Warfare of Science/Theology
by Andrew Dickson White
Hypertext Meanings and Commentaries
from the Encyclopedia of the Self
by Mark Zimmerman
Go to Part 2 of 4

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
rogress 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

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 declartion, 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 Gensis, 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; recen
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 Euvres, 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 simialr 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 182O
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 Reverand 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 oppostition 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 thenhighest and truest view
of Christianity, see Prof. Drummond's Chautaqua 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, .
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 aand 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, Hisoire 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]