History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom Part 41

Heat, light, magnetism, electricity, projectiles, digestion, and the incompressibility of water were studied by the right method and with results that enriched the world.

The academy was a fortress of science, and siege was soon laid to it. The votaries of scholastic learning denounced it as irreligious, quarrels were fomented, Leopold was bribed with a cardinal's hat and drawn away to Rome, and, after ten years of beleaguering, the fortress fell: Borelli was left a beggar; Oliva killed himself in despair.

So, too, the noted Academy of the Lincei at times incurred the ill will of the papacy by the very fact that it included thoughtful investigators. It was "patronized" by Pope Urban VIII in such manner as to paralyze it, and it was afterward vexed by Pope Gregory XVI. Even in our own time sessions of scientific a.s.sociations were discouraged and thwarted by as kindly a pontiff as Pius IX.(276)

(276) For Porta, see the English translation of his main summary, Natural Magick, London, 1658. The first chapters are especially interesting, as showing what the word "magic" had come to mean in the mind of a man in whom mediaeval and modern ideas were curiously mixed; see also Hoefer, Histoire de la Chimie, vol. ii, pp. 102-106; also Kopp; also Sprengel, Histoire de la Medecine, vol. iii, p. 239; also Musset-Pathay. For the Accademia del Cimento, see Napier, Florentine History, vol. v, p. 485; Tiraboschi, Storia della Litteratura; Henri Martin, Histoire de France; Jevons, Principles of Science, vol. ii, pp. 36-40. For value attached to Borelli's investigations by Newton and Huygens, see Brewster's Life of Sir Isaac Newton, London, 1875, pp. 128, 129. Libri, in his first Essai sur Galilee, p. 37, says that Oliva was summoned to Rome and so tortured by the Inquisition that, to escape further cruelty, he ended his life by throwing himself from a window.

For interference by Pope Gregory XVI with the Academy of the Lincei, and with public instruction generally, see Carutti, Storia della Accademia dei Lincei, p. 126. Pius IX, with all his geniality, seems to have allowed his hostility to voluntary a.s.sociations to carry him very far at times. For his answer to an application made through Lord Odo Russell regarding a society for the prevention of cruelty to animals and his answer that "such an a.s.sociation could not be sanctioned by the Holy See, being founded on a theological error, to wit, that Christians owed any duties to animals," see Frances Power Cobbe, Hopes of the Human Race, p. 207.

A hostility similar in kind, though less in degree, was shown in Protestant countries.

Even after Thomasius in Germany and Voltaire in France and Beccaria in Italy had given final blows to the belief in magic and witchcraft throughout Christendom, the traditional orthodox distrust of the physical sciences continued for a long time.

In England a marked dislike was shown among various leading ecclesiastics and theologians towards the Royal Society, and later toward the a.s.sociation for the Advancement of Science; and this dislike, as will hereafter be seen, sometimes took shape in serious opposition.

As a rule, both in Protestant and Catholic countries instruction in chemistry and physics was for a long time discouraged by Church authorities; and, when its suppression was no longer possible, great pains were taken to subordinate it to instruction supposed to be more fully in accordance with the older methods of theological reasoning.

I have now presented in outline the more direct and open struggle of the physical sciences with theology, mainly as an exterior foe. We will next consider their warfare with the same foe in its more subtle form, mainly as a vitiating and sterilizing principle in science itself.

We have seen thus far, first, how such men as Eusebius, Lactantius, and their compeers, opposed scientific investigation as futile; next, how such men as Albert the Great, St. Thomas Aquinas, and the mult.i.tude who followed them, turned the main current of medieval thought from science to theology; and, finally, how a long line of Church authorities from Popes John XXII and Innocent VIII, and the heads of the great religious orders, down to various theologians and ecclesiastics, Catholic and Protestant, of a very recent period, endeavoured first to crush and afterward to discourage scientific research as dangerous.

Yet, injurious as all this was to the evolution of science, there was developed something in many respects more destructive; and this was the influence of mystic theology, penetrating, permeating, vitiating, sterilizing nearly every branch of science for hundreds of years. Among the forms taken by this development in the earlier Middle Ages we find a mixture of physical science with a pseudo-science obtained from texts of Scripture. In compounding this mixture, Jews and Christians vied with each other. In this process the sacred books were used as a fetich; every word, every letter, being considered to have a divine and hidden meaning. By combining various scriptural letters in various abstruse ways, new words of prodigious significance in magic were obtained, and among them the great word embracing the seventy-two mystical names of G.o.d--the mighty word "Schemhamphoras." Why should men seek knowledge by observation and experiment in the book of Nature, when the book of Revelation, interpreted by the Kabbalah, opened such treasures to the ingenious believer?

So, too, we have ancient mystical theories of number which the theological spirit had made Christian, usurping an enormous place in medieval science. The sacred power of the number three was seen in the Trinity; in the three main divisions of the universe--the empyrean, the heavens, and the earth; in the three angelic hierarchies; in the three choirs of seraphim, cherubim, and thrones; in the three of dominions, virtues, and powers; in the three of princ.i.p.alities, archangels, and angels; in the three orders in the Church--bishops, priests, and deacons; in the three cla.s.ses--the baptized, the communicants, and the monks; in the three degrees of attainment--light, purity, and knowledge; in the three theological virtues--faith, hope, and charity--and in much else. All this was brought into a theologico-scientific relation, then and afterward, with the three dimensions of s.p.a.ce; with the three divisions of time--past, present, and future; with the three realms of the visible world--sky, earth, and sea; with the three const.i.tuents of man--body, soul, and spirit; with the threefold enemies of man--the world, the flesh, and the devil; with the three kingdoms in nature--mineral, vegetable, and animal; with "the three colours"--red, yellow, and blue; with "the three eyes of the honey-bee"--and with a mult.i.tude of other a.n.a.logues equally precious. The sacred power of the number seven was seen in the seven golden candlesticks and the seven churches in the Apocalypse; in the seven cardinal virtues and the seven deadly sins; in the seven liberal arts and the seven devilish arts, and, above all, in the seven sacraments. And as this proved in astrology that there could be only seven planets, so it proved in alchemy that there must be exactly seven metals. The twelve apostles were connected with the twelve signs in the zodiac, and with much in physical science.

The seventy-two disciples, the seventy-two interpreters of the Old Testament, the seventy-two mystical names of G.o.d, were connected with the alleged fact in anatomy that there were seventy-two joints in the human frame.

Then, also, there were revived such theologic and metaphysical subst.i.tutes for scientific thought as the declaration that the perfect line is a circle, and hence that the planets must move in absolute circles--a statement which led astronomy astray even when the great truths of the Copernican theory were well in sight; also, the declaration that nature abhors a vacuum--a statement which led physics astray until Torricelli made his experiments; also, the declaration that we see the lightning before we hear the thunder because "sight is n.o.bler than hearing."

In chemistry we have the same theologic tendency to magic, and, as a result, a muddle of science and theology, which from one point of view seems blasphemous and from another idiotic, but which none the less sterilized physical investigation for ages. That debased Platonism which had been such an important factor in the evolution of Christian theology from the earliest days of the Church continued its work. As everything in inorganic nature was supposed to have spiritual significance, the doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation were turned into an argument in behalf of the philosopher's stone; arguments for the scheme of redemption and for transubstantiation suggested others of similar construction to prove the trans.m.u.tation of metals; the doctrine of the resurrection of the human body was by similar mystic jugglery connected with the processes of distillation and sublimation. Even after the Middle Ages were past, strong men seemed unable to break away from such reasoning as this--among them such leaders as Basil Valentine in the fifteenth century, Agricola in the sixteenth, and Van Helmont in the seventeenth.

The greatest theologians contributed to the welter of unreason from which this pseudo-science was developed. One question largely discussed was, whether at the Redemption it was necessary for G.o.d to take the human form. Thomas Aquinas answered that it was necessary, but William Occam and Duns Scotus answered that it was not; that G.o.d might have taken the form of a stone, or of a log, or of a beast. The possibilities opened to wild subst.i.tutes for science by this sort of reasoning were infinite. Men have often asked how it was that the Arabians accomplished so much in scientific discovery as compared with Christian investigators; but the answer is easy: the Arabians were comparatively free from these theologic allurements which in Christian Europe flickered in the air on all sides, luring men into paths which led no-whither.

Strong investigators, like Arnold of Villanova, Raymond Lully, Basil Valentine, Paracelsus, and their compeers, were thus drawn far out of the only paths which led to fruitful truths. In a work generally ascribed to the first of these, the student is told that in mixing his chemicals he must repeat the psalm Exsurge Domine, and that on certain chemical vessels must be placed the last words of Jesus on the cross.

Vincent of Beauvais insisted that, as the Bible declares that Noah, when five hundred years old, had children born to him, he must have possessed alchemical means of preserving life; and much later d.i.c.kinson insisted that the patriarchs generally must have owed their long lives to such means. It was loudly declared that the reality of the philosopher's stone was proved by the words of St. John in the Revelation. "To him that overcometh I will give a white stone." The reasonableness of seeking to develop gold out of the baser metals was for many generations based upon the doctrine of the resurrection of the physical body, which, though explicitly denied by St. Paul, had become a part of the creed of the Church. Martin Luther was especially drawn to believe in the alchemistic doctrine of trans.m.u.tation by this a.n.a.logy. The Bible was everywhere used, both among Protestants and Catholics, in support of these mystic adulterations of science, and one writer, as late as 1751, based his alchemistic arguments on more than a hundred pa.s.sages of Scripture. As an example of this sort of reasoning, we have a proof that the elect will preserve the philosopher's stone until the last judgment, drawn from a pa.s.sage in St. Paul's Epistle to the Corinthians, "We have this treasure in earthen vessels."

The greatest thinkers devoted themselves to adding new ingredients to this strange mixture of scientific and theologic thought. The Catholic philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, the Protestant mysticism of Jacob Boehme, and the alchemistic reveries of Basil Valentine were all cast into this seething ma.s.s.

And when alchemy in its old form had been discredited, we find scriptural arguments no less perverse, and even comical, used on the other side. As an example of this, just before the great discoveries by Stahl, we find the valuable scientific efforts of Becher opposed with the following syllogism: "King Solomon, according to the Scriptures, possessed the united wisdom of heaven and earth; but King Solomon knew nothing about alchemy (or chemistry in the form it then took), and sent his vessels to Ophir to seek gold, and levied taxes upon his subjects; ergo alchemy (or chemistry) has no reality or truth." And we find that Becher is absolutely turned away from his labours, and obliged to devote himself to proving that Solomon used more money than he possibly could have obtained from Ophir or his subjects, and therefore that he must have possessed a knowledge of chemical methods and the philosopher's stone as the result of them.(277)

(277) For an extract from Agrippa's Occulta Philosophia, giving examples of the way in which mystical names were obtained from the Bible, see Rydberg, Magic of the Middle Ages, pp. 143 et seq. For the germs of many mystic beliefs regarding number and the like, which were incorporated into mediaeval theology, see Zeller, Plato and the Older Academy, English translation, pp. 254 and 572, and elsewhere. As to the connection of spiritual things with inorganic nature in relation to chemistry, see Eicken, p. 634. On the injury to science wrought by Platonism acting through mediaeval theology, see Hoefer, Histoire de la Chimie, vol. i, p. 90. As to the influence of mysticism upon strong men in science, see Hoefer; also Kopp, Geschichte der Alchemie, vol. i, p.

211. For a very curious Catholic treatise on sacred numbers, see the Abbe Auber, Symbolisme Religieux, Paris, 1870; also Detzel, Christliche Ikonographie, pp. 44 et seq.; and for an equally important Protestant work, see Samuell, Seven the Sacred number, London 1887. It is interesting to note that the latter writer, having been forced to give up the seven planets, consoles himself with the statement that "the earth is the seventh planet, counting from Neptune and calling the asteroids one" (see p. 426). For the electrum magic.u.m, the seven metals composing it, and its wonderful qualities, see extracts from Paracelsus's writings in Hartmann's Life of Paracelsus, London, 1887, pp. 168 et seq. As to the more rapid transition of light than sound, the following expresses the scholastic method well: "What is the cause why we see sooner the lightning than we heare the thunder clappe? That is because our sight is both n.o.bler and sooner perceptive of its object than our eare; as being the more active part, and priore to our hearing: besides, the visible species are more subtile and less corporeal than the audible species."--Person's Varieties, Meteors, p. 82. For Basil Valentine's view, see Hoefer, vol. i, pp. 453-465; Schmieder, Geschichte der Alchemie, pp. 197-209; Allgemeine deutsche Biographies, article Basilius. For the discussions referred to on possibilities of G.o.d a.s.suming forms of stone, or log, or beast, see Lippert, Christenthum, Volksglaube, und Volksbrauch, pp. 372, 373, where citations are given, etc. For the syllogism regarding Solomon, see Figuier, L'Alchimie et les Alchimistes, pp. 106, 107. For careful appreciation of Becher's position in the history of chemistry, see Kopp, Ansichten uber die Aufgabe der Chemie, etc., von Geber bis Stahl, Braunschweig, 1875, pp. 201 et seq.

For the text proving the existence of the philosopher's stone from the book of Revelation, see Figuier, p. 22.

Of the general reasoning enforced by theology regarding physical science, every age has shown examples; yet out of them all I will select but two, and these are given because they show how this mixture of theological with scientific ideas took hold upon the strongest supporters of better reasoning even after the power of medieval theology seemed broken.

The first of these examples is Melanchthon. He was the scholar of the Reformation, and justly won the t.i.tle "Preceptor of Germany." His mind was singularly open, his sympathies broad, and his usual freedom from bigotry drew down upon him that wrath of Protestant heresy-hunters which embittered the last years of his life and tortured him upon his deathbed. During his career at the University of Wittenberg he gave a course of lectures on physics, and in these he dwelt upon scriptural texts as affording scientific proofs, accepted the interference of the devil in physical phenomena as in other things, and applied the medieval method throughout his whole work.(278)

(278) For Melanchthon's ideas on physics, see his Initia Doctrinae Physicae, Wittenberg, 1557, especially pp. 243 and 274; also in vol.

xiii of Bretschneider's edition of the collected works, and especially pp. 339-343.

Yet far more remarkable was the example, a century later, of the man who more than any other led the world out of the path opened by Aquinas, and into that through which modern thought has advanced to its greatest conquests. Strange as it may at first seem, Francis Bacon, whose keenness of sight revealed the delusions of the old path and the promises of the new, and whose boldness did so much to turn the world from the old path into the new, presents in his own writings one of the most striking examples of the evil he did so much to destroy.

The Novum Organon, considering the time when it came from his pen, is doubtless one of the greatest exhibitions of genius in the history of human thought. It showed the modern world the way out of the scholastic method and reverence for dogma into the experimental method and reverence for fact. In it occur many pa.s.sages which show that the great philosopher was fully alive to the danger both to religion and to science arising from their mixture. He declares that the "corruption of philosophy from superst.i.tion and theology introduced the greatest amount of evil both into whole systems of philosophy and into their parts." He denounces those who "have endeavoured to found a natural philosophy on the books of Genesis and Job and other sacred Scriptures, so 'seeking the dead among the living.'" He speaks of the result as "an unwholesome mixture of things human and divine; not merely fantastic philosophy, but heretical religion."

He refers to the opposition of the fathers to the doctrine of the rotundity of the earth, and says that, "thanks to some of them, you may find the approach to any kind of philosophy, however improved, entirely closed up." He charges that some of these divines are "afraid lest perhaps a deeper inquiry into nature should, penetrate beyond the allowed limits of sobriety"; and finally speaks of theologians as sometimes craftily conjecturing that, if science be little understood, "each single thing can be referred more easily to the hand and rod of G.o.d," and says, "THIS IS NOTHING MORE OR LESS THAN WIs.h.i.+NG TO PLEASE G.o.d BY A LIE."

No man who has reflected much upon the annals of his race can, without a feeling of awe, come into the presence of such clearness of insight and boldness of utterance, and the first thought of the reader is that, of all men, Francis Bacon is the most free from the unfortunate bias he condemns; that he, certainly, can not be deluded into the old path.

But as we go on through his main work we are surprised to find that the strong arm of Aquinas has been stretched over the intervening ages, and has laid hold upon this master-thinker of the seventeenth century; for only a few chapters beyond those containing the citations already made we find Bacon alluding to the recent voyage of Columbus, and speaking of the prophecy of Daniel regarding the latter days, that "many shall run to and fro, and knowledge be increased," as clearly signifying "that... the circ.u.mnavigation of the world and the increase of science should happen in the same age."(279)

(279) See the Novum Organon, translated by the Rev. G. W. Kitchin, Oxford, 1855, chaps. lxv and lx.x.xix.

In his great work on the Advancement of Learning the firm grasp which the methods he condemned held upon him is shown yet more clearly. In the first book of it he a.s.serts that "that excellent book of Job, if it be revolved with diligence, will be found pregnant and swelling with natural philosophy," and he endeavours to show that in it the "roundness of the earth," the "fixing of the stars, ever standing at equal distances," the "depression of the southern pole," the "matter of generation," and "matter of minerals" are "with great elegancy noted."

But, curiously enough, he uses to support some of these truths the very texts which the fathers of the Church used to destroy them, and those for which he finds Scripture warrant most clearly are such as science has since disproved. So, too, he says that Solomon was enabled in his Proverbs, "by donation of G.o.d, to compile a natural history of all verdure."(280)

(280) See Bacon, Advancement of Learning, edited by W. Aldis Wright, London, 1873, pp. 47, 48. Certainly no more striking examples of the strength of the evil which he had all along been denouncing could be exhibited that these in his own writings. Nothing better ill.u.s.trates the sway of the mediaeval theology, or better explains his blindness to the discoveries of Copernicus and to the experiments of Gilbert. For a very contemptuous statement of Lord Bacon's claim to his position as a philosopher, see Lange, Geschichte des Materialismus, Leipsic, 1872, vol i, p. 219. For a more just statement, see Brewster, Life of Sir Isaac Newton, London, 1874, vol. ii, p. 298.

Such was the struggle of the physical sciences in general. Let us now look briefly at one special example out of many, which reveals, as well as any, one of the main theories which prompted theological interference with them.

It will doubtless seem amazing to many that for ages the weight of theological thought in Christendom was thrown against the idea of the suffocating properties of certain gases, and especially of carbonic acid. Although in antiquity we see men forming a right theory of gases in mines, we find that, early in the history of the Church, St. Clement of Alexandria put forth the theory that these gases are manifestations of diabolic action, and that, throughout Christendom, suffocation in caverns, wells, and cellars was attributed to the direct action of evil spirits. Evidences of this view abound through the medieval period, and during the Reformation period a great authority, Agricola, one of the most earnest and truthful of investigators, still adhered to the belief that these gases in mines were manifestations of devils, and he specified two cla.s.ses--one of malignant imps, who blow out the miners'

lamps, and the other of friendly imps, who simply tease the workmen in various ways. He went so far as to say that one of these spirits in the Saxon mine of Annaberg destroyed twelve workmen at once by the power of his breath.

At the end of the sixteenth century we find a writer on mineralogy complaining that the mines in France and Germany had been in large part abandoned on account of the "evil spirits of metals which had taken possession of them."

Even as late as the seventeenth century, Van Helmont, after he had broken away from alchemy and opened one of the great paths to chemistry--even after he had announced to the world the existence of various gases and the mode of their generation--was not strong enough to free himself from theologic bias; he still inclined to believe that the gases he had discovered, were in some sense living spirits, beneficent or diabolical.

But at various. periods glimpses of the truth had been gained. The ancient view had not been entirely forgotten; and as far back as the first part of the thirteenth century Albert the Great suggested a natural cause in the possibility of exhalations from minerals causing a "corruption of the air"; but he, as we have seen, was driven or dragged off into, theological studies, and the world relapsed into the theological view.

Toward the end of the fifteenth century there had come a great genius laden with important truths in chemistry, but for whom the world was not ready--Basil Valentine. His discoveries antic.i.p.ated much that has brought fame and fortune to chemists since, yet so fearful of danger was he that his work was carefully concealed. Not until after his death was his treatise on alchemy found, and even then it was for a long time not known where and when he lived. The papal bull, Spondent pariter, and the various prohibitions it bred, forcing other alchemists to conceal their laboratories, led him to let himself be known during his life at Erfurt simply as an apothecary, and to wait until after his death to make a revelation of truth which during his lifetime might have cost him dear.

Among the legacies of this greatest of the alchemists was the doctrine that the air which asphyxiates workers in mines is similar to that which is produced by fermentation of malt, and a recommendation that, in order to drive away the evil and to prevent serious accidents, fires be lighted and jets of steam used to ventilate the mines--stress being especially laid upon the idea that the danger in the mines is produced by "exhalations of metals."

Thanks to men like Valentine, this idea of the interference of Satan and his minions with the mining industry was gradually weakened, and the working of the deserted mines was resumed; yet even at a comparatively recent period we find it still lingering, and among leading divines in the very heart of Protestant Germany. In 1715 a cellar-digger having been stifled at Jena, the medical faculty of the university decided that the cause was not the direct action of the devil, but a deadly gas.

Thereupon Prof. Loescher, of the University of Wittenberg, entered a solemn protest, declaring that the decision of the medical faculty was "only a proof of the lamentable license which has so taken possession of us, and which, if we are not earnestly on our guard, will finally turn away from us the blessing of G.o.d."(281) But denunciations of this kind could not hold back the little army of science; in spite of adverse influences, the evolution of physics and chemistry went on. More and more there rose men bold enough to break away from theological methods and strong enough to resist ecclesiastical bribes and threats. As alchemy in its first form, seeking for the philosopher's stone and the trans.m.u.tation of metals, had given way to alchemy in its second form, seeking for the elixir of life and remedies more or less magical for disease, so now the latter yielded to the search for truth as truth.

More and more the "solemnly const.i.tuted impostors" were resisted in every field. A great line of physicists and chemists began to appear.(282)

(281) For Loescher's protest, see Julian Schmidt, Geschichte des geistigen Lebens, etc., vol. i, p. 319.

(282) For the general view of noxious gases as imps of Satan, see Hoefer, Histoire de la Chimie, vol. i, p. 350; vol. ii, p. 48. For the work of Black, Priestley, Bergmann, and others, see main authorities already cited, and especially the admirable paper of Dr. R. G. Eccles on The Evolution of Chemistry, New York, D. Appleton & Co., 1891. For the treatment of Priesley, see Spence's Essays, London, 1892; also Rutt, Life and Correspondence of Priestley, vol. ii, pp. 115 et seq.