primitive tongue, and
+that it passed through Babel unharmed. Still another effect was made by
+a Breton to prove that all languages took their rise in the language of
+Brittany. All was chaos. There was much wrangling, but little earnest
+controversy. Here and there theologians were calling out frantically,
+beseeching the Church to save the old doctrine as "essential to the
+truth of Scripture"; here and there other divines began to foreshadow
+the inevitable compromise which has always been thus vainly attempted in
+the history of every science. But it was soon seen by thinking men that
+no concessions as yet spoken of by theologians were sufficient. In
+the latter half of the century came the bloom period of the French
+philosophers and encyclopedists, of the English deists, of such German
+thinkers as Herder, Kant, and Lessing; and while here and there some
+writer on the theological side, like Perrin, amused thinking men by
+his flounderings in this great chaos, all remained without form and
+void.(417)
+
+
+     (417) For Hottinger, see the preface to his Etymologicum Orientale,
+Frankfort, 1661. For Leibnitz, Catharine the Great, Hervas, and Adelung,
+see Max Muller, as above, from whom I have quoted very fully; see also
+Benfey, Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft, etc., p. 269. Benfey declares
+that the Catalogue of Hervas is even now a mine for the philologist. For
+the first two citations from Leibnitz, as well as for a statement of his
+importance in the history of languages, see Max Muller, as above, pp.
+135, 136. For the third quotation, Leibnitz, Opera, Geneva, 1768, vi,
+part ii, p. 232. For Nelme, see his Origin and Elements of Language,
+London, 1772, pp. 85-100. For Rowland Jones, see The Origin of Language
+and Nations, London, 1764, and preface. For the origin of languages in
+Brittany, see Le Brigant, Paris, 1787. For Herder and Lessing, see Canon
+Farrar's treatise; on Lessing, see Sayce, as above. As to Perrin, see
+his essay Sur l'Origine et l'Antiquite des Langues, London, 1767.
+
+
+Nothing better reveals to us the darkness and duration of this chaos
+in England than a comparison of the articles on Philology given in the
+successive editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. The first edition
+of that great mirror of British thought was printed in 1771: chaos
+reigns through the whole of its article on this subject. The writer
+divides languages into two classes, seems to indicate a mixture of
+divine inspiration with human invention, and finally escapes under a
+cloud. In the second edition, published in 1780, some progress has been
+made. The author states the sacred theory, and declares: "There are some
+divines who pretend that Hebrew was the language in which God talked
+with Adam in paradise, and that the saints will make use of it in heaven
+in those praises which they will eternally offer to the Almighty. These
+doctors seem to be as certain in regard to what is past as to what is to
+come."
+
+This was evidently considered dangerous. It clearly outran the belief
+of the average British Philistine; and accordingly we find in the third
+edition, published seventeen years later, a new article, in which, while
+the author gives, as he says, "the best arguments on both sides," he
+takes pains to adhere to a fairly orthodox theory.
+
+This soothing dose was repeated in the fourth and fifth editions. In
+1824 appeared a supplement to the fourth, fifth, and sixth editions,
+which dealt with the facts so far as they were known; but there was
+scarcely a reference to the biblical theory throughout the article.
+Three years later came another supplement. While this chaos was fast
+becoming cosmos in Germany, such a change had evidently not gone far
+in England, for from this edition of the Encyclopaedia the subject of
+philology was omitted. In fact, Babel and Philology made nearly as much
+trouble to encyclopedists as Noah's Deluge and Geology. Just as in
+the latter case they had been obliged to stave off a presentation of
+scientific truth, by the words "For Deluge, see Flood" and "For
+Flood, see Noah," so in the former they were obliged to take various
+provisional measures, some of them comical. In 1842 came the seventh
+edition. In this the first part of the old article on Philology which
+had appeared in the third, fourth, and fifth editions was printed, but
+the supernatural part was mainly cut out. Yet we find a curious
+evidence of the continued reign of chaos in a foot-note inserted by
+the publishers, disavowing any departure from orthodox views. In 1859
+appeared the eighth edition. This abandoned the old article completely,
+and in its place gave a history of philology free from admixture of
+scriptural doctrines.
+
+Finally, in the year 1885, appeared the ninth edition, in which
+Professors Whitney of Yale and Sievers of Tubingen give admirably and in
+fair compass what is known of philology, making short work of the sacred
+theory--in fact, throwing it overboard entirely.
+
+
+
+
+IV. TRIUMPH OF THE NEW SCIENCE.
+
+
+Such was that chaos of thought into which the discovery of Sanskrit
+suddenly threw its great light. Well does one of the foremost modern
+philologists say that this "was the electric spark which caused the
+floating elements to crystallize into regular forms." Among the first to
+bring the knowledge of Sanskrit to Europe were the Jesuit missionaries,
+whose services to the material basis of the science of comparative
+philology had already been so great; and the importance of the new
+discovery was soon seen among all scholars, whether orthodox or
+scientific. In 1784 the Asiatic Society at Calcutta was founded, and
+with it began Sanskrit philology. Scholars like Sir William Jones,
+Carey, Wilkins, Foster, Colebrooke, did noble work in the new field. A
+new spirit brooded over that chaos, and a great new orb of science was
+evolved.
+
+The little group of scholars who gave themselves up to these researches,
+though almost without exception reverent Christians, were recognised
+at once by theologians as mortal foes of the whole sacred theory of
+language. Not only was the dogma of the multiplication of languages
+at the Tower of Babel swept out of sight by the new discovery, but the
+still more vital dogma of the divine origin of language, never
+before endangered, was felt to be in peril, since the evidence became
+overwhelming that so many varieties had been produced by a process of
+natural growth.
+
+Heroic efforts were therefore made, in the supposed interest of
+Scripture, to discredit the new learning. Even such a man as Dugald
+Stewart declared that the discovery of Sanskrit was altogether
+fraudulent, and endeavoured to prove that the Brahmans had made it up
+from the vocabulary and grammar of Greek and Latin. Others exercised
+their ingenuity in picking the new discovery to pieces, and still others
+attributed it all to the machinations of Satan.
+
+On the other hand, the more thoughtful men in the Church endeavoured to
+save something from the wreck of the old system by a compromise. They
+attempted to prove that Hebrew is at least a cognate tongue with the
+original speech of mankind, if not the original speech itself; but
+here they were confronted by the authority they dreaded most--the great
+Christian scholar, Sir William Jones himself. His words were: "I can
+only declare my belief that the language of Noah is irretrievably lost.
+After diligent search I can not find a single word used in common by
+the Arabian, Indian, and Tartar families, before the intermixture of
+dialects occasioned by the Mohammedan conquests."
+
+So, too, in Germany came full acknowledgment of the new truth, and from
+a Roman Catholic, Frederick Schlegel. He accepted the discoveries in the
+old language and literature of India as final: he saw the significance
+of these discoveries as regards philology, and grouped the languages of
+India, Persia, Greece, Italy, and Germany under the name afterward so
+universally accepted--Indo-Germanic.
+
+It now began to be felt more and more, even among the most devoted
+churchmen, that the old theological dogmas regarding the origin of
+language, as held "always, everywhere, and by all," were wrong, and that
+Lucretius and sturdy old Gregory of Nyssa might be right.
+
+But this was not the only wreck. During ages the great men in the Church
+had been calling upon the world to admire the amazing exploit of Adam in
+naming the animals which Jehovah had brought before him, and to accept
+the history of language in the light of this exploit. The early fathers,
+the mediaeval doctors, the great divines of the Reformation period,
+Catholic and Protestant, had united in this universal chorus. Clement
+of Alexandria declared Adam's naming of the animals proof of a prophetic
+gift. St. John Chrysostom insisted that it was an evidence of consummate
+intelligence. Eusebius held that the phrase "That was the name thereof"
+implied that each name embodied the real character and description of
+the animal concerned.
+
+This view was echoed by a multitude of divines in the seventeenth and
+eighteenth centuries. Typical among these was the great Dr. South, who,
+in his sermon on The State of Man before the Fall, declared that "Adam
+came into the world a philosopher, which sufficiently appears by his
+writing the nature of things upon their names."
+
+In the chorus of modern English divines there appeared one of eminence
+who declared against this theory: Dr. Shuckford, chaplain in ordinary
+to his Majesty George II, in the preface to his work on The Creation and
+Fall of Man, pronounced the whole theory "romantic and irrational." He
+goes on to say: "The original of our speaking was from God; not that God
+put into Adam's mouth the very sounds which he designed he should use as
+the names of things; but God made Adam with the powers of a man; he had
+the use of an understanding to form notions in his mind of the things
+about him, and he had the power to utter sounds which should be to
+himself the names of things according as he might think fit to call
+them."
+
+This echo of Gregory of Nyssa was for many years of little avail.
+Historians of philosophy still began with Adam, because only a
+philosopher could have named all created things. There was, indeed,
+one difficulty which had much troubled some theologians: this was, that
+fishes were not specially mentioned among the animals brought by Jehovah
+before Adam for naming. To meet this difficulty there was much argument,
+and some theologians laid stress on the difficulty of bringing fishes
+from the sea to the Garden of Eden to receive their names; but naturally
+other theologians replied that the almighty power which created the
+fishes could have easily brought them into the garden, one by one, even
+from the uttermost parts of the sea. This point, therefore, seems to
+have been left in abeyance.(418)
+
+
+     (418) For the danger of "the little system of the history of the world,"
+see Sayce, as above. On Dugald Stewart's contention, see Max Muller,
+Lectures on Language, pp. 167, 168. For Sir William Jones, see his
+Works, London, 1807, vol. i, p. 199. For Schlegel, see Max Muller, as
+above. For an enormous list of great theologians, from the fathers down,
+who dwelt on the divine inspiration and wonderful gifts of Adam on this
+subject, see Canon Farrar, Language and Languages. The citation from
+Clement of Alexandria is Strom.. i, p. 335. See also Chrysostom, Hom.
+XIV in Genesin; also Eusebius, Praep. Evang. XI, p. 6. For the two
+quotations given above from Shuckford, see The Creation and Fall of Man,
+London, 1763, preface, p. lxxxiii; also his Sacred and Profane History
+of the World, 1753; revised edition by Wheeler, London, 1858. For the
+argument regarding the difficulty of bringing the fishes to be named
+into the Garden of Eden, see Massey, Origin and Progress of Letters,
+London, 1763, pp. 14-19.
+
+
+It had continued, then, the universal belief in the Church that the
+names of all created things, except possibly fishes, were given by Adam
+and in Hebrew; but all this theory was whelmed in ruin when it was found
+that there were other and indeed earlier names for the same animals
+than those in the Hebrew language; and especially was this enforced on
+thinking men when the Egyptian discoveries began to reveal the pictures
+of animals with their names in hieroglyphics at a period earlier than
+that agreed on by all the sacred chronologists as the date of the
+Creation.
+
+Still another part of the sacred theory now received its death-blow.
+Closely allied with the question of the origin of language was that of
+the origin of letters. The earlier writers had held that letters were
+also a divine gift to Adam; but as we go on in the eighteenth century
+we find theological opinion inclining to the belief that this gift was
+reserved for Moses. This, as we have seen, was the view of St. John
+Chrysostom; and an eminent English divine early in the eighteenth
+century, John Johnson, Vicar of Kent, echoed it in the declaration
+concerning the alphabet, that "Moses first learned it from God by
+means of the lettering on the tables of the law." But here a difficulty
+arose--the biblical statement that God commanded Moses to "write in a
+book" his decree concerning Amalek before he went up into Sinai.
+With this the good vicar grapples manfully. He supposes that God had
+previously concealed the tables of stone in Mount Horeb, and that
+Moses, "when he kept Jethro's sheep thereabout, had free access to these
+tables, and perused them at discretion, though he was not permitted
+to carry them down with him." Our reconciler then asks for what other
+reason could God have kept Moses up in the mountain forty days at a
+time, except to teach him to write; and says, "It seems highly probable
+that the angel gave him the alphabet of the Hebrew, or in some other way
+unknown to us became his guide."
+
+But this theory of letters was soon to be doomed like the other parts
+of the sacred theory. Studies in Comparative Philology, based upon
+researches in India, began to be reenforced by facts regarding the
+inscriptions in Egypt, the cuneiform inscriptions of Assyria, the
+legends of Chaldea, and the folklore of China--where it was found in the
+sacred books that the animals were named by Fohi, and with such wisdom
+and insight that every name disclosed the nature of the corresponding
+animal.
+
+But, although the old theory was doomed, heroic efforts were still made
+to support it. In 1788 James Beattie, in all the glory of his Oxford
+doctorate and royal pension, made a vigorous onslaught, declaring the
+new system of philology to be "degrading to our nature," and that the
+theory of the natural development of language is simply due to the
+beauty of Lucretius' poetry. But his main weapon was ridicule, and in
+this he showed himself a master. He tells the world, "The following
+paraphrase has nothing of the elegance of Horace or Lucretius, but seems
+to have all the elegance that so ridiculous a doctrine deserves":
+
+"When men out of the earth of old A dumb and beastly vermin crawled;
+For acorns, first, and holes of shelter, They tooth and nail, and helter
+skelter, Fought fist to fist; then with a club Each learned his brother
+brute to drub; Till, more experienced grown, these cattle Forged fit
+accoutrements for battle. At last (Lucretius says and Creech) They set
+their wits to work on SPEECH: And that their thoughts might all have
+marks To make them known, these learned clerks Left off the trade of
+cracking crowns, And manufactured verbs and nouns."
+
+
+But a far more powerful theologian entered the field in England to save
+the sacred theory of language--Dr. Adam Clarke. He was no less severe
+against Philology than against Geology. In 1804, as President of the
+Manchester Philological Society, he delivered an address in which he
+declared that, while men of all sects were eligible to membership,
+"he who rejects the establishment of what we believe to be a divine
+revelation, he who would disturb the peace of the quiet, and by doubtful
+disputations unhinge the minds of the simple and unreflecting, and
+endeavour to turn the unwary out of the way of peace and rational
+subordination, can have no seat among the members of this institution."
+The first sentence in this declaration gives food for reflection, for it
+is the same confusion of two ideas which has been at the root of so much
+interference of theology with science for the last two thousand years.
+Adam Clarke speaks of those "who reject the establishment of what,
+WE BELIEVE, to be a divine revelation." Thus comes in that customary
+begging of the question--the substitution, as the real significance of
+Scripture, of "WHAT WE BELIEVE" for what IS.
+
+The intended result, too, of this ecclesiastical sentence was simple
+enough. It was, that great men like Sir William Jones, Colebrooke, and
+their compeers, must not be heard in the Manchester Philological Society
+in discussion with Dr. Adam Clarke on questions regarding Sanskrit and
+other matters regarding which they knew all that was then known, and Dr.
+Clarke knew nothing.
+
+But even Clarke was forced to yield to the scientific current. Thirty
+years later, in his Commentary on the Old Testament, he pitched the
+claims of the sacred theory on a much lower key. He says: "Mankind was
+of one language, in all likelihood the Hebrew.... The proper names and
+other significations given in the Scripture seem incontestable evidence
+that the Hebrew language was the original language of the earth,--the
+language in which God spoke to man, and in which he gave the revelation
+of his will to Moses and the prophets." Here are signs that this great
+champion is growing weaker in the faith: in the citations made it will
+be observed he no longer says "IS," but "SEEMS"; and finally we have him
+saying, "What the first language was is almost useless to inquire, as it
+is impossible to arrive at any satisfactory information on this point."
+
+In France, during the first half of the nineteenth century, yet
+more heavy artillery was wheeled into place, in order to make a last
+desperate defence of the sacred theory. The leaders in this effort were
+the three great Ultramontanes, De Maistre, De Bonald, and Lamennais.
+Condillac's contention that "languages were gradually and insensibly
+acquired, and that every man had his share of the general result,"
+they attacked with reasoning based upon premises drawn from the book of
+Genesis. De Maistre especially excelled in ridiculing the philosophic or
+scientific theory. Lamennais, who afterward became so vexatious a thorn
+in the side of the Church, insisted, at this earlier period, that "man
+can no more think without words than see without light." And then, by
+that sort of mystical play upon words so well known in the higher ranges
+of theologic reasoning, he clinches his argument by saying, "The Word is
+truly and in every sense 'the light which lighteth every man that cometh
+into the world.'"
+
+But even such champions as these could not stay the progress of thought.
+While they seemed to be carrying everything before them in France,
+researches in philology made at such centres of thought as the Sorbonne
+and the College of France were undermining their last great fortress.
+Curious indeed is it to find that the Sorbonne, the stronghold of
+theology through so many centuries, was now made in the nineteenth
+century the arsenal and stronghold of the new ideas. But the most
+striking result of the new tendency in France was seen when the greatest
+of the three champions, Lamennais himself, though offered the highest
+Church preferment, and even a cardinal's hat, braved the papal anathema,
+and went over to the scientific side.(419)
+
+
+     (419) For Johnson's work, showing how Moses learned the alphabet, see
+the Collection of Discourses by Rev. John Johnson, A. M., Vicar of Kent,
+London, 1728, p. 42, and the preface. For Beattie, see his Theory of
+Language, London, 1788, p. 98; also pp. 100, 101. For Adam Clarke, see,
+for the speech cited, his Miscellaneous Works, London, 1837; for the
+passage from his Commentary, see the London edition of 1836, vol. i,
+p. 93; for the other passage, see Introduction to Bibliographical
+Miscellany, quoted in article, Origin of Language and Alphabetical
+Characters, in Methodist Magazine, vol. xv, p. 214. For De Bonald,
+see his Recherches Philosophiques, part iii, chap. ii, De l'Origine du
+Language, in his Oeuvres, Bruxelles, 1852, vol. i, Les Soirees de Saint
+Petersbourg, deuxieme entretien, passim. For Lamennais, see his Oeuvres
+Completes, Paris, 1836-'37, tome ii, pp.78-81, chap. xv of Essai sur
+l'Indifference en Matiere de Religion.
+
+
+In Germany philological science took so strong a hold that its positions
+were soon recognised as impregnable. Leaders like the Schlegels, Wilhelm
+von Humboldt, and above all Franz Bopp and Jacob Grimm, gave such
+additional force to scientific truth that it could no longer be
+withstood. To say nothing of other conquests, the demonstration of that
+great law in philology which bears Grimm's name brought home to all
+thinking men the evidence that the evolution of language had not been
+determined by the philosophic utterances of Adam in naming the animals
+which Jehovah brought before him, but in obedience to natural law.
+
+True, a few devoted theologians showed themselves willing to lead a
+forlorn hope; and perhaps the most forlorn of all was that of 1840,
+led by Dr. Gottlieb Christian Kayser, Professor of Theology at the
+Protestant University of Erlangen. He does not, indeed, dare put in the
+old claim that Hebrew is identical with the primitive tongue, but he
+insists that it is nearer it than any other. He relinquishes the two
+former theological strongholds--first, the idea that language was taught
+by the Almighty to Adam, and, next, that the alphabet was thus taught to
+Moses--and falls back on the position that all tongues are thus derived
+from Noah, giving as an example the language of the Caribbees, and
+insisting that it was evidently so derived. What chance similarity in
+words between Hebrew and the Caribbee tongue he had in mind is past
+finding out. He comes out strongly in defence of the biblical account of
+the Tower of Babel, and insists that "by the symbolical expression 'God
+said, Let us go down,' a further natural phenomenon is intimated, to
+wit, the cleaving of the earth, whereby the return of the dispersed
+became impossible--that is to say, through a new or not universal
+flood, a partial inundation and temporary violent separation of great
+continents until the time of the rediscovery" By these words the learned
+doctor means nothing less than the separation of Europe from America.
+
+While at the middle of the nineteenth century the theory of the origin
+and development of language was upon the continent considered as
+settled, and a well-ordered science had there emerged from the old
+chaos, Great Britain still held back, in spite of the fact that the most
+important contributors to the science were of British origin. Leaders in
+every English church and sect vied with each other, either in denouncing
+the encroachments of the science of language or in explaining them away.
+
+But a new epoch had come, and in a way least expected. Perhaps the most
+notable effort in bringing it in was made by Dr. Wiseman, afterward
+Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster. His is one of the best examples of
+a method which has been used with considerable effect during the latest
+stages of nearly all the controversies between theology and science.
+It consists in stating, with much fairness, the conclusions of the
+scientific authorities, and then in persuading one's self and trying
+to persuade others that the Church has always accepted them and accepts
+them now as "additional proofs of the truth of Scripture." A little
+juggling with words, a little amalgamation of texts, a little judicious
+suppression, a little imaginative deduction, a little unctuous phrasing,
+and the thing is done. One great service this eminent and kindly
+Catholic champion undoubtedly rendered: by this acknowledgment, so
+widely spread in his published lectures, he made it impossible for
+Catholics or Protestants longer to resist the main conclusions
+of science. Henceforward we only have efforts to save theological
+appearances, and these only by men whose zeal outran their discretion.
+
+On both sides of the Atlantic, down to a recent period, we see these
+efforts, but we see no less clearly that they are mutually destructive.
+Yet out of this chaos among English-speaking peoples the new science
+began to develop steadily and rapidly. Attempts did indeed continue
+here and there to save the old theory. Even as late as 1859 we hear
+the eminent Presbyterian divine, Dr. John Cumming, from his pulpit
+in London, speaking of Hebrew as "that magnificent tongue--that
+mother-tongue, from which all others are but distant and debilitated
+progenies."
+
+But the honour of producing in the nineteenth century the most absurd
+known attempt to prove Hebrew the primitive tongue belongs to the
+youngest of the continents, Australia. In the year 1857 was printed at
+Melbourne The Triumph of Truth, or a Popular Lecture on the Origin of
+Languages, by B. Atkinson, M.R.C.P.L.--whatever that may mean. In this
+work, starting with the assertion that "the Hebrew was the primary stock
+whence all languages were derived," the author states that Sanskrit is
+"a dialect of the Hebrew," and declares that "the manuscripts found
+with mummies agree precisely with the Chinese version of the Psalms of
+David." It all sounds like Alice in Wonderland. Curiously enough, in
+the latter part of his book, evidently thinking that his views would not
+give him authority among fastidious philologists, he says, "A great deal
+of our consent to the foregoing statements arises in our belief in the
+Divine inspiration of the Mosaic account of the creation of the world
+and of our first parents in the Garden of Eden." A yet more
+interesting light is thrown upon the author's view of truth, and of its
+promulgation, by his dedication: he says that, "being persuaded that
+literary men ought to be fostered by the hand of power," he dedicates
+his treatise "to his Excellency Sir H. Barkly," who was at the time
+Governor of Victoria.
+
+Still another curious survival is seen in a work which appeared as late
+as 1885, at Edinburgh, by William Galloway, M.A., Ph.D., M.D. The author
+thinks that he has produced abundant evidence to prove that "Jehovah,
+the Second Person of the Godhead, wrote the first chapter of Genesis on
+a stone pillar, and that this is the manner by which he first revealed
+it to Adam; and thus Adam was taught not only to speak but to read and
+write by Jehovah, the Divine Son; and that the first lesson he got was
+from the first chapter of Genesis." He goes on to say: "Jehovah wrote
+these first two documents; the first containing the history of the
+Creation, and the second the revelation of man's redemption,... for
+Adam's and Eve's instruction; it is evident that he wrote them in the
+Hebrew tongue, because that was the language of Adam and Eve." But this
+was only a flower out of season.
+
+And, finally, in these latter days Mr. Gladstone has touched the
+subject. With that well-known facility in believing anything he wishes
+to believe, which he once showed in connecting Neptune's trident
+with the doctrine of the Trinity, he floats airily over all the
+impossibilities of the original Babel legend and all the conquests of
+science, makes an assertion regarding the results of philology which no
+philologist of any standing would admit, and then escapes in a cloud of
+rhetoric after his well-known fashion.
+
+This, too, must be set down simply as a survival, for in the British
+Isles as elsewhere the truth has been established. Such men as Max
+Muller and Sayce in England,--Steinthal, Schleicher, Weber, Karl
+Abel, and a host of others in Germany,--Ascoli and De Gubernatis in
+Italy,--and Whitney, with the scholars inspired by him, in America,
+have carried the new science to a complete triumph. The sons of
+Yale University may well be proud of the fact that this old Puritan
+foundation was made the headquarters of the American Oriental Society,
+which has done so much for the truth in this field.(420)
+
+
+     (420) For Mr. Gladstone's view, see his Impregnable Rock of Holy
+Scripture, London, 1890, pp. 241 et seq. The passage connecting the
+trident of Neptune with the Trinity is in his Juventus Mundi. To any
+American boy who sees how inevitably, both among Indian and white
+fishermen, the fish spear takes the three-pronged form, this utterance
+of Mr. Gladstone is amazing.
+
+
+
+
+V. SUMMARY.
+
+
+It may be instructive, in conclusion, to sum up briefly the history of
+the whole struggle.
+
+First, as to the origin of speech, we have in the beginning the whole
+Church rallying around the idea that the original language was Hebrew;
+that this language, even including the medieval rabbinical punctuation,
+was directly inspired by the Almighty; that Adam was taught it by God
+himself in walks and talks; and that all other languages were derived
+from it at the "confusion of Babel."
+
+Next, we see parts of this theory fading out: the inspiration of the
+rabbinical points begins to disappear. Adam, instead of being taught
+directly by God, is "inspired" by him.
+
+Then comes the third stage: advanced theologians endeavour to compromise
+on the idea that Adam was "given verbal roots and a mental power."
+
+Finally, in our time, we have them accepting the theory that language is
+the result of an evolutionary process in obedience to laws more or less
+clearly ascertained. Babel thus takes its place quietly among the sacred
+myths.
+
+As to the origin of writing, we have the more eminent theologians
+at first insisting that God taught Adam to write; next we find them
+gradually retreating from this position, but insisting that writing was
+taught to the world by Noah. After the retreat from this position, we
+find them insisting that it was Moses whom God taught to write.
+But scientific modes of thought still progressed, and we next have
+influential theologians agreeing that writing was a Mosaic invention;
+this is followed by another theological retreat to the position that
+writing was a post-Mosaic invention. Finally, all the positions are
+relinquished, save by some few skirmishers who appear now and then
+upon the horizon, making attempts to defend some subtle method of
+"reconciling" the Babel myth with modern science.
+
+Just after the middle of the nineteenth century the last stage of
+theological defence was evidently reached--the same which is seen in the
+history of almost every science after it has successfully fought its way
+through the theological period--the declaration which we have already
+seen foreshadowed by Wiseman, that the scientific discoveries in
+question are nothing new, but have really always been known and held by
+the Church, and that they simply substantiate the position taken by
+the Church. This new contention, which always betokens the last gasp of
+theological resistance to science, was now echoed from land to land. In
+1856 it was given forth by a divine of the Anglican Church, Archdeacon
+Pratt, of Calcutta. He gives a long list of eminent philologists who had
+done most to destroy the old supernatural view of language, reads into
+their utterances his own wishes, and then exclaims, "So singularly do
+their labours confirm the literal truth of Scripture."
+
+Two years later this contention was echoed from the American
+Presbyterian Church, and Dr. B. W. Dwight, having stigmatized as
+"infidels" those who had not incorporated into their science the literal
+acceptance of Hebrew legend, declared that "chronology, ethnography,
+and etymology have all been tortured in vain to make them contradict the
+Mosaic account of the early history of man." Twelve years later this was
+re-echoed from England. The Rev. Dr. Baylee, Principal of the College of
+St. Aidan's, declared, "With regard to the varieties of human language,
+the account of the confusion of tongues is receiving daily confirmation
+by all the recent discoveries in comparative philology." So, too, in
+the same year (1870), in the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland,
+Dr. John Eadie, Professor of Biblical Literature and Exegesis, declared,
+"Comparative philology has established the miracle of Babel."
+
+A skill in theology and casuistry so exquisite as to contrive such
+assertions, and a faith so robust as to accept them, certainly leave
+nothing to be desired. But how baseless these contentions are is shown,
+first, by the simple history of the attitude of the Church toward this
+question; and, secondly, by the fact that comparative philology now
+reveals beyond a doubt that not only is Hebrew not the original or
+oldest language upon earth, but that it is not even the oldest form in
+the Semitic group to which it belongs. To use the words of one of the
+most eminent modern authorities, "It is now generally recognised that
+in grammatical structure the Arabic preserves much more of the original
+forms than either the Hebrew or Aramaic."
+
+History, ethnology, and philology now combine inexorably to place the
+account of the confusion of tongues and the dispersion of races at Babel
+among the myths; but their work has not been merely destructive: more
+and more strong are the grounds for belief in an evolution of language.
+
+A very complete acceptance of the scientific doctrines has been made
+by Archdeacon Farrar, Canon of Westminster. With a boldness which in an
+earlier period might have cost him dear, and which merits praise even
+now for its courage, he says: "For all reasoners except that portion of
+the clergy who in all ages have been found among the bitterest enemies
+of scientific discovery, these considerations have been conclusive. But,
+strange to say, here, as in so many other instances, this self-styled
+orthodoxy--more orthodox than the Bible itself--directly contradicts
+the very Scriptures which it professes to explain, and by sheer
+misrepresentation succeeds in producing a needless and deplorable
+collision between the statements of Scripture and those other mighty and
+certain truths which have been revealed to science and humanity as their
+glory and reward."
+
+Still another acknowledgment was made in America through the
+instrumentality of a divine of the Methodist Episcopal Church, whom
+the present generation at least will hold in honour not only for his
+scholarship but for his patriotism in the darkest hour of his country's
+need--John McClintock. In the article on Language, in the Biblical
+Cyclopaedia, edited by him and the Rev. Dr. Strong, which appeared
+in 1873, the whole sacred theory is given up, and the scientific view
+accepted.(421)
+
+
+     (421) For Kayser, see his work, Ueber die Ursprache, oder uber eine
+Behauptung Mosis, dass alle Sprachen der Welt von einer einzigen der
+Noahhischen abstammen, Erlangen, 1840; see especially pp. 5, 80, 95,
+112. For Wiseman, see his Lectures on the Connection between Science and
+Revealed Religion, London, 1836. For examples typical of very many in
+this field, see the works of Pratt, 1856; Dwight, 1858; Jamieson, 1868.
+For citation from Cumming, see his Great Tribulation, London, 1859, p.
+4; see also his Things Hard to be Understood, London, 1861, p. 48. For
+an admirable summary of the work of the great modern philologists, and
+a most careful estimate of the conclusions reached, see Prof. Whitney's
+article on Philology in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. A copy of Mr.
+Atkinson's book is in the Harvard College Library, it having been
+presented by the Trustees of the Public Library of Victoria. For
+Galloway, see his Philosophy of the Creation, Edinburgh and London,
+1885, pp. 21, 238, 239, 446. For citation from Baylee, see his Verbal
+Inspiration the True Characteristic of God's Holy Word, London, 1870,
+p. 14 and elsewhere. For Archdeacon Pratt, see his Scripture and Science
+not at Variance, London, 1856, p. 55. For the citation from Dr. Eadie,
+see his Biblical Cyclopaedia, London, 1870, p. 53. For Dr. Dwight,
+see The New-Englander, vol. xvi, p. 465. For the theological article
+referred to as giving up the sacred theory, see the Cyclopaedia of
+Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature, prepared by Rev.
+John McClintock, D. D., and James Strong, New York, 1873, vol. v, p.
+233. For Arabic as an earlier Semitic development than Hebrew, as well
+as for much other valuable information on the questions recently
+raised, see article Hebrew, by W. R. Smith, in the latest edition of
+the Encyclopaedia Britannica. For quotation from Canon Farrar, see his
+language and Languages, London, 1878, pp. 6,7.
+
+
+It may, indeed, be now fairly said that the thinking leaders of theology
+have come to accept the conclusions of science regarding the origin of
+language, as against the old explanations by myth and legend. The result
+has been a blessing both to science and to religion. No harm has been
+done to religion; what has been done is to release it from the clog of
+theories which thinking men saw could no longer be maintained. No matter
+what has become of the naming of the animals by Adam, of the origin of
+the name Babel, of the fear of the Almighty lest men might climb up into
+his realm above the firmament, and of the confusion of tongues and the
+dispersion of nations; the essentials of Christianity, as taught by its
+blessed Founder, have simply been freed, by Comparative Philology, from
+one more great incubus, and have therefore been left to work with more
+power upon the hearts and minds of mankind.
+
+Nor has any harm been done to the Bible. On the contrary, this divine
+revelation through science has made it all the more precious to us.
+In these myths and legends caught from earlier civilizations we see an
+evolution of the most important religious and moral truths for our
+race. Myth, legend, and parable seem, in obedience to a divine law, the
+necessary setting for these truths, as they are successively evolved,
+ever in higher and higher forms. What matters it, then, that we have
+come to know that the accounts of Creation, the Fall, the Deluge, and
+much else in our sacred books, were remembrances of lore obtained from
+the Chaldeans? What matters it that the beautiful story of Joseph is
+found to be in part derived from an Egyptian romance, of which the
+hieroglyphs may still be seen? What matters it that the story of David
+and Goliath is poetry; and that Samson, like so many men of strength
+in other religions, is probably a sun-myth? What matters it that the
+inculcation of high duty in the childhood of the world is embodied in
+such quaint stories as those of Jonah and Balaam? The more we realize
+these facts, the richer becomes that great body of literature brought
+together within the covers of the Bible. What matters it that those who
+incorporated the Creation lore of Babylonia and other Oriental
+nations into the sacred books of the Hebrews, mixed it with their own
+conceptions and deductions? What matters it that Darwin changed the
+whole aspect of our Creation myths; that Lyell and his compeers placed
+the Hebrew story of Creation and of the Deluge of Noah among legends;
+that Copernicus put an end to the standing still of the sun for Joshua;
+that Halley, in promulgating his law of comets, put an end to the
+doctrine of "signs and wonders"; that Pinel, in showing that all
+insanity is physical disease, relegated to the realm of mythology the
+witch of Endor and all stories of demoniacal possession; that the Rev.
+Dr. Schaff, and a multitude of recent Christian travellers in Palestine,
+have put into the realm of legend the story of Lot's wife transformed
+into a pillar of salt; that the anthropologists, by showing how man
+has risen everywhere from low and brutal beginnings, have destroyed the
+whole theological theory of "the fall of man"? Our great body of sacred
+literature is thereby only made more and more valuable to us: more and
+more we see how long and patiently the forces in the universe which make
+for righteousness have been acting in and upon mankind through the only
+agencies fitted for such work in the earliest ages of the world--through
+myth, legend, parable, and poem.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.  FROM THE DEAD SEA LEGENDS TO COMPARATIVE MYTHOLOGY,
+
+
+
+
+I. THE GROWTH OF EXPLANATORY TRANSFORMATION MYTHS.
+
+
+A few years since, Maxime Du Camp, an eminent member of the French
+Academy, travelling from the Red Sea to the Nile through the Desert
+of Kosseir, came to a barren slope covered with boulders, rounded and
+glossy.
+
+His Mohammedan camel-driver accounted for them on this wise:
+
+"Many years ago Hadji Abdul-Aziz, a sheik of the dervishes, was
+travelling on foot through this desert: it was summer: the sun was hot
+and the dust stifling; thirst parched his lips, fatigue weighed down his
+back, sweat dropped from his forehead, when looking up he saw--on this
+very spot--a garden beautifully green, full of fruit, and, in the midst
+of it, the gardener.
+
+"'O fellow-man,' cried Hadji Abdul-Aziz, 'in the name of Allah, clement
+and merciful, give me a melon and I will give you my prayers.'"
+
+The gardener answered: 'I care not for your prayers; give me money, and
+I will give you fruit.'
+
+"'But,' said the dervish, 'I am a beggar; I have never had money; I am
+thirsty and weary, and one of your melons is all that I need.'
+
+"'No,' said the gardener; 'go to the Nile and quench your thirst.'
+
+"Thereupon the dervish, lifting his eyes toward heaven, made this
+prayer: 'O Allah, thou who in the midst of the desert didst make the
+fountain of Zem-Zem spring forth to satisfy the thirst of Ismail, father
+of the faithful: wilt thou suffer one of thy creatures to perish thus of
+thirst and fatigue? '
+
+"And it came to pass that, hardly had the dervish spoken, when an
+abundant dew descended upon him, quenching his thirst and refreshing him
+even to the marrow of his bones.
+
+"Now at the sight of this miracle the gardener knew that the dervish was
+a holy man, beloved of Allah, and straightway offered him a melon.
+
+"'Not so,' answered Hadji Abdul-Aziz; 'keep what thou hast, thou wicked
+man. May thy melons become as hard as thy heart, and thy field as barren
+as thy soul!'
+
+"And straightway it came to pass that the melons were changed into
+these blocks of stone, and the grass into this sand, and never since has
+anything grown thereon."
+
+In this story, and in myriads like it, we have a survival of that early
+conception of the universe in which so many of the leading moral and
+religious truths of the great sacred books of the world are imbedded.
+
+All ancient sacred lore abounds in such mythical explanations of
+remarkable appearances in nature, and these are most frequently prompted
+by mountains, rocks, and boulders seemingly misplaced.
+
+In India we have such typical examples among the Brahmans as the
+mountain-peak which Durgu threw at Parvati; and among the Buddhists the
+stone which Devadatti hurled at Buddha.
+
+In Greece the Athenian, rejoicing in his belief that Athena guarded her
+chosen people, found it hard to understand why the great rock Lycabettus
+should be just too far from the Acropolis to be of use as an outwork;
+but a myth was developed which explained all. According to this, Athena
+had intended to make Lycabettus a defence for the Athenians, and she
+was bringing it through the air from Pallene for that very purpose; but,
+unfortunately, a raven met her and informed her of the wonderful birth
+of Erichthonius, which so surprised the goddess that she dropped the
+rock where it now stands.
+
+So, too, a peculiar rock at Aegina was accounted for by a long and
+circumstantial legend to the effect that Peleus threw it at Phocas.
+
+A similar mode of explaining such objects is seen in the mythologies of
+northern Europe. In Scandinavia we constantly find rocks which tradition
+accounts for by declaring that they were hurled by the old gods at each
+other, or at the early Christian churches.
+
+In Teutonic lands, as a rule, wherever a strange rock or stone is found,
+there will be found a myth or a legend, heathen or Christian, to account
+for it.
+
+So, too, in Celtic countries: typical of this mode of thought in
+Brittany and in Ireland is the popular belief that such features in the
+landscape were dropped by the devil or by fairies.
+
+Even at a much later period such myths have grown and bloomed. Marco
+Polo gives a long and circumstantial legend of a mountain in Asia Minor
+which, not long before his visit, was removed by a Christian who,
+having "faith as a grain of mustard seed," and remembering the Saviour's
+promise, transferred the mountain to its present place by prayer, "at
+which marvel many Saracens became Christians."(422)
+
+
+     (422) For Maxime Du Camp, see Le Nil: Egypte et Nubie, Paris, 1877,
+chapter v. For India, see Duncker, Geschichte des Alterthums, vol. iii,
+p. 366; also Coleman, Mythology of the Hindus, p. 90. For Greece, as to
+the Lycabettus myth, see Leake, Topography of Athens, vol. i, sec. 3;
+also Burnouf, La Legende Athenienne, p. 152. For the rock at Aegina,
+see Charton, vol. i, p. 310. For Scandanavia, see Thorpe, Northern
+Antiquities, passim. For Teutonic countries, see Grimm, Deutsche
+Mythologie; Panzer, Beitrag zur deutschen Mythologie, vol. ii; Zingerle,
+Sagen aus Tyrol, pp. 111 et seq., 488, 504, 543; and especially J. B.
+Friedrich, Symbolik und Mythologie der Natur, pp. 116 et seq. For Celtic
+examples I am indebted to that learned and genial scholar, Prof. J.
+P. Mahaffy, of Trinity College, Dublin. See also story of the devil
+dropping a rock when forced by the archangel Michael to aid him in
+building Mont Saint-Michel on the west coast of France, in Sebillot's
+Traditions de la Haute Bretagne, vol. i, p. 22; also multitudes of other
+examples in the same work. For Marco Polo, see in Grynaeus, p. 337; also
+Charton, Voyageurs anciens et modernes, tome ii, pp. 274 et seq., where
+the legend is given in full.
+
+
+Similar mythical explanations are also found, in all the older religions
+of the world, for curiously marked meteoric stones, fossils, and the
+like.
+
+Typical examples are found in the imprint of Buddha's feet on stones in
+Siam and Ceylon; in the imprint of the body of Moses, which down to the
+middle of the last century was shown near Mount Sinai; in the imprint
+of Poseidon's trident on the Acropolis at Athens; in the imprint of the
+hands or feet of Christ on stones in France, Italy, and Palestine; in
+the imprint of the Virgin's tears on stones at Jerusalem; in the imprint
+of the feet of Abraham at Jerusalem and of Mohammed on a stone in the
+Mosque of Khait Bey at Cairo; in the imprint of the fingers of giants on
+stones in the Scandinavian Peninsula, in north Germany, and in western
+France; in the imprint of the devil's thighs on a rock in Brittany,
+and of his claws on stones which he threw at churches in Cologne and
+Saint-Pol-de-Leon; in the imprint of the shoulder of the devil's grand
+mother on the "elbow-stone" at the Mohriner see; in the imprint of
+St. Otho's feet on a stone formerly preserved in the castle church at
+Stettin; in the imprint of the little finger of Christ and the head
+of Satan at Ehrenberg; and in the imprint of the feet of St. Agatha
+at Catania, in Sicily. To account for these appearances and myriads of
+others, long and interesting legends were developed, and out of this
+mass we may take one or two as typical.
+
+One of the most beautiful was evolved at Rome. On the border of the
+medieval city stands the church of "Domine quo vadis"; it was erected in
+honour of a stone, which is still preserved, bearing a mark resembling a
+human footprint--perhaps the bed of a fossil.
+
+Out of this a pious legend grew as naturally as a wild rose in a
+prairie. According to this story, in one of the first great persecutions
+the heart of St. Peter failed him, and he attempted to flee from the
+city: arriving outside the walls he was suddenly confronted by the
+Master, whereupon Peter in amazement asked, "Lord, whither goest thou?"
+(Domine quo vadis?); to which the Master answered, "To Rome, to be
+crucified again." The apostle, thus rebuked, returned to martyrdom; the
+Master vanished, but left, as a perpetual memorial, his footprint in the
+solid rock.
+
+Another legend accounts for a curious mark in a stone at Jerusalem.
+According to this, St. Thomas, after the ascension of the Lord, was
+again troubled with doubts, whereupon the Virgin Mother threw down her
+girdle, which left its imprint upon the rock, and thus converted the
+doubter fully and finally.
+
+And still another example is seen at the very opposite extreme of
+Europe, in the legend of the priestess of Hertha in the island of Rugen.
+She had been unfaithful to her vows, and the gods furnished a proof of
+her guilt by causing her and her child to sink into the rock on which
+she stood.(423)
+
+
+     (423) For myths and legend crystallizing about boulders and other stones
+curiously shaped or marked, see, on the general subject, in addition to
+works already cited, Des Brosses, Les Dieux Fetiches, 1760, passim, but
+especially pages 166, 167; and for a condensed statement as to worship
+paid them, see Gerard de Rialle, Mythologie comparee, vol. vi, chapter
+ii. For imprints of Buddha's feet, see Tylor, Researches into the Early
+History of Mankind, London, 1878, pp. 115 et seq.; also Coleman, p. 203,
+and Charton, Voyageurs anciens et modernes, tome i, pp. 365, 366, where
+engravings of one of the imprints, and of the temple above another, are
+seen. There are five which are considered authentic by the Siamese,
+and a multitude of others more or less strongly insisted upon. For the
+imprint os Moses' body, see travellers from Sir John Mandeville down.
+For the mark of Neptune's trident, see last edition of Murray's Handbook
+of Greece, vol. i, p. 322; and Burnouf, La Legende Athenienne, p. 153.
+For imprint of the feet of Christ, and of the Virgin's girdle and tears,
+see many of the older travellers in Palestine, as Arculf, Bouchard,
+Roger, and especially Bertrandon de la Brocquiere in Wright's
+collection, pp. 339, 340; also Maundrell's Travels, and Mandeville. For
+the curious legend regarding the imprint of Abraham's foot, see Weil,
+Biblische Legenden der Muselmanner, pp. 91 et seq. For many additional
+examples in Palestine, particularly the imprints of the bodies of three
+apostles on stones in the Garden of Gethsemane and of St. Jerome's body
+in the desert, see Beauvau, Relation du Voyage du Lavant, Nancy, 1615,
+passim. For the various imprints made by Satan and giants in Scandanavia
+and Germany, see Thorpe, vol. ii, p. 85; Friedrichs, pp. 126 and passim.
+For a very rich collection of such explanatory legends regarding stones
+and marks in Germany, see Karl Bartsch, Sagen, Marchen und Gebrauche
+aus Meklenburg, Wien, 1880, vol. ii, pp. 420 et seq. For a woodcut
+representing the imprint of Christ's feet on the stone from which he
+ascended to heaven, see woodcut in Mandeville, edition of 1484, in the
+White Library, Cornell University. For the legend of Domine quo vadis,
+see many books of travel and nearly all guide books for Rome, from
+the mediaeval Mirabilia Romae to the latest edition of Murray. The
+footprints of Mohammed at Cairo were shown to the present writer in
+1889. On the general subject, with many striking examples, see Falsan,
+La Periode glaciaire, Paris, 1889, pp. 17, 294, 295.
+
+
+Another and very fruitful source of explanatory myths is found in
+ancient centres of volcanic action, and especially in old craters of
+volcanoes and fissures filled with water.
+
+In China we have, among other examples, Lake Man, which was once the
+site of the flourishing city Chiang Shui--overwhelmed and sunk on
+account of the heedlessness of its inhabitants regarding a divine
+warning.
+
+In Phrygia, the lake and morass near Tyana were ascribed to the wrath
+of Zeus and Hermes, who, having visited the cities which formerly stood
+there, and having been refused shelter by all the inhabitants save
+Philemon and Baucis, rewarded their benefactors, but sunk the wicked
+cities beneath the lake and morass.
+
+Stories of similar import grew up to explain the crater near Sipylos
+in Asia Minor and that of Avernus in Italy: the latter came to be
+considered the mouth of the infernal regions, as every schoolboy knows
+when he has read his Virgil.
+
+In the later Christian mythologies we have such typical legends as those
+which grew up about the old crater in Ceylon; the salt water in it being
+accounted for by supposing it the tears of Adam and Eve, who retreated
+to this point after their expulsion from paradise and bewailed their sin
+during a hundred years.
+
+So, too, in Germany we have multitudes of lakes supposed to owe their
+origin to the sinking of valleys as a punishment for human sin. Of these
+are the "Devil's Lake," near Gustrow, which rose and covered a
+church and its priests on account of their corruption; the lake at
+Probst-Jesar, which rose and covered an oak grove and a number of
+peasants resting in it on account of their want of charity to beggars;
+and the Lucin Lake, which rose and covered a number of soldiers on
+account of their cruelty to a poor peasant.
+
+Such legends are found throughout America and in Japan, and will
+doubtless be found throughout Asia and Africa, and especially among
+the volcanic lakes of South America, the pitch lakes of the Caribbean
+Islands, and even about the Salt Lake of Utah; for explanatory myths and
+legends under such circumstances are inevitable.(424)
+
+
+     (424) As to myths explaining volcanic craters and lakes, and embodying
+ideas of the wrath of Heaven against former inhabitants of the
+neighboring country, see Forbiger, Alte Geographie, Hamburg, 1877, vol.
+i, p. 563. For exaggerations concerning the Dead Sea, see ibid., vol. i,
+p. 575. For the sinking of Chiang Shui and other examples, see Denny's
+Folklore of China, pp. 126 et seq. For the sinking of the Phrygian
+region, the destruction of its inhabitants, and the saving of Philemon
+and Baucis, see Ovid's Metamorphoses, book viii; also Botticher,
+Baumcultus der Alten, etc. For the lake in Ceylon arising from the tears
+of Adam and Eve, see variants of the original legend in Mandeville and
+in Jurgen Andersen, Reisebeschreibung, 1669, vol. ii, p. 132. For
+the volcanic nature of the Dead Sea, see Daubeny, cited in Smith's
+Dictionary of the Bible, s.v. Palestine. For lakes in Germany owing
+their origin to human sin and various supernatural causes, see Karl
+Bartsch, Sagen, Marche und Gebrauche aus Meklenburg, vol. i, pp. 397 et
+seq. For lakes in America, see any good collection of Indian legends.
+For lakes in Japan sunk supernaturally, see Braun's Japanesische Marche
+und Sagen, Leipsic, 1885, pp. 350, 351.
+
+
+To the same manner of explaining striking appearances in physical
+geography, and especially strange rocks and boulders, we mainly owe
+the innumerable stories of the transformation of living beings, and
+especially of men and women, into these natural features.
+
+In the mythology of China we constantly come upon legends of such
+transformations--from that of the first Counsellor of the Han dynasty
+to those of shepherds and sheep. In the Brahmanic mythology of India,
+Salagrama, the fossil ammonite, is recognised as containing the body of
+Vishnu's wife, and the Binlang stone has much the same relation to Siva;
+so, too, the nymph Ramba was changed, for offending Ketu, into a mass of
+sand; by the breath of Siva elephants were turned into stone; and in a
+very touching myth Luxman is changed into stone but afterward released.
+In the Buddhist mythology a Nat demon is represented as changing himself
+into a grain of sand.
+
+Among the Greeks such transformation myths come constantly before
+us--both the changing of stones to men and the changing of men to
+stones. Deucalion and Pyrrha, escaping from the flood, repeopled the
+earth by casting behind them stones which became men and women; Heraulos
+was changed into stone for offending Mercury; Pyrrhus for offending
+Rhea; Phineus, and Polydectes with his guests, for offending Perseus:
+under the petrifying glance of Medusa's head such transformations became
+a thing of course.
+
+To myth-making in obedience to the desire of explaining unusual
+natural appearances, coupled with the idea that sin must be followed by
+retribution, we also owe the well-known Niobe myth. Having incurred the
+divine wrath, Niobe saw those dearest to her destroyed by missiles from
+heaven, and was finally transformed into a rock on Mount Sipylos which
+bore some vague resemblance to the human form, and her tears became the
+rivulets which trickled from the neighbouring strata.
+
+Thus, in obedience to a moral and intellectual impulse, a striking
+geographical appearance was explained, and for ages pious Greeks looked
+with bated breath upon the rock at Sipylos which was once Niobe, just
+as for ages pious Jews, Christians, and Mohammedans looked with awe upon
+the salt pillar at the Dead Sea which was once Lot's wife.
+
+Pausanias, one of the most honest of ancient travellers, gives us a
+notable exhibition of this feeling. Having visited this monument of
+divine vengeance at Mount Sipylos, he tells us very naively that, though
+he could discern no human features when standing near it, he thought
+that he could see them when standing at a distance. There could
+hardly be a better example of that most common and deceptive of all
+things--belief created by the desire to believe.
+
+In the pagan mythology of Scandinavia we have such typical examples as
+Bors slaying the giant Ymir and transforming his bones into boulders;
+also "the giant who had no heart" transforming six brothers and their
+wives into stone; and, in the old Christian mythology, St. Olaf changing
+into stone the wicked giants who opposed his preaching.
+
+So, too, in Celtic countries we have in Ireland such legends as those of
+the dancers turned into stone; and, in Brittany, the stones at Plesse,
+which were once hunters and dogs violating the sanctity of Sunday; and
+the stones of Carnac, which were once soldiers who sought to kill St.
+Cornely.
+
+Teutonic mythology inherited from its earlier Eastern days a similar
+mass of old legends, and developed a still greater mass of new ones.
+Thus, near the Konigstein, which all visitors to the Saxon Switzerland
+know so well, is a boulder which for ages was believed to have once been
+a maiden transformed into stone for refusing to go to church; and near
+Rosenberg in Mecklenburg is another curiously shaped stone of which
+a similar story is told. Near Spornitz, in the same region, are seven
+boulders whose forms and position are accounted for by a long and
+circumstantial legend that they were once seven impious herdsmen; near
+Brahlsdorf is a stone which, according to a similar explanatory myth,
+was once a blasphemous shepherd; near Schwerin are three boulders which
+were once wasteful servants; and at Neustadt, down to a recent period,
+was shown a collection of stones which were once a bride and bridegroom
+with their horses--all punished for an act of cruelty; and these stories
+are but typical of thousands.
+
+At the other extremity of Europe we may take, out of the multitude
+of explanatory myths, that which grew about the well-known group of
+boulders near Belgrade. In the midst of them stands one larger than the
+rest: according to the legend which was developed to account for all
+these, there once lived there a swineherd, who was disrespectful to the
+consecrated Host; whereupon he was changed into the larger stone, and
+his swine into the smaller ones. So also at Saloniki we have the pillars
+of the ruined temple, which are widely believed, especially among the
+Jews of that region, to have once been human beings, and are therefore
+known as the "enchanted columns."
+
+Among the Arabs we have an addition to our sacred account of Adam--the
+legend of the black stone of the Caaba at Mecca, into which the angel
+was changed who was charged by the Almighty to keep Adam away from the
+forbidden fruit, and who neglected his duty.
+
+Similar old transformation legends are abundant among the Indians of
+America, the negroes of Africa, and the natives of Australia and the
+Pacific islands.
+
+Nor has this making of myths to account for remarkable appearances yet
+ceased, even in civilized countries.
+
+About the beginning of this century the Grand Duke of Weimar, smitten
+with the classical mania of his time, placed in the public park near
+his palace a little altar, and upon this was carved, after the manner
+so frequent in classical antiquity, a serpent taking a cake from it.
+And shortly there appeared, in the town and the country round about, a
+legend to explain this altar and its decoration. It was commonly said
+that a huge serpent had laid waste that region in the olden time, until
+a wise and benevolent baker had rid the world of the monster by means of
+a poisoned biscuit.
+
+So, too, but a few years since, in the heart of the State of New York,
+a swindler of genius having made and buried a "petrified giant," one
+theologian explained it by declaring it a Phoenician idol, and published
+the Phoenician inscription which he thought he had found upon it; others
+saw in it proofs that "there were giants in those days," and within a
+week after its discovery myths were afloat that the neighbouring remnant
+of the Onondaga Indians had traditions of giants who frequently roamed
+through that region.(425)
+
+
+     (425) For transformation myths and legends, identifying rocks and stones
+with gods and heroes, see Welcker, Gotterlehre, vol. i, p. 220. For
+recent and more accessible statements for the general reader, see
+Robertson Smith's admirable Lectures on the Religion of the Semites,
+Edinburgh, 1889, pp. 86 et seq. For some thoughtful remarks on the
+ancient adoration of stones rather than statues, with refernce to
+the anointing of stones at Bethel by Jacob, see Dodwell, Tour through
+Greece, vol. ii, p. 172; also Robertson Smith, as above, Lecture V. For
+Chinese transformation legends, see Denny's Folklore of China, pp. 96,
+128. For Hindu and other ancient legends of transformations, see
+Dawson, Dictionary of Hindu Mythology; also Coleman, as above; also Cox,
+Mythology of the Aryan Nations, pp. 81-97, etc. For such transformations
+in Greece, see the Iliad, and Ovid, as above; also Stark, Niobe und die
+Niobiden, p. 444 and elsewhere; also Preller, Griechische Mythologie,
+passim; also Baumeister, Denkmaler des classischen Alterthums, article
+Niobe; also Botticher, as above; also Curtius, Griechische Geschichte,
+vol i, pp. 71, 72. For Pausanius's naive confession regarding the
+Sipylos rock, see book i, p. 215. See also Texier, Asie Mineure, pp. 265
+et seq.; also Chandler, Travels in Greece, vol. ii, p. 80, who seems to
+hold to the later origin of the statue. At the end of Baumeister there
+is an engraving copied from Stuart which seems to show that, as to the
+Niobe legend, at a later period, Art was allowed to help Nature. For the
+general subject, see Scheiffle, Programm des K. Gymnasiums in
+Ellwangen: Mythologische Parallelen, 1865. For Scandinavian and Teutonic
+transformation legends, see Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, vierte Ausg.,
+vol. i, p. 457; also Thorpe, Northern Antiquities; also Friedrich,
+passim, especially p. 116 et seq.; also, for a mass of very curious
+ones, Karl Bartsch, Sagen, Marchen und gebrauche aus Meklenburg, vol. i,
+pp. 420 et seq.; also Karl Simrock's edition of the Edda, ninth edition,
+p. 319; also John Fiske, Myths and Myth-makers, pp. 8, 9. On the
+universality of such legends and myths, see Ritter's Erdkunde, vol. xiv,
+pp. 1098-1122. For Irish examples, see Manz, Real-Encyclopadie, article
+Stein; and for multitudes of examples in Brittany, see Sebillot,
+Traditions de la Haute-Bretagne. For the enchanted columns at Saloniki,
+see the latest edition of Murray's Handbook of Turkey, vol. ii, p. 711.
+For the legend of the angel changed into stone for neglecting to guard
+Adam, see Weil, university librarian at Heidelberg, Biblische Legende
+der Muselmanner, Frankfort-am-Main, 1845, pp. 37, 84. For similar
+transformation legends in Australia and among the American Indians, see
+Andrew Lang, Mythology, French translation, pp. 83, 102; also his Myth,
+Ritual, and Religion, vol. i, pp. 150 et seq., citing numerous examples
+from J. G. Muller, Urreligionen, and Dorman's Primitive Superstitions;
+also Report of the Bureau of Ethnoligy for 1880-'81; and for an African
+example, see account of the rock at Balon which was once a woman, in
+Berenger-Feraud, Contes populaires de la Senegambie, chap. viii. For the
+Weimar legend, see Lewes, Life of Goethe, book iv. For the myths which
+arose about the swindling "Cardiff giant" in the State of New York, see
+especially an article by G. A. Stockwell, M. D., in The Popular Science
+Monthly for June, 1878; see also W. A. McKinney in The New-Englander
+for October, 1875; and for the "Phoenician inscription," given at length
+with a translation, see the Rev. Alexander McWhorter, in The Galaxy for
+July, 1872. The present writer visited the "giant" shortly after it
+was "discovered," carefully observed it, and the myths to which it gave
+rise, has in his possession a mass of curious documents regarding this
+fraud, and hopes ere long to prepare a supplement to Dr. Stockwell's
+valuable paper.
+
+
+To the same stage of thought belongs the conception of human beings
+changed into trees. But, in the historic evolution of religion
+and morality, while changes into stone or rock were considered as
+punishments, or evidences of divine wrath, those into trees and shrubs
+were frequently looked upon as rewards, or evidences of divine favour.
+
+A very beautiful and touching form of this conception is seen in such
+myths as the change of Philemon into the oak, and of Baucis into the
+linden; of Myrrha into the myrtle; of Melos into the apple tree; of
+Attis into the pine; of Adonis into the rose tree; and in the springing
+of the vine and grape from the blood of the Titans, the violet from the
+blood of Attis, and the hyacinth from the blood of Hyacinthus.
+
+Thus it was, during the long ages when mankind saw everywhere miracle
+and nowhere law, that, in the evolution of religion and morality,
+striking features in physical geography became connected with the idea
+of divine retribution.(426)
+
+
+
+     (426) For the view taken in Greece and Rome of transformations into
+trees and shrubs, see Botticher, Baumcultus der Hellenen, book i, chap.
+xix; also Ovid, Metamorphoses, passim; also foregoing notes.
+
+
+But, in the natural course of intellectual growth, thinking men began to
+doubt the historical accuracy of these myths and legends--or, at least,
+to doubt all save those of the theology in which they happened to be
+born; and the next step was taken when they began to make comparisons
+between the myths and legends of different neighbourhoods and countries:
+so came into being the science of comparative mythology--a science sure
+to be of vast value, because, despite many stumblings and vagaries,
+it shows ever more and more how our religion and morality have been
+gradually evolved, and gives a firm basis to a faith that higher planes
+may yet be reached.
+
+Such a science makes the sacred books of the world more and more
+precious, in that it shows how they have been the necessary envelopes of
+our highest spiritual sustenance; how even myths and legends apparently
+the most puerile have been the natural husks and rinds and shells of our
+best ideas; and how the atmosphere is created in which these husks and
+rinds and shells in due time wither, shrivel, and fall away, so that the
+fruit itself may be gathered to sustain a nobler religion and a purer
+morality.
+
+The coming in of Christianity contributed elements of inestimable value
+in this evolution, and, at the centre of all, the thoughts, words, and
+life of the Master. But when, in the darkness that followed the
+downfall of the Roman Empire, there was developed a theology and a vast
+ecclesiastical power to enforce it, the most interesting chapters in
+this evolution of religion and morality were removed from the domain of
+science.
+
+So it came that for over eighteen hundred years it has been thought
+natural and right to study and compare the myths and legends arising
+east and west and south and north of Palestine with each other, but
+never with those of Palestine itself; so it came that one of the regions
+most fruitful in materials for reverent thought and healthful comparison
+was held exempt from the unbiased search for truth; so it came that, in
+the name of truth, truth was crippled for ages. While observation, and
+thought upon observation, and the organized knowledge or science which
+results from these, progressed as regarded the myths and legends of
+other countries, and an atmosphere was thus produced giving purer
+conceptions of the world and its government, myths of that little
+geographical region at the eastern end of the Mediterranean retained
+possession of the civilized world in their original crude form, and have
+at times done much to thwart the noblest efforts of religion, morality,
+and civilization.
+
+
+
+
+II. MEDIAEVAL GROWTH OF THE DEAD SEA LEGENDS.
+
+
+The history of myths, of their growth under the earlier phases of human
+thought and of their decline under modern thinking, is one of the most
+interesting and suggestive of human studies; but, since to treat it as
+a whole would require volumes, I shall select only one small group, and
+out of this mainly a single myth--one about which there can no longer be
+any dispute--the group of myths and legends which grew upon the shore of
+the Dead Sea, and especially that one which grew up to account for the
+successive salt columns washed out by the rains at its southwestern
+extremity.
+
+The Dead Sea is about fifty miles in length and ten miles in width; it
+lies in a very deep fissure extending north and south, and its surface
+is about thirteen hundred feet below that of the Mediterranean. It has,
+therefore, no outlet, and is the receptacle for the waters of the whole
+system to which it belongs, including those collected by the Sea of
+Galilee and brought down thence by the river Jordan.
+
+It certainly--or at least the larger part of it--ranks geologically
+among the oldest lakes on earth. In a broad sense the region is
+volcanic: On its shore are evidences of volcanic action, which must from
+the earliest period have aroused wonder and fear, and stimulated the
+myth-making tendency to account for them. On the eastern side are
+impressive mountain masses which have been thrown up from old volcanic
+vents; mineral and hot springs abound, some of them spreading sulphurous
+odours; earthquakes have been frequent, and from time to time these have
+cast up masses of bitumen; concretions of sulphur and large formations
+of salt constantly appear.
+
+The water which comes from the springs or oozes through the salt layers
+upon its shores constantly brings in various salts in solution, and,
+being rapidly evaporated under the hot sun and dry wind, there has been
+left, in the bed of the lake, a strong brine heavily charged with the
+usual chlorides and bromides--a sort of bitter "mother liquor" This
+fluid has become so dense as to have a remarkable power of supporting
+the human body; it is of an acrid and nauseating bitterness; and by
+ordinary eyes no evidence of life is seen in it.
+
+Thus it was that in the lake itself, and in its surrounding shores,
+there was enough to make the generation of explanatory myths on a large
+scale inevitable.
+
+The main northern part of the lake is very deep, the plummet having
+shown an abyss of thirteen hundred feet; but the southern end is shallow
+and in places marshy.
+
+The system of which it forms a part shows a likeness to that in South
+America of which the mountain lake Titicaca is the main feature; as a
+receptacle for surplus waters, only rendering them by evaporation, it
+resembles the Caspian and many other seas; as a sort of evaporating dish
+for the leachings of salt rock, and consequently holding a body of water
+unfit to support the higher forms of animal life, it resembles,
+among others, the Median lake of Urumiah; as a deposit of bitumen, it
+resembles the pitch lakes of Trinidad.(427)
+
+
+     (427) For modern views of the Dead Sea, see the Rev. Edward Robinson, D.
+D., Biblical Researches, various editions; Lynch's Exploring Expedition;
+De Saulcy, Voyage autour de la Mer Morte; Stanley's Palestine and Syria;
+Schaff's Through Bible Lands; and other travellers hereafter quoted. For
+good photogravures, showing the character of the whole region, see the
+atlas forming part of De Luynes's monumental Voyage d'Exploration. For
+geographical summaries, see Reclus, La Terre, Paris, 1870, pp. 832-834;
+Ritter, Erdkunde, volumes devoted to Palestine and especially as
+supplemented in Gage's translation with additions; Reclus, Nouvelle
+Geographie Universelle, vol. ix, p. 736, where a small map is given
+presenting the difference in depth between the two ends of the lake,
+of which so much was made theologically before Lartet. For still better
+maps, see De Saulcy, and especially De Luynes, Voyage d'Exploration
+(atlas). For very interesting panoramic views, see last edition of Canon
+Tristram's Land of Israel, p. 635. For the geology, see Lartet, in his
+reports to the French Geographical Society, and especially in vol. iii
+of De Luynes's work, where there is an admirable geological map with
+sections, etc.; also Ritter; also Sir J. W. Dawson's Egypt and Syria,
+published by the Religious Tract Society; also Rev. Cunningham Geikie,
+D. D., Geology of Palestine; and for pictures showing salt formation,
+Tristram, as above. For the meteorology, see Vignes, report to De
+Luynes, pp. 65 et seq. For chemistry of the Dead Sea, see as above,
+and Terreil's report, given in Gage's Ritter, vol. iii, appendix 2, and
+tables in De Luynes's third volume. For zoology of the Dead Sea, as to
+entire absence of life in it, see all earlier travellers; as to presence
+of lower forms of life, see Ehrenberg's microscopic examinations in
+Gage's Ritter. See also reports in third volume of De Luynes. For botany
+of the Dead Sea, and especially regarding "apples of Sodom," see Dr.
+Lortet's La Syrie, p. 412; also Reclus, Nouvelle Geographie, vol. ix,
+p. 737; also for photographic representations of them, see portfolio
+forming part of De Luynes's work, plate 27. For Strabo's very perfect
+description, see his Geog., lib. xvi, cap. ii; also Fallmerayer, Werke,
+pp. 177, 178. For names and positions of a large number of salt lakes in
+various parts of the world more or less resembling the Dead Sea, see De
+Luynes, vol. iii, pp. 242 et seq. For Trinidad "pitch lakes," found by
+Sir Walter Raleigh in 1595, see Lengegg, El Dorado, part i, p. 103, and
+part ii, p. 101; also Reclus, Ritter, et al. For the general subject,
+see Schenkel, Bibel-Lexikon, s.v. Todtes Meer, an excellent summery.
+The description of the Dead Sea in Lenormant's great history is utterly
+unworthy of him, and must have been thrown together from old notes after
+his death. It is amazing to see in such a work the old superstitions
+that birds attempting to fly over the sea are suffocated. See Lenormant,
+Histoire ancienne de l'Orient, edition of 1888, vol. vi, p. 112. For the
+absorption and adoption of foreign myths and legends by the Jews, see
+Baring-Gould, Curious Myths of the Middle Ages, p. 390. For the views of
+Greeks and Romans, see especially Tacitus, Historiae, book v, Pliny, and
+Strabo, in whose remarks are the germs of many of the mediaeval myths.
+For very curious examples of these, see Baierus, De Excidio Sodomae,
+Halle, 1690, passim.
+
+
+In all this there is nothing presenting any special difficulty to the
+modern geologist or geographer; but with the early dweller in Palestine
+the case was very different. The rocky, barren desolation of the Dead
+Sea region impressed him deeply; he naturally reasoned upon it; and this
+impression and reasoning we find stamped into the pages of his sacred
+literature, rendering them all the more precious as a revelation of the
+earlier thought of mankind. The long circumstantial account given in
+Genesis, its application in Deuteronomy, its use by Amos, by Isaiah,
+by Jeremiah, by Zephaniah, and by Ezekiel, the references to it in
+the writings attributed to St. Paul, St. Peter, and St. Jude, in the
+Apocalypse, and, above all, in more than one utterance of the Master
+himself--all show how deeply these geographical features impressed the
+Jewish mind.
+
+At a very early period, myths and legends, many and circumstantial, grew
+up to explain features then so incomprehensible.
+
+As the myth and legend grew up among the Greeks of a refusal of
+hospitality to Zeus and Hermes by the village in Phrygia, and the
+consequent sinking of that beautiful region with its inhabitants beneath
+a lake and morass, so there came belief in a similar offence by the
+people of the beautiful valley of Siddim, and the consequent sinking
+of that valley with its inhabitants beneath the waters of the Dead Sea.
+Very similar to the accounts of the saving of Philemon and Baucis are
+those of the saving of Lot and his family.
+
+But the myth-making and miracle-mongering by no means ceased in ancient
+times; they continued to grow through the medieval and modern period
+until they have quietly withered away in the light of modern scientific
+investigation, leaving to us the religious and moral truths they
+inclose.
+
+It would be interesting to trace this whole group of myths: their
+origin in times prehistoric, their development in Greece and Rome, their
+culmination during the ages of faith, and their disappearance in the age
+of science. It would be especially instructive to note the conscientious
+efforts to prolong their life by making futile compromises between
+science and theology regarding them; but I shall mention this main group
+only incidentally, confining my self almost entirely to the one above
+named--the most remarkable of all--the myth which grew about the salt
+pillars of Usdum.
+
+I select this mainly because it involves only elementary principles,
+requires no abstruse reasoning, and because all controversy regarding it
+is ended. There is certainly now no theologian with a reputation to lose
+who will venture to revive the idea regarding it which was sanctioned
+for hundreds, nay, thousands, of years by theology, was based on
+Scripture, and was held by the universal Church until our own century.
+
+The main feature of the salt region of Usdum is a low range of hills
+near the southwest corner of the Dead Sea, extending in a southeasterly
+direction for about five miles, and made up mainly of salt rock. This
+rock is soft and friable, and, under the influence of the heavy winter
+rains, it has been, without doubt, from a period long before human
+history, as it is now, cut ever into new shapes, and especially into
+pillars or columns, which sometimes bear a resemblance to the human
+form.
+
+An eminent clergyman who visited this spot recently speaks of the
+appearance of this salt range as follows:
+
+"Fretted by fitful showers and storms, its ridge is exceedingly uneven,
+its sides carved out and constantly changing;... and each traveller
+might have a new pillar of salt to wonder over at intervals of a few
+years."(428)
+
+
+     (428) As to the substance of the "pillars" or "statues" or "needles" of
+salt at Usdum, many travellers speak of it as "marl and salt." Irby and
+Mangles, in their Travels in Egypt, Nubia, Syria, and the Holy Land,
+chap. vii, call it "salt and hardened sand." The citation as to frequent
+carving out of new "pillars" is from the Travels in Palestine of the
+Rev. H. F. Osborn, D. D.; see also Palmer, Desert of the Exodus, vol ii,
+pp. 478, 479. For engravings of the salt pillar at different times,
+compare that given by Lynch in 1848, when it appeared as a column forty
+feet high, with that given by Palmer as the frontpiece to his Desert of
+the Exodus, Cambridge, England, 1871, when it was small and "does
+really bear a curious resemblance to an Arab woman with a child upon
+he shoulders", and this again with the picture of the salt formation at
+Usdum given by Canon Tristram, at whose visit there was neither "pillar"
+nor "statue." See The Land of Israel, by H. B. Tristram, D. D., F. R.
+S., London, 1882, p. 324. For similar pillars of salt washed out from
+the mud at Catalonia, see Lyell.
+
+
+Few things could be more certain than that, in the indolent dream-life
+of the East, myths and legends would grow up to account for this as
+for other strange appearances in all that region. The question which
+a religious Oriental put to himself in ancient times at Usdum was
+substantially that which his descendant to-day puts to himself at
+Kosseir. "Why is this region thus blasted?" "Whence these pillars of
+salt?" or "Whence these blocks of granite?" "What aroused the vengeance
+of Jehovah or of Allah to work these miracles of desolation?"
+
+And, just as Maxime Du Camp recorded the answer of the modern Shemite at
+Kosseir, so the compilers of the Jewish sacred books recorded the answer
+of the ancient Shemite at the Dead Sea; just as Allah at Kosseir blasted
+the land and transformed the melons into boulders which are seen to this
+day, so Jehovah at Usdum blasted the land and transformed Lot's wife
+into a pillar of salt, which is seen to this day.
+
+No more difficulty was encountered in the formation of the Lot legend,
+to account for that rock resembling the human form, than in the
+formation of the Niobe legend, which accounted for a supposed
+resemblance in the rock at Sipylos: it grew up just as we have seen
+thousands of similar myths and legends grow up about striking natural
+appearances in every early home of the human race. Being thus consonant
+with the universal view regarding the relation of physical geography to
+the divine government, it became a treasure of the Jewish nation and
+of the Christian Church--a treasure not only to be guarded against
+all hostile intrusion, but to be increased, as we shall see, by the
+myth-making powers of Jews, Christians, and Mohammedans for thousands
+of years. The spot where the myth originated was carefully kept in mind;
+indeed, it could not escape, for in that place alone were constantly
+seen the phenomena which gave rise to it. We have a steady chain of
+testimony through the ages, all pointing to the salt pillar as the
+irrefragable evidence of divine judgment. That great theological test of
+truth, the dictum of St. Vincent of Lerins, would certainly prove
+that the pillar was Lot's wife, for it was believed so to be by Jews,
+Christians, and Mohammedans from the earliest period down to a time
+almost within present memory--"always, everywhere, and by all." It would
+stand perfectly the ancient test insisted upon by Cardinal Newman,"
+Securus judicat orbis terrarum."
+
+For, ever since the earliest days of Christianity, the identity of the
+salt pillar with Lot's wife has been universally held and supported by
+passages in Genesis, in St. Luke's Gospel, and in the Second Epistle of
+St. Peter--coupled with a passage in the book of the Wisdom of Solomon,
+which to this day, by a majority in the Christian Church, is believed to
+be inspired, and from which are specially cited the words, "A standing
+pillar of salt is a monument of an unbelieving soul."(429)
+
+
+     (429) For the usual biblical citations, see Genesis xix, 26; St. Luke
+xvii, 32; II Peter ii, 6. For the citation from Wisdom, see chap. x,
+v. 7. For the account of the transformation of Lot's wife put into
+its proper relations with the Jehovistic and Elohistic documents, see
+Lenormant's La Genese, Paris, 1883, pp. 53, 199, and 317, 318.
+
+
+Never was chain of belief more continuous. In the first century of the
+Christian era Josephus refers to the miracle, and declares regarding
+the statue, "I have seen it, and it remains at this day"; and Clement,
+Bishop of Rome, one of the most revered fathers of the Church, noted
+for the moderation of his statements, expresses a similar certainty,
+declaring the miraculous statue to be still standing.
+
+In the second century that great father of the Church, bishop and
+martyr, Irenaeus, not only vouched for it, but gave his approval to the
+belief that the soul of Lot's wife still lingered in the statue, giving
+it a sort of organic life: thus virtually began in the Church that
+amazing development of the legend which we shall see taking various
+forms through the Middle Ages--the story that the salt statue exercised
+certain physical functions which in these more delicate days can not be
+alluded to save under cover of a dead language.
+
+This addition to the legend, which in these signs of life, as in other
+things, is developed almost exactly on the same lines with the legend
+of the Niobe statue in the rock of Mount Sipylos and with the legends of
+human beings transformed into boulders in various mythologies, was for
+centuries regarded as an additional confirmation of revealed truth.
+
+In the third century the myth burst into still richer bloom in a
+poem long ascribed to Tertullian. In this poem more miraculous
+characteristics of the statue are revealed. It could not be washed away
+by rains; it could not be overthrown by winds; any wound made upon it
+was miraculously healed; and the earlier statements as to its physical
+functions were amplified in sonorous Latin verse.
+
+With this appeared a new legend regarding the Dead Sea; it became
+universally believed, and we find it repeated throughout the whole
+medieval period, that the bitumen could only he dissolved by such fluids
+as in the processes of animated nature came from the statue.
+
+The legend thus amplified we shall find dwelt upon by pious travellers
+and monkish chroniclers for hundreds of years: so it came to be more
+and more treasured by the universal Church, and held more and more
+firmly--"always, everywhere, and by all."
+
+In the two following centuries we have an overwhelming mass of
+additional authority for the belief that the very statue of salt into
+which Lot's wife was transformed was still existing. In the fourth, the
+continuance of the statue was vouched for by St. Silvia, who visited the
+place: though she could not see it, she was told by the Bishop of Segor
+that it had been there some time before, and she concluded that it
+had been temporarily covered by the sea. In both the fourth and fifth
+centuries such great doctors in the Church as St. Jerome, St. John
+Chrysostom, and St. Cyril of Jerusalem agreed in this belief and
+statement; hence it was, doubtless, that the Hebrew word which is
+translated in the authorized English version "pillar," was translated
+in the Vulgate, which the majority of Christians believe virtually
+inspired, by the word "statue"; we shall find this fact insisted upon by
+theologians arguing in behalf of the statue, as a result and monument of
+the miracle, for over fourteen hundred years afterward.(430)
+
+
+     (430) See Josephus, Antiquities, book i, chap. xi; Epist. I; Cyril
+Hieros, Catech., xix; Chrysostom, Hom. XVIII, XLIV, in Genes.; Irenaeus,
+lib. iv, c. xxxi, of his Heresies, edition Oxon., 1702. For St. Silvia,
+see S. Silviae Aquitanae Peregrinatio ad Loca Sancta, Romae, 1887, p.
+55; also edition of 1885, p. 25. For recent translation, see Pilgrimage
+of St. Silvia, p. 28, in publications of Palestine Text Society for
+1891. For legends of signs of continued life in boulders and stones
+into which human beings have been transformed for sin, see Karl Bartsch,
+Sage, etc., vol. ii, pp. 420 et seq.
+
+
+About the middle of the sixth century Antoninus Martyr visited the Dead
+Sea region and described it, but curiously reversed a simple truth in
+these words: "Nor do sticks or straws float there, nor can a man swim,
+but whatever is cast into it sinks to the bottom." As to the statue of
+Lot's wife, he threw doubt upon its miraculous renewal, but testified
+that it was still standing.
+
+In the seventh century the Targum of Jerusalem not only testified that
+the salt pillar at Usdum was once Lot's wife, but declared that she must
+retain that form until the general resurrection. In the seventh century
+too, Bishop Arculf travelled to the Dead Sea, and his work was added
+to the treasures of the Church. He greatly develops the legend, and
+especially that part of it given by Josephus. The bitumen that floats
+upon the sea "resembles gold and the form of a bull or camel"; "birds
+can not live near it"; and "the very beautiful apples" which grow there,
+when plucked, "burn and are reduced to ashes, and smoke as if they were
+still burning."
+
+In the eighth century the Venerable Bede takes these statements of
+Arculf and his predecessors, binds them together in his work on The
+Holy Places, and gives the whole mass of myths and legends an enormous
+impulse.(431)
+
+
+     (431) For Antoninus Martyr, see Tobler's edition of his work in the
+Itinera, vol. i, p. 100, Geneva, 1877. For the Targum of Jerusalem, see
+citation in Quaresmius, Terrae Sanctae Elucidation, Peregrinatio vi,
+cap. xiv; new Venice edition. For Arculf, see Tobler. For Bede, see his
+De Locis Sanctis in Tobler's Itinera, vol. i, p. 228. For an admirable
+statement of the mediaeval theological view of scientific research,
+see Eicken, Geschichte der mittelalterlichen Weltanschauung, Stuttgart,
+1887, chap. vi.
+
+
+In the tenth century new force is given to it by the pious Moslem
+Mukadassi. Speaking of the town of Segor, near the salt region, he says
+that the proper translation of its name is "Hell"; and of the lake
+he says, "Its waters are hot, even as though the place stood over
+hell-fire."
+
+In the crusading period, immediately following, all the legends burst
+forth more brilliantly than ever.
+
+The first of these new travellers who makes careful statements is Fulk
+of Chartres, who in 1100 accompanied King Baldwin to the Dead Sea and
+saw many wonders; but, though he visited the salt region at Usdum, he
+makes no mention of the salt pillar: evidently he had fallen on evil
+times; the older statues had probably been washed away, and no new one
+had happened to be washed out of the rocks just at that period.
+
+But his misfortune was more than made up by the triumphant experience
+of a far more famous traveller, half a century later--Rabbi Benjamin of
+Tudela.
+
+Rabbi Benjamin finds new evidences of miracle in the Dead Sea, and
+develops to a still higher point the legend of the salt statue of Lot's
+wife, enriching the world with the statement that it was steadily and
+miraculously rene wed; that, though the cattle of the region licked its
+surface, it never grew smaller. Again a thrill of joy went through the
+monasteries and pulpits of Christendom at this increasing "evidence of
+the truth of Scripture."
+
+Toward the end of the thirteenth century there appeared in Palestine
+a traveller superior to most before or since--Count Burchard, monk of
+Mount Sion. He had the advantage of knowing something of Arabic, and his
+writings show him to have been observant and thoughtful. No statue of
+Lot's wife appears to have been washed clean of the salt rock at his
+visit, but he takes it for granted that the Dead Sea is "the mouth of
+hell," and that the vapour rising from it is the smoke from Satan's
+furnaces.
+
+These ideas seem to have become part of the common stock, for Ernoul,
+who travelled to the Dead Sea during the same century, always speaks of
+it as the "Sea of Devils."
+
+Near the beginning of the fourteenth century appeared the book of far
+wider influence which bears the name of Sir John Mandeville, and in
+the various editions of it myths and legends of the Dead Sea and of the
+pillar of salt burst forth into wonderful luxuriance.
+
+This book tells us that masses of fiery matter are every day thrown up
+from the water "as large as a horse"; that, though it contains no living
+thing, it has been shown that men thrown into it can not die; and,
+finally, as if to prove the worthlessness of devout testimony to the
+miraculous, he says: "And whoever throws a piece of iron therein, it
+floats; and whoever throws a feather therein, it sinks to the bottom;
+and, because that is contrary to nature, I was not willing to believe it
+until I saw it."
+
+The book, of course, mentions Lot's wife, and says that the pillar of
+salt "stands there to-day," and "has a right salty taste."
+
+Injustice has perhaps been done to the compilers of this famous work
+in holding them liars of the first magnitude. They simply abhorred
+scepticism, and thought it meritorious to believe all pious legends.
+The ideal Mandeville was a man of overmastering faith, and resembled
+Tertullian in believing some things "because they are impossible"; he
+was doubtless entirely conscientious; the solemn ending of the
+book shows that he listened, observed, and wrote under the deepest
+conviction, and those who re-edited his book were probably just as
+honest in adding the later stories of pious travellers.
+
+The Travels of Sir John Mandeville, thus appealing to the popular heart,
+were most widely read in the monasteries and repeated among the people.
+Innumerable copies were made in manuscript, and finally in print, and so
+the old myths received a new life.(432)
+
+
+     (432) For Fulk of Chartres and crusading travellers generally, see
+Bongars' Gesta Dei and the French Recueil; also Histories of the
+Crusades by Wilken, Sybel, Kugler, and others; see also Robinson,
+Biblical Researches, vol. ii, p. 109, and Tobler, Bibliographia
+Geographica Palestinae, 1867, p. 12. For Benjamin of Tudela's statement,
+see Wright's Collection of Travels in Palestine, p. 84, and Asher's
+edition of Benjamin of Tudela's travels, vol. i, pp. 71, 72; also
+Charton, vol. i, p. 180. For Borchard or Burchard, see full text in the
+Reyssbuch dess Heyligen Landes; also Grynaeus, Nov. Orbis, Basil, 1532,
+fol. 298, 329. For Ernoul, see his L'Estat de la Cite de Hierusalem, in
+Michelant and Reynaud, Itineraires Francaises au 12me et 13me Siecles.
+For Petrus Diaconus, see his book De Locis Sanctis, edited by Gamurrini,
+Rome, 1887, pp. 126, 127. For Mandeville I have compared several
+editions, especially those in the Reyssbuch, in Canisius, and in Wright,
+with Halliwell's reprint and with the rare Strasburg edition of 1484
+in the Cornell University Library: the whole statement regarding the
+experiment with iron and feathers is given differently in different
+copies. The statement that he saw the feathers sink and the iron swim
+is made in the Reyssbuch edition, Frankfort, 1584. The story, like the
+saints' legends, evidently grew as time went on, but is none the less
+interesting as showing the general credulity. Since writing the above, I
+have been glad to find my view of Mandeville's honesty confirmed by the
+Rev. Dr. Robinson, and by Mr. Gage in his edition of Ritter's Palestine.
+
+
+In the fifteenth century wonders increased. In 1418 we have the Lord of
+Caumont, who makes a pilgrimage and gives us a statement which is
+the result of the theological reasoning of centuries, and especially
+interesting as a typical example of the theological method in contrast
+with the scientific. He could not understand how the blessed waters of
+the Jordan could be allowed to mingle with the accursed waters of the
+Dead Sea. In spite, then, of the eye of sense, he beheld the water with
+the eye of faith, and calmly announced that the Jordan water passes
+through the sea, but that the two masses of water are not mingled. As to
+the salt statue of Lot's wife, he declares it to be still existing; and,
+copying a table of indulgences granted by the Church to pious pilgrims,
+he puts down the visit to the salt statue as giving an indulgence of
+seven years.
+
+Toward the end of the century we have another traveller yet more
+influential: Bernard of Breydenbach, Dean of Mainz. His book of travels
+was published in 1486, at the famous press of Schoeffer, and in various
+translations it was spread through Europe, exercising an influence wide
+and deep. His first important notice of the Dead Sea is as follows: "In
+this, Tirus the serpent is found, and from him the Tiriac medicine is
+made. He is blind, and so full of venom that there is no remedy for
+his bite except cutting off the bitten part. He can only be taken by
+striking him and making him angry; then his venom flies into his head
+and tail." Breydenbach calls the Dead Sea "the chimney of hell," and
+repeats the old story as to the miraculous solvent for its bitumen.
+He, too, makes the statement that the holy water of the Jordan does not
+mingle with the accursed water of the infernal sea, but increases the
+miracle which Caumont had announced by saying that, although the waters
+appear to come together, the Jordan is really absorbed in the earth
+before it reaches the sea.
+
+As to Lot's wife, various travellers at that time had various fortunes.
+Some, like Caumont and Breydenbach, took her continued existence for
+granted; some, like Count John of Solms, saw her and were greatly
+edified; some, like Hans Werli, tried to find her and could not, but,
+like St. Silvia, a thousand years before, were none the less edified by
+the idea that, for some inscrutable purpose, the sea had been allowed to
+hide her from them; some found her larger than they expected, even forty
+feet high, as was the salt pillar which happened to be standing at the
+visit of Commander Lynch in 1848; but this only added a new proof to the
+miracle, for the text was remembered, "There were giants in those days."
+
+Out of the mass of works of pilgrims during the fifteenth century I
+select just one more as typical of the theological view then dominant,
+and this is the noted book of Felix Fabri, a preaching friar of Ulm. I
+select him, because even so eminent an authority in our own time as Dr.
+Edward Robinson declares him to have been the most thorough, thoughtful,
+and enlightened traveller of that century.
+
+Fabri is greatly impressed by the wonders of the Dead Sea, and typical
+of his honesty influenced by faith is his account of the Dead Sea fruit;
+he describes it with almost perfect accuracy, but adds the statement
+that when mature it is "filled with ashes and cinders."
+
+As to the salt statue, he says: "We saw the place between the sea and
+Mount Segor, but could not see the statue itself because we were too far
+distant to see anything of human size; but we saw it with firm faith,
+because we believed Scripture, which speaks of it; and we were filled
+with wonder."
+
+To sustain absolute faith in the statue he reminds his reader's that
+"God is able even of these stones to raise up seed to Abraham," and goes
+into a long argument, discussing such transformations as those of King
+Atlas and Pygmalion's statue, with a multitude of others, winding up
+with the case, given in the miracles of St. Jerome, of a heretic who was
+changed into a log of wood, which was then burned.
+
+He gives a statement of the Hebrews that Lot's wife received her
+peculiar punishment because she had refused to add salt to the food
+of the angels when they visited her, and he preaches a short sermon in
+which he says that, as salt is the condiment of food, so the salt statue
+of Lot's wife "gives us a condiment of wisdom."(433)
+
+
+     (433) For Bernard of Breydenbach, I have used the Latin edition, Mentz,
+1486, in the White collection, Cornell University, also the German
+edition in the Reyssbuch. For John of Solms, Werli, and the like, see
+the Reyssbuch, which gives a full text of their travels. For Fabri
+(Schmid), see, for his value, Robinson; also Tobler, Bibliographia, pp.
+53 et seq.; and for texts, see Reyssbuch, pp. 122b et seq., but best the
+Fratris Fel. Fabri Evagatorium, ed. Hassler, Stuttgart, 1843, vol. iii,
+pp. 172 et seq. His book now has been translated into English by the
+Palestine Pilgrims' Text Society.
+
+
+There were, indeed, many discrepancies in the testimony of travellers
+regarding the salt pillar--so many, in fact, that at a later period the
+learned Dom Calmet acknowledged that they shook his belief in the whole
+matter; but, during this earlier time, under the complete sway of the
+theological spirit, these difficulties only gave new and more glorious
+opportunities for faith.
+
+For, if a considerable interval occurred between the washing of one salt
+pillar out of existence and the washing of another into existence, the
+idea arose that the statue, by virtue of the soul which still remained
+in it, had departed on some mysterious excursion. Did it happen that one
+statue was washed out one year in one place and another statue another
+year in another place, this difficulty was surmounted by believing that
+Lot's wife still walked about. Did it happen that a salt column was
+undermined by the rains and fell, this was believed to be but another
+sign of life. Did a pillar happen to be covered in part by the sea,
+this was enough to arouse the belief that the statue from time to time
+descended into the Dead Sea depths--possibly to satisfy that old fatal
+curiosity regarding her former neighbours.
+
+Did some smaller block of salt happen to be washed out near the statue,
+it was believed that a household dog, also transformed into salt, had
+followed her back from beneath the deep. Did more statues than one
+appear at one time, that simply made the mystery more impressive.
+
+In facts now so easy of scientific explanation the theologians found
+wonderful matter for argument.
+
+One great question among them was whether the soul of Lot's wife did
+really remain in the statue. On one side it was insisted that, as Holy
+Scripture declares that Lot's wife was changed into a pillar of salt,
+and as she was necessarily made up of a soul and a body, the soul must
+have become part of the statue. This argument was clinched by citing
+that passage in the Book of Wisdom in which the salt pillar is declared
+to be still standing as "the monument of an unbelieving SOUL." On the
+other hand, it was insisted that the soul of the woman must have been
+incorporeal and immortal, and hence could not have been changed into a
+substance corporeal and mortal. Naturally, to this it would be answered
+that the salt pillar was no more corporeal than the ordinary materials
+of the human body, and that it had been made miraculously immortal,
+and "with God all things are possible." Thus were opened long vistas of
+theological discussion.(434)
+
+
+     (434) For a brief statement of the main arguments for and against the
+idea that the soul of Lot's wife remained within the salt statue, see
+Cornelius a Lapide, Commentarius in Pentateuchum, Antwerp, 1697, chap.
+xix.
+
+
+As we enter the sixteenth century the Dead Sea myths, and especially the
+legends of Lot's wife, are still growing. In 1507 Father Anselm of the
+Minorites declares that the sea sometimes covers the feet of the statue,
+sometimes the legs, sometimes the whole body.
+
+In 1555, Gabriel Giraudet, priest at Puy, journeyed through Palestine.
+His faith was robust, and his attitude toward the myths of the Dead
+Sea is seen by his declaration that its waters are so foul that one can
+smell them at a distance of three leagues; that straw, hay, or feathers
+thrown into them will sink, but that iron and other metals will float;
+that criminals have been kept in them three or four days and could not
+drown. As to Lot's wife, he says that he found her "lying there, her
+back toward heaven, converted into salt stone; for I touched her,
+scratched her, and put a piece of her into my mouth, and she tasted
+salt."
+
+At the centre of all these legends we see, then, the idea that,
+though there were no living beasts in the Dead Sea, the people of the
+overwhelmed cities were still living beneath its waters, probably in
+hell; that there was life in the salt statue; and that it was still
+curious regarding its old neighbours.
+
+Hence such travellers in the latter years of the century as Count Albert
+of Lowenstein and Prince Nicolas Radziwill are not at all weakened
+in faith by failing to find the statue. What the former is capable of
+believing is seen by his statement that in a certain cemetery at Cairo
+during one night in the year the dead thrust forth their feet, hands,
+limbs, and even rise wholly from their graves.
+
+There seemed, then, no limit to these pious beliefs. The idea that
+there is merit in credulity, with the love of myth-making and
+miracle-mongering, constantly made them larger. Nor did the Protestant
+Reformation diminish them at first; it rather strengthened them and
+fixed them more firmly in the popular mind. They seemed destined to last
+forever. How they were thus strengthened at first, under Protestantism,
+and how they were finally dissolved away in the atmosphere of scientific
+thought, will now be shown.(435)
+
+
+     (435) For Father Anselm, see his Descriptio Terrae Sanctae, in H.
+Canisius, Thesaurus Monument Eccles., Basnage edition, Amsterdam, 1725,
+vol. iv, p. 788. For Giraudet, see his Discours du Voyage d'Outre-Mer,
+Paris, 1585, p. 56a. For Radziwill and Lowenstein, see the Reyssbuch,
+especially p. 198a.
+
+
+
+
+
+III. POST-REFORMATION CULMINATION OF THE DEAD SEA LEGENDS.--BEGINNINGS
+OF A HEALTHFUL SCEPTICISM.
+
+
+The first effect of the Protestant Reformation was to popularize the
+older Dead Sea legends, and to make the public mind still more receptive
+for the newer ones.
+
+Luther's great pictorial Bible, so powerful in fixing the ideas of the
+German people, showed by very striking engravings all three of these
+earlier myths--the destruction of the cities by fire from heaven, the
+transformation of Lot's wife, and the vile origin of the hated Moabites
+and Ammonites; and we find the salt statue, especially, in this and
+other pictorial Bibles, during generation after generation.
+
+Catholic peoples also held their own in this display of faith. About
+1517 Francois Regnault published at Paris a compilation on Palestine
+enriched with woodcuts: in this the old Dead Sea legend of the "serpent
+Tyrus" reappears embellished, and with it various other new versions
+of old stories. Five years later Bartholomew de Salignac travels in the
+Holy Land, vouches for the continued existence of the Lot's wife statue,
+and gives new life to an old marvel by insisting that the sacred waters
+of the Jordan are not really poured into the infernal basin of the Dead
+Sea, but that they are miraculously absorbed by the earth.
+
+These ideas were not confined to the people at large; we trace them
+among scholars.
+
+In 1581, Bunting, a North German professor and theologian, published his
+Itinerary of Holy Scripture, and in this the Dead Sea and Lot legends
+continue to increase. He tells us that the water of the sea "changes
+three times every day"; that it "spits forth fire" that it throws up
+"on high" great foul masses which "burn like pitch" and "swim about like
+huge oxen"; that the statue of Lot's wife is still there, and that it
+shines like salt.
+
+In 1590, Christian Adrichom, a Dutch theologian, published his famous
+work on sacred geography. He does not insist upon the Dead Sea legends
+generally, but declares that the statue of Lot's wife is still in
+existence, and on his map he gives a picture of her standing at Usdum.
+
+Nor was it altogether safe to dissent from such beliefs. Just as, under
+the papal sway, men of science were severely punished for wrong views of
+the physical geography of the earth in general, so, when Calvin decided
+to burn Servetus, he included in his indictment for heresy a charge
+that Servetus, in his edition of Ptolemy, had made unorthodox statements
+regarding the physical geography of Palestine.(436)
+
+
+     (436) For biblical engravings showing Lot's wife transformed into a
+salt statue, etc., see Luther's Bible, 1534, p. xi; also the pictorial
+Electoral Bible; also Merian's Icones Biblicae of 1625; also the
+frontpiece of the Luther Bible published at Nuremberg in 1708; also
+Scheuchzer's Kupfer-Bibel, Augsburg, 1731, Tab. lxxx. For the account of
+the Dead Sea serpent "Tyrus," etc., see La Grande Voyage de Hierusalem,
+Paris (1517?), p. xxi. For De Salignac's assertion regarding the salt
+pillar and suggestion regarding the absorption of the Jordan before
+reaching the Dead Sea, see his Itinerarium Sacrae Scripturae, Magdeburg,
+1593, SS 34 and 35. For Bunting, see his Itinerarium Sacrae Scripturae,
+Magdeburg, 1589, pp. 78, 79. For Andrichom's picture of the salt statue,
+see map, p. 38, and text, p. 205, of his Theatrum Terrae Sanctae, 1613.
+For Calvin and Servetus, see Willis, Servetus and Calvin, pp. 96, 307;
+also the Servetus edition of Ptolemy.
+
+
+Protestants and Catholics vied with each other in the making of new
+myths. Thus, in his Most Devout Journey, published in 1608, Jean
+Zvallart, Mayor of Ath in Hainault, confesses himself troubled by
+conflicting stories about the salt statue, but declares himself sound in
+the faith that "some vestige of it still remains," and makes up for
+his bit of freethinking by adding a new mythical horror to the
+region--"crocodiles," which, with the serpents and the "foul odour of
+the sea," prevented his visit to the salt mountains.
+
+In 1615 Father Jean Boucher publishes the first of many editions of his
+Sacred Bouquet of the Holy Land. He depicts the horrors of the Dead Sea
+in a number of striking antitheses, and among these is the statement
+that it is made of mud rather than of water, that it soils whatever is
+put into it, and so corrupts the land about it that not a blade of grass
+grows in all that region.
+
+In the same spirit, thirteen years later, the Protestant Christopher
+Heidmann publishes his Palaestina, in which he speaks of a fluid
+resembling blood oozing from the rocks about the Dead Sea, and cites
+authorities to prove that the statue of Lot's wife still exists and
+gives signs of life.
+
+Yet, as we near the end of the sixteenth century, some evidences of a
+healthful and fruitful scepticism begin to appear.
+
+The old stream of travellers, commentators, and preachers, accepting
+tradition and repeating what they have been told, flows on; but here and
+there we are refreshed by the sight of a man who really begins to think
+and look for himself.
+
+First among these is the French naturalist Pierre Belon. As regards the
+ordinary wonders, he had the simple faith of his time. Among a multitude
+of similar things, he believed that he saw the stones on which the
+disciples were sleeping during the prayer of Christ; the stone on which
+the Lord sat when he raised Lazarus from the dead; the Lord's footprints
+on the stone from which he ascended into heaven; and, most curious of
+all, "the stone which the builders rejected." Yet he makes some advance
+on his predecessors, since he shows in one passage that he had thought
+out the process by which the simpler myths of Palestine were made. For,
+between Bethlehem and Jerusalem, he sees a field covered with small
+pebbles, and of these he says: "The common people tell you that a man
+was once sowing peas there, when Our Lady passed that way and asked
+him what he was doing; the man answered 'I am sowing pebbles' and
+straightway all the peas were changed into these little stones."
+
+His ascribing belief in this explanatory transformation myth to the
+"common people" marks the faint dawn of a new epoch.
+
+Typical also of this new class is the German botanist Leonhard Rauwolf.
+He travels through Palestine in 1575, and, though devout and at times
+credulous, notes comparatively few of the old wonders, while he makes
+thoughtful and careful mention of things in nature that he really saw;
+he declines to use the eyes of the monks, and steadily uses his own to
+good purpose.
+
+As we go on in the seventeenth century, this current of new thought is
+yet more evident; a habit of observing more carefully and of comparing
+observations had set in; the great voyages of discovery by Columbus,
+Vasco da Gama, Magellan, and others were producing their effect; and
+this effect was increased by the inductive philosophy of Bacon, the
+reasonings of Descartes, and the suggestions of Montaigne.
+
+So evident was this current that, as far back as the early days of the
+century, a great theologian, Quaresmio of Lodi, had made up his mind
+to stop it forever. In 1616, therefore, he began his ponderous work
+entitled The Historical, Theological, and Moral Explanation of the
+Holy Land. He laboured upon it for nine years, gave nine years more to
+perfecting it, and then put it into the hands of the great publishing
+house of Plantin at Antwerp: they were four years in printing and
+correcting it, and when it at last appeared it seemed certain to
+establish the theological view of the Holy Land for all time. While
+taking abundant care of other myths which he believed sanctified by Holy
+Scripture, Quaresmio devoted himself at great length to the Dead Sea,
+but above all to the salt statue; and he divides his chapter on it
+into three parts, each headed by a question: First, "HOW was Lot's
+wife changed into a statue of salt?" secondly, "WHERE was she thus
+transformed?" and, thirdly, "DOES THAT STATUE STILL EXIST?" Through each
+of these divisions he fights to the end all who are inclined to swerve
+in the slightest degree from the orthodox opinion. He utterly refuses
+to compromise with any modern theorists. To all such he says, "The
+narration of Moses is historical and is to be received in its natural
+sense, and no right-thinking man will deny this." To those who favoured
+the figurative interpretation he says, "With such reasonings any passage
+of Scripture can be denied."
+
+As to the spot where the miracle occurred, he discusses four places,
+but settles upon the point where the picture of the statue is given in
+Adrichom's map. As to the continued existence of the statue, he plays
+with the opposing view as a cat fondles a mouse; and then shows that the
+most revered ancient authorities, venerable men still living, and the
+Bedouins, all agree that it is still in being. Throughout the whole
+chapter his thoroughness in scriptural knowledge and his profundity
+in logic are only excelled by his scorn for those theologians who were
+willing to yield anything to rationalism.
+
+So powerful was this argument that it seemed to carry everything before
+it, not merely throughout the Roman obedience, but among the most
+eminent theologians of Protestantism.
+
+As regards the Roman Church, we may take as a type the missionary priest
+Eugene Roger, who, shortly after the appearance of Quaresmio's book,
+published his own travels in Palestine. He was an observant man, and his
+work counts among those of real value; but the spirit of Quaresmio had
+taken possession of him fully. His work is prefaced with a map showing
+the points of most importance in scriptural history, and among these he
+identifies the place where Samson slew the thousand Philistines with the
+jawbone of an ass, and where he hid the gates of Gaza; the cavern which
+Adam and Eve inhabited after their expulsion from paradise; the spot
+where Balaam's ass spoke; the tree on which Absalom was hanged; the
+place where Jacob wrestled with the angel; the steep place where the
+swine possessed of devils plunged into the sea; the spot where the
+prophet Elijah was taken up in a chariot of fire; and, of course, the
+position of the salt statue which was once Lot's wife. He not only
+indicates places on land, but places in the sea; thus he shows where
+Jonah was swallowed by the whale, and "where St. Peter caught one
+hundred and fifty-three fishes."
+
+As to the Dead Sea miracles generally, he does not dwell on them
+at great length; he evidently felt that Quaresmio had exhausted the
+subject; but he shows largely the fruits of Quaresmio's teaching in
+other matters.
+
+So, too, we find the thoughts and words of Quaresmio echoing afar
+through the German universities, in public disquisitions, dissertations,
+and sermons. The great Bible commentators, both Catholic and Protestant,
+generally agreed in accepting them.
+
+But, strong as this theological theory was, we find that, as time went
+on, it required to be braced somewhat, and in 1692 Wedelius, Professor
+of Medicine at Jena, chose as the subject of his inaugural address The
+Physiology of the Destruction of Sodom and of the Statue of Salt.
+
+It is a masterly example of "sanctified science." At great length he
+dwells on the characteristics of sulphur, salt, and thunderbolts; mixes
+up scriptural texts, theology, and chemistry after a most bewildering
+fashion; and finally comes to the conclusion that a thunderbolt, flung
+by the Almighty, calcined the body of Lot's wife, and at the same time
+vitrified its particles into a glassy mass looking like salt.(437)
+
+
+     (437) For Zvallart, see his Tres-devot Voyage de Ierusalem, Antwerp,
+1608, book iv, chapter viii. His journey was made twenty years before.
+For Father Boucher, see his Bouquet de la Terre Saincte, Paris, 1622,
+pp. 447, 448. For Heidmann, see his Palaestina, 1689, pp. 58-62. For
+Belon's credulity in matters referred to, see his Observations de
+Plusieurs Singularitez, etc., Paris, 1553, pp. 141-144; and for the
+legend of the peas changed into pebbles, p. 145; see also Lartet in De
+Luynes, vol. iii, p. 11. For Rauwolf, see the Reyssbuch, and Tobler,
+Bibliographia. For a good acoount of the influence of Montaigne in
+developing French scepticism, see Prevost-Paradol's study on Montaigne
+prefixed to the Le Clerc edition of the Essays, Paris, 1865; also the
+well-known passages in Lecky's Rationalism in Europe. For Quaresmio
+I have consulted both the Plantin edition of 1639 and the superb new
+Venice edition of 1880-'82. The latter, though less prized by book
+fanciers, is the more valuable, since it contains some very interesting
+recent notes. For the above discussion, see Plantin edition, vol. ii,
+pp. 758 et seq., and Venice edition, vol. ii, pp. 572-574. As to the
+effect of Quaresmio on the Protestant Church, see Wedelius, De Statua
+Salis, Jenae, 1692, pp.6, 7, and elsewhere. For Eugene Roger, see his La
+Terre Saincte, Paris, 1664; the map, showing various sites referred to,
+is in the preface; and for basilisks, salamanders, etc., see pp. 89-92,
+139, 218, and elsewhere.
+
+
+Not only were these views demonstrated, so far as theologico-scientific
+reasoning could demonstrate anything, but it was clearly shown, by a
+continuous chain of testimony from the earliest ages, that the salt
+statue at Usdum had been recognised as the body of Lot's wife by Jews,
+Mohammedans, and the universal Christian Church, "always, everywhere,
+and by all."
+
+Under the influence of teachings like these--and of the winter
+rains--new wonders began to appear at the salt pillar. In 1661 the
+Franciscan monk Zwinner published his travels in Palestine, and gave not
+only most of the old myths regarding the salt statue, but a new one, in
+some respects more striking than any of the old--for he had heard that a
+dog, also transformed into salt, was standing by the side of Lot's wife.
+
+Even the more solid Benedictine scholars were carried away, and we find
+in the Sacred History by Prof. Mezger, of the order of St. Benedict,
+published in 1700, a renewal of the declaration that the salt statue
+must be a "PERPETUAL memorial."
+
+But it was soon evident that the scientific current was still working
+beneath this ponderous mass of theological authority. A typical evidence
+of this we find in 1666 in the travels of Doubdan, a canon of St. Denis.
+As to the Dead Sea, he says that he saw no smoke, no clouds, and no
+"black, sticky water"; as to the statue of Lot's wife, he says, "The
+moderns do not believe so easily that she has lasted so long"; then, as
+if alarmed at his own boldness, he concedes that the sea MAY be black
+and sticky in the middle; and from Lot's wife he escapes under cover of
+some pious generalities. Four years later another French ecclesiastic,
+Jacques Goujon, referring in his published travels to the legends of
+the salt pillar, says: "People may believe these stories as much as
+they choose; I did not see it, nor did I go there." So, too, in
+1697, Morison, a dignitary of the French Church, having travelled in
+Palestine, confesses that, as to the story of the pillar of salt, he has
+difficulty in believing it.
+
+The same current is observed working still more strongly in the
+travels of the Rev. Henry Maundrell, an English chaplain at Aleppo, who
+travelled through Palestine during the same year. He pours contempt over
+the legends of the Dead Sea in general: as to the story that birds could
+not fly over it, he says that he saw them flying there; as to the utter
+absence of life in the sea, he saw small shells in it; he saw no traces
+of any buried cities; and as to the stories regarding the statue of
+Lot's wife and the proposal to visit it, he says, "Nor could we give
+faith enough to these reports to induce us to go on such an errand."
+
+The influence of the Baconian philosophy on his mind is very clear; for,
+in expressing his disbelief in the Dead Sea apples, with their contents
+of ashes, he says that he saw none, and he cites Lord Bacon in support
+of scepticism on this and similar points.
+
+But the strongest effect of this growing scepticism is seen near the end
+of that century, when the eminent Dutch commentator Clericus (Le Clerc)
+published his commentary on the Pentateuch and his Dissertation on the
+Statue of Salt.
+
+At great length he brings all his shrewdness and learning to bear
+against the whole legend of the actual transformation of Lot's wife and
+the existence of the salt pillar, and ends by saying that "the whole
+story is due to the vanity of some and the credulity of more."
+
+In the beginning of the eighteenth century we find new tributaries
+to this rivulet of scientific thought. In 1701 Father Felix Beaugrand
+dismisses the Dead Sea legends and the salt statue very curtly and
+dryly--expressing not his belief in it, but a conventional wish to
+believe.
+
+In 1709 a scholar appeared in another part of Europe and of different
+faith, who did far more than any of his predecessors to envelop the Dead
+Sea legends in an atmosphere of truth--Adrian Reland, professor at the
+University of Utrecht. His work on Palestine is a monument of patient
+scholarship, having as its nucleus a love of truth as truth: there is
+no irreverence in him, but he quietly brushes away a great mass of myths
+and legends: as to the statue of Lot's wife, he treats it warily, but
+applies the comparative method to it with killing effect, by showing
+that the story of its miraculous renewal is but one among many of its
+kind.(438)
+
+
+     (438) For Zwinner, see his Blumenbuch des Heyligen Landes, Munchen,
+1661, p. 454. For Mezger, see his Sacra Historia, Augsburg, 1700, p. 30.
+For Doubdan, see his Voyage de la Terre-Sainte, Paris, 1670, pp. 338,
+339; also Tobler and Gage's Ritter. For Goujon, see his Histoire et
+Voyage de la Terre Saincte, Lyons, 1670, p. 230, etc. For Morison,
+see his Voyage, book ii, pp. 516, 517. For Maundrell, see in Wright's
+Collection, pp. 383 et seq. For Clericus, see his Dissertation de Salis
+Statua, in his Pentateuch, edition of 1696, pp. 327 et seq. For Father
+Beaugrand, see his Voyage, Paris, 1701, pp. 137 et seq. For Reland, see
+his Palaestina, Utrecht, 1714, vol. i, pp. 61-254, passim.
+
+
+Yet to superficial observers the old current of myth and marvel seemed
+to flow into the eighteenth century as strong as ever, and of this
+we may take two typical evidences. The first of these is the Pious
+Pilgrimage of Vincent Briemle. His journey was made about 1710; and his
+work, brought out under the auspices of a high papal functionary some
+years later, in a heavy quarto, gave new life to the stories of the
+hellish character of the Dead Sea, and especially to the miraculous
+renewal of the salt statue.
+
+In 172O came a still more striking effort to maintain the old belief
+in the north of Europe, for in that year the eminent theologian Masius
+published his great treatise on The Conversion of Lot's Wife into a
+Statue of Salt.
+
+Evidently intending that this work should be the last word on this
+subject in Germany, as Quaresmio had imagined that his work would be
+the last in Italy, he develops his subject after the high scholastic and
+theologic manner. Calling attention first to the divine command in the
+New Testament, "Remember Lot's wife," he argues through a long series
+of chapters. In the ninth of these he discusses "the impelling cause" of
+her looking back, and introduces us to the question, formerly so often
+treated by theologians, whether the soul of Lot's wife was finally
+saved. Here we are glad to learn that the big, warm heart of Luther
+lifted him above the common herd of theologians, and led him to declare
+that she was "a faithful and saintly woman," and that she certainly was
+not eternally damned. In justice to the Roman Church also it should be
+said that several of her most eminent commentators took a similar view,
+and insisted that the sin of Lot's wife was venial, and therefore, at
+the worst, could only subject her to the fires of purgatory.
+
+The eleventh chapter discusses at length the question HOW she was
+converted into salt, and, mentioning many theological opinions, dwells
+especially upon the view of Rivetus, that a thunderbolt, made up
+apparently of fire, sulphur, and salt, wrought her transformation at the
+same time that it blasted the land; and he bases this opinion upon the
+twenty-ninth chapter of Deuteronomy and the one hundred and seventh
+Psalm.
+
+Later, Masius presents a sacred scientific theory that "saline particles
+entered into her until her whole body was infected"; and with this
+he connects another piece of sanctified science, to the effect that
+"stagnant bile" may have rendered the surface of her body "entirely
+shining, bitter, dry, and deformed."
+
+Finally, he comes to the great question whether the salt pillar is still
+in existence. On this he is full and fair. On one hand he allows that
+Luther thought that it was involved in the general destruction of Sodom
+and Gomorrah, and he cites various travellers who had failed to find it;
+but, on the other hand, he gives a long chain of evidence to show
+that it continued to exist: very wisely he reminds the reader that the
+positive testimony of those who have seen it must outweigh the negative
+testimony of those who have not, and he finally decides that the salt
+statue is still in being.
+
+No doubt a work like this produced a considerable effect in Protestant
+countries; indeed, this effect seems evident as far off as England, for,
+in 172O, we find in Dean Prideaux's Old and New Testament connected
+a map on which the statue of salt is carefully indicated. So, too, in
+Holland, in the Sacred Geography published at Utrecht in 1758 by
+the theologian Bachiene, we find him, while showing many signs of
+rationalism, evidently inclined to the old views as to the existence
+of the salt pillar; but just here comes a curious evidence of the real
+direction of the current of thought through the century, for, nine years
+later, in the German translation of Bachiene's work we find copious
+notes by the translator in a far more rationalistic spirit; indeed,
+we see the dawn of the inevitable day of compromise, for we now have,
+instead of the old argument that the divine power by one miraculous
+act changed Lot's wife into a salt pillar, the suggestion that she was
+caught in a shower of sulphur and saltpetre, covered by it, and that the
+result was a lump, which in a general way IS CALLED in our sacred books
+"a pillar of salt."(439)
+
+
+     (439) For Briemle, see his Andachtige Pilgerfahrt, p. 129. For Masius,
+see his De Uxore Lothi in Statuam Salis Conversa, Hafniae, 1720,
+especially pages 29-31. For Dean Prideaux, see his Old and New Testament
+connected in the History of the Jews, 1720, map at page 7. For Bachiene,
+see his Historische und geographische Beschreibung von Palaestina,
+Leipzig, 1766, vol. i, pp. 118-120, and notes.
+
+
+But, from the middle of the eighteenth century, the new current sets
+through Christendom with ever-increasing strength. Very interesting is
+it to compare the great scriptural commentaries of the middle of this
+century with those published a century earlier.
+
+Of the earlier ones we may take Matthew Poole's Synopsis as a type:
+as authorized by royal decree in 1667 it contains very substantial
+arguments for the pious belief in the statue. Of the later ones we may
+take the edition of the noted commentary of the Jesuit Tirinus seventy
+years later: while he feels bound to present the authorities, he
+evidently endeavours to get rid of the subject as speedily as possible
+under cover of conventionalities; of the spirit of Quaresmio he shows no
+trace.(440)
+
+
+     (440) For Poole (Polus) see his Synopsis, 1669, p. 179; and for Titinus,
+the Lyons edition of his Commentary, 1736, p. 10.
+
+
+About 1760 came a striking evidence of the strength of this new current.
+The Abate Mariti then published his book upon the Holy Land; and of
+this book, by an Italian ecclesiastic, the most eminent of German
+bibliographers in this field says that it first broke a path for
+critical study of the Holy Land. Mariti is entirely sceptical as to the
+sinking of the valley of Siddim and the overwhelming of the cities. He
+speaks kindly of a Capuchin Father who saw everywhere at the Dead Sea
+traces of the divine malediction, while he himself could not see them,
+and says, "It is because a Capuchin carries everywhere the five senses
+of faith, while I only carry those of nature." He speaks of "the lies of
+Josephus," and makes merry over "the rude and shapeless block" which the
+guide assured him was the statue of Lot's wife, explaining the want
+of human form in the salt pillar by telling him that this complete
+metamorphosis was part of her punishment.
+
+About twenty years later, another remarkable man, Volney, broaches the
+subject in what was then known as the "philosophic" spirit. Between the
+years 1783 and 1785 he made an extensive journey through the Holy Land
+and published a volume of travels which by acuteness of thought and
+vigour of style secured general attention. In these, myth and legend
+were thrown aside, and we have an account simply dictated by the love of
+truth as truth. He, too, keeps the torch of science burning by applying
+his geological knowledge to the regions which he traverses.
+
+As we look back over the eighteenth century we see mingled with the new
+current of thought, and strengthening it, a constantly increasing stream
+of more strictly scientific observation and reflection.
+
+To review it briefly: in the very first years of the century Maraldi
+showed the Paris Academy of Sciences fossil fishes found in the Lebanon
+region; a little later, Cornelius Bruyn, in the French edition of his
+Eastern travels, gave well-drawn representations of fossil fishes and
+shells, some of them from the region of the Dead Sea; about the middle
+of the century Richard Pococke, Bishop of Meath, and Korte of Altona
+made more statements of the same sort; and toward the close of the
+century, as we have seen, Volney gave still more of these researches,
+with philosophical deductions from them.
+
+The result of all this was that there gradually dawned upon thinking
+men the conviction that, for ages before the appearance of man on the
+planet, and during all the period since his appearance, natural laws
+have been steadily in force in Palestine as elsewhere; this conviction
+obliged men to consider other than supernatural causes for the phenomena
+of the Dead Sea, and myth and marvel steadily shrank in value.
+
+But at the very threshold of the nineteenth century Chateaubriand came
+into the field, and he seemed to banish the scientific spirit, though
+what he really did was to conceal it temporarily behind the vapours
+of his rhetoric. The time was propitious for him. It was the period of
+reaction after the French Revolution, when what was called religion was
+again in fashion, and when even atheists supported it as a good thing
+for common people: of such an epoch Chateaubriand, with his superficial
+information, thin sentiment, and showy verbiage, was the foreordained
+prophet. His enemies were wont to deny that he ever saw the Holy Land;
+whether he did or not, he added nothing to real knowledge, but simply
+threw a momentary glamour over the regions he described, and especially
+over the Dead Sea. The legend of Lot's wife he carefully avoided, for he
+knew too well the danger of ridicule in France.
+
+As long as the Napoleonic and Bourbon reigns lasted, and indeed for some
+time afterward, this kind of dealing with the Holy Land was fashionable,
+and we have a long series of men, especially of Frenchmen, who evidently
+received their impulse from Chateaubriand.
+
+About 1831 De Geramb, Abbot of La Trappe, evidently a very noble and
+devout spirit, sees vapour above the Dead Sea, but stretches the truth a
+little--speaking of it as "vapour or smoke." He could not find the salt
+statue, and complains of the "diversity of stories regarding it." The
+simple physical cause of this diversity--the washing out of different
+statues in different years--never occurs to him; but he comforts himself
+with the scriptural warrant for the metamorphosis.(441)
+
+
+     (441) For Mariti, see his Voyage, etc., vol. ii, pp. 352-356. For
+Tobler's high opinion of him, see the Bibliographia, pp. 132, 133. For
+Volney, see his Voyage en Syrie et Egypte, Paris, 1807, vol. i, pp.
+308 et seq.; also, for a statement of contributions of the eighteenth
+century to geology, Lartet in De Luynes's Mer Morte, vol. iii, p. 12.
+For Cornelius Bruyn, see French edition of his works, 1714 (in which his
+name is given as "Le Brun"), especially for representations of fossils,
+pp. 309, 375. For Chateaubriand, see his Voyage, etc., vol. ii, part
+iii. For De Geramb, see his Voyage, vol. ii, pp. 45-47.
+
+
+But to the honour of scientific men and scientific truth it should
+be said that even under Napoleon and the Bourbons there were men who
+continued to explore, observe, and describe with the simple love of
+truth as truth, and in spite of the probability that their researches
+would be received during their lifetime with contempt and even
+hostility, both in church and state.
+
+The pioneer in this work of the nineteenth century was the German
+naturalist Ulrich Seetzen. He began his main investigation in 1806, and
+soon his learning, courage, and honesty threw a flood of new light into
+the Dead Sea questions.
+
+In this light, myth and legend faded more rapidly than ever. Typical
+of his method is his examination of the Dead Sea fruit. He found, on
+reaching Palestine, that Josephus's story regarding it, which had been
+accepted for nearly two thousand years, was believed on all sides; more
+than this, he found that the original myth had so grown that a multitude
+of respectable people at Bethlehem and elsewhere assured him that not
+only apples, but pears, pomegranates, figs, lemons, and many other
+fruits which grow upon the shores of the Dead Sea, though beautiful to
+look upon, were filled with ashes. These good people declared to Seetzen
+that they had seen these fruits, and that, not long before, a basketful
+of them which had been sent to a merchant of Jaffa had turned to ashes.
+
+Seetzen was evidently perplexed by this mass of testimony and naturally
+anxious to examine these fruits. On arriving at the sea he began to look
+for them, and the guide soon showed him the "apples." These he found to
+be simply an asclepia, which had been described by Linnaeus, and which
+is found in the East Indies, Arabia, Egypt, Jamaica, and elsewhere--the
+"ashes" being simply seeds. He looked next for the other fruits, and
+the guide soon found for him the "lemons": these he discovered to be a
+species of solanum found in other parts of Palestine and elsewhere, and
+the seeds in these were the famous "cinders." He looked next for the
+pears, figs, and other accursed fruits; but, instead of finding them
+filled with ashes and cinders, he found them like the same fruits in
+other lands, and he tells us that he ate the figs with much pleasure.
+
+So perished a myth which had been kept alive two thousand years,--partly
+by modes of thought natural to theologians, partly by the self-interest
+of guides, and partly by the love of marvel-mongering among travellers.
+
+The other myths fared no better. As to the appearance of the sea, he
+found its waters not "black and sticky," but blue and transparent; he
+found no smoke rising from the abyss, but tells us that sunlight and
+cloud and shore were pleasantly reflected from the surface. As to Lot's
+wife, he found no salt pillar which had been a careless woman, but the
+Arabs showed him many boulders which had once been wicked men.
+
+His work was worthily continued by a long succession of true
+investigators,--among them such travellers or geographers as Burckhardt,
+Irby, Mangles, Fallmerayer, and Carl von Raumer: by men like these the
+atmosphere of myth and legend was steadily cleared away; as a rule, they
+simply forgot Lot's wife altogether.
+
+In this noble succession should be mentioned an American theologian, Dr.
+Edward Robinson, professor at New York. Beginning about 1826, he devoted
+himself for thirty years to the thorough study of the geography of
+Palestine, and he found a worthy coadjutor in another American divine,
+Dr. Eli Smith. Neither of these men departed openly from the old
+traditions: that would have cost a heart-breaking price--the loss of all
+further opportunity to carry on their researches. Robinson did not even
+think it best to call attention to the mythical character of much on
+which his predecessors had insisted; he simply brought in, more and
+more, the dry, clear atmosphere of the love of truth for truth's sake,
+and, in this, myths and legends steadily disappeared. By doing this
+he rendered a far greater service to real Christianity than any other
+theologian had ever done in this field.
+
+Very characteristic is his dealing with the myth of Lot's wife. Though
+more than once at Usdum,--though giving valuable information regarding
+the sea, shore, and mountains there, he carefully avoids all mention of
+the salt pillar and of the legend which arose from it. In this he set
+an example followed by most of the more thoughtful religious travellers
+since his time. Very significant is it to see the New Testament
+injunction, "Remember Lot's wife," so utterly forgotten. These later
+investigators seem never to have heard of it; and this constant
+forgetfulness shows the change which had taken place in the enlightened
+thinking of the world.
+
+But in the year 1848 came an episode very striking in its character and
+effect.
+
+At that time, the war between the United States and Mexico having
+closed, Lieutenant Lynch, of the United States Navy, found himself in
+the port of Vera Cruz, commanding an old hulk, the Supply. Looking about
+for something to do, it occurred to him to write to the Secretary of
+the Navy asking permission to explore the Dead Sea. Under ordinary
+circumstances the proposal would doubtless have been strangled with
+red tape; but, fortunately, the Secretary at that time was Mr. John Y.
+Mason, of Virginia. Mr. Mason was famous for his good nature. Both
+at Washington and at Paris, where he was afterward minister, this
+predominant trait has left a multitude of amusing traditions; it was of
+him that Senator Benton said, "To be supremely happy he must have his
+paunch full of oysters and his hands full of cards."
+
+The Secretary granted permission, but evidently gave the matter not
+another thought. As a result, came an expedition the most comical and
+one of the most rich in results to be found in American annals. Never
+was anything so happy-go-lucky. Lieutenant Lynch started with his hulk,
+with hardly an instrument save those ordinarily found on shipboard, and
+with a body of men probably the most unfit for anything like scientific
+investigation ever sent on such an errand; fortunately, he picked up
+a young instructor in mathematics, Mr. Anderson, and added to his
+apparatus two strong iron boats.
+
+Arriving, after a tedious voyage, on the coast of Asia Minor, he set to
+work. He had no adequate preparation in general history, archaeology,
+or the physical sciences; but he had his American patriotism, energy,
+pluck, pride, and devotion to duty, and these qualities stood him in
+good stead. With great labour he got the iron boats across the country.
+Then the tug of war began. First of all investigators, he forced his way
+through the whole length of the river Jordan and from end to end of the
+Dead Sea. There were constant difficulties--geographical, climatic, and
+personal; but Lynch cut through them all. He was brave or shrewd, as
+there was need. Anderson proved an admirable helper, and together
+they made surveys of distances, altitudes, depths, and sundry simple
+investigations in a geological, mineralogical, and chemical way. Much
+was poorly done, much was left undone, but the general result was most
+honourable both to Lynch and Anderson; and Secretary Mason found that
+his easy-going patronage of the enterprise was the best act of his
+official life.
+
+The results of this expedition on public opinion were most curious.
+Lynch was no scholar in any sense; he had travelled little, and thought
+less on the real questions underlying the whole investigation; as to
+the difference in depth of the two parts of the lake, he jumped--with
+a sailor's disregard of logic--to the conclusion that it somehow proved
+the mythical account of the overwhelming of the cities, and he indulged
+in reflections of a sort probably suggested by his recollections of
+American Sunday-schools.
+
+Especially noteworthy is his treatment of the legend of Lot's wife. He
+found the pillar of salt. It happened to be at that period a circular
+column of friable salt rock, about forty feet high; yet, while he
+accepts every other old myth, he treats the belief that this was once
+the wife of Lot as "a superstition." One little circumstance added
+enormously to the influence of this book, for, as a frontispiece, he
+inserted a picture of the salt column. It was delineated in rather a
+poetic manner: light streamed upon it, heavy clouds hung above it,
+and, as a background, were ranged buttresses of salt rock furrowed and
+channelled out by the winter rains: this salt statue picture was spread
+far and wide, and in thousands of country pulpits and Sunday-schools it
+was shown as a tribute of science to Scripture.
+
+Nor was this influence confined to American Sunday-school children:
+Lynch had innocently set a trap into which several European theologians
+stumbled. One of these was Dr. Lorenz Gratz, Vicar-General of Augsburg,
+a theological professor. In the second edition of his Theatre of the
+Holy Scriptures, published in 1858, he hails Lynch's discovery of the
+salt pillar with joy, forgets his allusion to the old theory regarding
+it as a superstition, and does not stop to learn that this was one of a
+succession of statues washed out yearly by the rains, but accepts it as
+the originaL Lot's wife.
+
+The French churchmen suffered most. About two years after Lynch, De
+Saulcy visited the Dead Sea to explore it thoroughly, evidently in the
+interest of sacred science--and of his own promotion. Of the modest
+thoroughness of Robinson there is no trace in his writings. He promptly
+discovered the overwhelmed cities, which no one before or since has ever
+found, poured contempt on other investigators, and threw over his whole
+work an air of piety. But, unfortunately, having a Frenchman's dread of
+ridicule, he attempted to give a rationalistic explanation of what he
+calls "the enormous needles of salt washed out by the winter rain," and
+their connection with the Lot's wife myth, and declared his firm belief
+that she, "being delayed by curiosity or terror, was crushed by a rock
+which rolled down from the mountain, and when Lot and his children
+turned about they saw at the place where she had been only the rock of
+salt which covered her body."
+
+But this would not do at all, and an eminent ecclesiastic privately and
+publicly expostulated with De Saulcy--very naturally declaring that "it
+was not Lot who wrote the book of Genesis."
+
+The result was that another edition of De Saulcy's work was published by
+a Church Book Society, with the offending passage omitted; but a passage
+was retained really far more suggestive of heterodoxy, and this was an
+Arab legend accounting for the origin of certain rocks near the Dead Sea
+curiously resembling salt formations. This in effect ran as follows:
+
+"Abraham, the friend of God, having come here one day with his mule to
+buy salt, the salt-workers impudently told him that they had no salt to
+sell, whereupon the patriarch said: 'Your words are, true, you have
+no salt to sell,' and instantly the salt of this whole region was
+transformed into stone, or rather into a salt which has lost its
+savour."
+
+Nothing could be more sure than this story to throw light into the
+mental and moral process by which the salt pillar myth was originally
+created.
+
+In the years 1864 and 1865 came an expedition on a much more imposing
+scale: that of the Duc de Luynes. His knowledge of archaeology and his
+wealth were freely devoted to working the mine which Lynch had opened,
+and, taking with him an iron vessel and several savants, he devoted
+himself especially to finding the cities of the Dead Sea, and to
+giving less vague accounts of them than those of De Saulcy. But he
+was disappointed, and honest enough to confess his disappointment. So
+vanished one of the most cherished parts of the legend.
+
+But worse remained behind. In the orthodox duke's company was an acute
+geologist, Monsieur Lartet, who in due time made an elaborate report,
+which let a flood of light into the whole region.
+
+The Abbe Richard had been rejoicing the orthodox heart of France by
+exhibiting some prehistoric flint implements as the knives which Joshua
+had made for circumcision. By a truthful statement Monsieur Lartet set
+all France laughing at the Abbe, and then turned to the geology of the
+Dead Sea basin. While he conceded that man may have seen some volcanic
+crisis there, and may have preserved a vivid remembrance of the vapour
+then rising, his whole argument showed irresistibly that all the
+phenomena of the region are due to natural causes, and that, so far from
+a sudden rising of the lake above the valley within historic times, it
+has been for ages steadily subsiding.
+
+Since Balaam was called by Balak to curse his enemies, and "blessed them
+altogether," there has never been a more unexpected tribute to truth.
+
+Even the salt pillar at Usdum, as depicted in Lynch's book, aided to
+undermine the myth among thinking men; for the background of the picture
+showed other pillars of salt in process of formation; and the ultimate
+result of all these expeditions was to spread an atmosphere in which
+myth and legend became more and more attenuated.
+
+To sum up the main points in this work of the nineteenth century:
+Seetzen, Robinson, and others had found that a human being could
+traverse the lake without being killed by hellish smoke; that the waters
+gave forth no odours; that the fruits of the region were not created
+full of cinders to match the desolation of the Dead Sea, but were
+growths not uncommon in Asia Minor and elsewhere; in fact, that all the
+phenomena were due to natural causes.
+
+Ritter and others had shown that all noted features of the Dead Sea
+and the surrounding country were to be found in various other lakes and
+regions, to which no supernatural cause was ascribed among enlightened
+men. Lynch, Van de Velde, Osborne, and others had revealed the fact that
+the "pillar of salt" was frequently formed anew by the rains; and Lartet
+and other geologists had given a final blow to the myths by making it
+clear from the markings on the neighbouring rocks that, instead of a
+sudden upheaval of the sea above the valley of Siddim, there had been a
+gradual subsidence for ages.(442)
+
+
+     (442) For Seetzen, see his Reisen, edited by Kruse, Berlin, 1854-'59;
+for the "Dead Sea Fruits," vol. ii, pp. 231 et seq.; for the appearance
+of the sea, etc., p. 243, and elsewhere; for the Arab explanatory
+transformation legends, vol. iii, pp. 7, 14, 17. As to similarity of the
+"pillars of salt" to columns washed out by rains elsewhere, see Kruse's
+commentary in vol. iv, p. 240; also Fallmerayer, vol. i, p. 197. For
+Irby and Mangles, see work already cited. For Robinson, see his Biblical
+Researches, London,1841; also his Later Biblical Researches, London,
+1856. For Lynch, see his Narrative, London, 1849. For Gratz, see his
+Schauplatz der Heyl. Schrift, pp. 186, 187. For De Saulcy, see his
+Voyage autour de la Mer Morte, Paris, 1853, especially vol. i, p. 252,
+and his journal of the early months of 1851, in vol. ii, comparing it
+with his work of the same title published in 1858 in the Bibliotheque
+Catholique de Voyages et du Romans, vol. i, pp. 78-81. For Lartet, see
+his papers read before the Geographical Society at Paris; also citations
+in Robinson; but, above all, his elaborate reports which form the
+greater part of the second and third volumes of the monumental work
+which bears the name of De Luynes, already cited. For exposures of De
+Saulcey's credulity and errors, see Van de Velde, Syria and Palestine,
+passim; also Canon Tristram's Land of Israel; also De Luynes, passim.
+
+
+Even before all this evidence was in, a judicial decision had been
+pronounced upon the whole question by an authority both Christian
+and scientific, from whom there could be no appeal. During the second
+quarter of the century Prof. Carl Ritter, of the University of Berlin,
+began giving to the world those researches which have placed him at
+the head of all geographers ancient or modern, and finally he brought
+together those relating to the geography of the Holy Land, publishing
+them as part of his great work on the physical geography of the
+earth. He was a Christian, and nothing could be more reverent than his
+treatment of the whole subject; but his German honesty did not permit
+him to conceal the truth, and he simply classed together all the stories
+of the Dead Sea--old and new--no matter where found, whether in the
+sacred books of Jews, Christians, or Mohammedans, whether in lives of
+saints or accounts of travellers, as "myths" and "sagas."
+
+From this decision there has never been among intelligent men any
+appeal.
+
+The recent adjustment of orthodox thought to the scientific view of the
+Dead Sea legends presents some curious features. As typical we may
+take the travels of two German theologians between 1860 and 1870--John
+Kranzel, pastor in Munich, and Peter Schegg, lately professor in the
+university of that city.
+
+The archdiocese of Munich-Freising is one of those in which the attempt
+to suppress modern scientific thought has been most steadily carried on.
+Its archbishops have constantly shown themselves assiduous in securing
+cardinals' hats by thwarting science and by stupefying education.
+The twin towers of the old cathedral of Munich have seemed to throw a
+killing shadow over intellectual development in that region. Naturally,
+then, these two clerical travellers from that diocese did not commit
+themselves to clearing away any of the Dead Sea myths; but it is
+significant that neither of them follows the example of so many of their
+clerical predecessors in defending the salt-pillar legend: they steadily
+avoid it altogether.
+
+The more recent history of the salt pillar, since Lynch, deserves
+mention. It appears that the travellers immediately after him found
+it shaped by the storms into a spire; that a year or two later it had
+utterly disappeared; and about the year 1870 Prof. Palmer, on visiting
+the place, found at some distance from the main salt bed, as he says,
+"a tall, isolated needle of rock, which does really bear a curious
+resemblance to an Arab woman with a child upon her shoulders."
+
+And, finally, Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, the standard work of
+reference for English-speaking scholars, makes its concession to the old
+belief regarding Sodom and Gomorrah as slight as possible, and the myth
+of Lot's wife entirely disappears.
+
+
+
+
+IV. THEOLOGICAL EFFORTS AT COMPROMISE.--TRIUMPH OF THE SCIENTIFIC VIEW.
+
+
+The theological effort to compromise with science now came in more
+strongly than ever. This effort had been made long before: as we have
+seen, it had begun to show itself decidedly as soon as the influence
+of the Baconian philosophy was felt. Le Clerc suggested that the shock
+caused by the sight of fire from heaven killed Lot's wife instantly and
+made her body rigid as a statue. Eichhorn suggested that she fell into a
+stream of melted bitumen. Michaelis suggested that her relatives raised
+a monument of salt rock to her memory. Friedrichs suggested that she
+fell into the sea and that the salt stiffened around her clothing, thus
+making a statue of her. Some claimed that a shower of sulphur came
+down upon her, and that the word which has been translated "salt" could
+possibly be translated "sulphur." Others hinted that the salt by its
+antiseptic qualities preserved her body as a mummy. De Saulcy, as we
+have seen, thought that a piece of salt rock fell upon her, and very
+recently Principal Dawson has ventured the explanation that a flood of
+salt mud coming from a volcano incrusted her.
+
+But theologians themselves were the first to show the inadequacy of
+these explanations. The more rationalistic pointed out the fact that
+they were contrary to the sacred text: Von Bohlen, an eminent professor
+at Konigsberg, in his sturdy German honesty, declared that the salt
+pillar gave rise to the story, and compared the pillar of salt causing
+this transformation legend to the rock in Greek mythology which gave
+rise to the transformation legend of Niobe.
+
+On the other hand, the more severely orthodox protested against such
+attempts to explain away the clear statements of Holy Writ. Dom Calmet,
+while presenting many of these explanations made as early as his time,
+gives us to understand that nearly all theologians adhered to the idea
+that Lot's wife was instantly and really changed into salt; and in
+our own time, as we shall presently see, have come some very vigorous
+protests.
+
+Similar attempts were made to explain the other ancient legends
+regarding the Dead Sea. One of the most recent of these is that the
+cities of the plain, having been built with blocks of bituminous rock,
+were set on fire by lightning, a contemporary earthquake helping on the
+work. Still another is that accumulations of petroleum and inflammable
+gas escaped through a fissure, took fire, and so produced the
+catastrophe.(443)
+
+
+     (443) For Kranzel, see his Reise nach Jerusalem, etc. For Schegg, see
+his Gedenkbuch einer Pilgerreise, etc., 1867, chap. xxiv. For Palmer,
+see his Desert of the Exodus, vol. ii, pp. 478, 479. For the various
+compromises, see works already cited, passim. For Von Bohlen, see
+his Genesis, Konigsberg, 1835, pp. 200-213. For Calmet, see his
+Dictionarium, etc, Venet., 1766. For very recent compromises, see J. W.
+Dawson and Dr. Cunningham Geikie in works cited.
+
+
+The revolt against such efforts to RECONCILE scientific fact with myth
+and legend had become very evident about the middle of the nineteenth
+century. In 1851 and 1852 Van de Velde made his journey. He was a most
+devout man, but he confessed that the volcanic action at the Dead Sea
+must have been far earlier than the catastrophe mentioned in our sacred
+books, and that "the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah had nothing to
+do with this." A few years later an eminent dignitary of the English
+Church, Canon Tristram, doctor of divinity and fellow of the Royal
+Society, who had explored the Holy Land thoroughly, after some
+generalities about miracles, gave up the whole attempt to make science
+agree with the myths, and used these words: "It has been frequently
+assumed that the district of Usdum and its sister cities was the result
+of some tremendous geological catastrophe.... Now, careful examination by
+competent geologists, such as Monsieur Lartet and others, has shown that
+the whole district has assumed its present shape slowly and gradually
+through a succession of ages, and that its peculiar phenomena are
+similar to those of other lakes." So sank from view the whole mass
+of Dead Sea myths and legends, and science gained a victory both for
+geology and comparative mythology.
+
+As a protest against this sort of rationalism appeared in 1876 an
+edition of Monseigneur Mislin's work on The Holy Places. In order to
+give weight to the book, it was prefaced by letters from Pope Pius IX
+and sundry high ecclesiastics--and from Alexandre Dumas! His hatred
+of Protestant missionaries in the East is phenomenal: he calls them
+"bagmen," ascribes all mischief and infamy to them, and his hatred is
+only exceeded by his credulity. He cites all the arguments in favour of
+the salt statue at Usdum as the identical one into which Lot's wife was
+changed, adds some of his own, and presents her as "a type of doubt and
+heresy." With the proverbial facility of dogmatists in translating any
+word of a dead language into anything that suits their purpose, he says
+that the word in the nineteenth chapter of Genesis which is translated
+"statue" or "pillar," may be translated "eternal monument"; he is
+especially severe on poor Monsieur De Saulcy for thinking that Lot's
+wife was killed by the falling of a piece of salt rock; and he actually
+boasts that it was he who caused De Saulcy, a member of the French
+Institute, to suppress the obnoxious passage in a later edition.
+
+Between 1870 and 1880 came two killing blows at the older theories, and
+they were dealt by two American scholars of the highest character.
+First of these may be mentioned Dr. Philip Schaff, a professor in the
+Presbyterian Theological Seminary at New York, who published his travels
+in 1877. In a high degree he united the scientific with the religious
+spirit, but the trait which made him especially fit for dealing with
+this subject was his straightforward German honesty. He tells the simple
+truth regarding the pillar of salt, so far as its physical origin and
+characteristics are concerned, and leaves his reader to draw the natural
+inference as to its relation to the myth. With the fate of Dr. Robertson
+Smith in Scotland and Dr. Woodrow in South Carolina before him--both
+recently driven from their professorships for truth-telling--Dr. Schaff
+deserves honour for telling as much as he does.
+
+Similar in effect, and even more bold in statement, were the travels of
+the Rev. Henry Osborn, published in 1878. In a truly scientific spirit
+he calls attention to the similarity of the Dead Sea, with the river
+Jordan, to sundry other lake and river systems; points out the endless
+variations between writers describing the salt formations at Usdum;
+accounts rationally for these variations, and quotes from Dr. Anderson's
+report, saying, "From the soluble nature of the salt and the crumbling
+looseness of the marl, it may well be imagined that, while some of these
+needles are in the process of formation, others are being washed away."
+
+Thus came out, little by little, the truth regarding the Dead Sea myths,
+and especially the salt pillar at Usdum; but the final truth remained to
+be told in the Church, and now one of the purest men and truest divines
+of this century told it. Arthur Stanley, Dean of Westminster, visiting
+the country and thoroughly exploring it, allowed that the physical
+features of the Dead Sea and its shores suggested the myths and legends,
+and he sums up the whole as follows: "A great mass of legends and
+exaggerations, partly the cause and partly the result of the old belief
+that the cities were buried under the Dead Sea, has been gradually
+removed in recent years."
+
+So, too, about the same time, Dr. Conrad Furrer, pastor of the great
+church of St. Peter at Zurich, gave to the world a book of travels,
+reverent and thoughtful, and in this honestly acknowledged that the
+needles of salt at the southern end of the Dead Sea "in primitive times
+gave rise to the tradition that Lot's wife was transformed into a statue
+of salt." Thus was the mythical character of this story at last openly
+confessed by Leading churchmen on both continents.
+
+Plain statements like these from such sources left the high theological
+position more difficult than ever, and now a new compromise was
+attempted. As the Siberian mother tried to save her best-beloved child
+from the pursuing wolves by throwing over to them her less favoured
+children, so an effort was now made in a leading commentary to save the
+legends of the valley of Siddim and the miraculous destruction of the
+cities by throwing overboard the legend of Lot's wife.(444)
+
+
+     (444) For Mislin, see his Les Saints Lieux, Paris, vol. iii, pp.
+290-293, especially note at foot of page 292. For Schaff, see his
+Through Bible Lands, especially chapter xxix; see also Rev. H. S.
+Osborn, M. A., The Holy Land, pp. 267 et seq.; also Stanley's Sinai and
+Palestine, London, 1887, especially pp. 290-293. For Furrer, see his
+En Palestine, Geneva, 1886, vol. i, p.246. For the attempt to save
+one legend by throwing overboard the other, see Keil and Delitzsch,
+Biblischer Commentar uber das Alte Testament, vol. i, pp. 155, 156. For
+Van de Velde, see his Syria and Palestine, vol. ii, p. 120.
+
+
+An amusing result has followed this development of opinion. As we have
+already seen, traveller after traveller, Catholic and Protestant, now
+visits the Dead Sea, and hardly one of them follows the New Testament
+injunction to "remember Lot's wife." Nearly every one of them seems to
+think it best to forget her. Of the great mass of pious legends they are
+shy enough, but that of Lot's wife, as a rule, they seem never to
+have heard of, and if they do allude to it they simply cover the whole
+subject with a haze of pious rhetoric.(445)
+
+
+     (445) The only notice of the Lot's wife legend in the editions of
+Robinson at my command is a very curious one by Leopold von Buch, the
+eminent geologist. Robinson, with a fearlessness which does him credit,
+consulted Von Buch, who in his answer was evidently inclined to make
+things easier for Robinson by hinting that Lot was so much struck by
+the salt formations that HE IMAGINED that his wife had been changed into
+salt. On this theory, Robinson makes no comment. See Robinson, Biblical
+Researches in Palestine, etc., London, 1841, vol. ii, p. 674.
+
+
+Naturally, under this state of things, there has followed the usual
+attempt to throw off from Christendom the responsibility of the old
+belief, and in 1887 came a curious effort of this sort. In that year
+appeared the Rev. Dr. Cunningham Geikie's valuable work on The Holy Land
+and the Bible. In it he makes the following statement as to the
+salt formation at Usdum: "Here and there, hardened portions of salt
+withstanding the water, while all around them melts and wears off, rise
+up isolated pillars, one of which bears among the Arabs the name of
+'Lot's wife.'"
+
+In the light of the previous history, there is something at once
+pathetic and comical in this attempt to throw the myth upon the
+shoulders of the poor Arabs. The myth was not originated by Mohammedans;
+it appears, as we have seen, first among the Jews, and, I need hardly
+remind the reader, comes out in the Book of Wisdom and in Josephus, and
+has been steadily maintained by fathers, martyrs, and doctors of the
+Church, by at least one pope, and by innumerable bishops, priests,
+monks, commentators, and travellers, Catholic and Protestant, ever
+since. In thus throwing the responsibility of the myth upon the Arabs
+Dr. Geikie appears to show both the "perfervid genius" of his countrymen
+and their incapacity to recognise a joke.
+
+Nor is he more happy in his rationalistic explanations of the whole mass
+of myths. He supposes a terrific storm, in which the lightning kindled
+the combustible materials of the cities, aided perhaps by an earthquake;
+but this shows a disposition to break away from the exact statements of
+the sacred books which would have been most severely condemned by the
+universal Church during at least eighteen hundred years of its history.
+Nor would the explanations of Sir William Dawson have fared any better:
+it is very doubtful whether either of them could escape unscathed today
+from a synod of the Free Church of Scotland, or of any of the leading
+orthodox bodies in the Southern States of the American Union.(446)
+
+
+     (446) For these most recent explanations, see Rev. Cunningham Geikie, D.
+D., in work cited; also Sir J. W. Dawson, Egypt and Syria, published
+by the Religious Tract Society, 1887, pp. 125, 126; see also Dawson's
+article in The Expositor for January, 1886.
+
+
+How unsatisfactory all such rationalism must be to a truly theological
+mind is seen not only in the dealings with Prof. Robertson Smith in
+Scotland and Prof. Woodrow in South Carolina, but most clearly in a book
+published in 1886 by Monseigneur Haussmann de Wandelburg. Among other
+things, the author was Prelate of the Pope's House-hold, a Mitred Abbot,
+Canon of the Holy Sepulchre, and a Doctor of Theology of the Pontifical
+University at Rome, and his work is introduced by approving letters from
+Pope Leo XIII and the Patriarch of Jerusalem. Monseigneur de Wandelburg
+scorns the idea that the salt column at Usdum is not the statue of Lot's
+wife; he points out not only the danger of yielding this evidence
+of miracle to rationalism, but the fact that the divinely inspired
+authority of the Book of Wisdom, written, at the latest, two hundred and
+fifty years before Christ, distinctly refers to it. He summons Josephus
+as a witness. He dwells on the fact that St. Clement of Rome, Irenaeus,
+Hegesippus, and St. Cyril, "who as Bishop of Jerusalem must have known
+better than any other person what existed in Palestine," with St.
+Jerome, St. Chrysostom, and a multitude of others, attest, as a matter
+of their own knowledge or of popular notoriety, that the remains of
+Lot's wife really existed in their time in the form of a column of salt;
+and he points triumphantly to the fact that Lieutenant Lynch found this
+very column. In the presence of such a continuous line of witnesses,
+some of them considered as divinely inspired, and all of them greatly
+revered--a line extending through thirty-seven hundred years--he
+condemns most vigorously all those who do not believe that the pillar
+of salt now at Usdum is identical with the wife of Lot, and stigmatizes
+them as people who "do not wish to believe the truth of the Word of
+God."
+
+His ignorance of many of the simplest facts bearing upon the legend is
+very striking, yet he does not hesitate to speak of men who know far
+more and have thought far more upon the subject as "grossly ignorant."
+The most curious feature in his ignorance is the fact that he is
+utterly unaware of the annual changes in the salt statue. He is entirely
+ignorant of such facts as that the priest Gabriel Giraudet in the
+sixteenth century found the statue lying down; that the monk Zwinner
+found it in the seventeenth century standing, and accompanied by a dog
+also transformed into salt; that Prince Radziwill found no statue at
+all; that the pious Vincent Briemle in the eighteenth century found
+the monument renewing itself; that about the middle of the nineteenth
+century Lynch found it in the shape of a tower or column forty feet
+high; that within two years afterward De Saulcy found it washed into the
+form of a spire; that a year later Van de Velde found it utterly washed
+away; and that a few years later Palmer found it "a statue bearing a
+striking resemblance to an Arab woman with a child in her arms." So
+ended the last great demonstration, thus far, on the side of sacred
+science--the last retreating shot from the theological rear guard.
+
+It is but just to say that a very great share in the honour of the
+victory of science in this field is due to men trained as theologians.
+It would naturally be so, since few others have devoted themselves to
+direct labour in it; yet great honour is none the less due to such men
+as Reland, Mariti, Smith, Robinson, Stanley, Tristram, and Schat.
+
+They have rendered even a greater service to religion than to science,
+for they have made a beginning, at least, of doing away with that
+enforced belief in myths as history which has become a most serious
+danger to Christianity.
+
+For the worst enemy of Christianity could wish nothing more than that
+its main Leaders should prove that it can not be adopted save by those
+who accept, as historical, statements which unbiased men throughout the
+world know to be mythical. The result of such a demonstration would only
+be more and more to make thinking people inside the Church dissemblers,
+and thinking people outside, scoffers. Far better is it to welcome the
+aid of science, in the conviction that all truth is one, and, in the
+light of this truth, to allow theology and science to work together in
+the steady evolution of religion and morality.
+
+The revelations made by the sciences which most directly deal with the
+history of man all converge in the truth that during the earlier stages
+of this evolution moral and spiritual teachings must be inclosed in
+myth, legend, and parable. "The Master" felt this when he gave to the
+poor peasants about him, and so to the world, his simple and beautiful
+illustrations. In making this truth clear, science will give to religion
+far more than it will take away, for it will throw new life and light
+into all sacred literature.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.  FROM LEVITICUS TO POLITICAL ECONOMY
+
+
+
+
+I. ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF HOSTILITY TO LOANS AT INTEREST.
+
+
+Among questions on which the supporters of right reason in political
+and social science have only conquered theological opposition after
+centuries of war, is the taking of interest on loans. In hardly any
+struggle has rigid adherence to the letter of our sacred books been more
+prolonged and injurious.
+
+Certainly, if the criterion of truth, as regards any doctrine, be that
+of St. Vincent of Lerins--that it has been held in the Church "always,
+everywhere, and by all"--then on no point may a Christian of these days
+be more sure than that every savings institution, every loan and trust
+company, every bank, every loan of capital by an individual, every means
+by which accumulated capital has been lawfully lent even at the most
+moderate interest, to make men workers rather than paupers, is based on
+deadly sin.
+
+The early evolution of the belief that taking interest for money is
+sinful presents a curious working together of metaphysical, theological,
+and humanitarian ideas.
+
+In the main centre of ancient Greek civilization, the loaning of money
+at interest came to be accepted at an early period as a condition of
+productive industry, and no legal restriction was imposed. In Rome there
+was a long process of development: the greed of creditors in early times
+led to laws against the taking of interest; but, though these lasted
+long, that strong practical sense which gave Rome the empire of
+the world substituted finally, for this absolute prohibition, the
+establishment of rates by law. Yet many of the leading Greek and
+Roman thinkers opposed this practical settlement of the question, and,
+foremost of all, Aristotle. In a metaphysical way he declared that money
+is by nature "barren"; that the birth of money from money is therefore
+"unnatural"; and hence that the taking of interest is to be censured
+and hated. Plato, Plutarch, both the Catos, Cicero, Seneca, and
+various other leaders of ancient thought, arrived at much the same
+conclusion--sometimes from sympathy with oppressed debtors; sometimes
+from dislike of usurers; sometimes from simple contempt of trade.
+
+From these sources there came into the early Church the germ of a
+theological theory upon the subject.
+
+But far greater was the stream of influence from the Jewish and
+Christian sacred books. In the Old Testament stood various texts
+condemning usury--the term usury meaning any taking of interest: the law
+of Moses, while it allowed usury in dealing with strangers, forbade it
+in dealing with Jews. In the New Testament, in the Sermon on the Mount,
+as given by St. Luke, stood the text "Lend, hoping for nothing again."
+These texts seemed to harmonize with the most beautiful characteristic
+of primitive Christianity; its tender care for the poor and oppressed:
+hence we find, from the earliest period, the whole weight of the Church
+brought to bear against the taking of interest for money.(448)
+
+
+     (448) On the general allowance of interest for money in Greece, even at
+high rates, see Bockh, Public Economy of the Athenians, translated by
+Lamb, Boston, 1857, especially chaps. xxii, xxiii, and xxiv of book i.
+For a view of usury taken by Aristotle, see his Politics and Economics,
+translated by Walford, p. 27; also Grote, History of Greece, vol. iii,
+chap. xi. For summary of opinions in Greece and Rome, and their relation
+to Christian thought, see Bohm-Bawerk, Capital and Interest, translated
+by Smart, London, 1890, chap. i. For a very full list of scripture texts
+against the taking of interest, see Pearson, The Theories on Usury
+in Europe, 1100-1400, Cambridge (England), 1876, p. 6. The texts most
+frequently cited were Leviticus xxv, 36, 37; Deuteronomy xxiii, 19 and
+26; Psalms, xv, 5; Ezekiel xviii, 8 and 17; St. Luke, vi, 35. For a
+curious modern use of them, see D. S. Dickinson's speech in the State of
+New York, in vol. i of his collected writings. See also Lecky, History
+of Rationalism in Europe, vol. ii, chap. vi; and above all, as the most
+recent historical summary by a leading historian of political economy,
+Bohm-Bawerk, as above.
+
+
+The great fathers of the Eastern Church, and among them St. Basil,
+St. Chrysostom, and St. Gregory of Nyssa,--the fathers of the Western
+Church, and among them Tertullian, St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, and St.
+Jerome, joined most earnestly in this condemnation. St. Basil denounces
+money at interest as a "fecund monster," and says, "The divine law
+declares expressly, 'Thou shalt not lend on usury to thy brother or thy
+neighbour.'" St. Gregory of Nyssa calls down on him who lends money at
+interest the vengeance of the Almighty. St. Chrysostom says: "What can
+be more unreasonable than to sow without land, without rain, without
+ploughs? All those who give themselves up to this damnable culture
+shall reap only tares. Let us cut off these monstrous births of gold and
+silver; let us stop this execrable fecundity."
+
+Lactantius called the taking of interest "robbery." St. Ambrose declared
+it as bad as murder, St. Jerome threw the argument into the form of a
+dilemma, which was used as a weapon against money-lenders for centuries.
+Pope Leo the Great solemnly adjudged it a sin worthy of severe
+punishment.(449)
+
+
+     (449) For St. Basil and St. Gregory of Nyssa, see French translation
+of their diatribes in Homelies contre les Usuriers, Paris, Hachette,
+1861-'62, especially p. 30 of St. Basil. For some doubtful reservations
+by St. Augustine, see Murray, History of Usury. For St. Ambrose, see De
+Officiis, lib. iii, cap. ii, in Migne, Patr. Lat., vol. xvi; also the De
+Tobia, in Migne, vol. xiv. For St. Augustine, see De Bapt. contr Donat.,
+lib. iv, cap. ix, in Migne, vol. xliii. For Lactantius, see his Opera,
+Leyden, 1660, p. 608. For Cyprian, see his Testimonies against the Jews,
+translated by Wallis, book iii, article 48. For St. Jerome, see his Com.
+in Ezekiel, xviii, 8, in Migne, vol. xxv, pp. 170 et seq. For Leo the
+Great, see his letter to the bishops of various provinces of Italy,
+cited in the Jus. Can., cap. vii, can. xiv, qu. 4. For very fair
+statements of the attitude of the fathers on this question, see Addis
+and Arnold, Catholic Dictionary, London, 1884, and Smith and Cheetham,
+Dictionary of Christian Antiquities, London, 1875-'80; in each, under
+article Usury.
+
+
+This unanimity of the fathers of the Church brought about a
+crystallization of hostility to interest-bearing loans into numberless
+decrees of popes and councils and kings and legislatures throughout
+Christendom during more than fifteen hundred years, and the canon law
+was shaped in accordance with these. At first these were more especially
+directed against the clergy, but we soon find them extending to the
+laity. These prohibitions were enforced by the Council of Arles in 314,
+and a modern Church apologist insists that every great assembly of the
+Church, from the Council of Elvira in 306 to that of Vienne in 1311,
+inclusive, solemnly condemned lending money at interest. The greatest
+rulers under the sway of the Church--Justinian, in the Empire of the
+East; Charlemagne, in the Empire of the West; Alfred, in England; St.
+Louis, in France--yielded fully to this dogma. In the ninth century
+Alfred went so far as to confiscate the estates of money-lenders,
+denying them burial in Consecrated ground; and similar decrees were made
+in other parts of Europe. In the twelfth century the Greek Church seems
+to have relaxed its strictness somewhat, but the Roman Church grew
+more severe. St. Anselm proved from the Scriptures that the taking of
+interest is a breach of the Ten Commandments. Peter Lombard, in his
+Sentences, made the taking of interest purely and simply theft. St.
+Bernard, reviving religious earnestness in the Church, took the same
+view. In 1179 the Third Council of the Lateran decreed that impenitent
+money-lenders should be excluded from the altar, from absolution in the
+hour of death, and from Christian burial. Pope Urban III reiterated
+the declaration that the passage in St. Luke forbade the taking of any
+interest whatever. Pope Alexander III declared that the prohibition in
+this matter could never be suspended by dispensation.
+
+In the thirteenth century Pope Gregory IX dealt an especially severe
+blow at commerce by his declaration that even to advance on interest the
+money necessary in maritime trade was damnable usury; and this was fitly
+followed by Gregory X, who forbade Christian burial to those guilty of
+this practice; the Council of Lyons meted out the same penalty. This
+idea was still more firmly fastened upon the world by the two greatest
+thinkers of the time: first, by St. Thomas Aquinas, who knit it into the
+mind of the Church by the use of the Scriptures and of Aristotle; and
+next by Dante, who pictured money-lenders in one of the worst regions of
+hell.
+
+About the beginning of the fourteenth century the "Subtile Doctor" of
+the Middle Ages, Duns Scotus, gave to the world an exquisite piece of
+reasoning in evasion of the accepted doctrine; but all to no purpose:
+the Council of Vienne, presided over by Pope Clement V, declared that
+if any one "shall pertinaciously presume to affirm that the taking of
+interest for money is not a sin, we decree him to be a heretic, fit for
+punishment." This infallible utterance bound the dogma with additional
+force on the conscience of the universal Church.
+
+Nor was this a doctrine enforced by rulers only; the people were no less
+strenuous. In 1390 the city authorities of London enacted that, "if any
+person shall lend or put into the hands of any person gold or silver
+to receive gain thereby, such person shall have the punishment for
+usurers." And in the same year the Commons prayed the king that the laws
+of London against usury might have the force of statutes throughout the
+realm.
+
+In the fifteenth century the Council of the Church at Salzburg excluded
+from communion and burial any who took interest for money, and this was
+a very general rule throughout Germany.
+
+An exception was, indeed, sometimes made: some canonists held that Jews
+might be allowed to take interest, since they were to be damned in any
+case, and their monopoly of money-lending might prevent Christians from
+losing their souls by going into the business. Yet even the Jews were
+from time to time punished for the crime of usury; and, as regards
+Christians, punishment was bestowed on the dead as well as the
+living--the bodies of dead money-lenders being here and there dug up and
+cast out of consecrated ground.
+
+The popular preachers constantly declaimed against all who took
+interest. The medieval anecdote books for pulpit use are especially full
+on this point. Jacques de Vitry tells us that demons on one occasion
+filled a dead money-lender's mouth with red-hot coins; Cesarius of
+Heisterbach declared that a toad was found thrusting a piece of money
+into a dead usurer's heart; in another case, a devil was seen pouring
+molten gold down a dead money-lender's throat.(450)
+
+
+     (450) For an enumeration of councils condemning the taking of interest
+for money, see Liegeois, Essai sur l'Histoire et la Legislation de
+l'Usure, Paris, 1865, p. 78; also the Catholic Dictionary as above. For
+curious additional details and sources regarding mediaeval horror of
+usurers, see Ducange, Glossarium, etc., article Caorcini. T he date 306,
+for the Council of Elvira is that assigned by Hefele. For the decree
+of Alexander III, see citation from the Latin text in Lecky. For a
+long catalogue of ecclesiastical and civil decrees against taking of
+interest, see Petit, Traite de l'Usure, Paris, 1840. For the reasoning
+at the bottom of this, see Cunningham, Christian Opinion on Usury,
+London, 1884. For the Salzburg decrees, see Zillner, Salzburgusche
+Culturgeschichte, p. 232; and for Germany generally, see Neumann,
+Geschichte des Wuchers in Deutschland, Halle, 1865, especially pp. 22 et
+seq; also Roscher, National-Oeconomis. For effect of mistranslation
+of the passage of Luke in the Vulgate, see Dollinger, p. 170, and
+especially pp. 224, 225 For the capitularies of Charlemagne against
+usury, see Liegeois, p. 77. For Gregory X and the Council of Lyons, see
+Sextus Decretalium liber, pp. 669 et. seq. For Peter Lombard, see his
+Lib. Sententiarum, III, dist. xxxvii, 3. For St. Thomas Aquinas, see his
+works, Migne, vol. iii, Paris 1889, quaestio 78, pp. 587 et seq., citing
+the Scriptures and Aristotle, and especially developing Aristotle's
+metaphysical idea regarding the "barrenness" of money. For a very good
+summary of St. Thomas's ideas, see Pearson. pp. 30 et seq. For Dante,
+see in canto xi of the Inferno a revelation of the amazing depth of the
+hostility to the taking of interest. For the London law of 1390 and the
+petition to the king, see Cunningham, Growth of English Industry and
+Commerce, pp. 210, 326; also the Abridgment of the Records in the Tower
+of London, p. 339. For the theory that Jews, being damned already, might
+be allowed to practice usury, see Liegeois, Histoire de l'Usure, p. 82.
+For St. Bernard's view, see Epist. CCCLXIII, in Migne, vol. clxxxii,
+p. 567. For ideas and anecdotes for preachers' use, see Joannes a San
+Geminiano, Summa de Exemplis, Antwerp, 1629, fol. 493, a; also the
+edition of Venice, 1584, ff. 132, 159; but especially, for multitudes
+of examples, see the Exempla of Jacques de Vitry, edited by Prof. T.
+F. Crane, of Cornell University, London, 1890, pp. 203 et seq. For the
+canon law in regard to interest, see a long line of authorities cited in
+Die Wucherfrage, St. Louis, 1869, pp. 92 et seq., and especially Decret.
+Gregor., lib v, lit. 19, cap. iii, and Clementin., lib. v, lit. 5, sec.
+2; see also the Corpus Juris Canonici, Paris, 1618, pp. 227, 228.
+For the position of the English Church, see Gibson's Corpus Juris
+Ecclesiastici Anglicani, pp. 1070, 1071, 1106.
+
+
+This theological hostility to the taking of interest was imbedded firmly
+in the canon law. Again and again it defined usury to be the taking of
+anything of value beyond the exact original amount of a loan; and
+under sanction of the universal Church it denounced this as a crime
+and declared all persons defending it to be guilty of heresy. What this
+meant the world knows but too well.
+
+The whole evolution of European civilization was greatly hindered by
+this conscientious policy. Money could only be loaned in most countries
+at the risk of incurring odium in this world and damnation in the
+next; hence there was but little capital and few lenders. The rates of
+interest became at times enormous; as high as forty per cent in England,
+and ten per cent a month in Italy and Spain. Commerce, manufactures, and
+general enterprise were dwarfed, while pauperism flourished.
+
+Yet worse than these were the moral results. Doing what one holds to be
+evil is only second in bad consequences to doing what is really evil;
+hence, all lending and borrowing, even for the most legitimate purposes
+and at the most reasonable rates, tended to debase both borrower and
+lender. The prohibition of lending at interest in continental Europe
+promoted luxury and discouraged economy; the rich, who were not
+engaged in business, finding no easy way of employing their incomes
+productively, spent them largely in ostentation and riotous living. One
+evil effect is felt in all parts of the world to this hour. The Jews,
+so acute in intellect and strong in will, were virtually drawn or driven
+out of all other industries or professions by the theory that their
+race, being accursed, was only fitted for the abhorred profession of
+money-lending.(451)
+
+
+     (451) For evil economic results, and especially for the rise of the rate
+of interest in England and elsewhere at times to forty per cent, see
+Cunningham, Growth of English Industry and Commerce, Cambridge, 1890,
+p. 189; and for its rising to ten per cent a month, see Bedarride, Les
+Juifs en France, en Italie, at en Espagne, p. 220; see also Hallam's
+Middle Ages, London, 1853, pp. 401, 402. For the evil moral effects of
+the Church doctrine against taking interest, see Montesquieu, Esprit
+des Lois, lib. xxi, chap. xx; see also Sismondi, cited in Lecky. For
+the trifling with conscience, distinction between "consumptibles" and
+"fungibles," "possessio" and "dominium," etc., see Ashley, English
+Economic History, New York, pp. 152, 153; see also Leopold Delisle,
+Etudes, pp. 198, 468. For the effects of these doctrines on the Jews,
+see Milman, History of the Jews, vol. iii, p. 179; also Wellhausen,
+History of Israel, London, 1885, p. 546; also Beugnot, Les Juifs
+d'Occident, Paris, 1824, pt. 2, p. 114 (on driving Jews out of other
+industries than money-lending). For a noted mediaeval evasion of the
+Church rules against usury, see Peruzzi, Storia del Commercio e dei
+Banchieri di Firenze, Florence, 1868, pp. 172, 173.
+
+
+These evils were so manifest, when trade began to revive throughout
+Europe in the fifteenth century, that most earnest exertions were put
+forth to induce the Church to change its position.
+
+The first important effort of this kind was made by John Gerson. His
+general learning made him Chancellor of the University of Paris; his
+sacred learning made him the leading orator at the Council of Constance;
+his piety led men to attribute to him The Imitation of Christ. Shaking
+off theological shackles, he declared, "Better is it to lend money at
+reasonable interest, and thus to give aid to the poor, than to see them
+reduced by poverty to steal, waste their goods, and sell at a low price
+their personal and real property."
+
+But this idea was at once buried beneath citations from the Scriptures,
+the fathers, councils, popes, and the canon law. Even in the most active
+countries there seemed to be no hope. In England, under Henry VII,
+Cardinal Morton, the lord chancellor, addressed Parliament, asking it to
+take into consideration loans of money at interest. The result was a law
+which imposed on lenders at interest a fine of a hundred pounds besides
+the annulment of the loan; and, to show that there was an offence
+against religion involved, there was added a clause "reserving to the
+Church, notwithstanding this punishment, the correction of their souls
+according to the laws of the same."
+
+Similar enactments were made by civil authority in various parts of
+Europe; and just when the trade, commerce, and manufactures of the
+modern epoch had received an immense impulse from the great series of
+voyages of discovery by such men as Columbus, Vasco da Gama, Magellan,
+and the Cabots, this barrier against enterprise was strengthened by a
+decree from no less enlightened a pontiff than Leo X.
+
+The popular feeling warranted such decrees. As late as the end of
+the Middle Ages we find the people of Piacenza dragging the body of a
+money-lender out of his grave in consecrated ground and throwing it into
+the river Po, in order to stop a prolonged rainstorm; and outbreaks of
+the same spirit were frequent in other countries. (452)
+
+
+     (452) For Gerson's argument favouring a reasonable rate of interest, see
+Coquelin and Guillaumin, Dictionnaire, article Interet. For the renewed
+opposition to the taking of interest in England, see Craik, History of
+British Commerce, chap. vi. The statute cited is 3 Henry VII, chap. vi;
+it is found in Gibson's Corpus Juris Eccles. Anglic., p. 1071. For
+the adverse decree of Leo X, see Liegeois, p. 76. See also Lecky,
+Rationalism, vol. ii. For the dragging out of the usurer's body at
+Piacenza, see Burckhardt, The Renaissance in Italy, London, 1878, vol.
+ii, p. 339. For public opinion of similar strength on this subject in
+England, see Cunningham, p. 239; also Pike, History of Crime in England,
+vol. i, pp. 127, 193. For good general observations on the same, see
+Stephen, History of Criminal Law in England, London, 1883, vol. iii, pp.
+195-197. For usury laws in Castile and Aragon, see Bedarride, pp.
+191, 192. For exceedingly valuable details as to the attitude of the
+mediaeval Church, see Leopold Delisle, Etudes sur la Classe Agricole en
+Normandie au Moyen Age, Evreux, 1851, pp. 200 et seq., also p. 468. For
+penalties in France, see Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, in the Rolls
+Series, especially vol. iii, pp. 191, 192. For a curious evasion,
+sanctioned by Popes Martin V and Calixtus III when Church corporations
+became money-lenders, see H. C. Lea on The Ecclesiastical Treatment of
+Usury, in the Yale Review for February, 1894. For a detailed development
+of interesting subordinate points, see Ashley, Introduction to English
+Economic History and Theory, vol. ii, ch, vi.
+
+
+Another mode of obtaining relief was tried. Subtle theologians devised
+evasions of various sorts. Two among these inventions of the schoolmen
+obtained much notoriety.
+
+The first was the doctrine of "damnum emergens": if a lender suffered
+loss by the failure of the borrower to return a loan at a date named,
+compensation might be made. Thus it was that, if the nominal date of
+payment was made to follow quickly after the real date of the loan,
+the compensation for the anticipated delay in payment had a very strong
+resemblance to interest. Equally cogent was the doctrine of "lucrum
+cessans": if a man, in order to lend money, was obliged to diminish his
+income from productive enterprises, it was claimed that he might receive
+in return, in addition to his money, an amount exactly equal to this
+diminution in his income.
+
+But such evasions were looked upon with little favour by the great body
+of theologians, and the name of St. Thomas Aquinas was triumphantly
+cited against them.
+
+Opposition on scriptural grounds to the taking of interest was not
+confined to the older Church. Protestantism was led by Luther and
+several of his associates into the same line of thought and practice.
+Said Luther. "To exchange anything with any one and gain by the exchange
+is not to do a charity; but to steal. Every usurer is a thief worthy
+of the gibbet. I call those usurers who lend money at five or six per
+cent." But it is only just to say that at a later period Luther took
+a much more moderate view. Melanchthon, defining usury as any interest
+whatever, condemned it again and again; and the Goldberg Catechism of
+1558, for which he wrote a preface and recommendation, declares every
+person taking interest for money a thief. From generation to generation
+this doctrine was upheld by the more eminent divines of the Lutheran
+Church in all parts of Germany. The English reformers showed the same
+hostility to interest-bearing loans. Under Henry VIII the law of Henry
+VII against taking interest had been modified for the better; but the
+revival of religious feeling under Edward VI caused in 1552 the passage
+of the "Bill of Usury." In this it is said, "Forasmuch as usury is
+by the word of God utterly prohibited, as a vice most odious and
+detestable, as in divers places of the Holy Scriptures it is evident to
+be seen, which thing by no godly teachings and persuasions can sink into
+the hearts of divers greedy, uncharitable, and covetous persons of
+this realm, nor yet, by any terrible threatenings of God's wrath and
+vengeance," etc., it is enacted that whosoever shall thereafter lend
+money "for any manner of usury, increase, lucre, gain, or interest, to
+be had, received, or hoped for," shall forfeit principal and interest,
+and suffer imprisonment and fine at the king's pleasure.(453)
+
+
+     (453) For Luther's views, see his sermon, Von dem Wucher, Wittenberg,
+1519; also the Table Talk, cited in Coquelin and Guillaumin, article
+Interet. For the later, more moderate views of Luther, Melanchthon, and
+Zwingli, making a compromise with the needs of society, see Bohm-Bawerk,
+p. 27, citing Wiskemann. For Melanchthon and a long line of the most
+eminent Lutheran divines who have denounced the taking of interest, see
+Die Wucherfrage, St. Louis, 1869, pp. 94 et seq. For the law against
+usury under Edward VI, see Cobbett's Parliamentary History, vol. i, p.
+596; see also Craik, History of British Commerce, chap. vi.
+
+
+But, most fortunately, it happened that Calvin, though at times
+stumbling over the usual texts against the taking of interest for money,
+turned finally in the right direction. He cut through the metaphysical
+arguments of Aristotle, and characterized the subtleties devised to
+evade the Scriptures as "a childish game with God." In place of
+these subtleties there was developed among Protestants a serviceable
+fiction--the statement that usury means ILLEGAL OR OPPRESSIVE INTEREST.
+Under the action of this fiction, commerce and trade revived rapidly
+in Protestant countries, though with occasional checks from exact
+interpreters of Scripture. At the same period in France, the great
+Protestant jurist Dumoulin brought all his legal learning and skill in
+casuistry to bear on the same side. A certain ferretlike acuteness
+and litheness seem to have enabled him to hunt down the opponents of
+interest-taking through the most tortuous arguments of scholasticism.
+
+In England the struggle went on with varying fortune; statesmen on one
+side, and theologians on the other. We have seen how, under Henry
+VIII, interest was allowed at a fixed rate, and how, the development of
+English Protestantism having at first strengthened the old theological
+view, there was, under Edward VI, a temporarily successful attempt to
+forbid the taking of interest by law.
+
+The Puritans, dwelling on Old Testament texts, continued for a
+considerable time especially hostile to the taking of any interest.
+Henry Smith, a noted preacher, thundered from the pulpit of St. Clement
+Danes in London against "the evasions of Scripture" which permitted men
+to lend money on interest at all. In answer to the contention that only
+"biting" usury was oppressive, Wilson, a noted upholder of the strict
+theological view in political economy, declared: "There is difference in
+deed between the bite of a dogge and the bite of a flea, and yet, though
+the flea doth lesse harm, yet the flea doth bite after hir kinde, yea,
+and draweth blood, too. But what a world this is, that men will make sin
+to be but a fleabite, when they see God's word directly against them!"
+
+The same view found strong upholders among contemporary English
+Catholics. One of the most eminent of these, Nicholas Sanders, revived
+very vigorously the use of an old scholastic argument. He insisted
+that "man can not sell time," that time is not a human possession, but
+something which is given by God alone: he declared, "Time was not of
+your gift to your neighbour, but of God's gift to you both."
+
+In the Parliament of the period, we find strong assertions of the old
+idea, with constant reference to Scripture and the fathers. In one
+debate, Wilson cited from Ezekiel and other prophets and attributed to
+St. Augustine the doctrine that "to take but a cup of wine is usury
+and damnable." Fleetwood recalled the law of King Edward the Confessor,
+which submitted usurers to the ordeal.
+
+But arguments of this sort had little influence upon Elizabeth and her
+statesmen. Threats of damnation in the next world troubled them little
+if they could have their way in this. They re-established the practice
+of taking interest under restrictions, and this, in various forms,
+has remained in England ever since. Most notable in this phase of the
+evolution of scientific doctrine in political economy at that period
+is the emergence of a recognised difference between USURY and
+INTEREST. Between these two words, which had so long been synonymous,
+a distinction now appears: the former being construed to indicate
+OPPRESSIVE INTEREST, and the latter JUST RATES for the use of money.
+This idea gradually sank into the popular mind of Protestant countries,
+and the scriptural texts no longer presented any difficulty to the
+people at large, since there grew up a general belief that the word
+"usury," as employed in Scripture, had ALWAYS meant exorbitant interest;
+and this in spite of the parable of the Talents. Still, that the old
+Aristotelian quibble had not been entirely forgotten, is clearly seen by
+various passages in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice. But this line of
+reasoning seems to have received its quietus from Lord Bacon. He did
+not, indeed, develop a strong and connected argument on the subject;
+but he burst the bonds of Aristotle, and based interest for money upon
+natural laws. How powerful the new current of thought was, is seen
+from the fact that James I, of all monarchs the most fettered by
+scholasticism and theology, sanctioned a statute dealing with interest
+for money as absolutely necessary. Yet, even after this, the old idea
+asserted itself; for the bishops utterly refused to agree to the law
+allowing interest until a proviso was inserted that "nothing in this law
+contained shall be construed or expounded to allow the practice of usury
+in point of religion or conscience." The old view cropped out from time
+to time in various public declarations. Famous among these were the
+Treatise of Usury, published in 1612 by Dr. Fenton, who restated the
+old arguments with much force, and the Usury Condemned of John Blaxton,
+published in 1634. Blaxton, who also was a clergyman, defined usury as
+the taking of any interest whatever for money, citing in support of this
+view six archbishops and bishops and over thirty doctors of divinity in
+the Anglican Church, some of their utterances being very violent and all
+of them running their roots down into texts of Scripture. Typical among
+these is a sermon of Bishop Sands, in which he declares, regarding the
+taking of interest: "This canker hath corrupted all England; we shall
+doe God and our country true service by taking away this evill; represse
+it by law, else the heavy hand of God hangeth over us and will strike
+us."
+
+
+
+
+II. RETREAT OF THE CHURCH, PROTESTANT AND CATHOLIC.
+
+But about the middle of the seventeenth century Sir Robert Filmer gave
+this doctrine the heaviest blow it ever received in England. Taking up
+Dr. Fenton's treatise, he answered it, and all works like it, in a way
+which, however unsuitable to this century, was admirably adapted to
+that. He cites Scripture and chops logic after a masterly manner.
+Characteristic is this declaration: "St. Paul doth, with one breath,
+reckon up seventeen sins, and yet usury is none of them; but many
+preachers can not reckon up seven deadly sins, except they make usury
+one of them." Filmer followed Fenton not only through his theology, but
+through his political economy, with such relentless keenness that the
+old doctrine seems to have been then and there practically worried out
+of existence, so far as England was concerned.
+
+Departures from the strict scriptural doctrines regarding interest soon
+became frequent in Protestant countries, and they were followed up with
+especial vigour in Holland. Various theologians in the Dutch Church
+attempted to assert the scriptural view by excluding bankers from
+the holy communion; but the commercial vigour of the republic was too
+strong: Salmasius led on the forces of right reason brilliantly, and by
+the middle of the seventeenth century the question was settled rightly
+in that country. This work was aided, indeed, by a far greater man, Hugo
+Grotius; but here was shown the power of an established dogma. Great as
+Grotius was--and it may well be held that his book on War and Peace
+has wrought more benefit to humanity than any other attributed to
+human authorship--he was, in the matter of interest for money, too much
+entangled in theological reasoning to do justice to his cause or
+to himself. He declared the prohibition of it to be scriptural, but
+resisted the doctrine of Aristotle, and allowed interest on certain
+natural and practical grounds.
+
+In Germany the struggle lasted longer. Of some little significance,
+perhaps, is the demand of Adam Contzen, in 1629, that lenders
+at interest should be punished as thieves; but by the end of the
+seventeenth century Puffendorf and Leibnitz had gained the victory.
+
+Protestantism, open as it was to the currents of modern thought, could
+not long continue under the dominion of ideas unfavourable to economic
+development, and perhaps the most remarkable proof of this was presented
+early in the eighteenth century in America, by no less strict a
+theologian than Cotton Mather. In his Magnalia he argues against the
+whole theological view with a boldness, acuteness, and good sense which
+cause us to wonder that this can be the same man who was so infatuated
+regarding witchcraft. After an argument so conclusive as his, there
+could have been little left of the old anti-economic doctrine in New
+England.(454)
+
+
+     (454) For Calvin's views, see his letter published in the appendix to
+Pearson's Theories on Usury. His position is well-stated in Bohm-Bawerk,
+pp. 28 et seq., where citations are given. See also Economic Tracts,
+No. IV, New York, 1881, pp. 34, 35; and for some serviceable Protestant
+fictions, see Cunningham, Christian Opinion on Usury, pp. 60, 61. For
+Dumoulin (Molinaeus), see Bohm-Bawerk, as above, pp. 29 et seq. For
+debates on usury in the British Parliament in Elizabeth's time, see
+Cobbett, Parliamentary History, vol. i, pp 756 et seq. A striking
+passage in Shakespeare is found in the Merchant of Venice, Act I, scene
+iii: "If thou wilt lend this money, lend it not as to thy friend; for
+when did friendship take a breed for barren metal of his friend?" For
+the right direction taken by Lord Bacon, see Neumann, Geschichte des
+Wuchers in Deutschland, Halle, 1864, pp. 497, 498. For Salmasius, see
+his De Usuris, Leyden, 1638, and for others mentioned, see Bohm-Bawerk,
+pp. 34 et seq.; also Lecky, vol. ii. p. 256. For the saving clause
+inderted by the bishops in the statute of James I, see the Corpus Juris
+Eccles. Anglic., p. 1071; also Murray, History of Usury, Philadelphia,
+1866, p. 49.
+
+For Blaxton, see his English Usurer, or Usury Condemned, by John
+Blaxton, Preacher of God's Word, London, 1634. Blaxton gives some of
+Calvin's earlier utterances against interest. For Bishop Sands;s sermon,
+see p. 11. For Filmer, see his Quaestio Quodlibetica, London, 1652,
+reprinted in the Harleian Miscellany, vol x, pp. 105 et seq. For
+Grotius, see the De Jure Belli ac Pacis, lib. ii, cap. xii. For Cotton
+Mather's argument, see the Magnalia, London, 1702, pp. 5, 52.
+
+
+But while the retreat of the Protestant Church from the old doctrine
+regarding the taking of interest was henceforth easy, in the Catholic
+Church it was far more difficult. Infallible popes and councils, with
+saints, fathers, and doctors, had so constantly declared the taking of
+any interest at all to be contrary to Scripture, that the more exact
+though less fortunate interpretation of the sacred text relating to
+interest continued in Catholic countries. When it was attempted in
+France in the seventeenth century to argue that usury "means oppressive
+interest," the Theological Faculty of the Sorbonne declared that usury
+is the taking of any interest at all, no matter how little; and the
+eighteenth chapter of Ezekiel was cited to clinch this argument.
+
+Another attempt to ease the burden of industry and commerce was made by
+declaring that "usury means interest demanded not as a matter of favour
+but as a matter of right." This, too, was solemnly condemned by Pope
+innocent XI.
+
+Again an attempt was made to find a way out of the difficulty by
+declaring that "usury is interest greater than the law allows." This,
+too, was condemned, and so also was the declaration that "usury is
+interest on loans not for a fixed time."
+
+Still the forces of right reason pressed on, and among them, in the
+seventeenth century, in France, was Richard Simon. He attempted to gloss
+over the declarations of Scripture against lending at interest, in an
+elaborate treatise, but was immediately confronted by Bossuet. Just as
+Bossuet had mingled Scripture with astronomy and opposed the Copernican
+theory, so now he mingled Scripture with political economy and denounced
+the lending of money at interest. He called attention to the fact that
+the Scriptures, the councils of the Church from the beginning, the
+popes, the fathers, had all interpreted the prohibition of "usury" to
+be a prohibition of any lending at interest; and he demonstrated this
+interpretation to be the true one. Simon was put to confusion and his
+book condemned.
+
+There was but too much reason for Bossuet's interpretation. There stood
+the fact that the prohibition of one of the most simple and beneficial
+principles in political and economical science was affirmed, not only
+by the fathers, but by twenty-eight councils of the Church, six of them
+general councils, and by seventeen popes, to say nothing of innumerable
+doctors in theology and canon law. And these prohibitions by the Church
+had been accepted as of divine origin by all obedient sons of the Church
+in the government of France. Such rulers as Charles the Bald in the
+ninth century, and St. Louis in the thirteenth, had riveted this idea
+into the civil law so firmly that it seemed impossible ever to detach
+it.(455)
+
+
+     (455) For the declaration of the Sorbonne in the seventeenth century
+against taking of interest, see Lecky, Rationalism, vol. ii, p. 248,
+note. For the special condemnation by Innocent XI, see Viva, Damnatae
+Theses, Pavia, 1715, pp. 112-114. For consideration of various ways of
+escaping the difficulty regarding interest, see Lecky, Rationalism,
+vol. ii, pp. 249, 250. For Bousset's strong declaration against taking
+interest, see his Oeuvres, Paris, 1845-'46, vol. i, p. 734, vol. vi,
+p. 654, and vol. ix, p. 49 et seq. For the number of councils and popes
+condemning usury, see Lecky, as above, vol. ii, p. 255, note, citing
+Concina.
+
+
+As might well be expected, Italy was one of the countries in which
+the theological theory regarding usury--lending at interest--was most
+generally asserted and assented to. Among the great number of Italian
+canonists who supported the theory, two deserve especial mention, as
+affording a contrast to the practical manner in which the commercial
+Italians met the question.
+
+In the sixteenth century, very famous among canonists was the learned
+Benedictine, Vilagut. In 1589 he published at Venice his great work
+on usury, supporting with much learning and vigour the most extreme
+theological consequences of the old doctrine. He defines usury as the
+taking of anything beyond the original loan, and declares it mortal sin;
+he advocates the denial to usurers of Christian burial, confession,
+the sacraments, absolution, and connection with the universities; he
+declares that priests receiving offerings from usurers should refrain
+from exercising their ministry until the matter is passed upon by the
+bishop.
+
+About the middle of the seventeenth century another ponderous folio was
+published in Venice upon the same subject and with the same title, by
+Onorato Leotardi. So far from showing any signs of yielding, he is even
+more extreme than Vilagut had been, and quotes with approval the old
+declaration that lenders of money at interest are not only robbers but
+murderers.
+
+So far as we can learn, no real opposition was made in either century to
+this theory, as a theory; as to PRACTICE, it was different. The Italian
+traders did not answer theological argument; they simply overrode it. In
+spite of theology, great banks were established, and especially that
+of Venice at the end of the twelfth century, and those of Barcelona and
+Genoa at the beginning of the fifteenth. Nowhere was commerce carried
+on in more complete defiance of this and other theological theories
+hampering trade than in the very city where these great treatises
+were published. The sin of usury, like the sin of commerce with the
+Mohammedans, seems to have been settled for by the Venetian merchants
+on their deathbeds; and greatly to the advantage of the magnificent
+churches and ecclesiastical adornments of the city.
+
+By the seventeenth century the clearest thinkers in the Roman Church saw
+that her theology must be readjusted to political economy: so began a
+series of amazing attempts to reconcile a view permitting usury with the
+long series of decrees of popes and councils forbidding it.
+
+In Spain, the great Jesuit casuist Escobar led the way, and rarely
+had been seen such exquisite hair-splitting. But his efforts were not
+received with the gratitude they perhaps deserved. Pascal, revolting at
+their moral effect, attacked them unsparingly in his Provincial Letters,
+citing especially such passages as the following: "It is usury to
+receive profit from those to whom one lends, if it be exacted as justly
+due; but, if it be exacted as a debt of gratitude, it is not usury."
+This and a multitude of similar passages Pascal covered with the keen
+ridicule and indignant denunciation of which he was so great a master.
+
+But even the genius of Pascal could not stop such efforts. In the
+eighteenth century they were renewed by a far greater theologian than
+Escobar--by him who was afterward made a saint and proclaimed a doctor
+of the Church--Alphonso Liguori.
+
+Starting with bitter denunciations of usury, Liguori soon developed a
+multitude of subtle devices for escaping the guilt of it. Presenting
+a long and elaborate theory of "mental, usury" he arrives at the
+conclusion that, if the borrower pay interest of his own free will, the
+lender may keep it. In answer to the question whether the lender may
+keep what the borrower paid, not out of gratitude but out of fear--fear
+that otherwise loans might be refused him in future--Liguori says, "To
+be usury it must be paid by reason of a contract, or as justly due;
+payment by reason of such a fear does not cause interest to be paid
+as an actual price." Again Liguori tells us, "It is not usury to
+exact something in return for the danger and expense of regaining
+the principal." The old subterfuges of "Damnum emergens" and "Lucrum
+cessans" are made to do full duty. A remarkable quibble is found in the
+answer to the question whether he sins who furnishes money to a man
+whom he knows to intend employing it in usury. After citing affirmative
+opinions from many writers, Liguori says, "Notwithstanding these
+opinions, the better opinion seems to me to be that the man thus putting
+out his money is not bound to make restitution, for his action is not
+injurious to the borrower, but rather favourable to him," and this
+reasoning the saint develops at great length.
+
+In the Latin countries this sort of casuistry eased the relations of
+the Church with the bankers, and it was full time; for now there came
+arguments of a different kind. The eighteenth century philosophy
+had come upon the stage, and the first effective onset of political
+scientists against the theological opposition in southern Europe was
+made in Italy--the most noted leaders in the attack being Galiani and
+Maffei. Here and there feeble efforts were made to meet them, but it was
+felt more and more by thinking churchmen that entirely different tactics
+must be adopted.
+
+About the same time came an attack in France, and though its results
+were less immediate at home, they were much more effective abroad. In
+1748 appeared Montesquieu's Spirit of the Laws. In this famous book were
+concentrated twenty years of study and thought by a great thinker on
+the interests of the world about him. In eighteen months it went through
+twenty-two editions; it was translated into every civilized language;
+and among the things on which Montesquieu brought his wit and wisdom
+to bear with especial force was the doctrine of the Church regarding
+interest on loans. In doing this he was obliged to use a caution in
+forms which seems strangely at variance with the boldness of his ideas.
+In view of the strictness of ecclesiastical control in France, he felt
+it safest to make his whole attack upon those theological and economic
+follies of Mohammedan countries which were similar to those which the
+theological spirit had fastened on France.(456)
+
+
+     (456) For Vilagut, see his Tractatus de Usuris, Venice, 1589, especially
+pp. 21, 25, 399. For Leotardi, see his De Usuris, Venice, 1655,
+especially preface, pp. 6, 7 et seq. For Pascal and Escobar, see the
+Provincial Letters, edited by Sayres, Cambridge, 1880, Letter VIII, pp.
+183-186; also a note to the same letter, p. 196. For Liguori, see
+his Theologia Moralis, Paris, 1834, lib. iii, tract v, cap. iii: De
+Contractibus, dub, vii. For the eighteenth century attack in Italy, see
+Bohm-Bawerk, pp. 48 et seq. For Montesquieu's view of interest on loans,
+see the Esprit des Lois, livre xxii.
+
+
+By the middle of the eighteenth century the Church authorities at
+Rome clearly saw the necessity of a concession: the world would endure
+theological restriction no longer; a way of escape MUST be found. It was
+seen, even by the most devoted theologians, that mere denunciations and
+use of theological arguments or scriptural texts against the scientific
+idea were futile.
+
+To this feeling it was due that, even in the first years of the century,
+the Jesuit casuists had come to the rescue. With exquisite subtlety some
+of their acutest intellects devoted themselves to explaining away the
+utterances on this subject of saints, fathers, doctors, popes, and
+councils. These explanations were wonderfully ingenious, but many of the
+older churchmen continued to insist upon the orthodox view, and at last
+the Pope himself intervened. Fortunately for the world, the seat of
+St. Peter was then occupied by Benedict XIV, certainly one of the most
+gifted, morally and intellectually, in the whole line of Roman pontiffs.
+Tolerant and sympathetic for the oppressed, he saw the necessity of
+taking up the question, and he grappled with it effectually: he
+rendered to Catholicism a service like that which Calvin had rendered
+to Protestantism, by shrewdly cutting a way through the theological
+barrier. In 1745 he issued his encyclical Vix pervenit, which declared
+that the doctrine of the Church remained consistent with itself; that
+usury is indeed a sin, and that it consists in demanding any amount
+beyond the exact amount lent, but that there are occasions when on
+special grounds the lender may obtain such additional sum.
+
+What these "occasions" and "special grounds" might be, was left very
+vague; but this action was sufficient.
+
+At the same time no new restrictions upon books advocating the taking
+of interest for money were imposed, and, in the year following his
+encyclical, Benedict openly accepted the dedication of one of them--the
+work of Maffei, and perhaps the most cogent of all.
+
+Like the casuistry of Boscovich in using the Copernican theory for
+"convenience in argument," while acquiescing in its condemnation by the
+Church authorities, this encyclical of Pope Benedict broke the spell.
+Turgot, Quesnay, Adam Smith, Hume, Bentham, and their disciples pressed
+on, and science won for mankind another great victory.(457)
+
+
+     (457) For Quesnay, see his Observations sur l'Interet de l'Argent, in
+his Oeuvres, Frankfort and Paris, 1888, pp. 399 et seq. For Turgot, see
+the Collections des Economistes, Paris, 1844, vols. iii and iv; also
+Blanqui, Histoire de l'Economie Politique, English translation, p. 373.
+For an excellent though brief summary of the efforts of the Jesuits to
+explain away the old action of the Church, see Lecky, vol. ii, pp
+256, 257. For the action of Benedict XIV, see Reusch, Der Index der
+Vorbotenen Bucher, Bonn, 1885, vol. ii, pp 847, 848. For a comical
+picture of the "quagmire' into which the hierarchy brought itself in the
+squaring of its practice with its theory, see Dollinger, as above, pp.
+227, 228. For cunningly vague statements of the action of Benedict XIV,
+see Mastrofini, Sur l'Usure, French translation, Lyons, 1834, pp. 125,
+255. The abbate, as will be seen, has not the slightest hesitaion in
+telling an untruth in order to preserve the consistency of papal action
+in the matter of usury--e.g., pp. 93, 94 96, and elsewhere.
+
+
+Yet in this case, as in others, insurrections against the sway of
+scientific truth appeared among some overzealous religionists. When the
+Sorbonne, having retreated from its old position, armed itself with
+new casuistries against those who held to its earlier decisions, sundry
+provincial doctors in theology protested indignantly, making the
+old citations from the Scriptures, fathers, saints, doctors, popes,
+councils, and canonists. Again the Roman court intervened. In 1830
+the Inquisition at Rome, with the approval of Pius VIII, though still
+declining to commit itself on the DOCTRINE involved, decreed that, as to
+PRACTICE, confessors should no longer disturb lenders of money at legal
+interest.
+
+But even this did not quiet the more conscientious theologians. The old
+weapons were again furbished and hurled by the Abbe Laborde, Vicar
+of the Metropolitan Archdiocese of Auch, and by the Abbe Dennavit,
+Professor of Theology at Lyons. Good Abbe Dennavit declared that he
+refused absolution to those who took interest and to priests who pretend
+that the sanction of the civil law is sufficient.
+
+But the "wisdom of the serpent" was again brought into requisition, and
+early in the decade between 1830 and 1840 the Abbate Mastrofini issued
+a work on usury, which, he declared on its title-page, demonstrated that
+"moderate usury is not contrary to Holy Scripture, or natural law,
+or the decisions of the Church." Nothing can be more comical than the
+suppressions of truth, evasions of facts, jugglery with phrases,
+and perversions of history, to which the abbate is forced to resort
+throughout his book in order to prove that the Church has made no
+mistake. In the face of scores of explicit deliverances and decrees of
+fathers, doctors, popes, and councils against the taking of any interest
+whatever for money, he coolly pretended that what they had declared
+against was EXORBITANT interest. He made a merit of the action of the
+Church, and showed that its course had been a blessing to humanity. But
+his masterpiece is in dealing with the edicts of Clement V and Benedict
+XIV. As to the first, it will be remembered that Clement, in accord
+with the Council of Vienne, had declared that "any one who shall
+pertinaciously presume to affirm that the taking of interest for money
+is not a sin, we decree him to be a heiretic fit for punishment," and we
+have seen that Benedict XIV did not at all deviate from the doctrines of
+his predecessors. Yet Mastrofini is equal to his task, and brings out,
+as the conclusion of his book, the statement put upon his title-page,
+that what the Church condemns is only EXORBITANT interest.
+
+This work was sanctioned by various high ecclesiastical dignitaries, and
+served its purpose; for it covered the retreat of the Church.
+
+In 1872 the Holy Office, answering a question solemnly put by the Bishop
+of Ariano, as solemnly declared that those who take eight per cent
+interest per annum are "not to be disquieted"; and in 1873 appeared a
+book published under authority from the Holy See, allowing the faithful
+to take moderate interest under condition that any future decisions
+of the Pope should be implicitly obeyed. Social science as applied to
+political economy had gained a victory final and complete. The Torlonia
+family at Rome to-day, with its palaces, chapels, intermarriages,
+affiliations, and papal favour--all won by lending money at interest,
+and by liberal gifts, from the profits of usury, to the Holy See--is but
+one out of many growths of its kind on ramparts long since surrendered
+and deserted.(458)
+
+
+     (458) For the decree forbidding confessors to trouble lenders of money
+at legal interest, see Addis and Arnold, Catholic Dictionary, as above;
+also Mastrofini, as above, in the appendix, where various other
+recent Roman decrees are given. As to the controversy generally, see
+Mastrofini; also La Replique des douze Docteurs, cited by Guillaumin and
+Coquelin; also Reusch, vol. ii, p. 850. As an example of Mastrofini's
+way of making black appear white, compare the Latin text of the decree
+on page 97 with his statements regarding it; see also his cunning
+substitution of the new significance of the word usury for the old in
+various parts of his book. A good historical presentation of the general
+subject will be found in Roscher, Geschichte der National-Oeconomie in
+Deutschland, Munchen, 1874, under articles Wucher and Zinsnehmen. For
+France, see especially Petit, Traite de l'Usure, Paris, 1840; and for
+Germany, see Neumann, Geschichte des Wuchers in Deutschland, Halle,
+1865. For the view of a modern leader of thought in this field, see
+Jeremy Bentham, Defence of Usury, Letter X. For an admirable piece of
+research into the nicer points involved in the whole subject, see H.
+C. Lea, The Ecclesiatical Treatment of Usury, in the Yale Review for
+February, 1894.
+
+
+The dealings of theology with public economy were by no means confined
+to the taking of interest for money. It would be interesting to note
+the restrictions placed upon commerce by the Church prohibition of
+commercial intercourse with infidels, against which the Republic of
+Venice fought a good fight; to note how, by a most curious perversion
+of Scripture in the Greek Church, many of the peasantry of Russia were
+prevented from raising and eating potatoes; how, in Scotland, at the
+beginning of this century, the use of fanning mills for winnowing grain
+was widely denounced as contrary to the text, "The wind bloweth where it
+listeth," etc., as leaguing with Satan, who is "Prince of the powers of
+the air," and therefore as sufficient cause for excommunication from the
+Scotch Church. Instructive it would be also to note how the introduction
+of railways was declared by an archbishop of the French Church to be an
+evidence of the divine displeasure against country innkeepers who set
+meat before their guests on fast days, and who were now punished by
+seeing travellers carried by their doors; how railways and telegraphs
+were denounced from a few noted pulpits as heralds of Antichrist; and
+how in Protestant England the curate of Rotherhithe, at the breaking in
+of the Thames Tunnel, so destructive to life and property, declared it
+from his pulpit a just judgment upon the presumptuous aspirations of
+mortal man.
+
+The same tendency is seen in the opposition of conscientious men to the
+taking of the census in Sweden and the United States, on account of
+the terms in which the numbering of Israel is spoken of in the Old
+Testament. Religious scruples on similar grounds have also been avowed
+against so beneficial a thing as life insurance.
+
+Apparently unimportant as these manifestations are, they indicate a
+widespread tendency; in the application of scriptural declarations to
+matters of social economy, which has not yet ceased, though it is fast
+fading away.(459)
+
+
+     (459) For various interdicts laid upon commerce by the Church, see Heyd,
+Histoire du Commerce du Levant au Moyen-Age, Leipsic, 1886, vol. ii,
+passim. For the injury done to commerce by prohibition of intercourse
+with the infidel, see Lindsay, History of Merchant Shipping, London,
+1874, vol. ii. For superstitions regarding the introduction of the
+potato in Russia, and the name "devil's root" given it, see Hellwald,
+Culturgeschichte, vol. ii, p. 476; also Haxthausen, La Russie. For
+opposition to winnowing machines, see Burton, History of Scotland, vol.
+viii, p. 511; also Lecky, Eighteenth Century, vol. ii, p. 83; also Mause
+Headrigg's views in Scott's Old Mortality, chap. vii. For the case of a
+person debarred from the communion for "raising the devil's wind" with
+a winnowing machine, see Works of Sir J. Y. Simpson, vol. ii. Those
+doubting the authority or motives of Simpson may be reminded that he
+was to the day of his death one of the strictest adherants to Scotch
+orthodoxy. As to the curate of Rotherhithe, see Journal of Sir I. Brunel
+for May 20, 1827, in Life of I. K. Brunel, p. 30. As to the conclusions
+drawn from the numbering of Israel, see Michaelis, Commentaries on the
+Laws of Moses, 1874, vol. ii, p. 3. The author of this work himself
+witnessed the reluctance of a very conscientious man to answer the
+questions of a census marshal, Mr. Lewis Hawley, of Syracuse, New York;
+and this reluctance was based upon the reasons assigned in II Samuel
+xxiv, 1, and I Chronicles xxi,1, for the numbering of the children of
+Israel.
+
+
+Worthy of especial study, too, would be the evolution of the modern
+methods of raising and bettering the condition of the poor,--the
+evolution, especially, of the idea that men are to be helped to help
+themselves, in opposition to the old theories of indiscriminate giving,
+which, taking root in some of the most beautiful utterances of our
+sacred books, grew in the warm atmosphere of medieval devotion into
+great systems for the pauperizing of the labouring classes. Here, too,
+scientific modes of thought in social science have given a new and
+nobler fruitage to the whole growth of Christian benevolence.(460)
+
+
+     (460) Among the vast number of authorities regarding the evolution of
+better methods in dealing with pauperism, I would call attention to
+a work which is especially suggestive--Behrends, Christianity and
+Socialism, New York, 1886.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.  FROM THE DIVINE ORACLES TO THE HIGHER CRITICISM.
+
+
+
+
+I. THE OLDER INTERPRETATION.
+
+
+The great sacred books of the world are the most precious of human
+possessions. They embody the deepest searchings into the most vital
+problems of humanity in all its stages: the naive guesses of the world's
+childhood, the opening conceptions of its youth, the more fully rounded
+beliefs of its maturity.
+
+These books, no matter how unhistorical in parts and at times,
+are profoundly true. They mirror the evolution of man's loftiest
+aspirations, hopes, loves, consolations, and enthusiasms; his hates and
+fears; his views of his origin and destiny; his theories of his rights
+and duties; and these not merely in their lights but in their shadows.
+Therefore it is that they contain the germs of truths most necessary in
+the evolution of humanity, and give to these germs the environment and
+sustenance which best insure their growth and strength.
+
+With wide differences in origin and character, this sacred literature
+has been developed and has exercised its influence in obedience to
+certain general laws. First of these in time, if not in importance, is
+that which governs its origin: in all civilizations we find that the
+Divine Spirit working in the mind of man shapes his sacred books first
+of all out of the chaos of myth and legend; and of these books, when
+life is thus breathed into them, the fittest survive.
+
+So broad and dense is this atmosphere of myth and legend enveloping
+them that it lingers about them after they have been brought forth
+full-orbed; and, sometimes, from it are even produced secondary mythical
+and legendary concretions--satellites about these greater orbs of early
+thought. Of these secondary growths one may be mentioned as showing how
+rich in myth-making material was the atmosphere which enveloped our own
+earlier sacred literature.
+
+In the third century before Christ there began to be elaborated among
+the Jewish scholars of Alexandria, then the great centre of human
+thought, a Greek translation of the main books constituting the Old
+Testament. Nothing could be more natural at that place and time than
+such a translation; yet the growth of explanatory myth and legend around
+it was none the less luxuriant. There was indeed a twofold growth. Among
+the Jews favourable to the new version a legend rose which justified it.
+This legend in its first stage was to the effect that the Ptolemy then
+on the Egyptian throne had, at the request of his chief librarian, sent
+to Jerusalem for translators; that the Jewish high priest Eleazar had
+sent to the king a most precious copy of the Scriptures from the temple
+at Jerusalem, and six most venerable, devout, and learned scholars from
+each of the twelve tribes of Israel; that the number of translators thus
+corresponded with the mysterious seventy-two appellations of God;
+and that the combined efforts of these seventy-two men produced a
+marvellously perfect translation.
+
+But in that atmosphere of myth and marvel the legend continued to grow,
+and soon we have it blooming forth yet more gorgeously in the statement
+that King Ptolemy ordered each of the seventy-two to make by himself
+a full translation of the entire Old Testament, and shut up each
+translator in a separate cell on the island of Pharos, secluding him
+there until the work was done; that the work of each was completed in
+exactly seventy-two days; and that when, at the end of the seventy-two
+days, the seventy-two translations were compared, each was found exactly
+like all the others. This showed clearly Jehovah's APPROVAL.
+
+But out of all this myth and legend there was also evolved an account of
+a very different sort. The Jews who remained faithful to the traditions
+of their race regarded this Greek version as a profanation, and
+therefore there grew up the legend that on the completion of the work
+there was darkness over the whole earth during three days. This showed
+clearly Jehovah's DISAPPROVAL.
+
+These well-known legends, which arose within what--as compared with any
+previous time--was an exceedingly enlightened period, and which were
+steadfastly believed by a vast multitude of Jews and Christians for
+ages, are but single examples among scores which show how inevitably
+such traditions regarding sacred books are developed in the earlier
+stages of civilization, when men explain everything by miracle and
+nothing by law.(461)
+
+
+     (461) For the legend regarding the Septaguint, especially as developed
+by the letters of Pseudo-Aristeas, and for quaint citations from the
+fathers regarding it, see The History of the Seventy-two Interpretors,
+from the Greek of Aristeas, translated by Mr. Lewis, London, 1715; also
+Clement of Alexandria, in the Ante-Nicene Christian Library, Edinburgh,
+1867, p. 448. For interesting summaries showing the growth of the
+story, see Drummond, Philo Judaeus and the Growth of the Alexandrian
+Philosophy, London, 1888, vol. i, pp. 231 et seq.; also Renan, Histoire
+du Peuple Israel, vol. iv, chap. iv; also, for Philo Judaeus's part in
+developing the legend, see Rev. Dr. Sanday's Bampton Lectures for 1893,
+on Inspiration, pp. 86, 87.
+
+
+As the second of these laws governing the evolution of sacred literature
+may be mentioned that which we have constantly seen so effective in the
+growth of theological ideas--that to which Comte gave the name of the
+Law of Wills and Causes. Obedient to this, man attributes to the Supreme
+Being a physical, intellectual, and moral structure like his own; hence
+it is that the votary of each of the great world religions ascribes to
+its sacred books what he considers absolute perfection: he imagines them
+to be what he himself would give the world, were he himself infinitely
+good, wise, and powerful.
+
+A very simple analogy might indeed show him that even a literature
+emanating from an all-wise, beneficent, and powerful author might not
+seem perfect when judged by a human standard; for he has only to look
+about him in the world to find that the work which he attributes to an
+all-wise, all-beneficent, and all-powerful Creator is by no means free
+from evil and wrong.
+
+But this analogy long escapes him, and the exponent of each great
+religion proves to his own satisfaction, and to the edification of his
+fellows, that their own sacred literature is absolutely accurate in
+statement, infinitely profound in meaning, and miraculously perfect in
+form. From these premises also he arrives at the conclusion that his own
+sacred literature is unique; that no other sacred book can have emanated
+from a divine source; and that all others claiming to be sacred are
+impostures.
+
+Still another law governing the evolution of sacred literature in every
+great world religion is, that when the books which compose it are once
+selected and grouped they come to be regarded as a final creation from
+which nothing can be taken away, and of which even error in form, if
+sanctioned by tradition, may not be changed.
+
+The working of this law has recently been seen on a large scale.
+
+A few years since, a body of chosen scholars, universally acknowledged
+to be the most fit for the work, undertook, at the call of
+English-speaking Christendom, to revise the authorized English version
+of the Bible.
+
+Beautiful as was that old version, there was abundant reason for a
+revision. The progress of biblical scholarship had revealed multitudes
+of imperfections and not a few gross errors in the work of the early
+translators, and these, if uncorrected, were sure to bring the sacred
+volume into discredit.
+
+Nothing could be more reverent than the spirit of the revisers, and the
+nineteenth century has known few historical events of more significant
+and touching beauty than the participation in the holy communion by all
+these scholars--prelates, presbyters, ministers, and laymen of churches
+most widely differing in belief and observance--kneeling side by side at
+the little altar in Westminster Abbey.
+
+Nor could any work have been more conservative and cautious than
+theirs; as far as possible they preserved the old matter and form with
+scrupulous care.
+
+Yet their work was no sooner done than it was bitterly attacked and
+widely condemned; to this day it is largely regarded with dislike.
+In Great Britain, in America, in Australia, the old version, with its
+glaring misconceptions, mistranslations, and interpolations, is still
+read in preference to the new; the great body of English-speaking
+Christians clearly preferring the accustomed form of words given by the
+seventeenth-century translators, rather than a nearer approach to the
+exact teaching of the Holy Ghost.
+
+Still another law is, that when once a group of sacred books has
+been evolved--even though the group really be a great library of most
+dissimilar works, ranging in matter from the hundredth Psalm to the
+Song of Songs, and in manner from the sublimity of Isaiah to the offhand
+story-telling of Jonah--all come to be thought one inseparable mass
+of interpenetrating parts; every statement in each fitting exactly and
+miraculously into each statement in every other; and each and every one,
+and all together, literally true to fact, and at the same time full of
+hidden meanings.
+
+The working of these and other laws governing the evolution of sacred
+literature is very clearly seen in the great rabbinical schools which
+flourished at Jerusalem, Tiberias, and elsewhere, after the return of
+the Jews from the Babylonian captivity, and especially as we approach
+the time of Christ. These schools developed a subtlety in the study of
+the Old Testament which seems almost preternatural. The resultant system
+was mainly a jugglery with words, phrases, and numbers, which finally
+became a "sacred science," with various recognised departments, in which
+interpretation was carried on sometimes by attaching a numerical
+value to letters; sometimes by interchange of letters from differently
+arranged alphabets; sometimes by the making of new texts out of the
+initial letters of the old; and with ever-increasing subtlety.
+
+Such efforts as these culminated fitly in the rabbinical declaration
+that each passage in the law has seventy distinct meanings, and that God
+himself gives three hours every day to their study.
+
+After this the Jewish world was prepared for anything, and it does not
+surprise us to find such discoveries in the domain of ethical culture as
+the doctrine that, for inflicting the forty stripes save one upon those
+who broke the law, the lash should be braided of ox-hide and ass-hide;
+and, as warrant for this construction of the lash, the text, "The ox
+knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib, but Israel doth not
+know"; and, as the logic connecting text and lash, the statement that
+Jehovah evidently intended to command that "the men who know not shall
+be beaten by those animals whose knowledge shames them."
+
+By such methods also were revealed such historical treasures as that Og,
+King of Bashan, escaped the deluge by wading after Noah's ark.
+
+There were, indeed, noble exceptions to this kind of teaching. It can
+not be forgotten that Rabbi Hillel formulated the golden rule, which
+had before him been given to the extreme Orient by Confucius, and which
+afterward received a yet more beautiful and positive emphasis from Jesus
+of Nazareth; but the seven rules of interpretation laid down by Hillel
+were multiplied and refined by men like Rabbi Ismael and Rabbi Eleazar
+until they justified every absurd subtlety.(462)
+
+
+     (462) For a multitude of amusing examples of rabbinical interpretations,
+see an article in Blackwood's Magazine for November, 1882. For a more
+general discussion, see Archdeacon Farrar's History of Interpretation,
+lect. i and ii, and Rev. Prof. H. P. Smith's Inspiration and Inerrancy,
+Cincinnati, 1893, especially chap. iv; also Reuss, History of the New
+Testament, English translation, pp. 527, 528.
+
+
+An eminent scholar has said that while the letter of Scripture became
+ossified in Palestine, it became volatilized at Alexandria; and the
+truth of this remark was proved by the Alexandrian Jewish theologians
+just before the beginning of our era.
+
+This, too, was in obedience to a law of development, which is, that
+when literal interpretation clashes with increasing knowledge or with
+progress in moral feeling, theologians take refuge in mystic meanings--a
+law which we see working in all great religions, from the Brahmans
+finding hidden senses in the Vedas, to Plato and the Stoics finding
+them in the Greek myths; and from the Sofi reading new meanings into the
+Koran, to eminent Christian divines of the nineteenth century giving a
+non-natural sense to some of the plainest statements in the Bible.
+
+Nothing is more natural than all this. When naive statements of sacred
+writers, in accord with the ethics of early ages, make Brahma perform
+atrocities which would disgrace a pirate; and Jupiter take part in
+adventures worthy of Don Juan; and Jahveh practise trickery, cruelty,
+and high-handed injustice which would bring any civilized mortal into
+the criminal courts, the invention of allegory is the one means of
+saving the divine authority as soon as men reach higher planes of
+civilization.
+
+The great early master in this evolution of allegory, for the
+satisfaction of Jews and Christians, was Philo: by him its use came in
+as never before. The four streams of the garden of Eden thus become the
+four virtues; Abraham's country and kindred, from which he was commanded
+to depart, the human body and its members; the five cities of Sodom,
+the five senses; the Euphrates, correction of manners. By Philo and
+his compeers even the most insignificant words and phrases, and those
+especially, were held to conceal the most precious meanings.
+
+A perfectly natural and logical result of this view was reached when
+Philo, saturated as he was with Greek culture and nourished on pious
+traditions of the utterances at Delphi and Dodona, spoke reverently of
+the Jewish Scriptures as "oracles". Oracles they became: as oracles they
+appeared in the early history of the Christian Church; and oracles they
+remained for centuries: eternal life or death, infinite happiness or
+agony, as well as ordinary justice in this world, being made to depend
+on shifting interpretations of a long series of dark and doubtful
+utterances--interpretations frequently given by men who might have been
+prophets and apostles, but who had become simply oracle-mongers.
+
+Pressing these oracles into the service of science, Philo became the
+forerunner of that long series of theologians who, from Augustine and
+Cosmas to Mr. Gladstone, have attempted to extract from scriptural myth
+and legend profound contributions to natural science. Thus he taught
+that the golden candlesticks in the tabernacle symbolized the planets,
+the high priest's robe the universe, and the bells upon it the harmony
+of earth and water--whatever that may mean. So Cosmas taught, a thousand
+years later, that the table of shewbread in the tabernacle showed forth
+the form and construction of the world; and Mr. Gladstone hinted,
+more than a thousand years later still, that Neptune's trident had a
+mysterious connection with the Christian doctrine of the Trinity.(463)
+
+
+     (463) For Philo Judaeus, see Yonge's translation, Bohn's edition; see
+also Sanday, Inspiration, pp. 78-85. For admirable general remarks on
+this period in history of exegesis, see Bartlett, Bampton Lectures,
+1888, p. 29. For efforts in general to save the credit of myths by
+allegorical interpretation, and for those of Philo in particular, see
+Drummond, Philo Judaeus, London, 1888, vol. i, pp. 18, 19, and notes.
+For interesting examples of Alexandrian exegesis and for Philo's
+application of the term "oracle" to the Jewish Scriptures, see Farrar,
+History of Interpretation, p. 147 and note. For his discovery of symbols
+of the universe in the furniture of the tabernacle, see Drummond, as
+above, pp. 269 et seq. For the general subject, admirably discussed
+from a historical point of view, see the Rev. Edwin Hatch, D. D., The
+Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the Christian Church, Hibbert
+Lectures for 1888, chap. iii. For Cosmas, see my chapters on Geography
+and Astronomy. For Mr. Gladstone's view of the connection between
+Neptune's trident and the doctrine of the Trinity, see his Juventus
+Mundi.
+
+
+These methods, as applied to the Old Testament, had appeared at times
+in the New; in spite of the resistance of Tertullian and Irenaeus, they
+were transmitted to the Church; and in the works of the early fathers
+they bloomed forth luxuriantly.
+
+Justin Martyr and Clement of Alexandria vigorously extended them.
+Typical of Justin's method is his finding, in a very simple reference by
+Isaiah to Damascus, Samaria, and Assyria, a clear prophecy of the three
+wise men of the East who brought gifts to the infant Saviour; and in the
+bells on the priest's robe a prefiguration of the twelve apostles.
+Any difficulty arising from the fact that the number of bells is not
+specified in Scripture, Justin overcame by insisting that David referred
+to this prefiguration in the nineteenth Psalm: "Their sound is gone out
+through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world."
+
+Working in this vein, Clement of Alexandria found in the form,
+dimensions, and colour of the Jewish tabernacle a whole wealth of
+interpretation--the altar of incense representing the earth placed at
+the centre of the universe; the high priest's robe the visible world;
+the jewels on the priest's robe the zodiac; and Abraham's three days'
+journey to Mount Moriah the three stages of the soul in its progress
+toward the knowledge of God. Interpreting the New Testament, he lessened
+any difficulties involved in the miracle of the barley loaves and fishes
+by suggesting that what it really means is that Jesus gave mankind a
+preparatory training for the gospel by means of the law and philosophy;
+because, as he says, barley, like the law, ripens sooner than wheat,
+which represents the gospel; and because, just as fishes grow in the
+waves of the ocean, so philosophy grew in the waves of the Gentile
+world.
+
+Out of reasonings like these, those who followed, especially Cosmas,
+developed, as we have seen, a complete theological science of geography
+and astronomy.(464)
+
+
+     (464) For Justin, see the Dialogue with Trypho, chaps. xlii, lxxvi, and
+lxxxiii. For Clement of Alexandria, see his Miscellanies, book v,
+chaps. vi and xi, and book vii, chap. xvi, and especially Hatch, Hibbert
+Lectures, as above, pp. 76, 77. As to the loose views of the canon held
+by these two fathers and others of their time, see Ladd, Doctrine of
+the Sacred Scriptures, vol. ii, pp. 86, 88; also Diestel, Geschichte des
+alten Testaments.
+
+
+But the instrument in exegesis which was used with most cogent force was
+the occult significance of certain numbers. The Chaldean and Egyptian
+researches of our own time have revealed the main source of this line of
+thought; the speculations of Plato upon it are well known; but among
+the Jews and in the early Church it grew into something far beyond the
+wildest imaginings of the priests of Memphis and Babylon.
+
+Philo had found for the elucidation of Scripture especially deep
+meanings in the numbers four, six, and seven; but other interpreters
+soon surpassed him. At the very outset this occult power was used in
+ascertaining the canonical books of Scripture. Josephus argued that,
+since there were twenty-two letters in the Hebrew alphabet, there
+must be twenty-two sacred books in the Old Testament; other Jewish
+authorities thought that there should be twenty-four books, on account
+of the twenty-four watches in the temple. St. Jerome wavered between the
+argument based upon the twenty-two letters in the Hebrew alphabet and
+that suggested by the twenty-four elders in the Apocalypse. Hilary of
+Poitiers argued that there must be twenty-four books, on account of the
+twenty-four letters in the Greek alphabet. Origen found an argument
+for the existence of exactly four gospels in the existence of just four
+elements. Irenaeus insisted that there could be neither more nor fewer
+than four gospels, since the earth has four quarters, the air four
+winds, and the cherubim four faces; and he denounced those who declined
+to accept this reasoning as "vain, ignorant, and audacious."(465)
+
+
+     (465) For Jerome and Origen, see notes on pages following. For Irenaeus,
+see Irenaeus, Adversus Hoeres., lib. iii, cap. xi, S 8. For the general
+subject, see Sanday, Inspiration, p. 115; also Farrar and H. P. Smith
+as above. For a recent very full and very curious statement from a Roman
+Catholic authority regarding views cherished in the older Church as to
+the symbolism of numbers, see Detzel, Christliche Iconographie, Freiburg
+in Bresigau, Band i, Einleitung, p. 4.
+
+
+But during the first half of the third century came one who exercised
+a still stronger influence in this direction--a great man who, while
+rendering precious services, did more than any other to fasten upon the
+Church a system which has been one of its heaviest burdens for more than
+sixteen hundred years: this was Origen. Yet his purpose was noble
+and his work based on profound thought. He had to meet the leading
+philosophers of the pagan world, to reply to their arguments against the
+Old Testament, and especially to break the force of their taunts against
+its imputation of human form, limitations, passions, weaknesses, and
+even immoralities to the Almighty.
+
+Starting with a mistaken translation of a verse in the book of Proverbs,
+Origen presented as a basis for his main structure the idea of
+a threefold sense of Scripture: the literal, the moral, and the
+mystic--corresponding to the Platonic conception of the threefold nature
+of man. As results of this we have such masterpieces as his proof, from
+the fifth verse of chapter xxv of Job, that the stars are living beings,
+and from the well-known passage in the nineteenth chapter of St. Matthew
+his warrant for self-mutilation. But his great triumphs were in the
+allegorical method. By its use the Bible was speedily made an oracle
+indeed, or, rather, a book of riddles. A list of kings in the Old
+Testament thus becomes an enumeration of sins; the waterpots of stone,
+"containing two or three firkins apiece," at the marriage of Cana,
+signify the literal, moral, and spiritual sense of Scripture; the
+ass upon which the Saviour rode on his triumphal entry into Jerusalem
+becomes the Old Testament, the foal the New Testament, and the two
+apostles who went to loose them the moral and mystical senses; blind
+Bartimeus throwing off his coat while hastening to Jesus, opens a whole
+treasury of oracular meanings.
+
+The genius and power of Origen made a great impression on the strong
+thinkers who followed him. St. Jerome called him "the greatest master in
+the Church since the apostles," and Athanasius was hardly less emphatic.
+
+The structure thus begun was continued by leading theologians during
+the centuries following: St. Hilary of Poitiers--"the Athanasius of
+Gaul"--produced some wonderful results of this method; but St. Jerome,
+inspired by the example of the man whom he so greatly admired, went
+beyond him. A triumph of his exegesis is seen in his statement that
+the Shunamite damsel who was selected to cherish David in his old age
+signified heavenly wisdom.
+
+The great mind of St. Augustine was drawn largely into this kind of
+creation, and nothing marks more clearly the vast change which had come
+over the world than the fact that this greatest of the early Christian
+thinkers turned from the broader paths opened by Plato and Aristotle
+into that opened by Clement of Alexandria.
+
+
+In the mystic power of numbers to reveal the sense of Scripture
+Augustine found especial delight. He tells us that there is deep meaning
+in sundry scriptural uses of the number forty, and especially as the
+number of days required for fasting. Forty, he reminds us, is four times
+ten. Now, four, he says, is the number especially representing time, the
+day and the year being each divided into four parts; while ten, being
+made up of three and seven, represents knowledge of the Creator and
+creature, three referring to the three persons in the triune Creator,
+and seven referring to the three elements, heart, soul, and mind, taken
+in connection with the four elements, fire, air, earth, and water, which
+go to make up the creature. Therefore this number ten, representing
+knowledge, being multiplied by four, representing time, admonishes us
+to live during time according to knowledge--that is, to fast for forty
+days. Referring to such misty methods as these, which lead the reader to
+ask himself whether he is sleeping or waking, St. Augustine remarks
+that "ignorance of numbers prevents us from understanding such things
+in Scripture." But perhaps the most amazing example is to be seen in his
+notes on the hundred and fifty and three fishes which, according to St.
+John's Gospel, were caught by St. Peter and the other apostles. Some
+points in his long development of this subject may be selected to show
+what the older theological method could be made to do for a great
+mind. He tells us that the hundred and fifty and three fishes embody
+a mystery; that the number ten, evidently as the number of the
+commandments, indicates the law; but, as the law without the spirit only
+kills, we must add the seven gifts of the spirit, and we thus have the
+number seventeen, which signifies the old and new dispensations; then,
+if we add together every several number which seventeen contains from
+one to seventeen inclusive, the result is a hundred and fifty and
+three--the number of the fishes. With this sort of reasoning he finds
+profound meanings in the number of furlongs mentioned in he sixth
+chapter of St. John. Referring to the fact that the disciples had rowed
+about "twenty-five or thirty furlongs," he declares that "twenty-five
+typifies the law, because it is five times five, but the law was
+imperfect before the gospel came; now perfection is comprised in six,
+since God in six days perfected the world, hence five is multiplied by
+six that the law may be perfected by the gospel, and six times five is
+thirty."
+
+But Augustine's exploits in exegesis were not all based on numerals; he
+is sometimes equally profound in other modes. Thus he tells us that the
+condemnation of the serpent to eat dust typifies the sin of curiosity,
+since in eating dust he "penetrates the obscure and shadowy"; and that
+Noah's ark was "pitched within and without with pitch" to show the
+safety of the Church from the leaking in of heresy.
+
+Still another exploit--one at which the Church might well have stood
+aghast--was his statement that the drunkenness of Noah prefigured the
+suffering and death of Christ. It is but just to say that he was not
+the original author of this interpretation: it had been presented long
+before by St. Cyprian. But this was far from Augustine's worst. Perhaps
+no interpretation of Scripture has ever led to more cruel and persistent
+oppression, torture, and bloodshed than his reading into one of the most
+beautiful parables of Jesus of Nazareth--into the words "Compel them
+to come in"--a warrant for religious persecution: of all unintended
+blasphemies since the world began, possibly the most appalling. Another
+strong man follows to fasten these methods on the Church: St. Gregory
+the Great. In his renowned work on the book of Job, the Magna Moralia,
+given to the world at the end of the sixth century, he lays great stress
+on the deep mystical meanings of the statement that Job had seven sons.
+He thinks the seven sons typify the twelve apostles, for "the apostles
+were selected through the sevenfold grace of the Spirit; moreover,
+twelve is produced from seven--that is, the two parts of seven, four
+and three, when multiplied together give twelve." He also finds deep
+significance in the number of the apostles; this number being evidently
+determined by a multiplication of the number of persons in the Trinity
+by the number of quarters of the globe. Still, to do him justice, it
+must be said that in some parts of his exegesis the strong sense which
+was one of his most striking characteristics crops out in a way very
+refreshing. Thus, referring to a passage in the first chapter of Job,
+regarding the oxen which were ploughing and the asses which were feeding
+beside them, he tells us pithily that these typify two classes of
+Christians: the oxen, the energetic Christians who do the work of the
+Church; the asses, the lazy Christians who merely feed.(466)
+
+
+     (466) For Origen, see the De Principiis, book iv, chaps. i-vii et seq.,
+Crombie's translation; also the Contra Celsum, vol. vi, p. 70; vol.
+vii, p. 20, etc.; also various citations in Farrar. For Hilary, see his
+Tractatus super Psalmos, cap. ix, li, etc. in Migne, vol. ix, and De
+Trinitate, lib. ii, cap. ii. For Jerome's interpretation of the text
+relating to the Shunamite woman, see Epist. lii, in Migne, vol. xxii,
+pp. 527, 528. For Augustine's use of numbers, see the De Doctrina
+Christiana, lib. ii, cap. xvi; and for the explanation of the draught of
+fishes, see Augustine in, In Johan. Evangel., tractat. cxxii; and on the
+twenty-five to thirty furlongs, ibid., tract. xxv, cap. 6; and for the
+significance of the serpent eating dust, De Gen., lib. ii, c. 18. or the
+view that the drunkenness of Noah prefigured the suffering of Christ, as
+held by SS. Cyprian and Augustine, see Farrar, as above, pp. 181, 238.
+For St. Gregory, see the Magna Moralia, lib. i, cap. xiv.
+
+
+Thus began the vast theological structure of oracular interpretation
+applied to the Bible. As we have seen, the men who prepared the
+ground for it were the rabbis of Palestine and the Hellenized Jews of
+Alexandria; and the four great men who laid its foundation courses were
+Origen, St. Augustine, St. Jerome, and St. Gregory.
+
+During the ten centuries following the last of these men this structure
+continued to rise steadily above the plain meanings of Scripture. The
+Christian world rejoiced in it, and the few great thinkers who dared
+bring the truth to bear upon it were rejected. It did indeed seem at one
+period in the early Church that a better system might be developed. The
+School of Antioch, especially as represented by Chrysostom, appeared
+likely to lead in this better way, but the dominant forces were too
+strong; the passion for myth and marvel prevailed over the love of
+real knowledge, and the reasonings of Chrysostom and his compeers were
+neglected.(467)
+
+
+     (467) For the work of the School of Antioch, and especially of
+Chrysostom, see the eloquent tribute to it by Farrar, as above.
+
+
+In the ninth century came another effort to present the claims of right
+reason. The first man prominent in this was St. Agobard, Bishop of
+Lyons, whom an eminent historian has well called the clearest head
+of his time. With the same insight which penetrated the fallacies and
+follies of image worship, belief in witchcraft persecution, the ordeal,
+and the judicial duel, he saw the futility of this vast fabric of
+interpretation, protested against the idea that the Divine Spirit
+extended its inspiration to the mere words of Scripture, and asked a
+question which has resounded through every generation since: "If you
+once begin such a system, who can measure the absurdity which will
+follow?"
+
+During the same century another opponent of this dominant system
+appeared: John Scotus Erigena. He contended that "reason and authority
+come alike from the one source of Divine Wisdom"; that the fathers,
+great as their authority is, often contradict each other; and that, in
+last resort, reason must be called in to decide between them.
+
+But the evolution of unreason continued: Agobard was unheeded, and
+Erigena placed under the ban by two councils--his work being condemned
+by a synod as a "Commentum Diaboli." Four centuries later Honorius
+III ordered it to be burned, as "teeming with the venom of hereditary
+depravity"; and finally, after eight centuries, Pope Gregory XIII placed
+it on the Index, where, with so many other works which have done good
+service to humanity, it remains to this day. Nor did Abelard, who, three
+centuries after Agobard and Erigena, made an attempt in some respects
+like theirs, have any better success: his fate at the hands of St.
+Bernard and the Council of Sens the world knows by heart. Far more
+consonant with the spirit of the universal Church was the teaching in
+the twelfth century of the great Hugo of St. Victor, conveyed in these
+ominous words, "Learn first what is to be believed" (Disce primo quod
+credendum est), meaning thereby that one should first accept doctrines,
+and then find texts to confirm them.
+
+These principles being dominant, the accretions to the enormous fabric
+of interpretation went steadily on. Typical is the fact that the
+Venerable Bede contributed to it the doctrine that, in the text
+mentioning Elkanah and his two wives, Elkanah means Christ and the two
+wives the Synagogue and the Church. Even such men as Alfred the Great
+and St. Thomas Aquinas were added to the forces at work in building
+above the sacred books this prodigious structure of sophistry.
+
+Perhaps nothing shows more clearly the tenacity of the old system of
+interpretation than the sermons of Savonarola. During the last decade of
+the fifteenth century, just at the close of the medieval period, he was
+engaged in a life-and-death struggle at Florence. No man ever preached
+more powerfully the gospel of righteousness; none ever laid more stress
+on conduct; even Luther was not more zealous for reform or more careless
+of tradition; and yet we find the great Florentine apostle and martyr
+absolutely tied fast to the old system of allegorical interpretation.
+The autograph notes of his sermons, still preserved in his cell at San
+Marco, show this abundantly. Thus we find him attaching to the creation
+of grasses and plants on the third day an allegorical connection with
+the "multitude of the elect" and with the "sound doctrines of the
+Church," and to the creation of land animals on the sixth day a similar
+relation to "the Jewish people" and to "Christians given up to things
+earthly."(468)
+
+
+     (468) For Agobard, see the Liber adversus Fredigisum, cap. xii; also
+Reuter's Relig. Aufklarung im Mittelalter, vol. i, p. 24; also Poole,
+Illustrations of the History of Medieval Thought, London, 1884, pp. 38
+et seq. For Erigena, see his De Divisione Naturae, lib. iv, cap. v; also
+i, cap. lxvi-lxxi; and for general account, see Ueberweg, History
+of Philosophy, New York, 1871, vol. i, pp. 358 et seq.; and for the
+treatment of his work by the Church, see the edition of the Index under
+Leo XIII, 1881. For Abelard, see the Sic et Non, Prologue, Migne, vol.
+iii, pp. 371-377. For Hugo of St. Victor, see Erudit. Didask., lib. vii,
+vi, 4, in Migne, clxxvi. For Savonarola's interpretations, see various
+references to his preaching in Villari's life of Savonarola, English
+translation, London, 1890, and especially the exceedingly interesting
+table in the appendix to vol. i, chap. vii.
+
+
+The revival of learning in the fifteenth century seemed likely to
+undermine this older structure.
+
+Then it was that Lorenzo Valla brought to bear on biblical research,
+for the first time, the spirit of modern criticism. By truly scientific
+methods he proved the famous "Letter of Christ to Abgarus" a forgery;
+the "Donation of Constantine," one of the great foundations of the
+ecclesiastical power in temporal things, a fraud; and the "Apostles'
+Creed" a creation which post-dated the apostles by several centuries.
+Of even more permanent influence was his work upon the New Testament,
+in which he initiated the modern method of comparing manuscripts to find
+what the sacred text really is. At an earlier or later period he would
+doubtless have paid for his temerity with his life; fortunately, just
+at that time the ruling pontiff and his Contemporaries cared much for
+literature and little for orthodoxy, and from their palaces he could bid
+defiance to the Inquisition.
+
+While Valla thus initiated biblical criticism south of the Alps, a much
+greater man began a more fruitful work in northern Europe. Erasmus, with
+his edition of the New Testament, stands at the source of that great
+stream of modern research and thought which is doing so much to
+undermine and dissolve away the vast fabric of patristic and scholastic
+interpretation.
+
+Yet his efforts to purify the scriptural text seemed at first to
+encounter insurmountable difficulties, and one of these may stimulate
+reflection. He had found, what some others had found before him, that
+the famous verse in the fifth chapter of the First Epistle General of
+St. John, regarding the "three witnesses," was an interpolation. Careful
+research through all the really important early manuscripts showed that
+it appeared in none of them. Even after the Bible had been corrected,
+in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, by Lanfranc, Archbishop of
+Canterbury, and by Nicholas, cardinal and librarian of the Roman Church,
+"in accordance with the orthodox faith," the passage was still wanting
+in the more authoritative Latin manuscripts. There was not the slightest
+tenable ground for believing in the authenticity of the text; on the
+contrary, it has been demonstrated that, after a universal silence
+of the orthodox fathers of the Church, of the ancient versions of the
+Scriptures, and of all really important manuscripts, the verse first
+appeared in a Confession of Faith drawn up by an obscure zealot toward
+the end of the fifth century. In a very mild exercise, then, of critical
+judgment, Erasmus omitted this text from the first two editions of
+his Greek Testament as evidently spurious. A storm arose at once. In
+England, Lee, afterward Archbishop of York; in Spain, Stunica, one of
+the editors of the Complutensian Polyglot; and in France, Bude, Syndic
+of the Sorbonne, together with a vast army of monks in England and
+on the Continent, attacked him ferociously. He was condemned by the
+University of Paris, and various propositions of his were declared to
+be heretical and impious. Fortunately, the worst persecutors could not
+reach him; otherwise they might have treated him as they treated his
+disciple, Berquin, whom in 1529 they burned at Paris.
+
+The fate of this spurious text throws light into the workings of human
+nature in its relations to sacred literature. Although Luther omitted it
+from his translation of the New Testament, and kept it out of every copy
+published during his lifetime, and although at a later period the most
+eminent Christian scholars showed that it had no right to a place in the
+Bible, it was, after Luther's death, replaced in the German translation,
+and has been incorporated into all important editions of it, save one,
+since the beginning of the seventeenth century. So essential was it
+found in maintaining the dominant theology that, despite the fact that
+Sir Isaac Newton, Richard Porson, the nineteenth-century revisers, and
+all other eminent authorities have rejected it, the Anglican Church
+still retains it in its Lectionary, and the Scotch Church continues to
+use it in the Westminster Catechism, as a main support of the doctrine
+of the Trinity.
+
+Nor were other new truths presented by Erasmus better received. His
+statement that "some of the epistles ascribed to St. Paul are certainly
+not his," which is to-day universally acknowledged as a truism, also
+aroused a storm. For generations, then, his work seemed vain.
+
+On the coming in of the Reformation the great structure of belief in the
+literal and historical correctness of every statement in the Scriptures,
+in the profound allegorical meanings of the simplest texts, and even
+in the divine origin of the vowel punctuation, towered more loftily and
+grew more rapidly than ever before. The Reformers, having cast off the
+authority of the Pope and of the universal Church, fell back all the
+more upon the infallibility of the sacred books. The attitude of Luther
+toward this great subject was characteristic. As a rule, he adhered
+tenaciously to the literal interpretation of the Scriptures; his
+argument against Copernicus is a fair example of his reasoning in this
+respect; but, with the strong good sense which characterized him, he
+from time to time broke away from the received belief. Thus, he took
+the liberty of understanding certain passages in the Old Testament in a
+different sense from that given them by the New Testament, and declared
+St. Paul's allegorical use of the story of Sarah and Hagar "too unsound
+to stand the test." He also emphatically denied that the Epistle to the
+Hebrews was written by St. Paul, and he did this in the exercise of
+a critical judgment upon internal evidence. His utterance as to the
+Epistle of St. James became famous. He announced to the Church: "I do
+not esteem this an apostolic, epistle; I will not have it in my
+Bible among the canonical books," and he summed up his opinion in his
+well-known allusion to it as "an epistle of straw."
+
+Emboldened by him, the gentle spirit of Melanchthon, while usually
+taking the Bible very literally, at times revolted; but this was not due
+to any want of loyalty to the old method of interpretation: whenever the
+wildest and most absurd system of exegesis seemed necessary to support
+any part of the reformed doctrine, Luther and Melanchthon unflinchingly
+developed it. Both of them held firmly to the old dictum of Hugo of St.
+Victor, which, as we have seen, was virtually that one must first accept
+the doctrine, and then find scriptural warrant for it. Very striking
+examples of this were afforded in the interpretation by Luther and
+Melanchthon of certain alleged marvels of their time, and one out of
+several of these may be taken as typical of their methods.
+
+In 1523 Luther and Melanchthon jointly published a work under the title
+Der Papstesel--interpreting the significance of a strange, ass-like
+monster which, according to a popular story, had been found floating
+in the Tiber some time before. This book was illustrated by startling
+pictures, and both text and pictures were devoted to proving that this
+monster was "a sign from God," indicating the doom of the papacy. This
+treatise by the two great founders of German Protestantism pointed out
+that the ass's head signified the Pope himself; "for," said they, "as
+well as an ass's head is suited to a human body, so well is the Pope
+suited to be head over the Church." This argument was clinched by a
+reference to Exodus. The right hand of the monster, said to be like an
+elephant's foot, they made to signify the spiritual rule of the Pope,
+since "with it he tramples upon all the weak": this they proved from
+the book of Daniel and the Second Epistle to Timothy. The monster's left
+hand, which was like the hand of a man, they declared to mean the Pope's
+secular rule, and they found passages to support this view in Daniel
+and St. Luke. The right foot, which was like the foot of an ox, they
+declared to typify the servants of the spiritual power; and proved this
+by a citation from St. Matthew. The left foot, like a griffin's claw,
+they made to typify the servants of the temporal power of the Pope,
+and the highly developed breasts and various other members, cardinals,
+bishops, priests, and monks, "whose life is eating, drinking, and
+unchastity": to prove this they cited passages from Second Timothy and
+Philippians. The alleged fish-scales on the arms, legs, and neck of the
+monster they made to typify secular princes and lords; "since," as they
+said, "in St. Matthew and Job the sea typifies the world, and fishes
+men." The old man's head at the base of the monster's spine they
+interpreted to mean "the abolition and end of the papacy," and proved
+this from Hebrews and Daniel. The dragon which opens his mouth in the
+rear and vomits fire, "refers to the terrible, virulent bulls and books
+which the Pope and his minions are now vomiting forth into the world."
+The two great Reformers then went on to insist that, since this monster
+was found at Rome, it could refer to no person but the Pope; "for,"
+they said, "God always sends his signs in the places where their meaning
+applies." Finally, they assured the world that the monster in general
+clearly signified that the papacy was then near its end. To this
+development of interpretation Luther and Melanchthon especially devoted
+themselves; the latter by revising this exposition of the prodigy, and
+the former by making additions to a new edition. Such was the success of
+this kind of interpretation that Luther, hearing that a monstrous calf
+had been found at Freiburg, published a treatise upon it--showing, by
+citations from the books of Exodus, Kings, the Psalms, Isaiah, Daniel,
+and the Gospel of St. John, that this new monster was the especial work
+of the devil, but full of meaning in regard to the questions at issue
+between the Reformers and the older Church.
+
+The other main branch of the Reformed Church appeared for a time to
+establish a better system. Calvin's strong logic seemed at one period
+likely to tear his adherents away from the older method; but the
+evolution of scholasticism continued, and the influence of the German
+reformers prevailed. At every theological centre came an amazing
+development of interpretation.
+
+Eminent Lutheran divines in the seventeenth century, like Gerhard,
+Calovius, Coccerus, and multitudes of others, wrote scores of quartos
+to further this system, and the other branch of the Protestant Church
+emulated their example. The pregnant dictum of St. Augustine--"Greater
+is the authority of Scripture than all human capacity"--was steadily
+insisted upon, and, toward the close of the seventeenth century,
+Voetius, the renowned professor at Utrecht, declared, "Not a word is
+contained in the Holy Scriptures which is not in the strictest sense
+inspired, the very punctuation not excepted"; and this declaration was
+echoed back from multitudes of pulpits, theological chairs, synods,
+and councils. Unfortunately, it was very difficult to find what the
+"authority of Scripture" really was. To the greater number of Protestant
+ecclesiastics it meant the authority of any meaning in the text which
+they had the wit to invent and the power to enforce.
+
+To increase this vast confusion, came, in the older branch of the
+Church, the idea of the divine inspiration of the Latin translation
+of the Bible ascribed to St. Jerome--the Vulgate. It was insisted by
+leading Catholic authorities that this was as completely a product
+of divine inspiration as was the Hebrew original. Strong men arose to
+insist even that, where the Hebrew and the Latin differed, the Hebrew
+should be altered to fit Jerome's mistranslation, as the latter, having
+been made under the new dispensation, must be better than that made
+under the old. Even so great a man as Cardinal Bellarmine exerted
+himself in vain against this new tide of unreason.(469)
+
+
+     (469) For Valla, see various sources already named; and for an
+especially interesting account, Symond's Renaissance in Italy, the
+Revival of Learning, pp. 260-269; and for the opinion of the best
+contemporary judge, see Erasmus, Opera, Leyden, 1703, tom. iii, p. 98.
+For Erasmus and his opponents, see Life of Erasmus, by Butler, London,
+1825, pp. 179-182; but especially, for the general subject, Bishop
+Creighton's History of the Papacy during the Reformation. For the attack
+by Bude and the Sorbonne and the burning of Berquin, see Drummond, Life
+and character of Erasmus, vol. ii, pp. 220-223; also pp. 230-239. As
+to the text of the Three Witnesses, see Gibbon, Decline and Fall of
+the Roman Empire, chap. xxxvi, notes 116-118; also Dean Milman's note
+thereupon. For a full and learned statement of the evidence against
+the verse, see Porson's Letters to Travis, London, 1790, in which an
+elaborate discussion of all the MSS. is given. See also Jowett in Essays
+and Reviews, p. 307. For a very full and impartial history of the long
+controversy over this passage, see Charles Butler's Horae Biblicae,
+reprinted in Jared Sparks's Theological Essays and Tracts, vol. ii. For
+Luther's ideas of interpretation, see his Sammtliche Schriften, Walch
+edition, vol. i, p. 1199, vol. ii, p. 1758, vol. viii, p. 2140; for some
+of his more free views, vol. xiv, p. 472, vol. vi, p. 121, vol. xi, p.
+1448, vol. xii, p. 830; also Tholuck, Doctrine of Inspiration, Boston,
+1867, citing the Colloquia, Frankfort, 1571, vol. ii, p. 102; also
+the Vorreden zu der deutschen Bibelubersetzung, in Walch's edition, as
+above, vol. xiv, especially pp. 94, 98, and 146-150. As to Melanchthon,
+see especially his Loci Communes, 1521; and as to the enormous growth
+of commentaries in the generations immediately following, see Charles
+Beard, Hibbert Lectures for 1883, on the Reformation, especially the
+admirable chapter on Protestant Scholasticism; also Archdeacon Farrar,
+history of Interpretation. For the Papstesel, etc., see Luther's
+Sammtliche Schriften, edit. Walch, vol. xiv, pp. 2403 et seq.; also
+Melanchthon's Opera, edit. Bretschneider, vol. xx, pp. 665 et seq.
+In the White Library of Cornell University will be found an original
+edition of the book, with engravings of the monster. For the Monchkalb,
+see Luther's works as above, vol. xix, pp. 2416 et seq. For the spirit
+of Calvin in interpretation, see Farrar, ans especially H. P. Smith, D.
+D., Inspiration and Inerrancy, chap. iv, and the very brilliant essay
+forming chap. iii of the same work, by L. J. Evans, pp. 66 and 67,
+note. For the attitude of the older Church toward the Vulgate, see
+Pallavicini, Histoire du Concile de Trente, Montrouge, 1844, tome i, pp
+19,20; but especially Symonds, The Catholic Reaction, vol. i, pp. 226 et
+seq. As to a demand for the revision of the Hebrew Bible to correct its
+differences from the Vulgate, see Emanuel Deutsch's Literary Remains,
+New York, 1874, p. 9. For the work and spirit of Calovius and other
+commentators immediately following the Reformation, see Farrar, as
+above; also Beard, Schaff, and Hertzog, Geschichte des alten Testaments
+in der christlichen Kirche, pp. 527 et seq. As to extreme views of
+Voetius and others, see Tholuck, as above. For the Formula Concensus
+Helvetica, which in 1675 affirmed the inspiration of the vowel points,
+see Schaff, Creeds.
+
+
+Nor was a fanatical adhesion to the mere letter of the sacred text
+confined to western Europe. About the middle of the seventeenth century,
+in the reign of Alexis, father of Peter the Great, Nikon, Patriarch of
+the Russian Greek Church, attempted to correct the Slavonic Scriptures
+and service-books. They were full of interpolations due to ignorance,
+carelessness, or zeal, and in order to remedy this state of the texts
+Nikon procured a number of the best Greek and Slavonic manuscripts, set
+the leading and most devout scholars he could find at work upon them,
+and caused Russian Church councils in 1655 and 1666 to promulgate the
+books thus corrected.
+
+But the same feelings which have wrought so strongly against our
+nineteenth-century revision of the Bible acted even more forcibly
+against that revision in the seventeenth century. Straightway great
+masses of the people, led by monks and parish priests, rose in revolt.
+The fact that the revisers had written in the New Testament the name of
+Jesus correctly, instead of following the old wrong orthography, aroused
+the wildest fanaticism. The monks of the great convent of Solovetsk,
+when the new books were sent them, cried in terror: "Woe, woe! what
+have you done with the Son of God?" They then shut their gates, defying
+patriarch, council, and Czar, until, after a struggle lasting seven
+years, their monastery was besieged and taken by an imperial army. Hence
+arose the great sect of the "Old Believers," lasting to this day, and
+fanatically devoted to the corrupt readings of the old text.(470)
+
+
+     (470) The present writer, visiting Moscow in the spring of 1894,
+was presented by Count Leo Tolstoi to one of the most eminent and
+influential members of the sect of "Old Believers," which dates from
+the reform of Nikon. Nothing could exceed the fervor with which this
+venerable man, standing in the chapel of his superb villa, expatiated on
+the horrors of making the sign of the cross with three fingers instead
+of two. His argument was that the TWO fingers, as used by the "Old
+Believers," typify the divine and human nature of our Lord, and hence
+that the use of them is strictly correct; whereas signing with THREE
+fingers, representing the blessed Trinity, is "virtually to crucify all
+three persons of the Godhead afresh." Not less cogent were his arguments
+regarding the immense value of the old text of Scripture as compared
+with the new. For the revolt against Nikon and his reforms, see Rambaud,
+History of Russia, vol. i, pp. 414-416; also Wallace, Russia, vol. ii,
+pp. 307-309; also Leroy-Beaulieu, L'Empire des Tsars, vol. iii, livre
+iii.
+
+
+Strange to say, on the development of Scripture interpretation, largely
+in accordance with the old methods, wrought, about the beginning of the
+eighteenth century, Sir Isaac Newton.
+
+It is hard to believe that from the mind which produced the Principia,
+and which broke through the many time-honoured beliefs regarding the
+dates and formation of scriptural books, could have come his discussions
+regarding the prophecies; still, at various points even in this work,
+his power appears. From internal evidence he not only discarded the text
+of the Three Witnesses, but he decided that the Pentateuch must have
+been made up from several books; that Genesis was not written until
+the reign of Saul; that the books of Kings and Chronicles were probably
+collected by Ezra; and, in a curious anticipation of modern criticism,
+that the book of Psalms and the prophecies of Isaiah and Daniel were
+each written by various authors at various dates. But the old belief in
+prophecy as prediction was too strong for him, and we find him applying
+his great powers to the relation of the details given by the prophets
+and in the Apocalypse to the history of mankind since unrolled,
+and tracing from every statement in prophetic literature its exact
+fulfilment even in the most minute particulars.
+
+By the beginning of the eighteenth century the structure of scriptural
+interpretation had become enormous. It seemed destined to hide forever
+the real character of our sacred literature and to obscure the great
+light which Christianity had brought into the world. The Church, Eastern
+and Western, Catholic and Protestant, was content to sit in its shadow,
+and the great divines of all branches of the Church reared every sort
+of fantastic buttress to strengthen or adorn it. It seemed to be founded
+for eternity; and yet, at this very time when it appeared the strongest,
+a current of thought was rapidly dissolving away its foundations, and
+preparing that wreck and ruin of the whole fabric which is now, at the
+close of the nineteenth century, going on so rapidly.
+
+The account of the movement thus begun is next to be given.(471)
+
+
+     (471) For Newton's boldness in textual criticism, compared with his
+credulity as to the literal fulfilment of prophecy, see his Observations
+upon the Prophesies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John, in his
+works, edited by Horsley, London, 1785, vol. v, pp. 297-491.
+
+
+
+
+II. BEGINNINGS OF SCIENTIFIC INTERPRETATION.
+
+At the base of the vast structure of the older scriptural interpretation
+were certain ideas regarding the first five books of the Old Testament.
+It was taken for granted that they had been dictated by the Almighty
+to Moses about fifteen hundred years before our era; that some parts of
+them, indeed, had been written by the corporeal finger of Jehovah, and
+that all parts gave not merely his thoughts but his exact phraseology.
+It was also held, virtually by the universal Church, that while
+every narrative or statement in these books is a precise statement of
+historical or scientific fact, yet that the entire text contains
+vast hidden meanings. Such was the rule: the exceptions made by a few
+interpreters here and there only confirmed it. Even the indifference
+of St. Jerome to the doctrine of Mosaic authorship did not prevent its
+ripening into a dogma.
+
+The book of Genesis was universally held to be an account, not only
+divinely comprehensive but miraculously exact, of the creation and of
+the beginnings of life on the earth; an account to which all discoveries
+in every branch of science must, under pains and penalties, be made to
+conform. In English-speaking lands this has lasted until our own time:
+the most eminent of recent English biologists has told us how in every
+path of natural science he has, at some stage in his career, come across
+a barrier labelled "No thoroughfare Moses."
+
+A favourite subject of theological eloquence was the perfection of the
+Pentateuch, and especially of Genesis, not only as a record of the past,
+but as a revelation of the future.
+
+The culmination of this view in the Protestant Church was the Pansophia
+Mosaica of Pfeiffer, a Lutheran general superintendent, or bishop, in
+northern Germany, near the beginning of the seventeenth century. He
+declared that the text of Genesis "must be received strictly"; that "it
+contains all knowledge, human and divine"; that "twenty-eight articles
+of the Augsburg Confession are to be found in it"; that "it is an
+arsenal of arguments against all sects and sorts of atheists, pagans,
+Jews, Turks, Tartars, papists, Calvinists, Socinians, and Baptists";
+"the source of all sciences and arts, including law, medicine,
+philosophy, and rhetoric"; "the source and essence of all histories and
+of all professions, trades, and works"; "an exhibition of all virtues
+and vices"; "the origin of all consolation."
+
+This utterance resounded through Germany from pulpit to pulpit, growing
+in strength and volume, until a century later it was echoed back by
+Huet, the eminent bishop and commentator of France. He cited a hundred
+authors, sacred and profane, to prove that Moses wrote the Pentateuch;
+and not only this, but that from the Jewish lawgiver came the heathen
+theology--that Moses was, in fact, nearly the whole pagan pantheon
+rolled into one, and really the being worshipped under such names as
+Bacchus, Adonis, and Apollo.(472)
+
+
+     (472) For the passage from Huxley regarding Mosaic barriers to modern
+thought, see his Essays, recently published. For Pfeiffer, see Zoeckler,
+Theologie und Naturwissenschaft, vol. i, pp. 688, 689. For St. Jerome's
+indifference as to the Mosaic authorship, see the first of the excellent
+Sketches of the Pentateuch Criticism, by the Rev. S. J. Curtiss, in the
+Bibliotheca Sacra for January, 1884. For Huet, see also Curtiss, ibid.
+
+
+About the middle of the twelfth century came, so far as the world now
+knows, the first gainsayer of this general theory. Then it was that Aben
+Ezra, the greatest biblical scholar of the Middle Ages, ventured
+very discreetly to call attention to certain points in the Pentateuch
+incompatible with the belief that the whole of it had been written by
+Moses and handed down in its original form. His opinion was based upon
+the well-known texts which have turned all really eminent biblical
+scholars in the nineteenth century from the old view by showing the
+Mosaic authorship of the five books in their present form to be clearly
+disproved by the books themselves; and, among these texts, accounts
+of Moses' own death and burial, as well as statements based on names,
+events, and conditions which only came into being ages after the time of
+Moses.
+
+But Aben Ezra had evidently no aspirations for martyrdom; he fathered
+the idea upon a rabbi of a previous generation, and, having veiled his
+statement in an enigma, added the caution, "Let him who understands hold
+his tongue."(473)
+
+
+     (473) For the texts referred to by Aben Ezra as incompatible with the
+Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, see Meyer, Geschichte der Exegese,
+vol. i, pp. 85-88; and for a pithy short account, Moore's introduction
+to The Genesis of Genesis, by B. W. Bacon, Hartford, 1893, p. 23; also
+Curtiss, as above. For a full exhibition of the absolute incompatibility
+of these texts with the Mosaic authorship, etc., see The Higher
+Criticism of the Pentateuch, by C. A. Briggs, D. D., New York, 1893,
+especially chap. iv; also Robertson Smith, art. Bible, in Encycl. Brit.
+
+
+For about four centuries the learned world followed the prudent rabbi's
+advice, and then two noted scholars, one of them a Protestant, the other
+a Catholic, revived his idea. The first of these, Carlstadt, insisted
+that the authorship of the Pentateuch was unknown and unknowable; the
+other, Andreas Maes, expressed his opinion in terms which would not now
+offend the most orthodox, that the Pentateuch had been edited by Ezra,
+and had received in the process sundry divinely inspired words and
+phrases to clear the meaning. Both these innovators were dealt
+with promptly: Carlstadt was, for this and other troublesome ideas,
+suppressed with the applause of the Protestant Church; and the book of
+Maes was placed by the older Church on the Index.
+
+But as we now look back over the Revival of Learning, the Age of
+Discovery, and the Reformation, we can see clearly that powerful as the
+older Church then was, and powerful as the Reformed Church was to be,
+there was at work something far more mighty than either or than both;
+and this was a great law of nature--the law of evolution through
+differentiation. Obedient to this law there now began to arise, both
+within the Church and without it, a new body of scholars--not so much
+theologians as searchers for truth by scientific methods. Some, like
+Cusa, were ecclesiastics; some, like Valla, Erasmus, and the Scaligers,
+were not such in any real sense; but whether in holy orders, really,
+nominally, or not at all, they were, first of all, literary and
+scientific investigators.
+
+During the sixteenth century a strong impulse was given to more thorough
+research by several very remarkable triumphs of the critical method
+as developed by this new class of men, and two of these ought here to
+receive attention on account of their influence upon the whole after
+course of human thought.
+
+For many centuries the Decretals bearing the great name of Isidore had
+been cherished as among the most valued muniments of the Church. They
+contained what claimed to be a mass of canons, letters of popes, decrees
+of councils, and the like, from the days of the apostles down to the
+eighth century--all supporting at important points the doctrine, the
+discipline, the ceremonial, and various high claims of the Church and
+its hierarchy.
+
+But in the fifteenth century that sturdy German thinker, Cardinal
+Nicholas of Cusa, insisted on examining these documents and on applying
+to them the same thorough research and patient thought which led him,
+even before Copernicus, to detect the error of the Ptolemaic astronomy.
+
+As a result, he avowed his scepticism regarding this pious literature;
+other close thinkers followed him in investigating it, and it was
+soon found a tissue of absurd anachronisms, with endless clashing and
+confusion of events and persons.
+
+For a time heroic attempts were made by Church authorities to cover up
+these facts. Scholars revealing them were frowned upon, even persecuted,
+and their works placed upon the Index; scholars explaining them
+away--the "apologists" or "reconcilers" of that day--were rewarded with
+Church preferment, one of them securing for a very feeble treatise
+a cardinal's hat. But all in vain; these writings were at length
+acknowledged by all scholars of note, Catholic and Protestant, to be
+mainly a mass of devoutly cunning forgeries.
+
+While the eyes of scholars were thus opened as never before to the skill
+of early Church zealots in forging documents useful to ecclesiasticism,
+another discovery revealed their equal skill in forging documents useful
+to theology.
+
+For more than a thousand years great stress had been laid by theologians
+upon the writings ascribed to Dionysius the Areopagite, the Athenian
+convert of St. Paul. Claiming to come from one so near the great
+apostle, they were prized as a most precious supplement to Holy Writ.
+A belief was developed that when St. Paul had returned to earth,
+after having been "caught up to the third heaven," he had revealed to
+Dionysius the things he had seen. Hence it was that the varied pictures
+given in these writings of the heavenly hierarchy and the angelic
+ministers of the Almighty took strong hold upon the imagination of the
+universal Church: their theological statements sank deeply into
+the hearts and minds of the Mystics of the twelfth century and the
+Platonists of the fifteenth; and the ten epistles they contained,
+addressed to St. John, to Titus, to Polycarp, and others of the earliest
+period, were considered treasures of sacred history. An Emperor of
+the East had sent these writings to an Emperor of the West as the most
+precious of imperial gifts. Scotus Erigena had translated them; St.
+Thomas Aquinas had expounded them; Dante had glorified them; Albert
+the Great had claimed that they were virtually given by St. Paul and
+inspired by the Holy Ghost. Their authenticity was taken for granted by
+fathers, doctors, popes, councils, and the universal Church.
+
+But now, in the glow of the Renascence, all this treasure was found to
+be but dross. Investigators in the old Church and in the new joined in
+proving that the great mass of it was spurious.
+
+To say nothing of other evidences, it failed to stand the simplest of
+all tests, for these writings constantly presupposed institutions and
+referred to events of much later date than the time of Dionysius; they
+were at length acknowledged by all authorities worthy of the name,
+Catholic as well as Protestant, to be simply--like the Isidorian
+Decretals--pious frauds.
+
+Thus arose an atmosphere of criticism very different from the atmosphere
+of literary docility and acquiescence of the "Ages of Faith"; thus it
+came that great scholars in all parts of Europe began to realize, as
+never before, the part which theological skill and ecclesiastical zeal
+had taken in the development of spurious sacred literature; thus was
+stimulated a new energy in research into all ancient documents, no
+matter what their claims. To strengthen this feeling and to intensify
+the stimulating qualities of this new atmosphere came, as we have seen,
+the researches and revelations of Valla regarding the forged Letter of
+Christ to Abgarus, the fraudulent Donation of Constantine, and the late
+date of the Apostles' Creed; and, to give this feeling direction toward
+the Hebrew and Christian sacred books, came the example of Erasmus.(474)
+
+
+     (474) For very fair statements regarding the great forged documents of
+the Middle Ages, see Addis and Arnold, Catholic Dictionary, articles
+Dionysius the Areopagite and False Decretals, and in the latter the
+curious acknowledgment that the mass of pseudo-Isidorian Decretals "is
+what we now call a forgery."
+
+For the derivation of Dionysius's ideas from St. Paul, and for the idea
+of inspiration attributed to him, see Albertus Magnus, Opera Omnia, vol.
+xiii, early chapters and chap. vi. For very interesting details on this
+general subject, see Dollinger, Das Papstthum, chap. ii; also his Fables
+respecting the Popes of the Middle Ages, translated by Plummer and H. B.
+Smith, part i, chap. v. Of the exposure of these works, see Farrar, as
+above, pp. 254, 255; also Beard, Hibbert Lectures, pp. 4, 354. For the
+False Decretals, see Milman, History of Latin Christianity, vol. ii, pp.
+373 et seq. For the great work of the pseudo-Dionysius, see ibid., vol.
+iii, p. 352, and vol. vi, pp. 402 et seq., and Canon Westcott's article
+on Dionysius the Areopagite in vol. v of the Contemporary Review; also
+the chapters on Astronomy in this work.
+
+
+Naturally, then, in this new atmosphere the bolder scholars of Europe
+soon began to push more vigorously the researches begun centuries before
+by Aben Ezra, and the next efforts of these men were seen about the
+middle of the seventeenth century, when Hobbes, in his Leviathan, and
+La Pevrere, in his Preadamites, took them up and developed them still
+further. The result came speedily. Hobbes, for this and other sins, was
+put under the ban, even by the political party which sorely needed him,
+and was regarded generally as an outcast; while La Peyrere, for this and
+other heresies, was thrown into prison by the Grand Vicar of Mechlin,
+and kept there until he fully retracted: his book was refuted by seven
+theologians within a year after its appearance, and within a generation
+thirty-six elaborate answers to it had appeared: the Parliament of Paris
+ordered it to be burned by the hangman.
+
+In 1670 came an utterance vastly more important, by a man far greater
+than any of these--the Tractatus Thrologico-Politicus of Spinoza.
+Reverently but firmly he went much more deeply into the subject.
+Suggesting new arguments and recasting the old, he summed up all with
+judicial fairness, and showed that Moses could not have been the author
+of the Pentateuch in the form then existing; that there had been glosses
+and revisions; that the biblical books had grown up as a literature;
+that, though great truths are to be found in them, and they are to be
+regarded as a divine revelation, the old claims of inerrancy for them
+can not be maintained; that in studying them men had been misled by
+mistaking human conceptions for divine meanings; that, while prophets
+have been inspired, the prophetic faculty has not been the dowry of the
+Jewish people alone; that to look for exact knowledge of natural and
+spiritual phenomena in the sacred books is an utter mistake; and that
+the narratives of the Old and New Testaments, while they surpass those
+of profane history, differ among themselves not only in literary merit,
+but in the value of the doctrines they inculcate. As to the authorship
+of the Pentateuch, he arrived at the conclusion that it was written long
+after Moses, but that Moses may have written some books from which
+it was compiled--as, for example, those which are mentioned in the
+Scriptures, the Book of the Wars of God, the Book of the Covenant,
+and the like--and that the many repetitions and contradictions in the
+various books show a lack of careful editing as well as a variety of
+original sources. Spinoza then went on to throw light into some other
+books of the Old and New Testaments, and added two general statements
+which have proved exceedingly serviceable, for they contain the germs of
+all modern broad churchmanship; and the first of them gave the formula
+which was destined in our own time to save to the Anglican Church a
+large number of her noblest sons: this was, that "sacred Scripture
+CONTAINS the Word of God, and in so far as it contains it is
+incorruptible"; the second was, that "error in speculative doctrine is
+not impious."
+
+Though published in various editions, the book seemed to produce little
+effect upon the world at that time; but its result to Spinoza himself
+was none the less serious. Though so deeply religious that Novalis
+spoke of him as "a God-intoxicated man," and Schleiermacher called him a
+"saint," he had been, for the earlier expression of some of the opinions
+it contained, abhorred as a heretic both by Jews and Christians: from
+the synagogue he was cut off by a public curse, and by the Church he was
+now regarded as in some sort a forerunner of Antichrist. For all this,
+he showed no resentment, but devoted himself quietly to his studies, and
+to the simple manual labour by which he supported himself; declined
+all proffered honours, among them a professorship at Heidelberg; found
+pleasure only in the society of a few friends as gentle and affectionate
+as himself; and died contentedly, without seeing any widespread effect
+of his doctrine other than the prevailing abhorrence of himself.
+
+Perhaps in all the seventeenth century there was no man whom Jesus of
+Nazareth would have more deeply loved, and no life which he would have
+more warmly approved; yet down to a very recent period this hatred for
+Spinoza has continued. When, about 1880, it was proposed to erect a
+monument to him at Amsterdam, discourses were given in churches and
+synagogues prophesying the wrath of Heaven upon the city for such a
+profanation; and when the monument was finished, the police were obliged
+to exert themselves to prevent injury to the statue and to the eminent
+scholars who unveiled it.
+
+But the ideas of Spinoza at last secured recognition. They had sunk
+deeply into the hearts and minds of various leaders of thought, and,
+most important of all, into the heart and mind of Lessing; he brought
+them to bear in his treatise on the Education of the World, as well as
+in his drama, Nathan the Wise, and both these works have spoken with
+power to every generation since.
+
+In France, also, came the same healthful evolution of thought. For
+generations scholars had known that multitudes of errors had crept into
+the sacred text. Robert Stephens had found over two thousand variations
+in the oldest manuscripts of the Old Testament, and in 1633 Jean Morin,
+a priest of the Oratory, pointed out clearly many of the most glaring
+of these. Seventeen years later, in spite of the most earnest Protestant
+efforts to suppress his work, Cappellus gave forth his Critica Sacra,
+demonstrating not only that the vowel pointing of Scripture was not
+divinely inspired, but that the Hebrew text itself, from which
+the modern translations were made, is full of errors due to the
+carelessness, ignorance, and doctrinal zeal of early scribes, and that
+there had clearly been no miraculous preservation of the "original
+autographs" of the sacred books.
+
+While orthodox France was under the uneasiness and alarm thus caused,
+appeared a Critical History of the Old Testament by Richard Simon, a
+priest of the Oratory. He was a thoroughly religious man and an acute
+scholar, whose whole purpose was to develop truths which he believed
+healthful to the Church and to mankind. But he denied that Moses was the
+author of the Pentateuch, and exhibited the internal evidence, now so
+well known, that the books were composed much later by various persons,
+and edited later still. He also showed that other parts of the Old
+Testament had been compiled from older sources, and attacked the
+time-honoured theory that Hebrew was the primitive language of mankind.
+The whole character of his book was such that in these days it would
+pass, on the whole, as conservative and orthodox; it had been approved
+by the censor in 1678, and printed, when the table of contents and
+a page of the preface were shown to Bossuet. The great bishop and
+theologian was instantly aroused; he pronounced the work "a mass of
+impieties and a bulwark of irreligion"; his biographer tells us that,
+although it was Holy Thursday, the bishop, in spite of the solemnity of
+the day, hastened at once to the Chancellor Le Tellier, and secured an
+order to stop the publication of the book and to burn the whole edition
+of it. Fortunately, a few copies were rescued, and a few years later
+the work found a new publisher in Holland; yet not until there had been
+attached to it, evidently by some Protestant divine of authority, an
+essay warning the reader against its dangerous doctrines. Two years
+later a translation was published in England.
+
+This first work of Simon was followed by others, in which he sought, in
+the interest of scriptural truth, to throw a new and purer light upon
+our sacred literature; but Bossuet proved implacable. Although unable
+to suppress all of Simon's works, he was able to drive him from the
+Oratory, and to bring him into disrepute among the very men who ought to
+have been proud of him as Frenchmen and thankful to him as Christians.
+
+But other scholars of eminence were now working in this field, and chief
+among them Le Clerc. Virtually driven out of Geneva, he took refuge
+at Amsterdam, and there published a series of works upon the Hebrew
+language, the interpretation of Scripture, and the like. In these
+he combated the prevalent idea that Hebrew was the primitive tongue,
+expressed the opinion that in the plural form of the word used in
+Genesis for God, "Elohim," there is a trace of Chaldean polytheism, and,
+in his discussion on the serpent who tempted Eve, curiously anticipated
+modern geological and zoological ideas by quietly confessing his
+inability to see how depriving the serpent of feet and compelling him to
+go on his belly could be punishment--since all this was natural to the
+animal. He also ventured quasi-scientific explanations of the confusion
+of tongues at Babel, the destruction of Sodom, the conversion of Lot's
+wife into a pillar of salt, and the dividing of the Red Sea. As to
+the Pentateuch in general, he completely rejected the idea that it was
+written by Moses. But his most permanent gift to the thinking world was
+his answer to those who insisted upon the reference by Christ and his
+apostles to Moses as the author of the Pentateuch. The answer became a
+formula which has proved effective from his day to ours: "Our Lord and
+his apostles did not come into this world to teach criticism to the
+Jews, and hence spoke according to the common opinion."
+
+Against all these scholars came a theological storm, but it raged most
+pitilessly against Le Clerc. Such renowned theologians as Carpzov in
+Germany, Witsius in Holland, and Huet in France berated him unmercifully
+and overwhelmed him with assertions which still fill us with wonder.
+That of Huet, attributing the origin of pagan as well as Christian
+theology to Moses, we have already seen; but Carpzov showed that
+Protestantism could not be outdone by Catholicism when he declared, in
+the face of all modern knowledge, that not only the matter but the exact
+form and words of the Bible had been divinely transmitted to the modern
+world free from all error.
+
+At this Le Clerc stood aghast, and finally stammered out a sort of half
+recantation.(475)
+
+
+     (475) For Carlstadt, and Luther's dealings with him on various accounts,
+see Meyer, Geschichte der exegese, vol. ii, pp. 373, 397. As to the
+value of Maes's work in general, see Meyer, vol. ii, p. 125; and as
+to the sort of work in question, ibid., vol. iii, p. 425, note. For
+Carlstadt, see also Farrar, History of Interpretation, and Moore's
+introduction, as above. For Hobbes's view that the Pentateuch was
+written long after Moses's day, see the Leviathan, vol. iii, p. 33. For
+La Peyrere's view, see especially his Prae-Adamitae, lib. iv, chap. ii,
+also lib. ii, passim; also Lecky, Rationalism in Europe, vol. i, p. 294;
+also interesting points in Bayle's Dictionary. For Spinoza's view,
+see the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, chaps. ii and iii, and for
+the persecution, see the various biographies. Details regarding the
+demonstration against the unveiling of his statue were given to the
+present writer at the time by Berthold Auerbach, who took part in the
+ceremony. For Morinus and Cappellus, see Farrar, as above, p. 387
+and note. For Richard Simon, see his Histoire Critique de l'Ancien
+Testament, liv. i, chaps. ii, iii, iv, v, and xiii. For his denial
+of the prevailing theory regarding Hebrew, see liv. i, chap. iv. For
+Morinus (Morin) and his work, see the Biog. Univ. and Nouvelle Biog.
+Generale; also Curtiss. For Bousset's opposition to Simon, see the
+Histoire de Bousser in the Oeuvres de Bousset, Paris, 1846, tome xii,
+pp. 330, 331; also t. x, p. 378; also sundry attacks in various volumes.
+It is interesting to note that among the chief instigators of the
+persecution were the Port-Royalists, upon whose persecution afterward by
+the Jesuits so much sympathy has been lavished by the Protestant world.
+For Le Clerc, see especially his Pentateuchus, Prolegom, dissertat.
+i; also Com. in Genes., cap. vi-viii. For a translation of selected
+passages on the points noted, see Twelve Dissertations out of Monsieur
+LeClerc's Genesis, done out of Latin by Mr. Brown, London, 1696; also Le
+Clerc's Sentiments de Quelques Theologiens de Hollande, passim; also his
+work on Inspiration, English translation, Boston, 1820, pp. 47-50,
+also 57-67. For Witsius and Carpzov, see Curtiss, as above. For some
+subordinate points in the earlier growth of the opinion at present
+dominant, see Briggs, The Higher Criticism of the Hexateuch, New York,
+1893, chap. iv.
+
+
+During the eighteenth century constant additions were made to the
+enormous structure of orthodox scriptural interpretation, some of them
+gaining the applause of the Christian world then, though nearly all
+are utterly discredited now. But in 1753 appeared two contributions
+of permanent influence, though differing vastly in value. In the
+comparative estimate of these two works the world has seen a remarkable
+reversal of public opinion.
+
+The first of these was Bishop Lowth's Prelections upon the Sacred Poetry
+of the Hebrews. In this was well brought out that characteristic of
+Hebrew poetry to which it owes so much of its peculiar charm--its
+parallelism.
+
+The second of these books was Astruc's Conjectures on the Original
+Memoirs which Moses used in composing the Book of Genesis. In this
+was for the first time clearly revealed the fact that, amid various
+fragments of old writings, at least two main narratives enter into the
+composition of Genesis; that in the first of these is generally used as
+an appellation of the Almighty the word "Elohim," and in the second the
+word "Yahveh" (Jehovah); that each narrative has characteristics of its
+own, in thought and expression, which distinguish it from the other;
+that, by separating these, two clear and distinct narratives may be
+obtained, each consistent with itself, and that thus, and thus alone,
+can be explained the repetitions, discrepancies, and contradictions in
+Genesis which so long baffled the ingenuity of commentators, especially
+the two accounts of the creation, so utterly inconsistent with each
+other.
+
+Interesting as was Lowth's book, this work by Astruc was, as the
+thinking world now acknowledges, infinitely more important; it was,
+indeed, the most valuable single contribution ever made to biblical
+study. But such was not the judgment of the world THEN. While Lowth's
+book was covered with honour and its author promoted from the bishopric
+of St. David's to that of London, and even offered the primacy,
+Astruc and his book were covered with reproach. Though, as an orthodox
+Catholic, he had mainly desired to reassert the authorship of Moses
+against the argument of Spinoza, he received no thanks on that account.
+Theologians of all creeds sneered at him as a doctor of medicine who had
+blundered beyond his province; his fellow-Catholics in France bitterly
+denounced him as a heretic; and in Germany the great Protestant
+theologian, Michaelis, who had edited and exalted Lowth's work, poured
+contempt over Astruc as an ignoramus.
+
+The case of Astruc is one of the many which show the wonderful power of
+the older theological reasoning to close the strongest minds against
+the clearest truths. The fact which he discovered is now as definitely
+established as any in the whole range of literature or science. It has
+become as clear as the day, and yet for two thousand years the minds of
+professional theologians, Jewish and Christian, were unable to detect
+it. Not until this eminent physician applied to the subject a mind
+trained in making scientific distinctions was it given to the world.
+
+It was, of course, not possible even for so eminent a scholar as
+Michaelis to pooh-pooh down a discovery so pregnant; and, curiously
+enough, it was one of Michaelis's own scholars, Eichhorn, who did the
+main work in bringing the new truth to bear upon the world. He, with
+others, developed out of it the theory that Genesis, and indeed the
+Pentateuch, is made up entirely of fragments of old writings, mainly
+disjointed. But they did far more than this: they impressed upon the
+thinking part of Christendom the fact that the Bible is not a BOOK, but
+a LITERATURE; that the style is not supernatural and unique, but simply
+the Oriental style of the lands and times in which its various parts
+were written; and that these must be studied in the light of the modes
+of thought and statement and the literary habits generally of Oriental
+peoples. From Eichhorn's time the process which, by historical,
+philological, and textual research, brings out the truth regarding this
+literature has been known as "the higher criticism."
+
+He was a deeply religious man, and the mainspring of his efforts was the
+desire to bring back to the Church the educated classes, who had been
+repelled by the stiff Lutheran orthodoxy; but this only increased
+hostility to him. Opposition met him in Germany at every turn; and in
+England, Lloyd, Regius Professor of Hebrew at Cambridge, who sought
+patronage for a translation of Eichhorn's work, was met generally with
+contempt and frequently with insult.
+
+Throughout Catholic Germany it was even worse. In 1774 Isenbiehl, a
+priest at Mayence who had distinguished himself as a Greek and Hebrew
+scholar, happened to question the usual interpretation of the passage in
+Isaiah which refers to the virgin-born Immanuel, and showed then--what
+every competent critic knows now--that it had reference to events looked
+for in older Jewish history. The censorship and faculty of theology
+attacked him at once and brought him before the elector. Luckily, this
+potentate was one of the old easy-going prince-bishops, and contented
+himself with telling the priest that, though his contention was perhaps
+true, he "must remain in the old paths, and avoid everything likely to
+make trouble."
+
+But at the elector's death, soon afterward, the theologians renewed the
+attack, threw Isenbiehl out of his professorship and degraded him. One
+insult deserves mention for its ingenuity. It was declared that
+he--the successful and brilliant professor--showed by the obnoxious
+interpretation that he had not yet rightly learned the Scriptures; he
+was therefore sent back to the benches of the theological school, and
+made to take his seat among the ingenuous youth who were conning the
+rudiments of theology. At this he made a new statement, so carefully
+guarded that it disarmed many of his enemies, and his high scholarship
+soon won for him a new professorship of Greek--the condition being that
+he should cease writing upon Scripture. But a crafty bookseller having
+republished his former book, and having protected himself by keeping the
+place and date of publication secret, a new storm fell upon the author;
+he was again removed from his professorship and thrown into prison; his
+book was forbidden, and all copies of it in that part of Germany were
+confiscated. In 1778, having escaped from prison, he sought refuge with
+another of the minor rulers who in blissful unconsciousness were doing
+their worst while awaiting the French Revolution, but was at once
+delivered up to the Mayence authorities and again thrown into prison.
+
+The Pope, Pius VI, now intervened with a brief on Isenbiehl's book,
+declaring it "horrible, false, perverse, destructive, tainted with
+heresy," and excommunicating all who should read it. At this, Isenbiehl,
+declaring that he had written it in the hope of doing a service to the
+Church, recanted, and vegetated in obscurity until his death in 1818.
+
+But, despite theological faculties, prince-bishops, and even popes, the
+new current of thought increased in strength and volume, and into it at
+the end of the eighteenth century came important contributions from two
+sources widely separated and most dissimilar.
+
+The first of these, which gave a stimulus not yet exhausted, was the
+work of Herder. By a remarkable intuition he had anticipated some of
+those ideas of an evolutionary process in nature and in literature which
+first gained full recognition nearly three quarters of a century after
+him; but his greatest service in the field of biblical study was his
+work, at once profound and brilliant, The Spirit of Hebrew Poetry. In
+this field he eclipsed Bishop Lowth. Among other things of importance,
+he showed that the Psalms were by different authors and of different
+periods--the bloom of a great poetic literature.
+
+Until his time no one had so clearly done justice to their sublimity and
+beauty; but most striking of all was his discussion of Solomon's Song.
+For over twenty centuries it had been customary to attribute to it
+mystical meanings. If here and there some man saw the truth, he was
+careful, like Aben Ezra, to speak with bated breath.
+
+The penalty for any more honest interpretation was seen, among
+Protestants, when Calvin and Beza persecuted Castellio, covered him with
+obloquy, and finally drove him to starvation and death, for throwing
+light upon the real character of the Song of Songs; and among Catholics
+it was seen when Philip II allowed the pious and gifted Luis de Leon,
+for a similar offence, to be thrown into a dungeon of the Inquisition
+and kept there for five years, until his health was utterly shattered
+and his spirit so broken that he consented to publish a new commentary
+on the song, "as theological and obscure as the most orthodox could
+desire."
+
+Here, too, we have an example of the efficiency of the older biblical
+theology in fettering the stronger minds and in stupefying the weaker.
+Just as the book of Genesis had to wait over two thousand years for a
+physician to reveal the simplest fact regarding its structure, so the
+Song of Songs had to wait even longer for a poet to reveal not only its
+beauty but its character. Commentators innumerable had interpreted it;
+St. Bernard had preached over eighty sermons on its first two chapters;
+Palestrina had set its most erotic parts to sacred music; Jews and
+Gentiles, Catholics and Protestants, from Origen to Aben Ezra and from
+Luther to Bossuet, had uncovered its deep meanings and had demonstrated
+it to be anything and everything save that which it really is. Among
+scores of these strange imaginations it was declared to represent the
+love of Jehovah for Israel; the love of Christ for the Church; the
+praises of the Blessed Virgin; the union of the soul with the body;
+sacred history from the Exodus to the Messiah; Church history from the
+Crucifixion to the Reformation; and some of the more acute Protestant
+divines found in it references even to the religious wars in Germany
+and to the Peace of Passau. In these days it seems hard to imagine how
+really competent reasoners could thus argue without laughing in each
+other's faces, after the manner of Cicero's augurs. Herder showed
+Solomon's Song to be what the whole thinking world now knows it to
+be--simply an Oriental love-poem.
+
+But his frankness brought him into trouble: he was bitterly assailed.
+Neither his noble character nor his genius availed him. Obliged to flee
+from one pastorate to another, he at last found a happy refuge at
+Weimar in the society of Goethe, Wieland, and Jean Paul, and thence he
+exercised a powerful influence in removing noxious and parasitic growths
+from religious thought.
+
+It would hardly be possible to imagine a man more different from
+Herder than was the other of the two who most influenced biblical
+interpretation at the end of the eighteenth century. This was Alexander
+Geddes--a Roman Catholic priest and a Scotchman. Having at an early
+period attracted much attention by his scholarship, and having received
+the very rare distinction, for a Catholic, of a doctorate from the
+University of Aberdeen, he began publishing in 1792 a new translation of
+the Old Testament, and followed this in 1800 with a volume of critical
+remarks. In these he supported mainly three views: first, that the
+Pentateuch in its present form could not have been written by Moses;
+secondly, that it was the work of various hands; and, thirdly, that it
+could not have been written before the time of David. Although there
+was a fringe of doubtful theories about them, these main conclusions,
+supported as they were by deep research and cogent reasoning, are now
+recognised as of great value. But such was not the orthodox opinion
+then. Though a man of sincere piety, who throughout his entire life
+remained firm in the faith of his fathers, he and his work were at
+once condemned: he was suspended by the Catholic authorities as a
+misbeliever, denounced by Protestants as an infidel, and taunted by both
+as "a would-be corrector of the Holy Ghost." Of course, by this
+taunt was meant nothing more than that he dissented from sundry ideas
+inherited from less enlightened times by the men who just then happened
+to wield ecclesiastical power.
+
+But not all the opposition to him could check the evolution of his
+thought. A line of great men followed in these paths opened by Astruc
+and Eichhorn, and broadened by Herder and Geddes. Of these was De Wette,
+whose various works, especially his Introduction to the Old Testament,
+gave a new impulse early in the nineteenth century to fruitful thought
+throughout Christendom. In these writings, while showing how largely
+myths and legends had entered into the Hebrew sacred books, he threw
+especial light into the books Deuteronomy and Chronicles. The former
+he showed to be, in the main, a late priestly summary of law, and the
+latter a very late priestly recast of early history. He had, indeed, to
+pay a penalty for thus aiding the world in its march toward more truth,
+for he was driven out of Germany, and obliged to take refuge in a
+Swiss professorship; while Theodore Parker, who published an English
+translation of his work, was, for this and similar sins, virtually
+rejected by what claimed to be the most liberal of all Christian bodies
+in the United States.
+
+But contributions to the new thought continued from quarters whence
+least was expected. Gesenius, by his Hebrew Grammar, and Ewald, by his
+historical studies, greatly advanced it.
+
+To them and to all like them during the middle years of the nineteenth
+century was sturdily opposed the colossus of orthodoxy--Hengstenberg. In
+him was combined the haughtiness of a Prussian drill-sergeant, the zeal
+of a Spanish inquisitor, and the flippant brutality of a French orthodox
+journalist. Behind him stood the gifted but erratic Frederick William
+IV--a man admirably fitted for a professorship of aesthetics, but whom
+an inscrutable fate had made King of Prussia. Both these rulers in the
+German Israel arrayed all possible opposition against the great scholars
+labouring in the new paths; but this opposition was vain: the succession
+of acute and honest scholars continued: Vatke, Bleek, Reuss, Graf,
+Kayser, Hupfeld, Delitzsch, Kuenen, and others wrought on in Germany and
+Holland, steadily developing the new truth.
+
+Especially to be mentioned among these is Hupfeld, who published in 1853
+his treatise on The Sources of Genesis. Accepting the Conjectures which
+Astruc had published just a hundred years before, he established what
+has ever since been recognised by the leading biblical commentators as
+the true basis of work upon the Pentateuch--the fact that THREE true
+documents are combined in Genesis, each with its own characteristics.
+He, too, had to pay a price for letting more light upon the world. A
+determined attempt was made to punish him. Though deeply religious in
+his nature and aspirations, he was denounced in 1865 to the Prussian
+Government as guilty of irreverence; but, to the credit of his noble and
+true colleagues who trod in the more orthodox paths--men like Tholuck
+and Julius Muller--the theological faculty of the University of Halle
+protested against this persecuting effort, and it was brought to naught.
+
+The demonstrations of Hupfeld gave new life to biblical scholarship in
+all lands. More and more clear became the evidence that throughout the
+Pentateuch, and indeed in other parts of our sacred books, there had
+been a fusion of various ideas, a confounding of various epochs, and a
+compilation of various documents. Thus was opened a new field of thought
+and work: in sifting out this literature; in rearranging it; and in
+bringing it into proper connection with the history of the Jewish race
+and of humanity.
+
+Astruc and Hupfeld having thus found a key to the true character of the
+"Mosaic" Scriptures, a second key was found which opened the way to the
+secret of order in all this chaos. For many generations one thing had
+especially puzzled commentators and given rise to masses of futile
+"reconciliation": this was the patent fact that such men as Samuel,
+David, Elijah, Isaiah, and indeed the whole Jewish people down to the
+Exile, showed in all their utterances and actions that they were utterly
+ignorant of that vast system of ceremonial law which, according to the
+accounts attributed to Moses and other parts of our sacred books, was in
+full force during their time and during nearly a thousand years before
+the Exile. It was held "always, everywhere, and by all," that in the
+Old Testament the chronological order of revelation was: first, the
+law; secondly, the Psalms; thirdly, the prophets. This belief continued
+unchallenged during more than two thousand years, and until after the
+middle of the nineteenth century.
+
+Yet, as far back as 1835, Vatke at Berlin had, in his Religion of the
+Old Testament, expressed his conviction that this belief was unfounded.
+Reasoning that Jewish thought must have been subject to the laws of
+development which govern other systems, he arrived at the conclusion
+that the legislation ascribed to Moses, and especially the elaborate
+paraphernalia and composite ceremonies of the ritual, could not have
+come into being at a period so rude as that depicted in the "Mosaic"
+accounts.
+
+Although Vatke wrapped this statement in a mist of Hegelian metaphysics,
+a sufficient number of watchmen on the walls of the Prussian Zion saw
+its meaning, and an alarm was given. The chroniclers tell us that "fear
+of failing in the examinations, through knowing too much, kept students
+away from Vatke's lectures." Naturally, while Hengstenberg and Frederick
+William IV were commanding the forces of orthodoxy, Vatke thought it
+wise to be silent.
+
+Still, the new idea was in the air; indeed, it had been divined about a
+year earlier, on the other side of the Rhine, by a scholar well known
+as acute and thoughtful--Reuss, of Strasburg. Unfortunately, he too was
+overawed, and he refrained from publishing his thought during more
+than forty years. But his ideas were caught by some of his most gifted
+scholars; and, of these, Graf and Kayser developed them and had the
+courage to publish them.
+
+At the same period this new master key was found and applied by a
+greater man than any of these--by Kuenen, of Holland; and thus it was
+that three eminent scholars, working in different parts of Europe and on
+different lines, in spite of all obstacles, joined in enforcing upon the
+thinking world the conviction that the complete Levitical law had
+been established not at the beginning, but at the end, of the Jewish
+nation--mainly, indeed, after the Jewish nation as an independent
+political body had ceased to exist; that this code had not been revealed
+in the childhood of Israel, but that it had come into being in a
+perfectly natural way during Israel's final decay--during the period
+when heroes and prophets had been succeeded by priests. Thus was the
+historical and psychological evolution of Jewish institutions brought
+into harmony with the natural development of human thought; elaborate
+ceremonial institutions being shown to have come after the ruder
+beginnings of religious development instead of before them. Thus came
+a new impulse to research, and the fruitage was abundant; the older
+theological interpretation, with its insoluble puzzles, yielded on all
+sides.
+
+The lead in the new epoch thus opened was taken by Kuenen. Starting
+with strong prepossessions in favour of the older thought, and even with
+violent utterances against some of the supporters of the new view, he
+was borne on by his love of truth, until his great work, The Religion of
+Israel, published in 1869, attracted the attention of thinking scholars
+throughout the world by its arguments in favour of the upward movement.
+From him now came a third master key to the mystery; for he showed that
+the true opening point for research into the history and literature of
+Israel is to be found in the utterances of the great prophets of the
+eighth century before our era. Starting from these, he opened new paths
+into the periods preceding and following them. Recognising the fact
+that the religion of Israel was, like other great world religions, a
+development of higher ideas out of lower, he led men to bring deeper
+thinking and wider research into the great problem. With ample learning
+and irresistible logic he proved that Old Testament history is largely
+mingled with myth and legend; that not only were the laws attributed
+to Moses in the main a far later development, but that much of their
+historical setting was an afterthought; also that Old Testament prophecy
+was never supernaturally predictive, and least of all predictive of
+events recorded in the New Testament. Thus it was that his genius gave
+to the thinking world a new point of view, and a masterly exhibition of
+the true method of study. Justly has one of the most eminent divines
+of the contemporary Anglican Church indorsed the statement of another
+eminent scholar, that "Kuenen stood upon his watch-tower, as it were
+the conscience of Old Testament science"; that his work is characterized
+"not merely by fine scholarship, critical insight, historical sense, and
+a religious nature, but also by an incorruptible conscientiousness, and
+a majestic devotion to the quest of truth."
+
+Thus was established the science of biblical criticism. And now the
+question was, whether the Church of northern Germany would accept
+this great gift--the fruit of centuries of devoted toil and
+self-sacrifice--and take the lead of Christendom in and by it.
+
+The great curse of Theology and Ecclesiasticism has always been their
+tendency to sacrifice large interests to small--Charity to Creed, Unity
+to Uniformity, Fact to Tradition, Ethics to Dogma. And now there were
+symptoms throughout the governing bodies of the Reformed churches
+indicating a determination to sacrifice leadership in this new thought
+to ease in orthodoxy. Every revelation of new knowledge encountered
+outcry, opposition, and repression; and, what was worse, the ill-judged
+declarations of some unwise workers in the critical field were seized
+upon and used to discredit all fruitful research. Fortunately, a man now
+appeared who both met all this opposition successfully, and put aside
+all the half truths or specious untruths urged by minor critics whose
+zeal outran their discretion. This was a great constructive scholar--not
+a destroyer, but a builder--Wellhausen. Reverently, but honestly and
+courageously, with clearness, fulness, and convicting force, he summed
+up the conquests of scientific criticism as bearing on Hebrew history
+and literature. These conquests had reduced the vast structures which
+theologians had during ages been erecting over the sacred text to
+shapeless ruin and rubbish: this rubbish he removed, and brought out
+from beneath it the reality. He showed Jewish history as an evolution
+obedient to laws at work in all ages, and Jewish literature as a growth
+out of individual, tribal, and national life. Thus was our sacred
+history and literature given a beauty and high use which had long been
+foreign to them. Thereby was a vast service rendered immediately to
+Germany, and eventually to all mankind; and this service was greatest of
+all in the domain of religion.(476)
+
+
+     (476) For Lowth, see the Rev. T. K. Cheyne, D. D., Professor of the
+Interpretation of the Holy Scripture in the University of Oxford,
+Founders of the Old Testament Criticism, London, 1893, pp. 3, 4.
+For Astruc's very high character as a medical authority, see the
+Dictionnaire des Sciences Medicales, Paris, 1820; it is significant that
+at first he concealed his authorship of the Conjectures. For a brief
+statement, see Cheyne; also Moore's introduction to Bacon's Genesis of
+Genesis; but for a statement remarkably full and interesting, and based
+on knowledge at first hand of Astruc's very rare book, see Curtiss, as
+above. For Michaelis and Eichorn, see Meyer, Geschichte der Exegese;
+also Cheyne and Moore. For Isenbiehl, see Reusch, in Allg. deutsche
+Biographie. The texts cited against him were Isaiah vii, 14, and Matt.
+i, 22, 23. For Herder, see various historians of literature and writers
+in exegesis, and especially Pfleiderer, Development of Theology in
+Germany, chap. ii. For his influence, as well as that of Lessing, see
+Beard's Hibbert Lectures, chap. x. For a brief comparison of Lowth's
+work with that of Herder, see Farrar, History of Interpretation, p. 377.
+For examples of interpretations of the Song of Songs, see Farrar, as
+above, p. 33. For Castellio (Chatillon), his anticipation of Herder's
+view of Solomon's Song, and his persecution by Calvin and Beza, which
+drove him to starvation and death, see Lecky, Rationalism, etc.,
+vol. ii, pp. 46-48; also Bayle's Dictionary, article Castalio; also
+Montaigne's Essais, liv,. i, chap. xxxiv; and especially the new life
+of him by Buisson. For the persecution of Luis de Leon for a similar
+offence, see Ticknor, History of Spanish Literature, vol. ii, pp. 41,
+42, and note. For a remarkably frank acceptance of the consequences
+flowing from Herder's view of it, see Sanday, Inspiration, pp. 211, 405.
+For Geddes, see Cheyne, as above. For Theodore Parker, see his various
+biographies, passim. For Reuss, Graf, and Kuenen, see Cheyne, as above;
+and for the citations referred to, see the Rev. Dr. Driver, Regius
+Professor of Hebrew at Oxford, in The Academy, October 27, 1894; also a
+note to Wellhausen's article Pentateuch in the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
+For a generous yet weighty tribute to Kuenen's method, see Pfleiderer,
+as above, book iii, chap. ii. For the view of leading Christian critics
+on the book of Chronicles, see especially Driver, Introduction to the
+Literature of the Old Testament, pp. 495 et seq.; also Wellhausen, as
+above; also Hooykaas, Oort, and Kuenen, Bible for Learners. For many of
+the foregoing, see also the writings of Prof. W. Robertson Smith; also
+Beard's Hibbert Lectures, chap. x. For Hupfield and his discovery, see
+Cheyne, Founders, etc., as above, chap. vii; also Moore's Introduction.
+For a justly indignant judgment of Hengstenberg and his school, see
+Canon Farrar, as above, p. 417, note; and for a few words throwing a
+bright light into his character and career, see C. A. Briggs, D. D.,
+Authority of Holy Scripture, p. 93. For Wellhausen, see Pfleiderer, as
+above, book iii, chap. ii. For an excellent popular statement of the
+general results of German criticism, see J. T. Sunderland, The Bible,
+Its Origin, Growth, and Character, New York and London, 1893.
+
+
+
+
+III. THE CONTINUED GROWTH OF SCIENTIFIC INTERPRETATION.
+
+
+The science of biblical criticism was, as we have seen, first developed
+mainly in Germany and Holland. Many considerations there, as elsewhere,
+combined to deter men from opening new paths to truth: not even in those
+countries were these the paths to preferment; but there, at least, the
+sturdy Teutonic love of truth for truth's sake, strengthened by the
+Kantian ethics, found no such obstacles as in other parts of Europe.
+Fair investigation of biblical subjects had not there been extirpated,
+as in Italy and Spain; nor had it been forced into channels which led
+nowhither, as in France and southern Germany; nor were men who might
+otherwise have pursued it dazzled and drawn away from it by the
+multitude of splendid prizes for plausibility, for sophistry, or for
+silence displayed before the ecclesiastical vision in England. In the
+frugal homes of North German and Dutch professors and pastors high
+thinking on these great subjects went steadily on, and the "liberty of
+teaching," which is the glory of the northern Continental universities,
+while it did not secure honest thinkers against vexations, did at least
+protect them against the persecutions which in other countries would
+have thwarted their studies and starved their families.(477)
+
+
+     (477) As to the influence of Kant on honest thought in Germany, see
+Pfleiderer, as above, chap. i.
+
+
+In England the admission of the new current of thought was apparently
+impossible. The traditional system of biblical interpretation seemed
+established on British soil forever. It was knit into the whole fabric
+of thought and observance; it was protected by the most justly esteemed
+hierarchy the world has ever seen; it was intrenched behind the bishops'
+palaces, the cathedral stalls, the professors' chairs, the country
+parsonages--all these, as a rule, the seats of high endeavour and
+beautiful culture. The older thought held a controlling voice in the
+senate of the nation; it was dear to the hearts of all classes; it was
+superbly endowed; every strong thinker seemed to hold a brief, or to be
+in receipt of a retaining fee for it. As to preferment in the Church,
+there was a cynical aphorism current, "He may hold anything who will
+hold his tongue."(478)
+
+
+     (478) For an eloquent and at the same time profound statement of the
+evils flowing from the "moral terrorism" and "intellectual tyrrany"
+at Oxford at the period referred to, see quotation in Pfleiderer,
+Development of Theology, p. 371.
+
+For the alloy of interested motives among English Church dignitiaries,
+see the pungent criticism of Bishop Hampden by Canon Liddon, in his Life
+of Pusey, vol. i, p. 363.
+
+
+Yet, while there was inevitably much alloy of worldly wisdom in the
+opposition to the new thought, no just thinker can deny far higher
+motives to many, perhaps to most, of the ecclesiastics who were resolute
+against it. The evangelical movement incarnate in the Wesleys had not
+spent its strength; the movement begun by Pusey, Newman, Keble, and
+their compeers was in full force. The aesthetic reaction, represented on
+the Continent by Chateaubriand, Manzoni, and Victor Hugo, and in England
+by Walter Scott, Pugin, Ruskin, and above all by Wordsworth, came in
+to give strength to this barrier. Under the magic of the men who led in
+this reaction, cathedrals and churches, which in the previous century
+had been regarded by men of culture as mere barbaric masses of stone and
+mortar, to be masked without by classic colonnades and within by rococo
+work in stucco and papier mache, became even more beloved than in
+the thirteenth century. Even men who were repelled by theological
+disputations were fascinated and made devoted reactionists by the newly
+revealed beauties of medieval architecture and ritual.(479)
+
+
+     (479) A very curious example of this insensibility among persons of
+really high culture is to be found in American literature toward the
+end of the eighteenth century. Mrs. Adams, wife of John Adams, afterward
+President of the United States, but at that time minister to England,
+one of the most gifted women of her time, speaking, in her very
+interesting letters from England, of her journey to the seashore, refers
+to Canterbury Cathedral, seen from her carriage windows, and which she
+evidently did not take the trouble to enter, as "looking like a vast
+prison." So, too, about the same time, Thomas Jefferson, the American
+plenipotentiary in France, a devoted lover of classical and Renaissance
+architecture, giving an account of his journey to Paris, never refers to
+any of the beautiful cathedrals or churches upon his route.
+
+
+The centre and fortress of this vast system, and of the reaction against
+the philosophy of the eighteenth century, was the University of Oxford.
+Orthodoxy was its vaunt, and a special exponent of its spirit and
+object of its admiration was its member of Parliament, Mr. William Ewart
+Gladstone, who, having begun his political career by a laboured plea
+for the union of church and state, ended it by giving that union what
+is likely to be a death-blow. The mob at the circus of Constantinople in
+the days of the Byzantine emperors was hardly more wildly orthodox than
+the mob of students at this foremost seat of learning of the Anglo-Saxon
+race during the middle decades of the nineteenth century. The Moslem
+students of El Azhar are hardly more intolerant now than these English
+students were then. A curious proof of this had been displayed just
+before the end of that period. The minister of the United States at the
+court of St. James was then Edward Everett. He was undoubtedly the most
+accomplished scholar and one of the foremost statesmen that America
+had produced; his eloquence in early life had made him perhaps the most
+admired of American preachers; his classical learning had at a later
+period made him Professor of Greek at Harvard; he had successfully
+edited the leading American review, and had taken a high place in
+American literature; he had been ten years a member of Congress; he had
+been again and again elected Governor of Massachusetts; and in all
+these posts he had shown amply those qualities which afterward made him
+President of Harvard, Secretary of State of the United States, and
+a United States Senator. His character and attainments were of the
+highest, and, as he was then occupying the foremost place in the
+diplomatic service of his country, he was invited to receive an
+appropriate honorary degree at Oxford. But, on his presentation for
+it in the Sheldonian Theatre, there came a revelation to the people he
+represented, and indeed to all Christendom: a riot having been
+carefully prepared beforehand by sundry zealots, he was most grossly and
+ingeniously insulted by the mob of undergraduates and bachelors of art
+in the galleries and masters of arts on the floor; and the reason for
+this was that, though by no means radical in his religious opinions, he
+was thought to have been in his early life, and to be possibly at
+that time, below what was then the Oxford fashion in belief, or rather
+feeling, regarding the mystery of the Trinity.
+
+At the centre of biblical teaching at Oxford sat Pusey, Regius Professor
+of Hebrew, a scholar who had himself remained for a time at a German
+university, and who early in life had imbibed just enough of the German
+spirit to expose him to suspicion and even to attack. One charge
+against him at that time shows curiously what was then expected of a
+man perfectly sound in the older Anglican theology. He had ventured
+to defend holy writ with the argument that there were fishes actually
+existing which could have swallowed the prophet Jonah. The argument
+proved unfortunate. He was attacked on the scriptural ground that the
+fish which swallowed Jonah was created for that express purpose. He,
+like others, fell back under the charm of the old system: his ideas
+gave force to the reaction: in the quiet of his study, which, especially
+after the death of his son, became a hermitage, he relapsed into
+patristic and medieval conceptions of Christianity, enforcing them from
+the pulpit and in his published works. He now virtually accepted the
+famous dictum of Hugo of St. Victor--that one is first to find what is
+to be believed, and then to search the Scriptures for proofs of it. His
+devotion to the main features of the older interpretation was seen at
+its strongest in his utterances regarding the book of Daniel. Just as
+Cardinal Bellarmine had insisted that the doctrine of the incarnation
+depends upon the retention of the Ptolemaic astronomy; just as Danzius
+had insisted that the very continuance of religion depends on the
+divine origin of the Hebrew punctuation; just as Peter Martyr had made
+everything sacred depend on the literal acceptance of Genesis; just as
+Bishop Warburton had insisted that Christianity absolutely depends upon
+a right interpretation of the prophecies regarding Antichrist; just
+as John Wesley had insisted that the truth of the Bible depends on the
+reality of witchcraft; just as, at a later period, Bishop Wilberforce
+insisted that the doctrine of the Incarnation depends on the "Mosaic"
+statements regarding the origin of man; and just as Canon Liddon
+insisted that Christianity itself depends on a literal belief in Noah's
+flood, in the transformation of Lot's wife, and in the sojourn of Jonah
+in the whale: so did Pusey then virtually insist that Christianity must
+stand or fall with the early date of the book of Daniel. Happily, though
+the Ptolemaic astronomy, and witchcraft, and the Genesis creation myths,
+and the Adam, Noah, Lot, and Jonah legends, and the divine origin of
+the Hebrew punctuation, and the prophecies regarding Antichrist, and the
+early date of the book of Daniel have now been relegated to the limbo of
+ontworn beliefs, Christianity has but come forth the stronger.
+
+Nothing seemed less likely than that such a vast intrenched camp as that
+of which Oxford was the centre could be carried by an effort proceeding
+from a few isolated German and Dutch scholars. Yet it was the unexpected
+which occurred; and it is instructive to note that, even at the
+period when the champions of the older thought were to all appearance
+impregnably intrenched in England, a way had been opened into their
+citadel, and that the most effective agents in preparing it were really
+the very men in the universities and cathedral chapters who had most
+distinguished themselves by uncompromising and intolerant orthodoxy.
+
+A rapid survey of the history of general literary criticism at that
+epoch will reveal this fact fully. During the last decade of the
+seventeenth century there had taken place the famous controversy
+over the Letters of Phalaris, in which, against Charles Boyle and his
+supporters at Oxford, was pitted Richard Bentley at Cambridge, who
+insisted that the letters were spurious. In the series of battles royal
+which followed, although Boyle, aided by Atterbury, afterward so noted
+for his mingled ecclesiastical and political intrigues, had gained a
+temporary triumph by wit and humour, Bentley's final attack had proved
+irresistible. Drawing from the stores of his wonderfully wide and minute
+knowledge, he showed that the letters could not have been written in the
+time of Phalaris--proving this by an exhibition of their style, which
+could not then have been in use, of their reference to events which had
+not then taken place, and of a mass of considerations which no one but
+a scholar almost miraculously gifted could have marshalled so fully. The
+controversy had attracted attention not only in England but throughout
+Europe. With Bentley's reply it had ended. In spite of public applause
+at Atterbury's wit, scholars throughout the world acknowledged Bentley's
+victory: he was recognised as the foremost classical scholar of his
+time; the mastership of Trinity, which he accepted, and the Bristol
+bishopric, which he rejected, were his formal reward.
+
+Although, in his new position as head of the greatest college in
+England, he went to extreme lengths on the orthodox side in biblical
+theology, consenting even to support the doctrine that the Hebrew
+punctuation was divinely inspired, this was as nothing compared with the
+influence of the system of criticism which he introduced into English
+studies of classical literature in preparing the way for the application
+of a similar system to ALL literature, whether called sacred or profane.
+
+Up to that period there had really been no adequate criticism of ancient
+literature. Whatever name had been attached to any ancient writing was
+usually accepted as the name of the author: what texts should be imputed
+to an author was settled generally on authority. But with Bentley began
+a new epoch. His acute intellect and exquisite touch revealed clearly
+to English scholars the new science of criticism, and familiarized the
+minds of thinking men with the idea that the texts of ancient literature
+must be submitted to this science. Henceforward a new spirit reigned
+among the best classical scholars, prophetic of more and more light in
+the greater field of sacred literature. Scholars, of whom Porson was
+chief, followed out this method, and though at times, as in Porson's
+own case, they were warned off, with much loss and damage, from the
+application of it to the sacred text, they kept alive the better
+tradition.
+
+A hundred years after Bentley's main efforts appeared in Germany another
+epoch-making book--Wolf's Introduction to Homer. In this was broached
+the theory that the Iliad and Odyssey are not the works of a single
+great poet, but are made up of ballad literature wrought into unity by
+more or less skilful editing. In spite of various changes and phases of
+opinion on this subject since Wolf's day, he dealt a killing blow at
+the idea that classical works are necessarily to be taken at what may be
+termed their face value.
+
+More and more clearly it was seen that the ideas of early copyists, and
+even of early possessors of masterpieces in ancient literature, were
+entirely different from those to which the modern world is accustomed.
+It was seen that manipulations and interpolations in the text by
+copyists and possessors had long been considered not merely venial sins,
+but matters of right, and that even the issuing of whole books under
+assumed names had been practised freely.
+
+In 1811 a light akin to that thrown by Bentley and Wolf upon ancient
+literature was thrown by Niebuhr upon ancient history. In his History
+of Rome the application of scientific principles to the examination
+of historical sources was for the first time exhibited largely and
+brilliantly. Up to that period the time-honoured utterances of ancient
+authorities had been, as a rule, accepted as final: no breaking away,
+even from the most absurd of them, was looked upon with favour, and any
+one presuming to go behind them was regarded as troublesome and even as
+dangerous.
+
+Through this sacred conventionalism Niebuhr broke fearlessly, and,
+though at times overcritical, he struck from the early history of Rome a
+vast mass of accretions, and gave to the world a residue infinitely more
+valuable than the original amalgam of myth, legend, and chronicle.
+
+His methods were especially brought to bear on students' history by
+one of the truest men and noblest scholars that the English race
+has produced--Arnold of Rugby--and, in spite of the inevitable heavy
+conservatism, were allowed to do their work in the field of ancient
+history as well as in that of ancient classical literature.
+
+The place of myth in history thus became more and more understood,
+and historical foundations, at least so far as SECULAR history was
+concerned, were henceforth dealt with in a scientific spirit. The
+extension of this new treatment to ALL ancient literature and history
+was now simply a matter of time.
+
+Such an extension had already begun; for in 1829 had appeared Milman's
+History of the Jews. In this work came a further evolution of the
+truths and methods suggested by Bentley, Wolf, and Niebuhr, and their
+application to sacred history was made strikingly evident. Milman,
+though a clergyman, treated the history of the chosen people in the
+light of modern knowledge of Oriental and especially of Semitic peoples.
+He exhibited sundry great biblical personages of the wandering days
+of Israel as sheiks or emirs or Bedouin chieftains; and the tribes of
+Israel as obedient then to the same general laws, customs, and ideas
+governing wandering tribes in the same region now. He dealt with
+conflicting sources somewhat in the spirit of Bentley, and with the
+mythical, legendary, and miraculous somewhat in the spirit of Niebuhr.
+This treatment of the history of the Jews, simply as the development of
+an Oriental tribe, raised great opposition. Such champions of orthodoxy
+as Bishop Mant and Dr. Faussett straightway took the field, and with
+such effect that the Family Library, a very valuable series in which
+Milman's history appeared, was put under the ban, and its further
+publication stopped. For years Milman, though a man of exquisite
+literary and lofty historical gifts, as well as of most honourable
+character, was debarred from preferment and outstripped by ecclesiastics
+vastly inferior to him in everything save worldly wisdom; for years he
+was passed in the race for honours by divines who were content either
+to hold briefs for all the contemporary unreason which happened to be
+popular, or to keep their mouths shut altogether. This opposition to him
+extended to his works. For many years they were sneered at, decried, and
+kept from the public as far as possible.
+
+Fortunately, the progress of events lifted him, before the closing years
+of his life, above all this opposition. As Dean of St. Paul's he really
+outranked the contemporary archbishops: he lived to see his main ideas
+accepted, and his History of Latin Christianity received as certainly
+one of the most valuable, and no less certainly the most attractive, of
+all Church histories ever written.
+
+The two great English histories of Greece--that by Thirlwall, which was
+finished, and that by Grote, which was begun, in the middle years of
+the nineteenth century--came in to strengthen this new development. By
+application of the critical method to historical sources, by pointing
+out more and more fully the inevitable part played by myth and legend
+in early chronicles, by displaying more and more clearly the ease
+with which interpolations of texts, falsifications of statements, and
+attributions to pretended authors were made, they paved the way still
+further toward a just and fruitful study of sacred literature.(480)
+
+
+     (480) For Mr. Gladstone's earlier opinion, see his Church and State, and
+Macaulay's review of it. For Pusey, see Mozley, Ward, Newman's
+Apologia, Dean Church, etc., and especially his Life, by Liddon. Very
+characteristic touches are given in vol. i, showing the origin of many
+of his opinions (see letter on p. 184). For the scandalous treatment of
+Mr. Everett by the clerical mob at Oxford, see a rather jaunty account
+of the preparations and of the whole performance in a letter written at
+the time from Oxford by the late Dean Church, in The Life and Letters of
+Dean Church, London, 1894, pp. 40, 41. For a brief but excellent summary
+of the character and services of Everett, see J. F. Rhodes's History of
+the United States from the Compromise of 1850, New York, 1893, vol.
+i, pp. 291 et seq. For a succinct and brilliant history of the
+Bentley-Boyle controversy, see Macauley's article on Bentley in the
+Encyclopaedia Britannica; also Beard's Hibbert Lectures for 1893, pp.
+344, 345; also Dissertation in Bentley's work, edited by Dyce, London,
+1836, vol. i, especially the preface. For Wolf, see his Prolegomena ad
+Homerum, Halle, 1795; for its effects, see the admirable brief statement
+in Beard, as above, p. 345. For Niebuhr, see his Roman History,
+translated by Hare and Thirlwall, London, 1828; also Beard, as above.
+For Milman's view, see, as a specimen, his History of the Jews, last
+edition, especially pp. 15-27. For a noble tribute to his character, see
+the preface to Lecky's History of European Morals. For Thirlwall, see
+his History of Greece, passim; also his letters; also his Charge of the
+Bishop of St. David's, 1863.
+
+
+Down to the middle of the nineteenth century the traditionally orthodox
+side of English scholarship, while it had not been able to maintain
+any effective quarantine against Continental criticism of classical
+literature, had been able to keep up barriers fairly strong against
+Continental discussions of sacred literature. But in the second half of
+the nineteenth century these barriers were broken at many points, and,
+the stream of German thought being united with the current of devotion
+to truth in England, there appeared early in 1860 a modest volume
+entitled Essays and Reviews. This work discussed sundry of the older
+theological positions which had been rendered untenable by modern
+research, and brought to bear upon them the views of the newer school
+of biblical interpretation. The authors were, as a rule, scholars in
+the prime of life, holding influential positions in the universities and
+public schools. They were seven--the first being Dr. Temple, a successor
+of Arnold at Rugby; and the others, the Rev. Dr. Rowland Williams, Prof.
+Baden Powell, the Rev. H. B. Wilson, Mr. C. W. Goodwin, the Rev. Mark
+Pattison, and the Rev. Prof. Jowett--the only one of the seven not in
+holy orders being Goodwin. All the articles were important, though
+the first, by Temple, on The Education of the World, and the last, by
+Jowett, on The Interpretation of Scripture, being the most moderate,
+served most effectually as entering wedges into the old tradition.
+
+At first no great attention was paid to the book, the only notice being
+the usual attempts in sundry clerical newspapers to pooh-pooh it. But in
+October, 1860, appeared in the Westminster Review an article exulting
+in the work as an evidence that the new critical method had at last
+penetrated the Church of England.
+
+The opportunity for defending the Church was at once seized by no less a
+personage than Bishop Wilberforce, of Oxford, the same who a few months
+before had secured a fame more lasting than enviable by his attacks on
+Darwin and the evolutionary theory. His first onslaught was made in
+a charge to his clergy. This he followed up with an article in the
+Quarterly Review, very explosive in its rhetoric, much like that which
+he had devoted in the same periodical to Darwin. The bishop declared
+that the work tended "toward infidelity, if not to atheism"; that the
+writers had been "guilty of criminal levity"; that, with the exception
+of the essay by Dr. Temple, their writings were "full of sophistries and
+scepticisms." He was especially bitter against Prof. Jowett's dictum,
+"Interpret the Scripture like any other book"; he insisted that Mr.
+Goodwin's treatment of the Mosaic account of the origin of man "sweeps
+away the whole basis of inspiration and leaves no place for the
+Incarnation"; and through the article were scattered such rhetorical
+adornments as the words "infidel," "atheistic," "false," and "wanton."
+It at once attracted wide attention, but its most immediate effect
+was to make the fortune of Essays and Reviews, which was straightway
+demanded on every hand, went through edition after edition, and became a
+power in the land. At this a panic began, and with the usual results
+of panic--much folly and some cruelty. Addresses from clergy and laity,
+many of them frantic with rage and fear, poured in upon the bishops,
+begging them to save Christianity and the Church: a storm of abuse
+arose: the seven essayists were stigmatized as "the seven extinguishers
+of the seven lamps of the Apocalypse," "the seven champions NOT of
+Christendom." As a result of all this pressure, Sumner, Archbishop of
+Canterbury, one of the last of the old, kindly, bewigged pluralists
+of the Georgian period, headed a declaration, which was signed by the
+Archbishop of York and a long list of bishops, expressing pain at
+the appearance of the book, but doubts as to the possibility of any
+effective dealing with it. This letter only made matters worse.
+The orthodox decried it as timid, and the liberals denounced it as
+irregular. The same influences were exerted in the sister island, and
+the Protestant archbishops in Ireland issued a joint letter warning the
+faithful against the "disingenuousness" of the book. Everything seemed
+to increase the ferment. A meeting of clergy and laity having been held
+at Oxford in the matter of electing a Professor of Sanscrit, the older
+orthodox party, having made every effort to defeat the eminent scholar
+Max Miller, and all in vain, found relief after their defeat in new
+denunciations of Essays and Reviews.
+
+Of the two prelates who might have been expected to breast the storm,
+Tait, Bishop of London, afterward Archbishop of Canterbury, bent to it
+for a period, though he soon recovered himself and did good service; the
+other, Thirlwall, Bishop of St. David's, bided his time, and, when the
+proper moment came, struck most effective blows for truth and justice.
+
+Tait, large-minded and shrewd, one of the most statesmanlike of
+prelates, at first endeavoured to detach Temple and Jowett from their
+associates; but, though Temple was broken down with a load of care,
+and especially by the fact that he had upon his shoulders the school at
+Rugby, whose patrons had become alarmed at his connection with the book,
+he showed a most refreshing courage and manliness. A passage from his
+letters to the Bishop of London runs as follows: "With regard to my own
+conduct I can only say that nothing on earth will induce me to do what
+you propose. I do not judge for others, but in me it would be base and
+untrue." On another occasion Dr. Temple, when pressed in the interest
+of the institution of learning under his care to detach himself from his
+associates in writing the book, declared to a meeting of the masters
+of the school that, if any statements were made to the effect that he
+disapproved of the other writers in the volume, he should probably find
+it his duty to contradict them. Another of these letters to the Bishop
+of London contains sundry passages of great force. One is as follows:
+"Many years ago you urged us from the university pulpit to undertake the
+critical study of the Bible. You said that it was a dangerous study, but
+indispensable. You described its difficulties, and those who listened
+must have felt a confidence (as I assuredly did, for I was there) that
+if they took your advice and entered on the task, you, at any rate,
+would never join in treating them unjustly if their study had brought
+with it the difficulties you described. Such a study, so full of
+difficulties, imperatively demands freedom for its condition. To tell a
+man to study, and yet bid him, under heavy penalties, come to the same
+conclusions with those who have not studied, is to mock him. If the
+conclusions are prescribed, the study is precluded." And again, what,
+as coming from a man who has since held two of the most important
+bishoprics in the English Church, is of great importance: "What can be a
+grosser superstition than the theory of literal inspiration? But because
+that has a regular footing it is to be treated as a good man's mistake,
+while the courage to speak the truth about the first chapter of Genesis
+is a wanton piece of wickedness."
+
+The storm howled on. In the Convocation of Canterbury it was especially
+violent. In the Lower House Archdeacon Denison insisted on the greatest
+severity, as he said, "for the sake of the young who are tainted, and
+corrupted, and thrust almost to hell by the action of this book." At
+another time the same eminent churchman declared: "Of all books in any
+language which I ever laid my hands on, this is incomparably the worst;
+it contains all the poison which is to be found in Tom Paine's Age of
+Reason, while it has the additional disadvantage of having been written
+by clergymen."
+
+Hysterical as all this was, the Upper House was little more
+self-contained. Both Tait and Thirlwall, trying to make some headway
+against the swelling tide, were for a time beaten back by Wilberforce,
+who insisted on the duty of the Church to clear itself publicly from
+complicity with men who, as he said, "gave up God's Word, Creation,
+redemption, and the work of the Holy Ghost."
+
+The matter was brought to a curious issue by two prosecutions--one
+against the Rev. Dr. Williams by the Bishop of Salisbury, the other
+against the Rev. Mr. Wilson by one of his clerical brethren. The first
+result was that both these authors were sentenced to suspension from
+their offices for a year. At this the two condemned clergymen appealed
+to the Queen in Council. Upon the judicial committee to try the case in
+last resort sat the lord chancellor, the two archbishops, and the Bishop
+of London; and one occurrence now brought into especial relief the power
+of the older theological reasoning and ecclesiastical zeal to close
+the minds of the best of men to the simplest principles of right and
+justice. Among the men of his time most deservedly honoured for lofty
+character, thorough scholarship, and keen perception of right and
+justice was Dr. Pusey. No one doubted then, and no one doubts now, that
+he would have gone to the stake sooner than knowingly countenance wrong
+or injustice; and yet we find him at this time writing a series of
+long and earnest letters to the Bishop of London, who, as a judge, was
+hearing this case, which involved the livelihood and even the good name
+of the men on trial, pointing out to the bishop the evil consequences
+which must follow should the authors of Essays and Reviews be acquitted,
+and virtually beseeching the judges, on grounds of expediency, to
+convict them. Happily, Bishop Tait was too just a man to be thrown off
+his bearings by appeals such as this.
+
+The decision of the court, as finally rendered by the lord chancellor,
+virtually declared it to be no part of the duty of the tribunal to
+pronounce any opinion upon the book; that the court only had to do with
+certain extracts which had been presented. Among these was one adduced
+in support of a charge against Mr. Wilson--that he denied the doctrine
+of eternal punishment. On this the court decided that it did "not find
+in the formularies of the English Church any such distinct declaration
+upon the subject as to require it to punish the expression of a hope
+by a clergyman that even the ultimate pardon of the wicked who are
+condemned in the day of judgment may be consistent with the will of
+Almighty God." While the archbishops dissented from this judgment,
+Bishop Tait united in it with the lord chancellor and the lay judges.
+
+And now the panic broke out more severely than ever. Confusion became
+worse confounded. The earnest-minded insisted that the tribunal had
+virtually approved Essays and Reviews; the cynical remarked that it had
+"dismissed hell with costs." An alliance was made at once between
+the more zealous High and Low Church men, and Oxford became its
+headquarters: Dr. Pusey and Archdeacon Denison were among the leaders,
+and an impassioned declaration was posted to every clergyman in England
+and Ireland, with a letter begging him, "for the love of God," to sign
+it. Thus it was that in a very short time eleven thousand signatures
+were obtained. Besides this, deputations claiming to represent one
+hundred and thirty-seven thousand laymen waited on the archbishops
+to thank them for dissenting from the judgment. The Convocation of
+Canterbury also plunged into the fray, Bishop Wilberforce being the
+champion of the older orthodoxy, and Bishop Tait of the new. Caustic
+was the speech made by Bishop Thirlwall, in which he declared that he
+considered the eleven thousand names, headed by that of Pusey, attached
+to the Oxford declaration "in the light of a row of figures preceded
+by a decimal point, so that, however far the series may be advanced, it
+never can rise to the value of a single unit."
+
+In spite of all that could be done, the act of condemnation was carried
+in Convocation.
+
+The last main echo of this whole struggle against the newer mode of
+interpretation was heard when the chancellor, referring to the matter
+in the House of Lords, characterized the ecclesiastical act as "simply a
+series of well-lubricated terms--a sentence so oily and saponaceous that
+no one can grasp it; like an eel, it slips through your fingers, and is
+simply nothing."
+
+The word "saponaceous" necessarily elicited a bitter retort from Bishop
+Wilberforce; but perhaps the most valuable judgment on the whole
+matter was rendered by Bishop Tait, who declared, "These things have
+so effectually frightened the clergy that I think there is scarcely a
+bishop on the bench, unless it be the Bishop of St. David's (Thirlwall),
+that is not useless for the purpose of preventing the widespread
+alienation of intelligent men."
+
+During the whole controversy, and for some time afterward, the press was
+burdened with replies, ponderous and pithy, lurid and vapid, vitriolic
+and unctuous, but in the main bearing the inevitable characteristics of
+pleas for inherited opinions stimulated by ample endowments.
+
+The authors of the book seemed for a time likely to be swept out of
+the Church. One of the least daring but most eminent, finding himself
+apparently forsaken, seemed, though a man of very tough fibre, about to
+die of a broken heart; but sturdy English sense at last prevailed. The
+storm passed, and afterward came the still, small voice. Really sound
+thinkers throughout England, especially those who held no briefs for
+conventional orthodoxy, recognised the service rendered by the book. It
+was found that, after all, there existed even among churchmen a great
+mass of public opinion in favour of giving a full hearing to the
+reverent expression of honest thought, and inclined to distrust any
+cause which subjected fair play to zeal.
+
+The authors of the work not only remained in the Church of England, but
+some of them have since represented the broader views, though not always
+with their early courage, in the highest and most influential positions
+in the Anglican Church.(481)
+
+
+     (481) For the origin of Essays and Reviews, see Edinburgh Review, April,
+1861, p. 463. For the reception of the book, see the Westminster Review,
+October, 1860. For the attack on it by Bishop Wilberforce, see his
+article in the Quarterly Review, January, 1861; for additional facts,
+Edinburgh Review, April, 1861, pp. 461 et seq. For action on the book
+by Convocation, see Dublin Review, May, 1861, citing Jelf et al.;
+also Davidson's Life of Archbishop Tate, vol. i, chap. xii. For the
+Archepiscopal Letter, see Dublin Review, as above; also Life of Bishop
+Wilberforce, by his son, London, 1882, vol. iii, pp. 4,5; it is there
+stated that Wilberforce drew upon the letter. For curious inside views
+of the Essays and Reviews controversy, including the course of Bishop
+Hampden, Tait, et al., see Life of Bishop Wilberforce, by his son, as
+above, pp. 3-11; also pp. 141-149. For the denunciation of the present
+Bishop of London (Temple) as a "leper," etc., see ibid., pp. 319, 320.
+For general treatment of Temple, see Fraser's Magazine, December, 1869.
+For very interesting correspondence, see Davidson's Life of Archbishop
+Tait, as above. For Archdeacon Denison's speeches, see ibid, vol. i,
+p. 302. For Dr. Pusey's letter to Bishop Tait, urging conviction of the
+Essayists and Reviewers, ibid, p. 314. For the striking letters of
+Dr. Temple, ibid., pp. 290 et seq.; also The Life and Letters of Dean
+Stanley. For replies, see Charge of the Bishop of Oxford, 1863;
+also Replies to Essays and Reviews, Parker, London, with preface by
+Wilberforce; also Aids to Faith, edited by the Bishop of Gloucester,
+London, 1861; also those by Jelf, Burgon, et al. For the legal
+proceedings, see Quarterly Review, April, 1864; also Davidson, as above.
+For Bishop Thirlwall's speech, see Chronicle of Convocation, quoted in
+Life of Tait, vol. i, p. 320. For Tait's tribute to Thirlwall, see
+Life of Tait, vol. i, p. 325. For a remarkable able review, and in most
+charming form, of the ideas of Bishop Wilberforce and Lord Chancellor
+Westbury, see H. D. Traill, The New Lucian, first dialogue. For the
+cynical phrase referred to, see Nash, Life of Lord Westbury, vol. ii, p.
+78, where the noted epitaph is given, as follows:
+
+            "RICHARD BARON WESTBURY
+        Lord High Chancellor of England,
+          He was an eminent Christian,
+      An energetic and merciful Statesman,
+   And a still more eminent and merciful Judge.
+    During his three years' tenure of office
+  He abolished the ancient method of conveying land,
+The time-honoured institution of the Insolvent's Court,                   And
+        The Eternity of Punishment.
+    Toward the close of his early career,
+In the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council,         He dismissed Hell with costs,
+And took away from the Orthodox members of the            Church of England
+   Their last hope of everlasting damnation."
+
+
+
+
+IV. THE CLOSING STRUGGLE.
+
+The storm aroused by Essays and Reviews had not yet subsided when a far
+more serious tempest burst upon the English theological world.
+
+In 1862 appeared a work entitled The Pentateuch and the Book of Joshua
+Critically Examined its author being Colenso, Anglican Bishop of Natal,
+in South Africa. He had formerly been highly esteemed as fellow and
+tutor at Cambridge, master at Harrow, author of various valuable
+text-books in mathematics; and as long as he exercised his powers within
+the limits of popular orthodoxy he was evidently in the way to the
+highest positions in the Church: but he chose another path. His
+treatment of his subject was reverent, but he had gradually come to
+those conclusions, then so daring, now so widespread among Christian
+scholars, that the Pentateuch, with much valuable historical matter,
+contains much that is unhistorical; that a large portion of it was
+the work of a comparatively late period in Jewish history; that many
+passages in Deuteronomy could only have been written after the Jews
+settled in Canaan; that the Mosaic law was not in force before the
+captivity; that the books of Chronicles were clearly written as an
+afterthought, to enforce the views of the priestly caste; and that in
+all the books there is much that is mythical and legendary.
+
+Very justly has a great German scholar recently adduced this work of a
+churchman relegated to the most petty of bishoprics in one of the most
+remote corners of the world, as a proof "that the problems of biblical
+criticism can no longer be suppressed; that they are in the air of our
+time, so that theology could not escape them even if it took the wings
+of the morning and dwelt in the uttermost parts of the sea."
+
+The bishop's statements, which now seem so moderate, then aroused
+horror. Especial wrath was caused by some of his arithmetical arguments,
+and among them those which showed that an army of six hundred thousand
+men could not have been mobilized in a single night; that three millions
+of people, with their flocks and herds, could neither have obtained food
+on so small and arid a desert as that over which they were said to have
+wandered during forty years, nor water from a single well; and that
+the butchery of two hundred thousand Midianites by twelve thousand
+Israelites, "exceeding infinitely in atrocity the tragedy at Cawnpore,
+had happily only been carried out on paper." There was nothing of the
+scoffer in him. While preserving his own independence, he had kept in
+touch with the most earnest thought both among European scholars and in
+the little flock intrusted to his care. He evidently remembered what had
+resulted from the attempt to hold the working classes in the towns of
+France, Germany, and Italy to outworn beliefs; he had found even the
+Zulus, whom he thought to convert, suspicious of the legendary features
+of the Old Testament, and with his clear practical mind he realized the
+danger which threatened the English Church and Christianity--the danger
+of tying its religion and morality to interpretations and conceptions of
+Scripture more and more widely seen and felt to be contrary to facts. He
+saw the especial peril of sham explanations, of covering up facts which
+must soon be known, and which, when revealed, must inevitably bring
+the plain people of England to regard their teachers, even the most
+deserving, as "solemnly constituted impostors"--ecclesiastics whose
+tenure depends on assertions which they know to be untrue. Therefore it
+was that, when his catechumens questioned him regarding some of the Old
+Testament legends, the bishop determined to tell the truth. He says: "My
+heart answered in the words of the prophet, 'Shall a man speak lies in
+the name of the Lord?' I determined not to do so."
+
+But none of these considerations availed in his behalf at first.
+
+The outcry against the work was deafening: churchmen and dissenters
+rushed forward to attack it. Archdeacon Denison, chairman of the
+committee of Convocation appointed to examine it, uttered a noisy
+anathema. Convocation solemnly condemned it; and a zealous colonial
+bishop, relying upon a nominal supremacy, deposed and excommunicated
+its author, declaring him "given over to Satan." On both sides of
+the Atlantic the press groaned with "answers," some of these being
+especially injurious to the cause they were intended to serve, and none
+more so than sundry efforts by the bishops themselves. One of the points
+upon which they attacked him was his assertion that the reference in
+Leviticus to the hare chewing its cud contains an error. Upon this
+Prof. Hitzig, of Leipsic, one of the best Hebrew scholars of his time,
+remarked: "Your bishops are making themselves the laughing-stock of
+Europe. Every Hebraist knows that the animal mentioned in Leviticus
+is really the hare;... every zoologist knows that it does not chew the
+cud."(482)
+
+
+     (482) For the citation referred to, see Pfleiderer, as above, book iv,
+chap. ii. For the passages referred to as provoking especial wrath, see
+Colenso, Lectures on the Pentateuch and the Moabite Stone, 1876, p. 217.
+For the episode regarding the hare chewing the cud, see Cox, Life of
+Colenso, vol. i, p. 240. The following epigram went the rounds:
+
+"The bishops all have sworn to shed their blood To prove 'tis true
+that the hare doth chew the cud. O bishops, doctors, and divines,
+beware--Weak is the faith that hangs upon a HAIR!"
+
+
+On Colenso's return to Natal, where many of the clergy and laity who
+felt grateful for his years of devotion to them received him with signs
+of affection, an attempt was made to ruin these clergymen by depriving
+them of their little stipends, and to terrify the simple-minded laity by
+threatening them with the same "greater excommunication" which had been
+inflicted upon their bishop. To make the meaning of this more evident,
+the vicar-general of the Bishop of Cape Town met Colenso at the door of
+his own cathedral, and solemnly bade him "depart from the house of
+God as one who has been handed over to the Evil One." The sentence of
+excommunication was read before the assembled faithful, and they were
+enjoined to treat their bishop as "a heathen man and a publican." But
+these and a long series of other persecutions created a reaction in his
+favour.
+
+There remained to Colenso one bulwark which his enemies found stronger
+than they had imagined--the British courts of justice. The greatest
+efforts were now made to gain the day before these courts, to humiliate
+Colenso, and to reduce to beggary the clergy who remained faithful to
+him; and it is worthy of note that one of the leaders in preparing the
+legal plea of the com mittee against him was Mr. Gladstone.
+
+But this bulwark proved impregnable: both the Judicial Committee of the
+Privy Council and the Rolls Court decided in Colenso's favour. Not only
+were his enemies thus forbidden to deprive him of his salary, but their
+excommunication of him was made null and void; it became, indeed, a
+subject of ridicule, and even a man so nurtured in religious sentiment
+as John Keble confessed and lamented that the English people no longer
+believed in excommunication. The bitterness of the defeated found vent
+in the utterances of the colonial metropolitan who had excommunicated
+Colenso--Bishop Gray, "the Lion of Cape Town"--who denounced the
+judgment as "awful and profane," and the Privy Council as "a
+masterpiece of Satan" and "the great dragon of the English Church." Even
+Wilberforce, careful as he was to avoid attacking anything established,
+alluded with deep regret to "the devotion of the English people to the
+law in matters of this sort."
+
+Their failure in the courts only seemed to increase the violence of the
+attacking party. The Anglican communion, both in England and America,
+was stirred to its depths against the heretic, and various dissenting
+bodies strove to show equal zeal. Great pains were taken to root out
+his reputation: it was declared that he had merely stolen the ideas
+of rationalists on the Continent by wholesale, and peddled them out in
+England at retail; the fact being that, while he used all the sources of
+information at his command, and was large-minded enough to put himself
+into relations with the best biblical scholarship of the Continent, he
+was singularly independent in his judgment, and that his investigations
+were of lasting value in modifying Continental thought. Kuenen, the most
+distinguished of all his contemporaries in this field, modified, as
+he himself declared, one of his own leading theories after reading
+Colenso's argument; and other Continental scholars scarcely less
+eminent acknowledged their great indebtedness to the English scholar for
+original suggestions.(483)
+
+
+     (483) For interesting details of the Colenso persecution, see Davidson's
+Life of Tait, chaps. xii and xiv; also the Lives of Bishops Wilberforce
+and Gray. For full accounts of the struggle, see Cox, Life of Bishop
+Colenso, London, 1888, especially vol. i, chap. v. For the dramatic
+performance at Colenso's cathedral, see vol. ii, pp. 14-25. For a very
+impartial and appreciative statement regarding Colenso's work, see
+Cheyne, Founders of Old Testament Criticism, London, 1893, chap. ix. For
+testimony to the originality and value of Colenso's contributions, see
+Kuenen, Origin and Composition of the Hexateuch, Introduction, pp. xx,
+as follows: "Colenso directed my attention to difficulties which I had
+hitherto failed to observe or adequately to reckon with; and as to
+the opinion of his labours current in Germany, I need only say that,
+inasmuch as Ewald, Bunsen, Bleek, and Knabel were every one of them
+logically forced to revise their theories in the light of the English
+bishop's research, there was small reason in the cry that his methods
+were antiquated and his objections stale." For a very brief but
+effective tribute to Colenso as an independent thinker whose merits are
+now acknowledged by Continental scholars, see Pfleiderer, Development of
+Theory, as above.
+
+
+But the zeal of the bishop's enemies did not end with calumny. He was
+socially ostracized--more completely even than Lyell had been after the
+publication of his Principles of Geology thirty years before. Even
+old friends left him, among them Frederick Denison Maurice, who, when
+himself under the ban of heresy, had been defended by Colenso. Nor was
+Maurice the only heretic who turned against him; Matthew Arnold attacked
+him, and set up, as a true ideal of the work needed to improve the
+English Church and people, of all books in the world, Spinoza's
+Tractatus. A large part of the English populace was led to regard him
+as an "infidel," a "traitor," an "apostate," and even as "an unclean
+being"; servants left his house in horror; "Tray, Blanche, and
+Sweetheart were let loose upon him"; and one of the favourite amusements
+of the period among men of petty wit and no convictions was the devising
+of light ribaldry against him.(484)
+
+
+     (484) One of the nonsense verses in vogue at the time summed up the
+controversy as follows:
+
+     "A bishop there was of Natal,
+       Who had a Zulu for his pal;
+     Said the Zulu, 'My dear,
+       Don't you think Genesis queer?'
+     Which coverted my lord of Natal."
+
+But verses quite as good appeared on the other side, one of them being
+as follows:
+
+     "Is this, then, the great Colenso,
+       Who all the bishops offends so?
+     Said Sam of the Soap,
+       Bring fagots and rope,
+     For oh! he's got no friends, oh!"
+
+For Matthew Arnold's attack on Colenso, see Macmillan's Magazine,
+January, 1863. For Maurice, see the references already given.
+
+
+In the midst of all this controversy stood three men, each of whom has
+connected his name with it permanently.
+
+First of these was Samuel Wilberforce, at that time Bishop of Oxford.
+The gifted son of William Wilberforce, who had been honoured throughout
+the world for his efforts in the suppression of the slave trade, he
+had been rapidly advanced in the English Church, and was at this time
+a prelate of wide influence. He was eloquent and diplomatic, witty and
+amiable, always sure to be with his fellow-churchmen and polite society
+against uncomfortable changes. Whether the struggle was against the
+slave power in the United States, or the squirearchy in Great Britain,
+or the evolution theory of Darwin, or the new views promulgated by the
+Essayists and Reviewers, he was always the suave spokesman of those
+who opposed every innovator and "besought him to depart out of their
+coasts." Mingling in curious proportions a truly religious feeling with
+care for his own advancement, his remarkable power in the pulpit gave
+him great strength to carry out his purposes, and his charming facility
+in being all things to all men, as well as his skill in evading the
+consequences of his many mistakes, gained him the sobriquet of "Soapy
+Sam." If such brethren of his in the episcopate as Thirlwall and Selwyn
+and Tait might claim to be in the apostolic succession, Wilberforce
+was no less surely in the succession from the most gifted and eminently
+respectable Sadducees who held high preferment under Pontius Pilate.
+
+By a curious coincidence he had only a few years before preached the
+sermon when Colenso was consecrated in Westminster Abbey, and one
+passage in it may be cited as showing the preacher's gift of prophecy
+both hortatory and predictive. Wilberforce then said to Colenso:
+"You need boldness to risk all for God--to stand by the truth and its
+supporters against men's threatenings and the devil's wrath;... you need
+a patient meekness to bear the galling calumnies and false surmises
+with which, if you are faithful, that same Satanic working, which, if it
+could, would burn your body, will assuredly assail you daily through the
+pens and tongues of deceivers and deceived, who, under a semblance of
+a zeal for Christ, will evermore distort your words, misrepresent your
+motives, rejoice in your failings, exaggerate your errors, and seek
+by every poisoned breath of slander to destroy your powers of
+service."(485)
+
+
+     (485) For the social ostracism of Colenso, see works already cited; also
+Cox's Life of Colenso. For the passage from Wilberforce's sermon at the
+consecration of Colenso, see Rev. Sir G. W. Cox, The Church of England
+and the Teaching of Bishop Colenso. For Wilberforce's relations to the
+Colenso case in general, see his Life, by his son, vol. iii, especially
+pp. 113-126, 229-231. For Keble's avowal that no Englishman believes
+in excommunication, ibid., p. 128. For a guarded statement of Dean
+Stanley's opinion regarding Wilberforce and Newman, see a letter from
+Dean Church to the Warden of Keble, in Life and Letters of Dean Church,
+p. 293.
+
+
+Unfortunately, when Colenso followed this advice his adviser became
+the most untiring of his persecutors. While leaving to men like the
+Metropolitan of Cape Town and Archdeacon Denison the noisy part of the
+onslaught, Wilberforce was among those who were most zealous in devising
+more effective measures.
+
+But time, and even short time, has redressed the balance between the two
+prelates. Colenso is seen more and more of all men as a righteous leader
+in a noble effort to cut the Church loose from fatal entanglements with
+an outworn system of interpretation; Wilberforce, as the remembrance
+of his eloquence and of his personal charm dies away, and as the
+revelations of his indiscreet biographers lay bare his modes of
+procedure, is seen to have left, on the whole, the most disappointing
+record made by any Anglican prelate during the nineteenth century.
+
+But there was a far brighter page in the history of the Church of
+England; for the second of the three who linked their names with that of
+Colenso in the struggle was Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, Dean of Westminster.
+His action during this whole persecution was an honour not only to the
+Anglican Church but to humanity. For his own manhood and the exercise
+of his own intellectual freedom he had cheerfully given up the high
+preferment in the Church which had been easily within his grasp. To
+him truth and justice were more than the decrees of a Convocation of
+Canterbury or of a Pan-Anglican Synod; in this as in other matters he
+braved the storm, never yielded to theological prejudice, from first to
+last held out a brotherly hand to the persecuted bishop, and at the most
+critical moment opened to him the pulpit of Westminster Abbey.(486)
+
+
+     (486) For interesting testimony to Stanley's character, from a quarter
+from whence it would have been least expected, see a reminiscence of
+Lord Shaftesbury in the Life of Frances Power Cobbe, London and New
+York, 1894. The late Bishop of Massachusetts, Phillips Brooks, whose
+death was a bereavement to his country and to the Church universal, once
+gave the present writer a vivid description of a scene witnessed by him
+in the Convocation of Canterbury, when Stanley virtually withstood alone
+the obstinate traditionalism of the whole body in the matter of the
+Athanasian Creed. It is to be hoped that this account may be brought to
+light among the letters written by Brooks at that time. See also Dean
+Church's Life and Letters, p. 294, for a very important testimony.
+
+
+The third of the high ecclesiastics of the Church of England whose
+names were linked in this contest was Thirlwall. He was undoubtedly
+the foremost man in the Church of his time--the greatest ecclesiastical
+statesman, the profoundest historical scholar, the theologian of
+clearest vision in regard to the relations between the Church and his
+epoch. Alone among his brother bishops at this period, he stood "four
+square to all the winds that blew," as during all his life he stood
+against all storms of clerical or popular unreason. He had his reward.
+He was never advanced beyond a poor Welsh bishopric; but, though he
+saw men wretchedly inferior constantly promoted beyond him, he never
+flinched, never lost heart or hope, but bore steadily on, refusing to
+hold a brief for lucrative injustice, and resisting to the last all
+reaction and fanaticism, thus preserving not only his own self-respect
+but the future respect of the English nation for the Church.
+
+A few other leading churchmen were discreetly kind to Colenso, among
+them Tait, who had now been made Archbishop of Canterbury; but, manly as
+he was, he was somewhat more cautious in this matter than those who most
+revere his memory could now wish.
+
+In spite of these friends the clerical onslaught was for a time
+effective; Colenso, so far as England was concerned, was discredited and
+virtually driven from his functions. But this enforced leisure simply
+gave him more time to struggle for the protection of his native flock
+against colonial rapacity and to continue his great work on the Bible.
+
+His work produced its effect. It had much to do with arousing a new
+generation of English, Scotch, and American scholars. While very many
+of his minor statements have since been modified or rejected, his main
+conclusion was seen more and more clearly to be true. Reverently and in
+the deepest love for Christianity he had made the unhistorical character
+of the Pentateuch clear as noonday. Henceforth the crushing weight of
+the old interpretation upon science and morality and religion steadily
+and rapidly grew less and less. That a new epoch had come was evident,
+and out of many proofs of this we may note two of the most striking.
+
+For many years the Bampton Lectures at Oxford had been considered as
+adding steadily and strongly to the bulwarks of the old orthodoxy. If
+now and then orthodoxy had appeared in danger from such additions to the
+series as those made by Dr. Hampden, these lectures had been, as a rule,
+saturated with the older traditions of the Anglican Church. But now
+there was an evident change. The departures from the old paths were many
+and striking, until at last, in 1893, came the lectures on Inspiration
+by the Rev. Dr. Sanday, Ireland Professor of Exegesis in the University
+of Oxford. In these, concessions were made to the newer criticism, which
+at an earlier time would have driven the lecturer not only out of the
+Church but out of any decent position in society; for Prof. Sanday
+not only gave up a vast mass of other ideas which the great body
+of churchmen had regarded as fundamental, but accepted a number of
+conclusions established by the newer criticism. He declared that Kuenen
+and Wellhausen had mapped out, on the whole rightly, the main stages of
+development in the history of Hebrew literature; he incorporated with
+approval the work of other eminent heretics; he acknowledged that very
+many statements in the Pentateuch show "the naive ideas and usages of
+a primitive age." But, most important of all, he gave up the whole
+question in regard to the book of Daniel. Up to a time then very recent,
+the early authorship and predictive character of the book of Daniel were
+things which no one was allowed for a moment to dispute. Pusey, as we
+have seen, had proved to the controlling parties in the English Church
+that Christianity must stand or fall with the traditional view of this
+book; and now, within a few years of Pusey's death, there came, in his
+own university, speaking from the pulpit of St. Mary's whence he had
+so often insisted upon the absolute necessity of maintaining the older
+view, this professor of biblical criticism, a doctor of divinity,
+showing conclusively as regards the book of Daniel that the critical
+view had won the day; that the name of Daniel is only assumed; that the
+book is in no sense predictive, but was written, mainly at least, after
+the events it describes; that "its author lived at the time of the
+Maccabean struggle"; that it is very inaccurate even in the simple facts
+which it cites; and hence that all the vast fabric erected upon its
+predictive character is baseless.
+
+But another evidence of the coming in of a new epoch was even more
+striking.
+
+To uproot every growth of the newer thought, to destroy even every germ
+that had been planted by Colenso and men like him, a special movement
+was begun, of which the most important part was the establishment,
+at the University of Oxford, of a college which should bring the old
+opinion with crushing force against the new thought, and should train up
+a body of young men by feeding them upon the utterances of the fathers,
+of the medieval doctors, and of the apologists of the seventeenth and
+eighteenth centuries; and should keep them in happy ignorance of the
+reforming spirit of the sixteenth and the scientific spirit of the
+nineteenth century.
+
+The new college thus founded bore the name of the poet most widely
+beloved among high churchmen; large endowments flowed in upon it; a
+showy chapel was erected in accordance throughout with the strictest
+rules of medieval ecclesiology. As if to strike the keynote of the
+thought to be fostered in the new institution, one of the most beautiful
+of pseudo-medieval pictures was given the place of honour in its hall;
+and the college, lofty and gaudy, loomed high above the neighbouring
+modest abode of Oxford science. Kuenen might be victorious in Holland,
+and Wellhausen in Germany, and Robertson Smith in Scotland--even
+Professors Driver, Sanday, and Cheyne might succeed Dr. Pusey as
+expounders of the Old Testament at Oxford--but Keble College, rejoicing
+in the favour of a multitude of leaders in the Church, including Mr.
+Gladstone, seemed an inexpugnable fortress of the older thought.
+
+But in 1889 appeared the book of essays entitled Lux Mundi, among whose
+leading authors were men closely connected with Keble College and
+with the movement which had created it. This work gave up entirely the
+tradition that the narrative in Genesis is a historical record, and
+admitted that all accounts in the Hebrew Scriptures of events before the
+time of Abraham are mythical and legendary; it conceded that the books
+ascribed to Moses and Joshua were made up mainly of three documents
+representing different periods, and one of them the late period of the
+exile; that "there is a considerable idealizing element in Old Testament
+history"; that "the books of Chronicles show an idealizing of history"
+and "a reading back into past records of a ritual development which
+is really later," and that prophecy is not necessarily
+predictive--"prophetic inspiration being consistent with erroneous
+anticipations." Again a shudder went through the upholders of tradition
+in the Church, and here and there threats were heard; but the Essays
+and Reviews fiasco and the Colenso catastrophe were still in vivid
+remembrance. Good sense prevailed: Benson, Archbishop of Canterbury,
+instead of prosecuting the authors, himself asked the famous question,
+"May not the Holy Spirit make use of myth and legend?" and the
+Government, not long afterward, promoted one of these authors to a
+bishopric.(487)
+
+
+     (487) Of Pusey's extreme devotion to his view of the book of Daniel,
+there is a curious evidence in a letter to Stanley in the second volume
+of the latter's Life and Letters. For the views referred to in Lux
+Mundi, see pp. 345-357; also, on the general subject, Bishop Ellicott's
+Christus Comprobator.
+
+
+In the sister university the same tendency was seen. Robertson Smith,
+who had been driven out of his high position in the Free Church of
+Scotland on account of his work in scriptural research, was welcomed
+into a professorship at Cambridge, and other men, no less loyal to the
+new truths, were given places of controlling influence in shaping the
+thought of the new generation.
+
+Nor did the warfare against biblical science produce any different
+results among the dissenters of England. In 1862 Samuel Davidson, a
+professor in the Congregational College at Manchester, published his
+Introduction to the Old Testament. Independently of the contemporary
+writers of Essays and Reviews, he had arrived in a general way at
+conclusions much like theirs, and he presented the newer view with
+fearless honesty, admitting that the same research must be applied
+to these as to other Oriental sacred books, and that such research
+establishes the fact that all alike contain legendary and mythical
+elements. A storm was at once aroused; certain denominational papers
+took up the matter, and Davidson was driven from his professorial chair;
+but he laboured bravely on, and others followed to take up his work,
+until the ideas which he had advocated were fully considered.
+
+So, too, in Scotland the work of Robertson Smith was continued even
+after he had been driven into England; and, as votaries of the older
+thought passed away, men of ideas akin to his were gradually elected
+into chairs of biblical criticism and interpretation. Wellhausen's great
+work, which Smith had introduced in English form, proved a power both in
+England and Scotland, and the articles upon various books of Scripture
+and scriptural subjects generally, in the ninth edition of the
+Encyclopaedia Britannica, having been prepared mainly by himself as
+editor or put into the hands of others representing the recent critical
+research, this very important work of reference, which had been in
+previous editions so timid, was now arrayed on the side of the newer
+thought, insuring its due consideration wherever the English language is
+spoken.
+
+In France the same tendency was seen, though with striking variations
+from the course of events in other countries--variations due to the
+very different conditions under which biblical students in France
+were obliged to work. Down to the middle of the nineteenth century the
+orthodoxy of Bossuet, stiffly opposing the letter of Scripture to
+every step in the advance of science, had only yielded in a very slight
+degree. But then came an event ushering in a new epoch. At that time
+Jules Simon, afterward so eminent as an author, academician, and
+statesman, was quietly discharging the duties of a professorship, when
+there was brought him the visiting card of a stranger bearing the
+name of "Ernest Renan, Student at St. Sulpice." Admitted to M. Simon's
+library, Renan told his story. As a theological student he had devoted
+himself most earnestly, even before he entered the seminary, to the
+study of Hebrew and the Semitic languages, and he was now obliged,
+during the lectures on biblical literature at St. Sulpice, to hear the
+reverend professor make frequent comments, based on the Vulgate, but
+absolutely disproved by Renan's own knowledge of Hebrew. On Renan's
+questioning any interpretation of the lecturer, the latter was wont
+to rejoin: "Monsieur, do you presume to deny the authority of the
+Vulgate--the translation by St. Jerome, sanctioned by the Holy Ghost and
+the Church? You will at once go into the chapel and say 'Hail Mary' for
+an hour before the image of the Blessed Virgin."
+
+"But," said Renan to Jules Simon, "this has now become very serious; it
+happens nearly every day, and, MON DIEU! Monsieur, I can not spend ALL
+my time in saying, Hail Mary, before the statue of the Virgin." The
+result was a warm personal attachment between Simon and Renan; both were
+Bretons, educated in the midst of the most orthodox influences, and both
+had unwillingly broken away from them.
+
+Renan was now emancipated, and pursued his studies with such effect that
+he was made professor at the College de France. His Life of Jesus, and
+other books showing the same spirit, brought a tempest upon him which
+drove him from his professorship and brought great hardships upon him
+for many years. But his genius carried the day, and, to the honour of
+the French Republic, he was restored to the position from which the
+Empire had driven him. From his pen finally appeared the Histoire du
+Peuple Israel, in which scholarship broad, though at times inaccurate in
+minor details, was supplemented by an exquisite acuteness and a poetic
+insight which far more than made good any of those lesser errors which a
+German student would have avoided. At his death, in October, 1892, this
+monumental work had been finished. In clearness and beauty of style it
+has never been approached by any other treatise on this or any kindred
+subject: it is a work of genius; and its profound insight into all that
+is of importance in the great subjects which he treated will doubtless
+cause it to hold a permanent place in the literature not only of the
+Latin nations but of the world.
+
+An interesting light is thrown over the history of advancing thought at
+the end of the nineteenth century by the fact that this most detested of
+heresiarchs was summoned to receive the highest of academic honours
+at the university which for ages had been regarded as a stronghold of
+Presbyterian orthodoxy in Great Britain.
+
+In France the anathemas lavished upon him by Church authorities during
+his life, their denial to him of Christian burial, and their refusal
+to allow him a grave in the place he most loved, only increased popular
+affection for him during his last years and deepened the general
+mourning at his death.(488)
+
+
+     (488) For a remarkably just summary of Renan's work, eminently judicial
+and at the same time deeply appreciative, see the Rev. Dr. Pfleiderer,
+professor at the University of Berlin, Development of Theology in
+Germany, pp. 241, 242, note. The facts as to the early relations between
+Renan and Jules Simon were told in 1878 by the latter to the present
+writer at considerable length and with many interesting details not here
+given. The writer was also present at the public funeral of the great
+scholar, and can testify of his own knowledge to the deep and hearty
+evidences of gratitude and respect then paid to Renan, not merely by
+eminent orators and scholars, but by the people at large. As to the
+refusal of the place of burial that Renan especially chose, see his own
+Souvenirs, in which he laments the inevitable exclusion of his grave
+from the site which he most loved. As to calumnies, one masterpiece,
+very widely spread, through the zeal of clerical journals, was that
+Renan received enormous sums from the Rothschilds for attacking
+Christianity.
+
+
+In spite of all resistance, the desire for more light upon the sacred
+books penetrated the older Church from every side.
+
+In Germany, toward the close of the eighteenth century, Jahn, Catholic
+professor at Vienna, had ventured, in an Introduction to Old Testament
+Study, to class Job, Jonah, and Tobit below other canonical books,
+and had only escaped serious difficulties by ample amends in a second
+edition.
+
+Early in the nineteenth century, Herbst, Catholic professor at Tubingen,
+had endeavoured in a similar Introduction to bring modern research to
+bear on the older view; but the Church authorities took care to have all
+passages really giving any new light skilfully and speedily edited out
+of the book.
+
+Later still, Movers, professor at Breslau, showed remarkable gifts
+for Old Testament research, and much was expected of him; but his
+ecclesiastical superiors quietly prevented his publishing any extended
+work.
+
+During the latter half of the nineteenth century much the same pressure
+has continued in Catholic Germany. Strong scholars have very generally
+been drawn into the position of "apologists" or "reconcilers," and, when
+found intractable, they have been driven out of the Church.
+
+The same general policy had been evident in France and Italy, but toward
+the last decade of the century it was seen by the more clear-sighted
+supporters of the older Church in those countries that the multifarious
+"refutations" and explosive attacks upon Renan and his teachings had
+accomplished nothing; that even special services of atonement for his
+sin, like the famous "Triduo" at Florence, only drew a few women, and
+provoked ridicule among the public at large; that throwing him out of
+his professorship and calumniating him had but increased his influence;
+and that his brilliant intuitions, added to the careful researches of
+German and English scholars, had brought the thinking world beyond
+the reach of the old methods of hiding troublesome truths and crushing
+persistent truth-tellers.
+
+Therefore it was that about 1890 a body of earnest Roman Catholic
+scholars began very cautiously to examine and explain the biblical
+text in the light of those results of the newer research which could no
+longer be gainsaid.
+
+Among these men were, in Italy, Canon Bartolo, Canon Berta, and Father
+Savi, and in France Monseigneur d'Hulst, the Abbe Loisy, professor
+at the Roman Catholic University at Paris, and, most eminent of all,
+Professor Lenormant, of the French Institute, whose researches
+into biblical and other ancient history and literature had won him
+distinction throughout the world. These men, while standing up manfully
+for the Church, were obliged to allow that some of the conclusions of
+modern biblical criticism were well founded. The result came rapidly.
+The treatise of Bartolo and the great work of Lenormant were placed on
+the Index; Canon Berta was overwhelmed with reproaches and virtually
+silenced; the Abbe Loisy was first deprived of his professorship, and
+then ignominiously expelled from the university; Monseigneur d'Hulst was
+summoned to Rome, and has since kept silence.(489)
+
+
+     (489) For the frustration of attempts to admit light into scriptural
+studies in Roman Catholic Germany, see Bleek, Old Testament, London,
+1882, vol. i, pp. 19, 20. For the general statement regarding recent
+suppression of modern biblical study in France and Italy, see an article
+by a Roman Catholic author in the Contemporary Review, September, 1894,
+p. 365. For the papal condemnations of Lenormant and Bartolo, see the
+Index Librorum Prohibitorum Sanctissimi Domini Nostri, Leonis XIII,
+P.M., etc., Rome, 1891; Appendices, July, 1890, and May, 1891. The
+ghastly part of the record, as stated in this edition of the Index, is
+that both these great scholars were forced to abjure their "errors" and
+to acquiesce in the condemnation--Lenorment doing this on his deathbed.
+
+
+The matter was evidently thought serious in the higher regions of the
+Church, for in November, 1893, appeared an encyclical letter by the
+reigning Pope, Leo XIII, on The Study of Sacred Scripture.
+
+Much was expected from it, for, since Benedict XIV in the last century,
+there had sat on the papal throne no Pope intellectually so competent
+to discuss the whole subject. While, then, those devoted to the older
+beliefs trusted that the papal thunderbolts would crush the whole brood
+of biblical critics, votaries of the newer thought ventured to hope
+that the encyclical might, in the language of one of them, prove "a
+stupendous bridge spanning the broad abyss that now divides alleged
+orthodoxy from established science."(490)
+
+
+     (490) For this statement, see an article in the Contemporary Review,
+April, 1894, p. 576.
+
+
+Both these expectations were disappointed; and yet, on the whole, it is
+a question whether the world at large may not congratulate itself upon
+this papal utterance. The document, if not apostolic, won credit as
+"statesmanlike." It took pains, of course, to insist that there can be
+no error of any sort in the sacred books; it even defended those parts
+which Protestants count apocryphal as thoroughly as the remainder of
+Scripture, and declared that the book of Tobit was not compiled of
+man, but written by God. His Holiness naturally condemned the higher
+criticism, but he dwelt at the same time on the necessity of the
+most thorough study of the sacred Scriptures, and especially on the
+importance of adjusting scriptural statements to scientific facts. This
+utterance was admirably oracular, being susceptible of cogent quotation
+by both sides: nothing could be in better form from an orthodox point of
+view; but, with that statesmanlike forecast which the present Pope has
+shown more than once in steering the bark of St. Peter over the troubled
+waves of the nineteenth century, he so far abstained from condemning any
+of the greater results of modern critical study that the main English
+defender of the encyclical, the Jesuit Father Clarke, did not hesitate
+publicly to admit a multitude of such results--results, indeed, which
+would shock not only Italian and Spanish Catholics, but many English
+and American Protestants. According to this interpreter, the Pope had
+no thought of denying the variety of documents in the Pentateuch, or the
+plurality of sources of the books of Samuel, or the twofold authorship
+of Isaiah, or that all after the ninth verse of the last chapter of St.
+Mark's Gospel is spurious; and, as regards the whole encyclical, the
+distinguished Jesuit dwelt significantly on the power of the papacy at
+any time to define out of existence any previous decisions which may
+be found inconvenient. More than that, Father Clarke himself, while
+standing as the champion of the most thorough orthodoxy, acknowledged
+that, in the Old Testament, "numbers must be expected to be used
+Orientally," and that "all these seventies and forties, as, for example,
+when Absalom is said to have rebelled against David for forty years, can
+not possibly be meant numerically"; and, what must have given a fearful
+shock to some Protestant believers in plenary inspiration, he, while
+advocating it as a dutiful Son of the Church, wove over it an exquisite
+web with the declaration that "there is a human element in the Bible
+pre-calculated for by the Divine."(491)
+
+
+     (491) For these admissions of Father Clarke, see his article The Papal
+Encyclical on the Bible, in the Contemporary Review for July, 1894.
+
+
+Considering the difficulties in the case, the world has reason to be
+grateful to Pope Leo and Father Clarke for these utterances, which
+perhaps, after all, may prove a better bridge between the old and the
+new than could have been framed by engineers more learned but less
+astute. Evidently Pope Leo XIII is neither a Paul V nor an Urban VIII,
+and is too wise to bring the Church into a position from which it can
+only be extricated by such ludicrous subterfuges as those by which it
+was dragged out of the Galileo scandal, or by such a tortuous policy as
+that by which it writhed out of the old doctrine regarding the taking of
+interest for money.
+
+In spite, then, of the attempted crushing out of Bartolo and Berta and
+Savi and Lenormant and Loisy, during this very epoch in which the Pope
+issued this encyclical, there is every reason to hope that the path
+has been paved over which the Church may gracefully recede from the old
+system of interpretation and quietly accept and appropriate the main
+results of the higher criticism. Certainly she has never had a better
+opportunity to play at the game of "beggar my neighbour" and to drive
+the older Protestant orthodoxy into bankruptcy.
+
+In America the same struggle between the old ideas and the new went on.
+In the middle years of the century the first adequate effort in behalf
+of the newer conception of the sacred books was made by Theodore
+Parker at Boston. A thinker brave and of the widest range,--a scholar
+indefatigable and of the deepest sympathies with humanity,--a man called
+by one of the most eminent scholars in the English Church "a religious
+Titan," and by a distinguished French theologian "a prophet," he had
+struggled on from the divinity school until at that time he was one
+of the foremost biblical scholars, and preacher to the largest regular
+congregation on the American continent. The great hall in Boston could
+seat four thousand people, and at his regular discourses every part
+of it was filled. In addition to his pastoral work he wielded a vast
+influence as a platform speaker, especially in opposition to the
+extension of slavery into the Territories of the United States, and as
+a lecturer on a wide range of vital topics; and among those whom he most
+profoundly influenced, both politically and religiously, was Abraham
+Lincoln. During each year at that period he was heard discussing the
+most important religious and political questions in all the greater
+Northern cities; but his most lasting work was in throwing light upon
+our sacred Scriptures, and in this he was one of the forerunners of
+the movement now going on not only in the United States but throughout
+Christendom. Even before he was fairly out of college his translation of
+De Wette's Introduction to the Old Testament made an impression on many
+thoughtful men; his sermon in 1841 on The Transient and Permanent in
+Christianity marked the beginning of his great individual career;
+his speeches, his lectures, and especially his Discourse on Matters
+pertaining to Religion, greatly extended his influence. His was a deeply
+devotional nature, and his public prayers exercised by their touching
+beauty a very strong religious influence upon his audiences. He had his
+reward. Beautiful and noble as were his life and his life-work, he was
+widely abhorred. On one occasion of public worship in one of the more
+orthodox churches, news having been received that he was dangerously
+ill, a prayer was openly made by one of the zealous brethren present
+that this arch-enemy might be removed from earth. He was even driven out
+from the Unitarian body. But he was none the less steadfast and bold,
+and the great mass of men and women who thronged his audience room at
+Boston and his lecture rooms in other cities spread his ideas. His fate
+was pathetic. Full of faith and hope, but broken prematurely by his
+labours, he retired to Italy, and died there at the darkest period in
+the history of the United States--when slavery in the state and the
+older orthodoxy in the Church seemed absolutely and forever triumphant.
+The death of Moses within sight of the promised land seems the only
+parallel to the death of Parker less than six months before the
+publication of Essays and Reviews and the election of Abraham Lincoln to
+the presidency, of the United States.(492)
+
+
+     (492) For the appellation "religious Titan" applied to Theodore Parker,
+see a letter of Jowett, Master of Balliol, to Frances Power Cobbe, in
+her Autobiography, vol. 1, p. 357, and for Reville's statement, ibid.,
+p. 9. For a pathetic account of Parker's last hours at Florence, ibid.,
+vol. i, pp. 10, 11. As to the influence of Theodore Parker on Lincoln,
+see Rhodes's History of the United States, as above, vol. ii, p. 312.
+For the statement regarding Parker's audiences and his power over them,
+the present writer trusts to his own memory.
+
+
+But here it must be noted that Parker's effort was powerfully aided by
+the conscientious utterances of some of his foremost opponents. Nothing
+during the American struggle against the slave system did more to wean
+religious and God-fearing men and women from the old interpretation of
+Scripture than the use of it to justify slavery. Typical among examples
+of this use were the arguments of Hopkins, Bishop of Vermont, a man
+whose noble character and beautiful culture gave him very wide influence
+in all branches of the American Protestant Church. While avowing his
+personal dislike to slavery, he demonstrated that the Bible sanctioned
+it. Other theologians, Catholic and Protestant, took the same ground;
+and then came that tremendous rejoinder which echoed from heart to heart
+throughout the Northern States: "The Bible sanctions slavery? So much
+the worse for the Bible." Then was fulfilled that old saying of Bishop
+Ulrich of Augsburg: "Press not the breasts of Holy Writ too hard, lest
+they yield blood rather than milk."(493)
+
+
+     (493) There is a curious reference to Bishop Hopkins's ideas on slavery
+in Archbishop Tait's Life and Letters. For a succinct statement of the
+biblical proslavery argument referred to, see Rhodes, as above, vol. i,
+pp. 370 et seq.
+
+
+Yet throughout Christendom a change in the mode of interpreting
+Scripture, though absolutely necessary if its proper authority was to
+be maintained, still seemed almost hopeless. Even after the foremost
+scholars had taken ground in favour of it, and the most conservative
+of those whose opinions were entitled to weight had made concessions
+showing the old ground to be untenable, there was fanatical opposition
+to any change. The Syllabus of Errors put forth by Pius IX in 1864, as
+well as certain other documents issued from the Vatican, had increased
+the difficulties of this needed transition; and, while the more
+able-minded Roman Catholic scholars skilfully explained away the
+obstacles thus created, others published works insisting upon the most
+extreme views as to the verbal inspiration of the sacred books. In
+the Church of England various influential men took the same view. Dr.
+Baylee, Principal of St. Aidan's College, declared that in Scripture
+"every scientific statement is infallibly accurate; all its histories
+and narrations of every kind are without any inaccuracy. Its words
+and phrases have a grammatical and philological accuracy, such as is
+possessed by no human composition." In 1861 Dean Burgon preached in
+Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, as follows: "No, sirs, the Bible is the
+very utterance of the Eternal: as much God's own word as if high heaven
+were open and we heard God speaking to us with human voice. Every
+book is inspired alike, and is inspired entirely. Inspiration is not a
+difference of degree, but of kind. The Bible is filled to overflowing
+with the Holy Spirit of God; the books of it and the words of it and the
+very letters of it."
+
+In 1865 Canon MacNeile declared in Exeter Hall that "we must either
+receive the verbal inspiration of the Old Testament or deny the
+veracity, the insight, the integrity of our Lord Jesus Christ as a
+teacher of divine truth."
+
+As late as 1889 one of the two most eloquent pulpit orators in the
+Church of England, Canon Liddon, preaching at St. Paul's Cathedral, used
+in his fervour the same dangerous argument: that the authority of Christ
+himself, and therefore of Christianity, must rest on the old view of
+the Old Testament; that, since the founder of Christianity, in divinely
+recorded utterances, alluded to the transformation of Lot's wife into a
+pillar of salt, to Noah's ark and the Flood, and to the sojourn of
+Jonah in the whale, the biblical account of these must be accepted as
+historical, or that Christianity must be given up altogether.
+
+In the light of what was rapidly becoming known regarding the Chaldean
+and other sources of the accounts given in Genesis, no argument could be
+more fraught with peril to the interest which the gifted preacher sought
+to serve.
+
+In France and Germany many similar utterances in opposition to the
+newer biblical studies were heard; and from America, especially from the
+college at Princeton, came resounding echoes. As an example of many
+may be quoted the statement by the eminent Dr. Hodge that the books
+of Scripture "are, one and all, in thought and verbal expression, in
+substance, and in form, wholly the work of God, conveying with absolute
+accuracy and divine authority all that God meant to convey without human
+additions and admixtures"; and that "infallibility and authority attach
+as much to the verbal expression in which the revelation is made as to
+the matter of the revelation itself."
+
+But the newer thought moved steadily on. As already in Protestant
+Europe, so now in the Protestant churches of America, it took strong
+hold on the foremost minds in many of the churches known as orthodox:
+Toy, Briggs, Francis Brown, Evans, Preserved Smith, Moore, Haupt,
+Harper, Peters, and Bacon developed it, and, though most of them were
+opposed bitterly by synods, councils, and other authorities of
+their respective churches, they were manfully supported by the more
+intellectual clergy and laity. The greater universities of the country
+ranged themselves on the side of these men; persecution but intrenched
+them more firmly in the hearts of all intelligent well-wishers of
+Christianity. The triumphs won by their opponents in assemblies, synods,
+conventions, and conferences were really victories for the nominally
+defeated, since they revealed to the world the fact that in each of
+these bodies the strong and fruitful thought of the Church, the thought
+which alone can have any hold on the future, was with the new race of
+thinkers; no theological triumphs more surely fatal to the victors have
+been won since the Vatican defeated Copernicus and Galileo.
+
+And here reference must be made to a series of events which, in the
+second half of the nineteenth century, have contributed most powerful
+aid to the new school of biblical research.
+
+
+
+
+
+V. VICTORY OF THE SCIENTIFIC AND LITERARY METHODS.
+
+
+While this struggle for the new truth was going on in various fields,
+aid appeared from a quarter whence it was least expected.
+
+The great discoveries by Botta and Layard in Assyria were supplemented
+by the researches of Rawlinson, George Smith, Oppert, Sayce, Sarzec,
+Pinches, and others, and thus it was revealed more clearly than ever
+before that as far back as the time assigned in Genesis to the creation
+a great civilization was flourishing in Mesopotamia; that long ages,
+probably two thousand years, before the scriptural date assigned to the
+migration of Abraham from Ur of the Chaldees, this Chaldean civilization
+had bloomed forth in art, science, and literature; that the ancient
+inscriptions recovered from the sites of this and kindred civilizations
+presented the Hebrew sacred myths and legends in earlier forms--forms
+long antedating those given in the Hebrew Scriptures; and that the
+accounts of the Creation, the Tree of Life in Eden, the institution and
+even the name of the Sabbath, the Deluge, the Tower of Babel, and much
+else in the Pentateuch, were simply an evolution out of earlier Chaldean
+myths and legends. So perfect was the proof of this that the most
+eminent scholars in the foremost seats of Christian learning were
+obliged to acknowledge it.(494)
+
+
+     (494) As to the revelations of the vast antiquity of Chaldean
+civilization, and especially regarding the Nabonidos inscription, see
+Records of the Past, vol. i, new series, first article, and especially
+pp. 5, 6, where a translation of that inscription is given; also Hommel,
+Geschichte Babyloniens und Assyriens, introduction, in which, on page
+12, an engraving of the Sargon cylinder is given; also, on the general
+subject, especially pp. 116 et seq., 309 et seq.; also Meyer,
+Geschichte des Alterthums, pp. 161-163; also Maspero and Sayce, Dawn of
+Civilization, p. 555 and note.
+
+For the earlier Chaldean forms of the Hebrew Creation accounts, Tree
+of Life in Eden, Hebrew Sabbath, both the institution and the name, and
+various other points of similar interest, see George Smith, Chaldean
+Account of Genesis, throughout the work, especially p. 308 and chaps.
+xvi, xvii; also Jensen, Die Kosmologie der Babylonier; also Schrader,
+The Cuneiform Inscriptions and the Old Testament; also Lenormant,
+Origines de l'Histoire; also Sayce, The Assyrian Story of Creation, in
+Records of the Past, new series, vol. i. For a general statement as to
+earlier sources of much in the Hebrew sacred origins, see Huxley, Essays
+on Controverted Questions, English edition, p. 525.
+
+
+The more general conclusions which were thus given to biblical criticism
+were all the more impressive from the fact that they had been revealed
+by various groups of earnest Christian scholars working on different
+lines, by different methods, and in various parts of the world. Very
+honourable was the full and frank testimony to these results given
+in 1885 by the Rev. Francis Brown, a professor in the Presbyterian
+Theological Seminary at New York. In his admirable though brief book on
+Assyriology, starting with the declaration that "it is a great pity to
+be afraid of facts," he showed how Assyrian research testifies in many
+ways to the historical value of the Bible record; but at the same time
+he freely allowed to Chaldean history an antiquity fatal to the sacred
+chronology of the Hebrews. He also cast aside a mass of doubtful
+apologetics, and dealt frankly with the fact that very many of the early
+narratives in Genesis belong to the common stock of ancient tradition,
+and, mentioning as an example the cuneiform inscriptions which record
+a story of the Accadian king Sargon--how "he was born in retirement,
+placed by his mother in a basket of rushes, launched on a river, rescued
+and brought up by a stranger, after which he became king"--he did not
+hesitate to remind his readers that Sargon lived a thousand years and
+more before Moses; that this story was told of him several hundred years
+before Moses was born; and that it was told of various other important
+personages of antiquity. The professor dealt just as honestly with the
+inscriptions which show sundry statements in the book of Daniel to be
+unhistorical; candidly making admissions which but a short time before
+would have filled orthodoxy with horror.
+
+A few years later came another testimony even more striking. Early in
+the last decade of the nineteenth century it was noised abroad that
+the Rev. Professor Sayce, of Oxford, the most eminent Assyriologist and
+Egyptologist of Great Britain, was about to publish a work in which what
+is known as the "higher criticism" was to be vigorously and probably
+destructively dealt with in the light afforded by recent research among
+the monuments of Assyria and Egypt. The book was looked for with eager
+expectation by the supporters of the traditional view of Scripture; but,
+when it appeared, the exultation of the traditionalists was speedily
+changed to dismay. For Prof. Sayce, while showing some severity toward
+sundry minor assumptions and assertions of biblical critics, confirmed
+all their more important conclusions which properly fell within his
+province. While his readers soon realized that these assumptions and
+assertions of overzealous critics no more disproved the main results of
+biblical criticism than the wild guesses of Kepler disproved the theory
+of Copernicus, or the discoveries of Galileo, or even the great laws
+which bear Kepler's own name, they found new mines sprung under some
+of the most lofty fortresses of the old dogmatic theology. A few of the
+statements of this champion of orthodoxy may be noted. He allowed that
+the week of seven days and the Sabbath rest are of Babylonian origin;
+indeed, that the very word "Sabbath" is Babylonian; that there are two
+narratives of Creation on the Babylonian tablets, wonderfully like
+the two leading Hebrew narratives in Genesis, and that the latter were
+undoubtedly drawn from the former; that the "garden of Eden" and its
+mystical tree were known to the inhabitants of Chaldea in pre-Semitic
+days; that the beliefs that woman was created out of man, and that
+man by sin fell from a state of innocence, are drawn from very ancient
+Chaldean-Babylonian texts; that Assyriology confirms the belief that the
+book Genesis is a compilation; that portions of it are by no means so
+old as the time of Moses; that the expression in our sacred book,
+"The Lord smelled a sweet savour" at the sacrifice made by Noah, is
+"identical with that of the Babylonian poet"; that "it is impossible to
+believe that the language of the latter was not known to the biblical
+writer" and that the story of Joseph and Potiphar's wife was drawn in
+part from the old Egyptian tale of The Two Brothers. Finally, after a
+multitude of other concessions, Prof. Sayce allowed that the book of
+Jonah, so far from being the work of the prophet himself, can not have
+been written until the Assyrian Empire was a thing of the past; that the
+book of Daniel contains serious mistakes; that the so-called historical
+chapters of that book so conflict with the monuments that the author
+can not have been a contemporary of Nebuchadnezzar and Cyrus; that
+"the story of Belshazzar's fall is not historical"; that the Belshazzar
+referred to in it as king, and as the son of Nehuchadnezzar, was not the
+son of Nebuchadnezzar, and was never king; that "King Darius the Mede,"
+who plays so great a part in the story, never existed; that the book
+associates persons and events really many years apart, and that it must
+have been written at a period far later than the time assigned in it for
+its own origin.
+
+As to the book of Ezra, he tells us that we are confronted by a
+chronological inconsistency which no amount of ingenuity can explain
+away. He also acknowledges that the book of Esther "contains many
+exaggerations and improbabilities, and is simply founded upon one of
+those same historical tales of which the Persian chronicles seem to have
+been full." Great was the dissatisfaction of the traditionalists with
+their expected champion; well might they repeat the words of Balak to
+Balaam, "I called thee to curse mine enemies, and, behold, thou hast
+altogether blessed them."(495)
+
+
+     (495) For Prof. Brown's discussion, see his Assyriology, its Use and
+Abuse in Old Testament Study, New York, 1885, passim. For Prof. Sayce's
+views, see The Higher Criticism and the Monuments, third edition,
+London, 1894, and especially his own curious anticipation, in the first
+lines of the preface, that he must fail to satisfy either side. For the
+declaration that the "higher critic" with all his offences is no worse
+than the orthodox "apologist," see p. 21. For the important admission
+that the same criterion must be applied in researches into our own
+sacred books as into others, and even into the mediaeval chronicles, see
+p. 26. For justification of critical scepticism regarding the history
+given in the book of Daniel, see pp. 27, 28, also chap. ix. For very
+full and explicit statements, with proofs, that the "Sabbath," both in
+name and nature, was derived by the Hebrews from the Chaldeans, see pp.
+74 et seq. For a very full and fair acknowledgment of the "Babylonian
+element in Genesis," see chap. iii, including the statement regarding
+the statement in our sacred book, "The Lord smelled a sweet savour," at
+the sacrifice made by Noah, etc., on p. 119. For an excellent summary of
+the work, see Dr. Driver's article in the Contemporary Review for March,
+1894. For a pungent but well-deserved rebuke of Prof. Sayce's recent
+attempts to propitiate pious subscribers to his archaeological fund, see
+Prof. A. A. Bevan, in the Contemporary Review for December, 1895. For
+the inscription on the Assyrian tablets relating in detail the exposure
+of King Sargon in a basket of rushes, his rescue and rule, see George
+Smith, Chaldean account of Genesis, Sayce's edition, London, 1880, pp.
+319, 320. For the frequent recurrence of the Sargon and Moses legend
+in ancient folklore, see Maspero and Sayce, Dawn of History, p. 598 and
+note. For various other points of similar interest, see ibid., passim,
+especially chaps. xvi and xvii; also Jensen, Die Kosmologie der
+Babylonier, and Schrader, The Cuneiform Inscriptions and the Old
+Testament; also Lenormant, Origines de l'Histoire.
+
+
+No less fruitful have been modern researches in Egypt. While, on one
+hand, they have revealed a very considerable number of geographical and
+archaeological facts proving the good faith of the narratives entering
+into the books attributed to Moses, and have thus made our early sacred
+literature all the more valuable, they have at the same time revealed
+the limitations of the sacred authors and compilers. They have brought
+to light facts utterly disproving the sacred Hebrew date of creation and
+the main framework of the early biblical chronology; they have shown
+the suggestive correspondence between the ten antediluvian patriarchs
+in Genesis and the ten early dynasties of the Egyptian gods, and have
+placed by the side of these the ten antediluvian kings of Chaldean
+tradition, the ten heroes of Armenia, the ten primeval kings of Persian
+sacred tradition, the ten "fathers" of Hindu sacred tradition, and
+multitudes of other tens, throwing much light on the manner in which the
+sacred chronicles of ancient nations were generally developed.
+
+These scholars have also found that the legends of the plagues of Egypt
+are in the main but natural exaggerations of what occurs every year; as,
+for example, the changing of the water of the Nile into blood--evidently
+suggested by the phenomena exhibited every summer, when, as various
+eminent scholars, and, most recent of all, Maspero and Sayce, tell us,
+"about the middle of July, in eight or ten days the river turns from
+grayish blue to dark red, occasionally of so intense a colour as to look
+like newly shed blood." These modern researches have also shown that
+some of the most important features in the legends can not possibly
+be reconciled with the records of the monuments; for example, that the
+Pharaoh of the Exodus was certainly not overwhelmed in the Red Sea. As
+to the supernatural features of the Hebrew relations with Egypt, even
+the most devoted apologists have become discreetly silent.
+
+Egyptologists have also translated for us the old Nile story of The Two
+Brothers, and have shown, as we have already seen, that one of the most
+striking parts of our sacred Joseph legend was drawn from it; they have
+been obliged to admit that the story of the exposure of Moses in the
+basket of rushes, his rescue, and his subsequent greatness, had been
+previously told, long before Moses's time, not only of King Sargon,
+but of various other great personages of the ancient world; they have
+published plans of Egyptian temples and copies of the sculptures upon
+their walls, revealing the earlier origin of some of the most striking
+features of the worship and ceremonial claimed to have been revealed
+especially to the Hebrews; they have found in the Egyptian Book of the
+Dead, and in various inscriptions of the Nile temples and tombs, earlier
+sources of much in the ethics so long claimed to have been revealed
+only to the chosen people in the Book of the Covenant, in the ten
+commandments, and elsewhere; they have given to the world copies of the
+Egyptian texts showing that the theology of the Nile was one of various
+fruitful sources of later ideas, statements, and practices regarding
+the brazen serpent, the golden calf, trinities, miraculous conceptions,
+incarnations, resurrections, ascensions, and the like, and that Egyptian
+sacro-scientific ideas contributed to early Jewish and Christian sacred
+literature statements, beliefs, and even phrases regarding the Creation,
+astronomy, geography, magic, medicine, diabolical influences, with a
+multitude of other ideas, which we also find coming into early Judaism
+in greater or less degree from Chaldean and Persian sources.
+
+But Egyptology, while thus aiding to sweep away the former conception of
+our sacred books, has aided biblical criticism in making them far more
+precious; for it has shown them to be a part of that living growth of
+sacred literature whose roots are in all the great civilizations of
+the past, and through whose trunk and branches are flowing the currents
+which are to infuse a higher religious and ethical life into the
+civilizations of the future.(496)
+
+
+     (496) For general statements of agreements and disagreements between
+biblical accounts and the revelations of the Egyptian monuments, see
+Sayce, The Higher Criticism and the Monuments, especially chap. iv. For
+discrepancies between the Hebrew sacred accounts of Jewish relations
+with Egypt and the revelations of modern Egyptian research, see Sharpe,
+History of Egypt; Flinders, Patrie, History of Egypt; and especially
+Maspero and Sayce, The Dawn of Civilization in Egypt and Chaldea,
+London, published by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge,
+1894. For the statement regarding the Nile, that about the middle of
+July "in eight or ten days it turns from grayish blue to dark red,
+occasionally of so intense a colour as to look like newly shed blood,"
+see Maspero and Sayce, as above, p. 23. For the relation of the Joseph
+legend to the Tale of Two Brothers, see Sharpe and others cited. For
+examples of exposure of various great personages of antiquity in their
+childhood, see G. Smith, Chaldean Accounts of Genesis, Sayce's edition,
+p. 320. For the relation of the Book of the Dead, etc., to Hebrew
+ethics, see a striking passage in Huxley's essay on The Evolution of
+Theology, also others cited in this chapter. As to trinities in Egypt
+and Chaldea, see Maspero and Sayce, especially pp. 104-106, 175, and
+659-663. For miraculous conception and birth of sons of Ra, ibid., pp.
+388, 389. For ascension of Ra into heaven, ibid., pp. 167, 168; for
+resurrections, see ibid., p. 695, also representations in Lepsius,
+Prisse d'Avennes, et al.; and for striking resemblance between Egyptian
+and Hebrew ritual and worship, and especially the ark, cherubim, ephod,
+Urim and Thummim, and wave offerings, see the same, passim. For a very
+full exhibition of the whole subject, see Renan, Histoire du Peuple
+Israel, vol. i, chap. xi. For Egyptian and Chaldean ideas in astronomy,
+out of which Hebrew ideas of "the firmament," "pillars of heaven," etc.,
+were developed, see text and engravings in Maspero and Sayce, pp. 17
+and 543. For creation of man out of clay by a divine being in Egypt, see
+Maspero and Sayce, p. 154; for a similar idea in Chaldea, see ibid.,
+p. 545; and for the creation of the universe by a word, ibid., pp. 146,
+147. For Egyptian and Chaldean ideas on magic and medicine, dread of
+evil spirits, etc., anticipating those of the Hebrew Scriptures, see
+Maspero and Sayce, as above, pp. 212-214, 217, 636; and for extension
+of these to neighboring nations, pp. 782, 783. For visions and use of
+dreams as oracles, ibid., p. 641 and elsewhere. See also, on these and
+other resemblances, Lenormant, Origines de l'Histoire, vol. i, passim;
+see also George Smith and Sayce, as above, chaps. xvi and xvii, for
+resemblances especially striking, combining to show how simple was the
+evolution of many Hebrew sacred legends and ideas out of those earlier
+civilizations. For an especially interesting presentation of the reasons
+why Egyptian ideas of immortality were not seized upon by the Jews, see
+the Rev. Barham Zincke's work upon Egypt. For the sacrificial vessels,
+temple rites, etc., see the bas-reliefs, figured by Lepsius, Prisse
+d'Avennes, Mariette, Maspero, et. al. For a striking summary by a
+brilliant scholar and divine of the Anglican Church, see Mahaffy,
+Prolegomena to Anc. Hist., cited in Sunderland, The Bible, New York,
+1893, p. 21, note.
+
+
+But while archaeologists thus influenced enlightened opinion, another
+body of scholars rendered services of a different sort--the centre of
+their enterprise being the University of Oxford. By their efforts was
+presented to the English-speaking world a series of translations of the
+sacred books of the East, which showed the relations of the more Eastern
+sacred literature to our own, and proved that in the religions of the
+world the ideas which have come as the greatest blessings to mankind
+are not of sudden revelation or creation, but of slow evolution out of a
+remote past.
+
+The facts thus shown did not at first elicit much gratitude from
+supporters of traditional theology, and perhaps few things brought more
+obloquy on Renan, for a time, than his statement that "the influence of
+Persia is the most powerful to which Israel was submitted." Whether this
+was an overstatement or not, it was soon seen to contain much truth. Not
+only was it made clear by study of the Zend Avesta that the Old and New
+Testament ideas regarding Satanic and demoniacal modes of action were
+largely due to Persian sources, but it was also shown that the idea of
+immortality was mainly developed in the Hebrew mind during the close
+relations of the Jews with the Persians. Nor was this all. In the
+Zend Avesta were found in earlier form sundry myths and legends
+which, judging from their frequent appearance in early religions, grow
+naturally about the history of the adored teachers of our race. Typical
+among these was the Temptation of Zoroaster.
+
+It is a fact very significant and full of promise that the first large,
+frank, and explicit revelation regarding this whole subject in
+form available for the general thinking public was given to the
+English-speaking world by an eminent Christian divine and scholar, the
+Rev. Dr. Mills. Having already shown himself by his translations a most
+competent authority on the subject, he in 1894 called attention, in a
+review widely read, to "the now undoubted and long since suspected
+fact that it pleased the Divine Power to reveal some of the important
+articles of our Catholic creed first to the Zoroastrians, and through
+their literature to the Jews and ourselves." Among these beliefs Dr.
+Mills traced out very conclusively many Jewish doctrines regarding
+the attributes of God, and all, virtually, regarding the attributes of
+Satan.
+
+There, too, he found accounts of the Miraculous Conception, Virgin
+Birth, and Temptation of Zoroaster, As to the last, Dr. Mills presented
+a series of striking coincidences with our own later account. As to
+its main features, he showed that there had been developed among the
+Persians, many centuries before the Christian era, the legend of a vain
+effort of the arch-demon, one seat of whose power was the summit of
+Mount Arezura, to tempt Zoroaster to worship him,--of an argument
+between tempter and tempted,--and of Zoroaster's refusal; and the doctor
+continued: "No Persian subject in the streets of Jerusalem, soon after
+or long after the Return, could have failed to know this striking myth."
+Dr. Mills then went on to show that, among the Jews, "the doctrine of
+immortality was scarcely mooted before the later Isaiah--that is,
+before the captivity--while the Zoroastrian scriptures are one mass of
+spiritualism, referring all results to the heavenly or to the infernal
+worlds." He concludes by saying that, as regards the Old and New
+Testaments, "the humble, and to a certain extent prior, religion of the
+Mazda worshippers was useful in giving point and beauty to many loose
+conceptions among the Jewish religious teachers, and in introducing many
+ideas which were entirely new, while as to the doctrines of immortality
+and resurrection--the most important of all--it positively determined
+belief."(498)
+
+
+     (498) For the passages in the Vendidad of special importance as regards
+the Temptation myth, see Fargard, xix, 18, 20, 26, also 140, 147. Very
+striking is the account of the Temptation in the Pelhavi version of the
+Vendidad. The devil is represented as saying to Zaratusht (Zoroaster):
+"I had the worship of thy ancestors; do thou also worship me." I am
+indebted to Prof. E. P. Evans, formerly of the University of Michigan,
+but now of Munich, for a translation of the original text from Spiegel's
+edition. For a good account, see also Haug, Essays on the Sacred
+Language, etc., of the Parsees, edited by West, London, 1884, pp. 252
+et seq.; see also Mills's and Darmesteter's work in Sacred Books of the
+East. For Dr. Mills's article referred to, see his Zoroaster and the
+Bible, in The Nineteenth Century, January, 1894. For the citation from
+Renan, see his Histoire du Peuple Israel, tome xiv, chap. iv; see also,
+for Persian ideas of heaven, hell and resurrection, Haug, as above, p.
+310 et seq. For an interesting resume of Zoroastrianism, see Laing, A
+Modern Zoroastrian, chap. xii, London, eighth edition, 1893. For
+the Buddhist version of the judgment of Solomon, etc., see Fausboll,
+Buddhist Birth Stories, translated by Rhys Davids, London, 1880, vol. 1,
+p. 14 and following. For very full statements regarding the influence of
+Persian ideas upon the Jews during the captivity, see Kahut, Ueber
+die judische Angelologie und Daemonologie in ihren Abhangigkeit vom
+Parsismus, Leipzig, 1866.
+
+
+Even more extensive were the revelations made by scientific criticism
+applied to the sacred literature of southern and eastern Asia. The
+resemblances of sundry fundamental narratives and ideas in our own
+sacred books with those of Buddhism were especially suggestive.
+
+Here, too, had been a long preparatory history. The discoveries in
+Sanscrit philology made in the latter half of the eighteenth century and
+the first half of the nineteenth, by Sir William Jones, Carey, Wilkins,
+Foster, Colebrooke, and others, had met at first with some opposition
+from theologians. The declaration by Dugald Stewart that the discovery
+of Sanscrit was fraudulent, and its vocabulary and grammar patched
+together out of Greek and Latin, showed the feeling of the older race of
+biblical students.
+
+But researches went on. Bopp, Burnouf, Lassen, Weber, Whitney, Max
+Muller, and others continued the work during the nineteenth century.
+More and more evident became the sources from which many ideas and
+narratives in our own sacred books had been developed. Studies in the
+sacred books of Brahmanism, and in the institutions of Buddhism, the
+most widespread of all religions, its devotees outnumbering those of all
+branches of the Christian Church together, proved especially fruitful in
+facts relating to general sacred literature and early European religious
+ideas.
+
+Noteworthy in the progress of this knowledge was the work of Fathers Huc
+and Gabet. In 1839 the former of these, a French Lazarist priest, set
+out on a mission to China. Having prepared himself at Macao by eighteen
+months of hard study, and having arrayed himself like a native, even to
+the wearing of the queue and the staining of his skin, he visited Peking
+and penetrated Mongolia. Five years later, taking Gabet with him, both
+disguised as Lamas, he began his long and toilsome journey to the chief
+seats of Buddhism in Thibet, and, after two years of fearful dangers
+and sufferings, accomplished it. Driven out finally by the Chinese,
+Huc returned to Europe in 1852, having made one of the most heroic,
+self-denying, and, as it turned out, one of the most valuable efforts
+in all the noble annals of Christian missions. His accounts of these
+journevs, written in a style simple, clear, and interesting, at once
+attracted attention throughout the world. But far more important than
+any services he had rendered to the Church he served was the influence
+of his book upon the general opinions of thinking men; for he completed
+a series of revelations made by earlier, less gifted, and less
+devoted travellers, and brought to the notice of the world the amazing
+similarity of the ideas, institutions, observances, ceremonies, and
+ritual, and even the ecclesiastical costumes of the Buddhists to those
+of his own Church.
+
+Buddhism was thus shown with its hierarchy, in which the Grand Lama, an
+infallible representative of the Most High, is surrounded by its
+minor Lamas, much like cardinals; with its bishops wearing mitres, its
+celibate priests with shaven crown, cope, dalmatic, and censer; its
+cathedrals with clergy gathered in the choir; its vast monasteries
+filled with monks and nuns vowed to poverty, chastity, and obedience;
+its church arrangements, with shrines of saints and angels; its use of
+images, pictures, and illuminated missals; its service, with a striking
+general resemblance to the Mass; antiphonal choirs; intoning of prayers;
+recital of creeds; repetition of litanies; processions; mystic rites and
+incense; the offering and adoration of bread upon an altar lighted
+by candles; the drinking from a chalice by the priest; prayers and
+offerings for the dead; benediction with outstretched hands; fasts,
+confessions, and doctrine of purgatory--all this and more was now
+clearly revealed. The good father was evidently staggered by these
+amazing facts; but his robust faith soon gave him an explanation: he
+suggested that Satan, in anticipation of Christianity, had revealed
+to Buddhism this divinely constituted order of things. This naive
+explanation did not commend itself to his superiors in the Roman Church.
+In the days of St. Augustine or of St. Thomas Aquinas it would doubtless
+have been received much more kindly; but in the days of Cardinal
+Antonelli this was hardly to be expected: the Roman authorities, seeing
+the danger of such plain revelations in the nineteenth century, even
+when coupled with such devout explanations, put the book under the ban,
+though not before it had been spread throughout the world in various
+translations. Father Huc was sent on no more missions.
+
+Yet there came even more significant discoveries, especially bearing
+upon the claims of that great branch of the Church which supposes itself
+to possess a divine safeguard against error in belief. For now was
+brought to light by literary research the irrefragable evidence that the
+great Buddha--Sakya Muni himself--had been canonized and enrolled among
+the Christian saints whose intercession may be invoked, and in whose
+honour images, altars, and chapels may be erected; and this, not only
+by the usage of the medieval Church, Greek and Roman, but by the special
+and infallible sanction of a long series of popes, from the end of the
+sixteenth century to the end of the nineteenth--a sanction granted under
+one of the most curious errors in human history. The story enables us to
+understand the way in which many of the beliefs of Christendom have been
+developed, especially how they have been influenced from the seats
+of older religions; and it throws much light into the character and
+exercise of papal infallibility.
+
+Early in the seventh century there was composed, as is now believed, at
+the Convent of St. Saba near Jerusalem, a pious romance entitled
+Barlaam and Josaphat--the latter personage, the hero of the story, being
+represented as a Hindu prince converted to Christianity by the former.
+
+This story, having been attributed to St. John of Damascus in the
+following century became amazingly popular, and was soon accepted as
+true: it was translated from the Greek original not only into Latin,
+Hebrew, Arabic, and Ethiopic, but into every important European
+language, including even Polish, Bohemian, and Icelandic. Thence it came
+into the pious historical encyclopaedia of Vincent of Beauvais, and,
+most important of all, into the Lives of the Saints.
+
+Hence the name of its pious hero found its way into the list of saints
+whose intercession is to be prayed for, and it passed without challenge
+until about 1590, when, the general subject of canonization having been
+brought up at Rome, Pope Sixtus V, by virtue of his infallibility and
+immunity against error in everything relating to faith and morals,
+sanctioned a revised list of saints, authorizing and directing it to
+be accepted by the Church; and among those on whom he thus forever
+infallibly set the seal of Heaven was included "The Holy Saint Josaphat
+of India, whose wonderful acts St. John of Damascus has related." The
+27th of November was appointed as the day set apart in honour of this
+saint, and the decree, having been enforced by successive popes for over
+two hundred and fifty years, was again officially approved by Pius IX
+in 1873. This decree was duly accepted as infallible, and in one of the
+largest cities of Italy may to-day be seen a Christian church dedicated
+to this saint. On its front are the initials of his Italianized name;
+over its main entrance is the inscription "Divo Josafat"; and within it
+is an altar dedicated to the saint--above this being a pedestal bearing
+his name and supporting a large statue which represents him as a
+youthful prince wearing a crown and contemplating a crucifix.
+
+Moreover, relics of this saint were found; bones alleged to be parts
+of his skeleton, having been presented by a Doge of Venice to a King of
+Portugal, are now treasured at Antwerp.
+
+But even as early as the sixteenth century a pregnant fact regarding
+this whole legend was noted: for the Portuguese historian Diego Conto
+showed that it was identical with the legend of Buddha. Fortunately for
+the historian, his faith was so robust that he saw in this resemblance
+only a trick of Satan; the life of Buddha being, in his opinion, merely
+a diabolic counterfeit of the life of Josaphat centuries before the
+latter was lived or written--just as good Abbe Huc saw in the ceremonies
+of Buddhism a similar anticipatory counterfeit of Christian ritual.
+
+There the whole matter virtually rested for about three hundred
+years--various scholars calling attention to the legend as a curiosity,
+but none really showing its true bearings--until, in 1859, Laboulaye in
+France, Liebrecht in Germany, and others following them, demonstrated
+that this Christian work was drawn almost literally from an early
+biography of Buddha, being conformed to it in the most minute details,
+not only of events but of phraseology; the only important changes being
+that, at the end of the various experiences showing the wretchedness of
+the world, identical with those ascribed in the original to the young
+Prince Buddha, the hero, instead of becoming a hermit, becomes a
+Christian, and that for the appellation of Buddha--"Bodisat"--is
+substituted the more scriptural name Josaphat.
+
+Thus it was that, by virtue of the infallibility vouchsafed to the
+papacy in matters of faith and morals, Buddha became a Christian saint.
+
+Yet these were by no means the most pregnant revelations. As the
+Buddhist scriptures were more fully examined, there were disclosed
+interesting anticipations of statements in later sacred books. The
+miraculous conception of Buddha and his virgin birth, like that of
+Horus in Egypt and of Krishna in India; the previous annunciation to his
+mother Maja; his birth during a journey by her; the star appearing
+in the east, and the angels chanting in the heavens at his birth; his
+temptation--all these and a multitude of other statements were full
+of suggestions to larger thought regarding the development of sacred
+literature in general. Even the eminent Roman Catholic missionary Bishop
+Bigandet was obliged to confess, in his scholarly life of Buddha, these
+striking similarities between the Buddhist scriptures and those which
+it was his mission to expound, though by this honest statement his own
+further promotion was rendered impossible. Fausboll also found the story
+of the judgment of Solomon imbedded in Buddhist folklore; and Sir Edwin
+Arnold, by his poem, The Light of Asia, spread far and wide a knowledge
+of the anticipation in Buddhism of some ideas which down to a recent
+period were considered distinctively Christian. Imperfect as
+the revelations thus made of an evolution of religious beliefs,
+institutions, and literature still are, they have not been without an
+important bearing upon the newer conception of our own sacred books:
+more and more manifest has become the interdependence of all human
+development; more and more clear the truth that Christianity, as a great
+fact in man's history, is not dependent for its life upon any parasitic
+growths of myth and legend, no matter how beautiful they may be.(498)
+
+
+     (498) For Huc and Gabet, see Souvenirs d'un Voyage dans la Tartarie, le
+Thibet, et la Chine, English translation by Hazlitt, London, 1851; also
+supplementary work by Huc. For Bishop Bigandet, see his Life of Buddha,
+passim. As for authority for the fact that his book was condemned
+at Rome and his own promotion prevented, the present writer has the
+bishop's own statement. For notices of similarities between Buddhist
+and Christian institutions, rituals, etc., see Rhys David's Buddhism,
+London, 1894, passim; also Lillie, Buddhism and Christianity, especially
+chaps. ii and xi. It is somewhat difficult to understand how a scholar
+so eminent as Mr. Rhys Davids should have allowed the Society for the
+Promotion of Christian Knowledge, which published his book, to eliminate
+all the interesting details regarding the birth of Buddha, and to give
+so fully everything that seemed to tell against the Roman Catholic
+Church; cf. p. 27 with p. 246 et seq. For more thorough presentation of
+the development of features in Buddhism and Brahmanism which anticipate
+those of Christianity, see Schroeder, Indiens Literatur und Cultur,
+Leipsic, 1887, especially Vorlesung XXVIII and following. For full
+details of the canonization of Buddha under the name of St. Josaphat,
+see Fausboll, Buddhist Birth Stories, translated by Rhys Davids, London,
+1880, pp. xxxvi and following; also Prof. Max Muller in the Contemporary
+Review for July, 1890; also the article Barlaam and Josaphat, in the
+ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. For the more recent
+and full accounts, correcting some minor details in the foregoing
+authorities, see Kuhn, Barlaam und Joasaph, Munich, 1893, especially
+pages 82, 83. For a very thorough discussion of the whole subject,
+see Zotenberg, Notice sur le livre de Barlaam et Joasaph, Paris, 1886;
+especially for arguments fixing date of the work, see parts i to
+iii; also Gaston Paris in the Revue de Paris for June, 1895. For the
+transliteration between the appellation of Buddha and the name of the
+saint, see Fausboll and Sayce, as above, p. xxxvii, note; and for the
+multitude of translations of the work ascribed to St. John of Damascus,
+see Table III, on p. xcv. The reader who is curious to trace up a
+multitude of the myths and legends of early Hebrew and Christian
+mythology to their more eastern and southern sources can do so in Bible
+Myths, New York, 1883. The present writer gladly avails himself of the
+opportunity to thank the learned Director of the National Library at
+Palermo, Monsignor Marzo, for his kindness in showing him the very
+interesting church of San Giosafat in that city; and to the custodians
+of the church for their readiness to allow photographs of the saint to
+be taken. The writer's visit was made in April, 1895, and copies of the
+photographs may be seen in the library of Cornell University. As to
+the more rare editions of Barlaam and Josaphat, a copy of the Icelandic
+translation is to be seen in the remarkable collection of Prof. Willard
+Fiske, at Florence. As to the influence of these translations, it may
+be noted that when young John Kuncewicz, afterward a Polish archbishop,
+became a monk, he took the name of the sainted Prince Josafat; and,
+having fallen a victim to one of the innumerable murderous affrays of
+the seventeenth century between different sorts of fanatics--Greek,
+Catholic, and Protestant--in Poland, he also was finally canonized under
+that name, evidently as a means of annoying the Russian Government. (See
+Contieri, Vita di S. Giosafat, Arcivesco e Martira Rutena, Roma, 1867.)
+
+
+No less important was the closer research into the New Testament during
+the latter part of the nineteenth century. To go into the subject in
+detail would be beyond the scope of this work, but a few of the main
+truths which it brought before the world may be here summarized.(499)
+
+
+     (499) For a brief but thorough statement of the work of Strauss,
+Baur, and the earlier cruder efforts in New Testament exegesis, see
+Pfleiderer, as already cited, book ii, chap. i; and for the later work
+on Supernatural Religion and Lightfoot's answer, ibid., book iv. chap.
+ii.
+
+
+By the new race of Christian scholars it has been clearly shown that the
+first three Gospels, which, down to the close of the last century, were
+so constantly declared to be three independent testimonies agreeing as
+to the events recorded, are neither independent of each other nor
+in that sort of agreement which was formerly asserted. All biblical
+scholars of any standing, even the most conservative, have come to admit
+that all three took their rise in the same original sources, growing by
+the accretions sure to come as time went on--accretions sometimes useful
+and often beautiful, but in no inconsiderable degree ideas and even
+narratives inherited from older religions: it is also fully acknowledged
+that to this growth process are due certain contradictions which can not
+otherwise be explained. As to the fourth Gospel, exquisitely beautiful
+as large portions of it are, there has been growing steadily and
+irresistibly the conviction, even among the most devout scholars, that
+it has no right to the name, and does not really give the ideas of St.
+John, but that it represents a mixture of Greek philosophy with Jewish
+theology, and that its final form, which one of the most eminent among
+recent Christian scholars has characterized as "an unhistorical product
+of abstract reflection," is mainly due to some gifted representative or
+representatives of the Alexandrian school. Bitter as the resistance
+to this view has been, it has during the last years of the nineteenth
+century won its way more and more to acknowledgment. A careful
+examination made in 1893 by a competent Christian scholar showed facts
+which are best given in his own words, as follows: "In the period of
+thirty years ending in 1860, of the fifty great authorities in this
+line, FOUR TO ONE were in favour of the Johannine authorship. Of
+those who in that period had advocated this traditional position, one
+quarter--and certainly the very greatest--finally changed their position
+to the side of a late date and non-Johannine authorship."
+
+Of those who have come into this field of scholarship since about 1860,
+some forty men of the first class, two thirds reject the traditional
+theory wholly or very largely. Of those who have contributed important
+articles to the discussion from about 1880 to 1890, about TWO TO ONE
+reject the Johannine authorship of the Gospel in its present shape--that
+is to say, while forty years ago great scholars were FOUR TO ONE IN
+FAVOUR OF, they are now TWO TO ONE AGAINST, the claim that the apostle
+John wrote this Gospel as we have it. Again, one half of those on the
+conservative side to-day--scholars like Weiss, Beyschlag, Sanday, and
+Reynolds--admit the existence of a dogmatic intent and an ideal element
+in this Gospel, so that we do not have Jesus's thought in his exact
+words, but only in substance."(500)
+
+
+     (500) For the citations given regarding the development of thought in
+relation to the fourth gospel, see Crooker, The New Bible and its Uses,
+Boston, 1893, pp. 29, 30. For the characterization of St. John's Gospel
+above referred to, see Robertson Smith in the Encyc. Brit., 9th edit.,
+art. Bible, p. 642. For a very careful and candid summary of the reasons
+which are gradually leading the more eminent among the newer scholars to
+give up the Johannine authorship ot the fourth Gospel, see Schurer, in
+the Contemporary Review for September, 1891. American readers, regarding
+this and the whole series of subjects of which this forms a part, may
+most profitably study the Rev. Dr. Cone's Gospel Criticism and Historic
+Christianity, one of the most lucid and judicial of recent works in this
+field.
+
+
+In 1881 came an event of great importance as regards the development of
+a more frank and open dealing with scriptural criticism. In that year
+appeared the Revised Version of the New Testament. It was exceedingly
+cautious and conservative; but it had the vast merit of being absolutely
+conscientious. One thing showed, in a striking way, ethical progress
+in theological methods. Although all but one of the English revisers
+represented Trinitarian bodies, they rejected the two great proof texts
+which had so long been accounted essential bulwarks of Trinitarian
+doctrine. Thus disappeared at last from the Epistle of St. John the text
+of the Three Witnesses, which had for centuries held its place in spite
+of its absence from all the earlier important manuscripts, and of its
+rejection in later times by Erasmus, Luther, Isaac Newton, Porson, and
+a long line of the greatest biblical scholars. And with this was thrown
+out the other like unto it in spurious origin and zealous intent, that
+interpolation of the word "God" in the sixteenth verse of the third
+chapter of the First Epistle to Timothy, which had for ages served as a
+warrant for condemning some of the noblest of Christians, even such men
+as Newton and Milton and Locke and Priestley and Channing.
+
+Indeed, so honest were the revisers that they substituted the correct
+reading of Luke ii, 33, in place of the time-honoured corruption in the
+King James version which had been thought necessary to safeguard the
+dogma of the virgin birth of Jesus of Nazareth. Thus came the true
+reading, "His FATHER and his mother" instead of the old piously
+fraudulent words "JOSEPH and his mother."
+
+An even more important service to the new and better growth of
+Christianity was the virtual setting aside of the last twelve verses of
+the Gospel according to St. Mark; for among these stood that sentence
+which has cost the world more innocent blood than any other--the words
+"He that believeth not shall be damned." From this source had logically
+grown the idea that the intellectual rejection of this or that dogma
+which dominant theology had happened at any given time to pronounce
+essential, since such rejection must bring punishment infinite in agony
+and duration, is a crime to be prevented at any cost of finite cruelty.
+Still another service rendered to humanity by the revisers was in
+substituting a new and correct rendering for the old reading of the
+famous text regarding the inspiration of Scripture, which had for ages
+done so much to make our sacred books a fetich. By this more correct
+reading the revisers gave a new charter to liberty in biblical
+research.(501)
+
+
+     (501) The texts referred to as most beneficially changed by the revisers
+are I John v, 7 and I Timothy iii, 16. Mention may also be made of
+the fact that the American revision gave up the Trinitarian version of
+Romans ix, 5, and that even their more conservative British brethren,
+while leaving it in the text, discredited it in the margin.
+
+Though revisers thought it better not to suppress altogether the last
+twelve verses of St. Mark's Gospel, they softened the word "damned"
+to "condemned," and separated them from the main Gospel, adding a
+note stating that "the two oldest Greek manuscripts, and some other
+authorities, omit from verse nine to the end"; and that "some other
+authorities have a different ending to this Gospel."
+
+The resistance of staunch high churchmen of the older type even to so
+mild a reform as the first change above noted may be exemplified by
+a story told of Philpotts, Bishop of Exeter, about the middle of the
+nineteenth century. A kindly clergyman reading an invitation to the holy
+communion, and thinking that so an affectionate a call was disfigured by
+the harsh phrase "eateth and drinketh to his own damnation," ventured
+timidly to substitute the word "condemnation." Thereupon the bishop, who
+was kneeling with the rest of the congregation, threw up his head
+and roared "DAMNATION!" The story is given in T. A. Trollope's What I
+Remember, vol. i, p. 444. American churchmen may well rejoice that the
+fathers of the American branch of the Anglican Church were wise enough
+and Christian enough to omit from their Prayer Book this damnatory
+clause, as well as the Commination Service and the Athanasian Creed.
+
+
+Most valuable, too, have been studies during the latter part of the
+nineteenth century upon the formation of the canon of Scripture. The
+result of these has been to substitute something far better for that
+conception of our biblical literature, as forming one book handed out
+of the clouds by the Almighty, which had been so long practically
+the accepted view among probably the majority of Christians. Reverent
+scholars have demonstrated our sacred literature to be a growth in
+obedience to simple laws natural and historical; they have shown how
+some books of the Old Testament were accepted as sacred, centuries
+before our era, and how others gradually gained sanctity, in some cases
+only fully acquiring it long after the establishment of the Christian
+Church. The same slow growth has also been shown in the New Testament
+canon. It has been demonstrated that the selection of the books
+composing it, and their separation from the vast mass of spurious
+gospels, epistles, and apocalyptic literature was a gradual process, and,
+indeed, that the rejection of some books and the acceptance of others
+was accidental, if anything is accidental.
+
+So, too, scientific biblical research has, as we have seen, been obliged
+to admit the existence of much mythical and legendary matter, as a
+setting for the great truths not only of the Old Testament but of the
+New. It has also shown, by the comparative study of literatures, the
+process by which some books were compiled and recompiled, adorned
+with beautiful utterances, strengthened or weakened by alterations and
+interpolations expressing the views of the possessors or transcribers,
+and attributed to personages who could not possibly have written them.
+The presentation of these things has greatly weakened that sway of mere
+dogma which has so obscured the simple teachings of Christ himself; for
+it has shown that the more we know of our sacred books, the less certain
+we become as to the authenticity of "proof texts," and it has disengaged
+more and more, as the only valuable residuum, like the mass of gold
+at the bottom of the crucible, the personality, spirit, teaching, and
+ideals of the blessed Founder of Christianity. More and more, too, the
+new scholarship has developed the conception of the New Testament as,
+like the Old, the growth of literature in obedience to law--a conception
+which in al probability will give it its strongest hold on the coming
+centuries. In making this revelation Christian scholarship has by no
+means done work mainly destructive. It has, indeed, swept away a mass
+of noxious growths, but it has at the same time cleared the ground for
+a better growth of Christianity--a growth through which already pulsates
+the current of a nobler life. It has forever destroyed the contention of
+scholars like those of the eighteenth century who saw, in the multitude
+of irreconcilable discrepancies between various biblical statements,
+merely evidences of priestcraft and intentional fraud. The new
+scholarship has shown that even such absolute contradictions as those
+between the accounts of the early life of Jesus by Matthew and Luke, and
+between the date of the crucifixion and details of the resurrection
+in the first three Gospels and in the fourth, and other discrepancies
+hardly less serious, do not destroy the historical character of the
+narrative. Even the hopelessly conflicting genealogies of the Saviour
+and the evidently mythical accretions about the simple facts of his
+birth and life are thus full of interest when taken as a natural
+literary development in obedience to the deepest religious feeling.(502)
+
+
+     (502) Among the newer English works of the canon of Scripture,
+especially as regards the Old Testament, see Ryle in work cited. As to
+the evidences of frequent mutilations of the New Testament text, as well
+as of frequent charge of changing texts made against each other by early
+Christian writers, see Reuss, History of the New Testament, vol. ii, S
+362. For a reverent and honest treatment of some of the discrepancies
+and contradictions which are absolutely irreconcilable, see Crooker, as
+above, appendix; also Cone, Gospel Criticism and Historic Christianity,
+especially chap. ii; also Matthew Arnold, Literature and Dogma, and God
+and the Bible, especially chap. vi; and for a brief but full showing of
+them in a judicial and kindly spirit, see Laing, Problems of the Future,
+chap. ix, on The Historical Element in the Gospels.
+
+
+Among those who have wrought most effectively to bring the leaders
+of thought in the English-speaking nations to this higher conception,
+Matthew Arnold should not be forgotten. By poetic insight, broad
+scholarship, pungent statement, pithy argument, and an exquisitely lucid
+style, he aided effectually during the latter half of the nineteenth
+century in bringing the work of specialists to bear upon the development
+of a broader and deeper view. In the light of his genius a conception
+of our sacred books at the same time more literary as well as more
+scientific has grown widely and vigorously, while the older view which
+made of them a fetich and a support for unchristian dogmas has been more
+and more thrown into the background. The contributions to these results
+by the most eminent professors at the great Christian universities of
+the English-speaking world, Oxford and Cambridge taking the lead, are
+most hopeful signs of a new epoch.
+
+Very significant also is a change in the style of argument against the
+scientific view. Leading supporters of the older opinions see more and
+more clearly the worthlessness of rhetoric against ascertained fact:
+mere dogged resistance to cogent argument evidently avails less and
+less; and the readiness of the more prominent representatives of the
+older thought to consider opposing arguments, and to acknowledge any
+force they may have, is certainly of good omen. The concessions made
+in Lux Mundi regarding scriptural myths and legends have been already
+mentioned.
+
+Significant also has been the increasing reprobation in the Church
+itself of the profound though doubtless unwitting immoralities of
+RECONCILERS. The castigation which followed the exploits of the
+greatest of these in our own time--Mr. Gladstone, at the hands of Prof.
+Huxley--did much to complete a work in which such eminent churchmen as
+Stanley, Farrar, Sanday, Cheyne, Driver, and Sayce had rendered good
+service.
+
+Typical among these evidences of a better spirit in controversy has been
+the treatment of the question regarding mistaken quotations from the
+Old Testament in the New, and especially regarding quotations by Christ
+himself. For a time this was apparently the most difficult of all
+matters dividing the two forces; but though here and there appear
+champions of tradition, like the Bishop of Gloucester, effectual
+resistance to the new view has virtually ceased; in one way or another
+the most conservative authorities have accepted the undoubted truth
+revealed by a simple scientific method. Their arguments have indeed
+been varied. While some have fallen back upon Le Clerc's contention that
+"Christ did not come to teach criticism to the Jews," and others upon
+Paley's argument that the Master shaped his statements in accordance
+with the ideas of his time, others have taken refuge in scholastic
+statements--among them that of Irenaeus regarding "a quiescence of the
+divine word," or the somewhat startling explanation by sundry recent
+theologians that "our Lord emptied himself of his Godhead."(504)
+
+
+     (504) For Matthew Arnold, see, besides his Literature and Dogma, his St.
+Paul and Protestantism. As to the quotations in the New Testament from
+the Old, see Toy, Quotations in the New Testament, 1889, p. 72; also
+Kuenen, The Prophets and Prophecy in Israel. For Le Clerc's method of
+dealing with the argument regarding quotations from the Old Testament in
+the New, see earlier parts of the present chapter. For Paley's mode,
+see his Evidences, part iii, chapter iii. For the more scholastic
+expressions from Irenaeus and others, see Gore, Bampton Lectures, 1891,
+especially note on p. 267. For a striking passage on the general subject
+see B. W. Bacon, Genesis of Genesis, p. 33, ending with the words, "We
+must decline to stake the authority of Jesus Christ on a question of
+literary criticism."
+
+
+Nor should there be omitted a tribute to the increasing courtesy shown
+in late years by leading supporters of the older view. During the last
+two decades of the present century there has been a most happy departure
+from the older method of resistance, first by plausibilities, next by
+epithets, and finally by persecution. To the bitterness of the attacks
+upon Darwin, the Essayists and Reviewers, and Bishop Colenso, have
+succeeded, among really eminent leaders, a far better method and
+tone. While Matthew Arnold no doubt did much in commending "sweet
+reasonableness" to theological controversialists, Mr. Gladstone, by
+his perfect courtesy to his opponents, even when smarting under their
+heaviest blows, has set a most valuable example. Nor should the spirit
+shown by Bishop Ellicott, leading a forlorn hope for the traditional
+view, pass without a tribute of respect. Truly pathetic is it to
+see this venerable and learned prelate, one of the most eminent
+representatives of the older biblical research, even when giving solemn
+warnings against the newer criticisms, and under all the temptations
+of ex cathedra utterance, remaining mild and gentle and just in the
+treatment of adversaries whose ideas he evidently abhors. Happily, he
+is comforted by the faith that Christianity will survive; and this faith
+his opponents fully share.(505)
+
+
+     (505) As an example of courtesy between theologic opponents may be cited
+the controversy between Mr. Gladstone and Prof. Huxley, Principal Gore's
+Bampton Lectures for 1891, and Bishop Ellicott's Charges, published in
+1893.
+
+To the fact that the suppression of personal convictions among "the
+enlightened" did not cease with the Medicean popes there are many
+testimonies. One especially curious was mentioned to the present writer
+by a most honoured diplomatist and scholar at Rome. While this gentleman
+was looking over the books of an eminent cardinal, recently deceased,
+he noticed a series of octavos bearing on their backs the title "Acta
+Apostolorum." Surprised at such an extension of the Acts of Apostles, he
+opened a volume and found the series to be the works of Voltaire. As to
+a similar condition of things in the Church of England may be cited
+the following from Froude's Erasmus: "I knew various persons of high
+reputation a few years ago who thought at the bottom very much as Bishop
+Colenso thought, who nevertheless turned and rent him to clear their own
+reputations--which they did not succeed in doing." See work cited, close
+of Lecture XI.
+
+
+
+
+VI. RECONSTRUCTIVE FORCE OF SCIENTIFIC CRITICISM.
+
+
+For all this dissolving away of traditional opinions regarding our
+sacred literature, there has been a cause far more general and powerful
+than any which has been given, for it is a cause surrounding and
+permeating all. This is simply the atmosphere of thought engendered by
+the development of all sciences during the last three centuries.
+
+Vast masses of myth, legend, marvel, and dogmatic assertion, coming into
+this atmosphere, have been dissolved and are now dissolving quietly away
+like icebergs drifted into the Gulf Stream. In earlier days, when some
+critic in advance of his time insisted that Moses could not have
+written an account embracing the circumstances of his own death, it was
+sufficient to answer that Moses was a prophet; if attention was called
+to the fact that the great early prophets, by all which they did and
+did not do, showed that there could not have existed in their time
+any "Levitical code," a sufficient answer was "mystery"; and if the
+discrepancy was noted between the two accounts of creation in Genesis,
+or between the genealogies or the dates of the crucifixion in the
+Gospels, the cogent reply was "infidelity." But the thinking world has
+at last been borne by the general development of a scientific atmosphere
+beyond that kind of refutation.
+
+If, in the atmosphere generated by the earlier developed sciences, the
+older growths of biblical interpretation have drooped and withered and
+are evidently perishing, new and better growths have arisen with roots
+running down into the newer sciences. Comparative Anthropology in
+general, by showing that various early stages of belief and observance,
+once supposed to be derived from direct revelation from heaven to the
+Hebrews, are still found as arrested developments among various savage
+and barbarous tribes; Comparative Mythology and Folklore, by showing
+that ideas and beliefs regarding the Supreme Power in the universe are
+progressive, and not less in Judea than in other parts of the world;
+Comparative Religion and Literature, by searching out and laying side by
+side those main facts in the upward struggle of humanity which show that
+the Israelites, like other gifted peoples, rose gradually, through ghost
+worship, fetichism, and polytheism, to higher theological levels; and
+that, as they thus rose, their conceptions and statements regarding the
+God they worshipped became nobler and better--all these sciences are
+giving a new solution to those problems which dogmatic theology has so
+long laboured in vain to solve. While researches in these sciences
+have established the fact that accounts formerly supposed to be special
+revelations to Jews and Christians are but repetitions of widespread
+legends dating from far earlier civilizations, and that beliefs formerly
+thought fundamental to Judaism and Christianity are simply based on
+ancient myths, they have also begun to impress upon the intellect and
+conscience of the thinking world the fact that the religious and moral
+truths thus disengaged from the old masses of myth and legend are
+all the more venerable and authoritative, and that all individual or
+national life of any value must be vitalized by them.(506)
+
+
+     (506) For plaintive lamentations over the influence of this atmosphere
+of scientific thought upon the most eminent contemporary Christian
+scholars, see the Christus Comprobator, by the Bishop of Gloucester and
+Bristol, London, 1893, and the article in the Contemporary Review for
+May, 1892, by the Bishop of Colchester, passim. For some less
+known examples of sacred myths and legends inherited from ancient
+civilizations, see Lenormant, Les Origines de l'Histoire, passim, but
+especially chaps. ii, iv, v, vi; see also Goldziher.
+
+
+If, then, modern science in general has acted powerfully to dissolve
+away the theories and dogmas of the older theologic interpretation, it
+has also been active in a reconstruction and recrystallization of
+truth; and very powerful in this reconstruction have been the evolution
+doctrines which have grown out of the thought and work of men like
+Darwin and Spencer.
+
+In the light thus obtained the sacred text has been transformed: out
+of the old chaos has come order; out of the old welter of hopelessly
+conflicting statements in religion and morals has come, in obedience
+to this new conception of development, the idea of a sacred literature
+which mirrors the most striking evolution of morals and religion in the
+history of our race. Of all the sacred writings of the world, it shows
+us our own as the most beautiful and the most precious; exhibiting to us
+the most complete religious development to which humanity has attained,
+and holding before us the loftiest ideals which our race has known.
+Thus it is that, with the keys furnished by this new race of biblical
+scholars, the way has been opened to treasures of thought which have
+been inaccessible to theologians for two thousand years.
+
+As to the Divine Power in the universe: these interpreters have shown
+how, beginning with the tribal god of the Hebrews--one among many
+jealous, fitful, unseen, local sovereigns of Asia Minor--the higher
+races have been borne on to the idea of the just Ruler of the whole
+earth, as revealed by the later and greater prophets of Israel, and
+finally to the belief in the Universal Father, as best revealed in
+the New Testament. As to man: beginning with men after Jehovah's own
+heart--cruel, treacherous, revengeful--we are borne on to an ideal of
+men who do right for right's sake; who search and speak the truth for
+truth's sake; who love others as themselves. As to the world at large:
+the races dominant in religion and morals have been lifted from the idea
+of a "chosen people" stimulated and abetted by their tribal god in every
+sort of cruelty and injustice, to the conception of a vast community in
+which the fatherhood of God overarches all, and the brotherhood of man
+permeates all.
+
+Thus, at last, out of the old conception of our Bible as a collection
+of oracles--a mass of entangling utterances, fruitful in wrangling
+interpretations, which have given to the world long and weary ages of
+"hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness"; of fetichism, subtlety,
+and pomp; of tyranny bloodshed, and solemnly constituted imposture; of
+everything which the Lord Jesus Christ most abhorred--has been gradually
+developed through the centuries, by the labours, sacrifices, and even
+the martyrdom of a long succession of men of God, the conception of it
+as a sacred literature--a growth only possible under that divine light
+which the various orbs of science have done so much to bring into the
+mind and heart and soul of man--a revelation, not of the Fall of Man,
+but of the Ascent of Man--an exposition, not of temporary dogmas and
+observances, but of the Eternal Law of Righteousness--the one upward
+path for individuals and for nations. No longer an oracle, good for
+the "lower orders" to accept, but to be quietly sneered at by "the
+enlightened"--no longer a fetich, whose defenders must be persecutors,
+or reconcilers, or "apologists"; but a most fruitful fact, which
+religion and science may accept as a source of strength to both.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of History of the Warfare of Science with
+Theology in Christendom, by Andrew Dickson White
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