Zane Grey - "The Man of the Forest"

Isabel C. Byrum - "The Poorhouse Waif and His Divine Teacher"

T.S. Arthur - "Home Scenes, and Home Influence"

Kathleen Hay - "The Quest of Happy Hearts"

New Philadelphia Book Publisher Highlights Local Talent
Book and Publishing News from Publishers Newswire(tm)

Looking for Child to be on Cover of a New Book, 'The Model Child'
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

FlatSigned Press Alleges Don Imus Remarks Damage Legacy of President Gerald R. Ford
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Nathan Yungerberg, an accomplished model scout and professional child photographer is launching a nation-wide casting call to find the cover model for his highly anticipated book release, 'The Model Child: A Parents Guide to the Child Modeling Industry' (ISBN: 978-0-9817018-0-6).

Books: History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science

J >> John William Draper >> History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science




In 1595 the Lambeth Articles asserted that "God from eternity
hath predestinated certain men unto life; certain he hath
reprobated." In 1618 the Synod of Dort decided in favor of this
view. It condemned the remonstrants against it, and treated them
with such severity, that many of them had to flee to foreign
countries. Even in the Church of England, as is manifested by its
seventeenth Article of Faith, these doctrines have found favor.

Probably there was no point which brought down from the Catholics
on the Protestants severer condemnation than this, their partial
acceptance of the government of the world by law. In all Reformed
Europe miracles ceased. But, with the cessation of shrine-cure,
relic-cure, great pecuniary profits ended. Indeed, as is well
known, it was the sale of indulgences that provoked the
Reformation--indulgences which are essentially a permit from God
for the practice of sin, conditioned on the payment of a certain
sum of money to the priest.

Philosophically, the Reformation implied a protest against the
Catholic doctrine of incessant divine intervention in human
affairs, invoked by sacerdotal agency; but this protest was far
from being fully made by all the Reforming Churches. The evidence
in behalf of government by law, which has of late years been
offered by science, is received by many of them with suspicion,
perhaps with dislike; sentiments which, however, must eventually
give way before the hourly-increasing weight of evidence.

Shall we not, then, conclude with Cicero, who, quoted by
Lactantius, says: "One eternal and immutable law embraces all
things and all times?"



CHAPTER X.

LATIN CHRISTIANITY IN RELATION TO MODERN CIVILIZATION.

For more than a thousand years Latin Christianity controlled the
intelligence of Europe, and is responsible for the result.

That result is manifested by the condition of the city of Rome at
the Reformation, and by the condition of the Continent of Europe
in domestic and social life.--European nations suffered under the
coexistence of a dual government, a spiritual and a
temporal.--They were immersed in ignorance, superstition,
discomfort.--Explanation of the failure of Catholicism--Political
history of the papacy: it was transmuted from a spiritual
confederacy into an absolute monarchy.--Action of the College of
Cardinals and the Curia-Demoralization that ensued from the
necessity of raising large revenues.

The advantages accruing to Europe during the Catholic rule arose
not from direct intention, but were incidental.

The general result is, that the political influence of
Catholicism was prejudicial to modern civilization.


LATIN Christianity is responsible for the condition and progress
of Europe from the fourth to the sixteenth century. We have now
to examine how it discharged its trust.

It will be convenient to limit to the case of Europe what has
here to be presented, though, from the claim of the papacy to
superhuman origin, and its demand for universal obedience, it
should strictly be held to account for the condition of all
mankind. Its inefficacy against the great and venerable religions
of Southern and Eastern Asia would furnish an important and
instructive theme for consideration, and lead us to the
conclusion that it has impressed itself only where Roman imperial
influences have prevailed; a political conclusion which, however,
it contemptuously rejects.

Doubtless at the inception of the Reformation there were many
persons who compared the existing social condition with what it
had been in ancient times. Morals had not changed, intelligence
had not advanced, society had little improved. From the Eternal
City itself its splendors had vanished. The marble streets, of
which Augustus had once boasted, had disappeared. Temples, broken
columns, and the long, arcaded vistas of gigantic aqueducts
bestriding the desolate Campagna, presented a mournful scene.
From the uses to which they had been respectively put, the
Capitol had been known as Goats' Hill, and the site of the Roman
Forum, whence laws had been issued to the world, as Cows' Field.
The palace of the Caesars was hidden by mounds of earth, crested
with flowering shrubs. The baths of Caracalla, with their
porticoes, gardens, reservoirs, had long ago become useless
through the destruction of their supplying aqueducts. On the
ruins of that grand edifice, "flowery glades and thickets of
odoriferous trees extended in ever-winding labyrinths upon
immense platforms, and dizzy arches suspended in the air." Of the
Coliseum, the most colossal of Roman ruins, only about one-third
remained. Once capable of accommodating nearly ninety thousand
spectators, it had, in succession, been turned into a fortress in
the middle ages, and then into a stone-quarry to furnish material
for the palaces of degenerate Roman princes. Some of the popes
had occupied it as a woollen-mill, some as a saltpetre factory;
some had planned the conversion of its magnificent arcades into
shops for tradesmen. The iron clamps which bound its stones
together had been stolen. The walls were fissured and falling.
Even in our own times botanical works have been composed on the
plants which have made this noble wreck their home. "The Flora of
the Coliseum" contains four hundred and twenty species. Among the
ruins of classical buildings might be seen broken columns,
cypresses, and mouldy frescoes, dropping from the walls. Even the
vegetable world participated in the melancholy change: the
myrtle, which once flourished on the Aventine, had nearly become
extinct; the laurel, which once gave its leaves to encircle the
brows of emperors, had been replaced by ivy--the companion of
death.

But perhaps it may be said the popes were not responsible for all
this. Let it be remembered that in less than one hundred and
forty years the city had been successively taken by Alaric,
Genseric, Rieimer, Vitiges, Totila ; that many of its great
edifices had been converted into defensive works. The aqueducts
were destroyed by Vitiges, who ruined the Campagna; the palace of
the Caesars was ravaged by Totila; then there had been the
Lombard sieges; then Robert Guiscard and his Normans had burnt
the city from the Antonine Column to the Flaminian Gate, from the
Lateran to the Capitol; then it was sacked and mutilated by the
Constable Bourbon; again and again it was flooded by inundations
of the Tiber and shattered by earthquakes. We must, however, bear
in mind the accusation of Machiavelli, who says, in his "History
of Florence," that nearly all the barbarian invasions of Italy
were by the invitations of the pontiffs, who called in those
hordes! It was not the Goth, nor the Vandal, nor the Norman, nor
the Saracen, but the popes and their nephews, who produced the
dilapidation of Rome! Lime-kilns had been fed from the ruins,
classical buildings had become stone-quarries for the palaces of
Italian princes, and churches were decorated from the old
temples.

Churches decorated from the temples! It is for this and such as
this that the popes must be held responsible. Superb Corinthian
columns bad been chiseled into images of the saints. Magnificent
Egyptian obelisks had been dishonored by papal inscriptions. The
Septizonium of Severus had been demolished to furnish materials
for the building of St. Peter's; the bronze roof of the Pantheon
had been melted into columns to ornament the apostle's tomb.

The great bell of Viterbo, in the tower of the Capitol, had
announced the death of many a pope, and still desecration of the
buildings and demoralization of the people went on. Papal Rome
manifested no consideration, but rather hatred, for classical
Rome, The pontiffs had been subordinates of the Byzantine
sovereigns, then lieutenants of the Frankish kings, then arbiters
of Europe; their government had changed as much as those of any
of the surrounding nations; there had been complete metamorphoses
in its maxims, objects, claims. In one point only it had never
changed--intolerance. Claiming to be the centre of the religious
life of Europe, it steadfastly refused to recognize any religious
existence outside of itself, yet both in a political and
theological sense it was rotten to the core. Erasmus and Luther
heard with amazement the blasphemies and witnessed with a shudder
the atheism of the city.

The historian Ranke, to whom I am indebted for many of these
facts, has depicted in a very graphic manner the demoralization
of the great metropolis. The popes were, for the most part, at
their election, aged men. Power was, therefore, incessantly
passing into new hands. Every election was a revolution in
prospects and expectations. In a community where all might rise,
where all might aspire to all, it necessarily followed that every
man was occupied in thrusting some other into the background.
Though the population of the city at the inception of the
Reformation had sunk to eighty thousand, there were vast crowds
of placemen, and still greater ones of aspirants for place. The
successful occupant of the pontificate had thousands of offices
to give away--offices from many of which the incumbents had been
remorselessly ejected; many had been created for the purpose of
sale. The integrity and capacity of an applicant were never
inquired into; the points considered were, what services has he
rendered or can he render to the party? how much can he pay for
the preferment? An American reader can thoroughly realize this
state of things. At every presidential election he witnesses
similar acts. The election of a pope by the Conclave is not
unlike the nomination of an American president by a convention.
In both cases there are many offices to give away.

William of Malmesbury says that in his day the Romans made a sale
of whatever was righteous and sacred for gold. After his time
there was no improvement; the Church degenerated into an
instrument for the exploitation of money. Vast sums were
collected in Italy; vast sums were drawn under all manner of
pretenses from surrounding and reluctant countries. Of these the
most nefarious was the sale of indulgences for the perpetration
of sin. Italian religion had become the art of plundering the
people.

For more than a thousand years the sovereign pontiffs had been
rulers of the city. True, it had witnessed many scenes of
devastation for which they were not responsible; but they were
responsible for this, that they had never made any vigorous, any
persistent effort for its material, its moral improvement.
Instead of being in these respects an exemplar for the imitation
of the world, it became an exemplar of a condition that ought to
be shunned. Things steadily went on from bad to worse, until at
the epoch of the Reformation no pious stranger could visit it
without being shocked.

The papacy, repudiating science as absolutely incompatible with
its pretensions, had in later years addressed itself to the
encouragement of art. But music and painting, though they may be
exquisite adornments of life, contain no living force that can
develop a weak nation into a strong one; nothing that can
permanently assure the material well-being or happiness of
communities; and hence at the time of the Reformation, to one who
thoughtfully considered her condition, Rome had lost all living
energy. She was no longer the arbiter of the physical or the
religious progress of the world. For the progressive maxims of
the republic and the empire, she had substituted the stationary
maxims of the papacy. She had the appearance of piety and the
possession of art. In this she resembled one of those
friar-corpses which we still see in their brown cowls in the
vaults of the Cappuccini, with a breviary or some withered
flowers in its hands.

From this view of the Eternal City, this survey of what Latin
Christianity had done for Rome itself, let us turn to the whole
European Continent. Let us try to determine the true value of the
system that was guiding society; let us judge it by its fruits.

The condition of nations as to their well-being is most precisely
represented by the variations of their population. Forms of
government have very little influence on population, but policy
may control it completely.

It has been very satisfactorily shown by authors who have given
attention to the subject, that the variations of population
depend upon the interbalancing of the generative force of society
and the resistances to life.

By the generative force of society is meant that instinct which
manifests itself in the multiplication of the race. To some
extent it depends on climate; but, since the climate of Europe
did not sensibly change between the fourth and the sixteenth
centuries, we may regard this force as having been, on that
continent, during the period under consideration, invariable.

By the resistances to life is meant whatever tends to make
individual existence more difficult of support. Among such may be
enumerated insufficient food, inadequate clothing, imperfect
shelter.

It is also known that, if the resistances become inappreciable,
the generative force will double a population in twenty-five
years.

The resistances operate in two modes: 1. Physically; since they
diminish the number of births, and shorten the term of the life
of all. 2. Intellectually; since, in a moral, and particularly in
a religious community, they postpone marriage, by causing
individuals to decline its responsibilities until they feel that
they are competent to meet the charges and cares of a family.
Hence the explanation of a long-recognized fact, that the number
of marriages during a given period has a connection with the
price of food.

The increase of population keeps pace with the increase of food;
and, indeed, such being the power of the generative force, it
overpasses the means of subsistence, establishing a constant
pressure upon them. Under these circumstances, it necessarily
happens that a certain amount of destitution must occur.
Individuals have come into existence who must be starved.

As illustrations of the variations that have occurred in the
population of different countries, may be mentioned the immense
diminution of that of Italy in consequence of the wars of
Justinian; the depopulation of North Africa in consequence of
theological quarrels; its restoration through the establishment
of Mohammedanism; the increase of that of all Europe through the
feudal system, when estates became more valuable in proportion to
the number of retainers they could supply. The crusades caused a
sensible diminution, not only through the enormous army losses,
but also by reason of the withdrawal of so many able-bodied men
from marriage-life. Similar variations have occurred on the
American Continent. The population of Mexico was very quickly
diminished by two million through the rapacity and atrocious
cruelty of the Spaniards, who drove the civilized Indians to
despair. The same happened in Peru.

The population of England at the Norman conquest was about two
million. In five hundred years it had scarcely doubled. It may be
supposed that this stationary condition was to some extent
induced by the papal policy of the enforcement of celibacy in the
clergy. The "legal generative force" was doubtless affected by
that policy, the "actual generative force" was not. For those who
have made this subject their study have long ago been satisfied
that public celibacy is private wickedness. This mainly
determined the laity, as well as the government in England, to
suppress the monasteries. It was openly asserted that there were
one hundred thousand women in England made dissolute by the
clergy.

In my history of the "American Civil War," I have presented some
reflections on this point, which I will take the liberty of
quoting here: "What, then, does this stationary condition of the
population mean? It means, food obtained with hardship,
insufficient clothing, personal uncleanness, cabins that could
not keep out the weather, the destructive effects of cold and
heat, miasm, want of sanitary provisions, absence of physicians,
uselessness of shrine-cure, the deceptiveness of miracles, in
which society was putting its trust; or, to sum up a long
catalogue of sorrows, wants, and sufferings, in one term--it
means a high death-rate.

"But more; it means deficient births. And what does that point
out? Marriage postponed, licentious life, private wickedness,
demoralized society.

"To an American, who lives in a country that was yesterday an
interminable and impenetrable desert, but which to-day is filling
with a population doubling itself every twenty-five years at the
prescribed rate, this awful waste of actual and contingent life
cannot but be a most surprising fact. His curiosity will lead him
to inquire what kind of system that could have been which was
pretending to guide and develop society, but which must be held
responsible for this prodigious destruction, excelling, in its
insidious result, war, pestilence, and famine combined;
insidious, for men were actually believing that it secured their
highest temporal interests. How different now! In England, the,
same geographical surface is sustaining ten times the population
of that day, and sending forth its emigrating swarms. Let him,
who looks back, with veneration on the past, settle in his own
mind what such a system could have been worth."

These variations in the population of Europe have been attended
with changes in distribution. The centre of population has passed
northward since the establishment of Christianity in the Roman
Empire. It has since passed westward, in consequence of the
development of manufacturing industry.


We may now examine somewhat more minutely the character of the
resistances which thus, for a thousand years, kept the population
of Europe stationary. The surface of the Continent was for the
most part covered with pathless forests; here and there it was
dotted with monasteries and towns. In the lowlands and along the
river-courses were fens, sometimes hundreds of miles in extent,
exhaling their pestiferous miasms, and spreading agues far and
wide. In Paris and London, the houses were of wood daubed with
clay, and thatched with straw or reeds. They had no windows, and,
until the invention of the saw-mill, very few had wooden floors.
The luxury of a carpet was unknown; some straw, scattered in the
room, supplied its place. There were no chimneys; the smoke of
the ill-fed, cheerless fire escaped through a hole in the roof.
In such habitations there was scarcely any protection from the
weather. No attempt was made at drainage, but the putrefying
garbage and rubbish were simply thrown out of the door. Men,
women, and children, slept in the same apartment; not
unfrequently, domestic animals were their companions; in such a
confusion of the family, it was impossible that modesty or
morality could be maintained. The bed was usually a bag of straw,
a wooden log served as a pillow. Personal cleanliness was utterly
unknown; great officers of state, even dignitaries so high as the
Archbishop of Canterbury, swarmed with vermin; such, it is
related, was the condition of Thomas a Becket, the antagonist of
an English king. To conceal personal impurity, perfumes were
necessarily and profusely used. The citizen clothed himself in
leather, a garment which, with its ever-accumulating impurity,
might last for many years. He was considered to be in
circumstances of ease, if he could procure fresh meat once a week
for his dinner. The streets had no sewers; they were without
pavement or lamps. After nightfall, the chamber-shatters were
thrown open, and slops unceremoniously emptied down, to the
discomfiture of the wayfarer tracking his path through the narrow
streets, with his dismal lantern in his hand.

Aeneas Sylvius, who afterward became Pope Pius II., and was
therefore a very competent and impartial writer, has left us a
graphic account of a journey he made to the British Islands,
about 1430. He describes the houses of the peasantry as
constructed of stones put together without mortar; the roofs were
of turf, a stiffened bull's-hide served for a door. The food
consisted of coarse vegetable products, such as peas, and even
the bark of trees. In some places they were unacquainted with
bread.

Cabins of reeds plastered with mud, houses of wattled stakes,
chimneyless peat-fires from which there was scarcely an escape
for the smoke, dens of physical and moral pollution swarming with
vermin, wisps of straw twisted round the limbs to keep off the
cold, the ague-stricken peasant, with no help except shrine-cure!
How was it possible that the population could increase? Shall we,
then, wonder that, in the famine of 1030, human flesh was cooked
and sold; or that, in that of 1258, fifteen thousand persons died
of hunger in London? Shall we wonder that, in some of the
invasions of the plague, the deaths were so frightfully numerous
that the living could hardly bury the dead? By that of 1348,
which came from the East along the lines of commercial travel,
and spread all over Europe, one-third of the population of France
was destroyed.

Such was the condition of the peasantry, and of the common
inhabitants of cities. Not much better was that of the nobles.
William of Malmesbury, speaking of the degraded manners of the
Anglo-Saxons, says: "Their nobles, devoted to gluttony and
voluptuousness, never visited the church, but the matins and the
mass were read over to them by a hurrying priest in their
bedchambers, before they rose, themselves not listening. The
common people were a prey to the more powerful; their property
was seized, their bodies dragged away to distant countries; their
maidens were either thrown into a brothel, or sold for slaves.
Drinking day and night was the general pursuit; vices, the
companions of inebriety, followed, effeminating the manly mind."
The baronial castles were dens of robbers. The Saxon chronicler
records how men and women were caught and dragged into those
strongholds, hung up by their thumbs or feet, fire applied to
them, knotted strings twisted round their heads, and many other
torments inflicted to extort ransom.

All over Europe, the great and profitable political offices were
filled by ecclesiastics. In every country there was a dual
government: 1. That of a local kind, represented by a temporal
sovereign; 2. That of a foreign kind, acknowledging the authority
of the pope, This Roman influence was, in the nature of things,
superior to the local; it expressed the sovereign will of one man
over all the nations of the continent conjointly, and gathered
overwhelming power from its compactness and unity. The local
influence was necessarily of a feeble nature, since it was
commonly weakened by the rivalries of conterminous states, and
the dissensions dexterously provoked by its competitor. On not a
single occasion could the various European states form a
coalition against their common antagonist. Whenever a question
arose, they were skillfully taken in detail, and commonly
mastered. The ostensible object of papal intrusion was to secure
for the different peoples moral well-being; the real object was
to obtain large revenues, and give support to vast bodies of
ecclesiastics. The revenues thus abstracted were not infrequently
many times greater than those passing into the treasury of the
local power. Thus, on the occasion of Innocent IV. demanding
provision to be made for three hundred additional Italian clergy
by the Church of England, and that one of his nephews--a mere
boy-- should have a stall in Lincoln Cathedral, it was found that
the sum already annually abstracted by foreign ecclesiastics from
England was thrice that which went into the coffers of the king.

While thus the higher clergy secured every political appointment
worth having, and abbots vied with counts in the herds of slaves
they possessed--some, it is said, owned not fewer than twenty
thousand--begging friars pervaded society in all directions,
picking up a share of what still remained to the poor. There was
a vast body of non-producers, living in idleness and owning a
foreign allegiance, who were subsisting on the fruits of the toil
of the laborers. It could not be otherwise than that small farms
should be unceasingly merged into the larger estates; that the
poor should steadily become poorer; that society, far from
improving, should exhibit a continually increasing
demoralization. Outside the monastic institutions no attempt at
intellectual advancement was made; indeed, so far as the laity
were concerned, the influence of the Church was directed to an
opposite result, for the maxim universally received was, that
"ignorance is the mother of devotion."

The settled practice of republican and imperial Rome was to have
swift communication with all her outlying provinces, by means of
substantial bridges and roads. One of the prime duties of the
legions was to construct them and keep them in repair. By this,
her military authority was assured. But the dominion of papal
Rome, depending upon a different principle, had no exigencies of
that kind, and this duty accordingly was left for the local
powers to neglect. And so, in all directions, the roads were
almost impassable for a large part of the year. A common means of
transportation was in clumsy carts drawn by oxen, going at the
most but three or four miles an hour. Where boat-conveyance along
rivers could not be had, pack-horses and mules were resorted to
for the transportation of merchandise, an adequate means for the
slender commerce of the times. When large bodies of men had to be
moved, the difficulties became almost insuperable. Of this,
perhaps, one of the best illustrations may be found in the story
of the march of the first Crusaders. These restraints upon
intercommunication tended powerfully to promote the general
benighted condition. Journeys by individuals could not be
undertaken without much risk, for there was scarcely a moor or a
forest that had not its highwaymen.