Books: History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science

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

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The locomotive has not only enlarged the field of human activity,
but, by diminishing space, it has increased the capabilities of
human life. In the swift transportation of manufactured goods and
agricultural products, it has become a most efficient incentive
to human industry

The perfection of ocean steam-navigation was greatly promoted by
the invention of the chronometer, which rendered it possible to
find with accuracy the place of a ship at sea. The great drawback
on the advancement of science in the Alexandrian School was the
want of an instrument for the measurement of time, and one for
the measurement of temperature--the chronometer and the
thermometer; indeed, the invention of the latter is essential to
that of the former. Clepsydras, or water-clocks, had been tried,
but they were deficient in accuracy. Of one of them, ornamented
with the signs of the zodiac, and destroyed by certain primitive
Christians, St. Polycarp significantly remarked, "In all these
monstrous demons is seen an art hostile to God." Not until about
1680 did the chronometer begin to approach accuracy. Hooke, the
contemporary of Newton, gave it the balance-wheel, with the
spiral spring, and various escapements in succession were
devised, such as the anchor, the dead-beat, the duplex, the
remontoir. Provisions for the variation of temperature were
introduced. It was brought to perfection eventually by Harrison
and Arnold, in their hands becoming an accurate measure of the
flight of time. To the invention of the chronometer must be added
that of the reflecting sextant by Godfrey. This permitted
astronomical observations to be made, notwithstanding the motion
of a ship.

Improvements in ocean navigation are exercising a powerful
influence on the distribution of mankind. They are increasing the
amount and altering the character of colonization.

DOMESTIC IMPROVEMENT. But not alone have these great discoveries
and inventions, the offspring of scientific investigation,
changed the lot of the human race; very many minor ones, perhaps
individually insignificant, have in their aggregate accomplished
surprising effects. The commencing cultivation of science in the
fourteenth century gave a wonderful stimulus to inventive talent,
directed mainly to useful practical results; and this,
subsequently, was greatly encouraged by the system of patents,
which secure to the originator a reasonable portion of the
benefits of his skill. It is sufficient to refer in the most
cursory manner to a few of these improvements; we appreciate at
once how much they have done. The introduction of the saw-mill
gave wooden floors to houses, banishing those of gypsum, tile, or
stone; improvements cheapening the manufacture of glass gave
windows, making possible the warming of apartments. However, it
was not until the sixteenth century that glazing could be well
done. The cutting of glass by the diamond was then introduced.
The addition of chimneys purified the atmosphere of dwellings,
smoky and sooty as the huts of savages; it gave that
indescribable blessing of northern homes--a cheerful fireside.
Hitherto a hole in the roof for the escape of the smoke, a pit in
the midst of the floor to contain the fuel, and to be covered
with a lid when the curfew-bell sounded or night came, such had
been the cheerless and inadequate means of warming.

MUNICIPAL IMPROVEMENTS. Though not without a bitter resistance on
the part of the clergy, men began to think that pestilences are
not punishments inflicted by God on society for its religious
shortcomings, but the physical consequences of filth and
wretchedness; that the proper mode of avoiding them is not by
praying to the saints, but by insuring personal and municipal
cleanliness. In the twelfth century it was found necessary to
pave the streets of Paris, the stench in them was so dreadful At
once dysenteries and spotted fever diminished; a sanitary
condition approaching that of the Moorish cities of Spain, which
had been paved for centuries, was attained. In that now beautiful
metropolis it was forbidden to keep swine, an ordinance resented
by the monks of the abbey of St. Anthony, who demanded that the
pigs of that saint should go where they chose; the government was
obliged to compromise the matter by requiring that bells should
be fastened to the animals' necks. King Philip, the son of Louis
the Fat, had been killed by his horse stumbling over a sow.
Prohibitions were published against throwing slops out of the
windows. In 1870 an eye-witness, the author of this book, at the
close of the pontifical rule in Rome, found that, in walking the
ordure-defiled streets of that city, it was more necessary to
inspect the earth than to contemplate the heavens, in order to
preserve personal purity. Until the beginning of the seventeenth
century, the streets of Berlin were never swept. There was a law
that every countryman, who came to market with a cart, should
carry back a load of dirt!

Paving was followed by attempts, often of an imperfect kind, at
the construction of drains and sewers. It had become obvious to
all reflecting men that these were necessary to the preservation
of health, not only in towns, but in isolated houses. Then
followed the lighting of the public thoroughfares. At first
houses facing the streets were compelled to have candles or lamps
in their windows; next the system that had been followed with so
much advantage in Cordova and Granada--of having public
lamps--was tried, but this was not brought to perfection until
the present century, when lighting by gas was invented.
Contemporaneously with public lamps were improved organizations
for night-watchmen and police.

By the sixteenth century, mechanical inventions and manufacturing
improvements were exercising a conspicuous influence on domestic
and social life. There were looking-glasses and clocks on the
walls, mantels over the fireplaces. Though in many districts the
kitchen-fire was still supplied with turf, the use of coal began
to prevail. The table in the dining-room offered new delicacies;
commerce was bringing to it foreign products; the coarse drinks
of the North were supplanted by the delicate wines of the South.
Ice-houses were constructed. The bolting of flour, introduced at
the windmills, had given whiter and finer bread. By degrees
things that had been rarities became common--Indian-corn, the
potato, the turkey, and, conspicuous in the long list, tobacco.
Forks, an Italian invention, displaced the filthy use of the
fingers. It may be said that the diet of civilized men now
underwent a radical change. Tea came from China, coffee from
Arabia, the use of sugar from India, and these to no
insignificant degree supplanted fermented liquors. Carpets
replaced on the floors the layer of straw; in the chambers there
appeared better beds, in the wardrobes cleaner and more
frequently-changed clothing. In many towns the aqueduct was
substituted for the public fountain and the street-pump. Ceilings
which in the old days would have been dingy with soot and dirt,
were now decorated with ornamental frescoes. Baths were more
commonly resorted to; there was less need to use perfumery for
the concealment of personal odors. An increasing taste for the
innocent pleasures of horticulture was manifested, by the
introduction of many foreign flowers in the gardens--the
tuberose, the auricula, the crown imperial, the Persian lily, the
ranunculus, and African marigolds. In the streets there appeared
sedans, then close carriages, and at length hackney-coaches.

Among the dull rustics mechanical improvements forced their way,
and gradually attained, in the implements for ploughing, sowing,
mowing, reaping, thrashing, the perfection of our own times.

MERCANTILE INVENTIONS. It began to be recognized, in spite of the
preaching of the mendicant orders, that poverty is the source of
crime, the obstruction to knowledge; that the pursuit of riches
by commerce is far better than the acquisition of power by war.
For, though it may be true, as Montesquieu says, that, while
commerce unites nations, it antagonizes individuals, and makes a
traffic of morality, it alone can give unity to the world; its
dream, its hope, is universal peace.

MEDICAL IMPROVEMENTS. Though, instead of a few pages, it would
require volumes to record adequately the ameliorations that took
place in domestic and social life after science began to exert
its beneficent influences, and inventive talent came to the aid
of industry, there are some things which cannot be passed in
silence. From the port of Barcelona the Spanish khalifs had
carried on an enormous commerce, and they with their
coadjutors--Jewish merchants --had adopted or originated many
commercial inventions, which, with matters of pure science, they
had transmitted to the trading communities of Europe. The art of
book-keeping by double entry was thus brought into Upper Italy.
The different kinds of insurance were adopted, though strenuously
resisted by the clergy. They opposed fire and marine insurance,
on the ground that it is a tempting of Providence. Life insurance
was regarded as an act of interference with the consequences of
God's will. Houses for lending money on interest and on pledges,
that is, banking and pawnbroking establishments, were bitterly
denounced, and especially was indignation excited against the
taking of high rates of interest, which was stigmatized as
usury--a feeling existing in some backward communities up to the
present day. Bills of exchange in the present form and terms were
adopted, the office of the public notary established, and
protests for dishonored obligations resorted to. Indeed, it may
be said, with but little exaggeration, that the commercial
machinery now used was thus introduced. I have already remarked
that, in consequence of the discovery of America, the front of
Europe had been changed. Many rich Italian merchants and many
enterprising Jews, had settled in Holland England, France, and
brought into those countries various mercantile devices. The
Jews, who cared nothing about papal maledictions, were enriched
by the pontifical action in relation to the lending of money at
high interest; but Pius II., perceiving the mistake that had been
made, withdrew his opposition. Pawnbroking establishments were
finally authorized by Leo X., who threatened excommunication of
those who wrote against them. In their turn the Protestants now
exhibited a dislike against establishments thus authorized by
Rome. As the theological dogma, that the plague, like the
earthquake, is an unavoidable visitation from God for the sins of
men, began to be doubted, attempts were made to resist its
progress by the establishment of quarantines. When the Mohammedan
discovery of inoculation was brought from Constantinople in 1721,
by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, it was so strenuously resisted by
the clergy, that nothing short of its adoption by the royal
family of England brought it into use. A similar resistance was
exhibited when Jenner introduced his great improvement,
vaccination; yet a century ago it was the exception to see a face
unpitted by smallpox-- now it is the exception to see one so
disfigured. In like manner, when the great American discovery of
anaesthetics was applied in obstetrical cases, it was
discouraged, not so much for physiological reasons, as under the
pretense that it was an impious attempt to escape from the curse
denounced against all women in Genesis iii. 16.

MAGIC AND MIRACLES. Inventive ingenuity did not restrict itself
to the production of useful contrivances, it added amusing ones.
Soon after the introduction of science into Italy, the houses of
the virtuosi began to abound in all kinds of curious mechanical
surprises, and, as they were termed, magical effects. In the
latter the invention of the magic-lantern greatly assisted. Not
without reason did the ecclesiastics detest experimental
philosophy, for a result of no little importance ensued--the
juggler became a successful rival to the miracle-worker. The
pious frauds enacted in the churches lost their wonder when
brought into competition with the tricks of the conjurer in the
market-place: he breathed flame, walked on burning coals, held
red-hot iron in his teeth, drew basketfuls of eggs out of his
mouth, worked miracles by marionettes. Yet the old idea of the
supernatural was with difficulty destroyed. A horse, whose master
had taught him many tricks, was tried at Lisbon in 1601, found
guilty of being, possessed by the devil, and was burnt. Still
later than that many witches were brought to the stake.

DISCOVERIES IN ASTRONOMY AND CHEMISTRY. Once fairly introduced,
discovery and invention have unceasingly advanced at an
accelerated pace. Each continually reacted on the other,
continually they sapped supernaturalism. De Dominis commenced,
and Newton completed, the explanation of the rainbow; they showed
that it was not the weapon of warfare of God, but the accident of
rays of light in drops of water. De Dominis was decoyed to Rome
through the promise of an archbishopric, and the hope of a
cardinal's hat. He was lodged in a fine residence, but carefully
watched. Accused of having suggested a concord between Rome and
England, he was imprisoned in the castle of St Angelo, and there
died. He was brought in his coffin before an ecclesiastical
tribunal, adjudged guilty of heresy, and his body, with a heap of
heretical books, was cast into the flames. Franklin, by
demonstrating the identity of lightning and electricity, deprived
Jupiter of his thunder-bolt. The marvels of superstition were
displaced by the wonders of truth. The two telescopes, the
reflector and the achromatic, inventions of the last century,
permitted man to penetrate into the infinite grandeurs of the
universe, to recognize, as far as such a thing is possible, its
illimitable spaces, its measureless times; and a little later the
achromatic microscope placed before his eyes the world of the
infinitely small. The air-balloon carried him above the clouds,
the diving- bell to the bottom of the sea. The thermometer gave
him true measures of the variations of heat; the barometer, of
the pressure of the air. The introduction of the balance imparted
exactness to chemistry, it proved the indestructibility of
matter. The discovery of oxygen, hydrogen, and many other gases,
the isolation of aluminum, calcium, and other metals, showed that
earth and air and water are not elements. With an enterprise that
can never be too much commended, advantage was taken of the
transits of Venus, and, by sending expeditions to different
regions, the distance of the earth from the sun was determined.
The step that European intellect had made between 1456 and 1759
was illustrated by Halley's comet. When it appeared in the former
year, it was considered as the harbinger of the vengeance of God,
the dispenser of the most dreadful of his retributions, war,
pestilence, famine. By order of the pope, all the church-bells in
Europe were rung to scare it away, the faithful were commanded to
add each day another prayer; and, as their prayers had often in
so marked a manner been answered in eclipses and droughts and
rains, so on this occasion it was declared that a victory over
the comet had been vouchsafed to the pope. But, in the mean time,
Halley, guided by the revelations of Kepler and Newton, had
discovered that its motions, so far from being controlled by the
supplications of Christendom, were guided in an elliptic orbit by
destiny. Knowing that Nature bad denied to him an opportunity of
witnessing the fulfillment of his daring prophecy, he besought
the astronomers of the succeeding generation to watch for its
return in 1759, and in that year it came.

INVENTIONS AND DISCOVERIES. Whoever will in a spirit of
impartiality examine what had been done by Catholicism for the
intellectual and material advancement of Europe, during her long
reign, and what has been done by science in its brief period of
action, can, I am persuaded, come to no other conclusion than
this, that, in instituting a comparison, he has established a
contrast. And yet, how imperfect, how inadequate is the catalogue
of facts I have furnished in the foregoing pages! I have said
nothing of the spread of instruction by the diffusion of the arts
of reading and writing, through public schools, and the
consequent creation of a reading community; the modes of
manufacturing public opinion by newspapers and reviews, the power
of journalism, the diffusion of information public and private by
the post-office and cheap mails, the individual and social
advantages of newspaper advertisements. I have said nothing of
the establishment of hospitals, the first exemplar of which was
the Invalides of Paris; nothing of the improved prisons,
reformatories, penitentiaries, asylums, the treatment of
lunatics, paupers, criminals; nothing of the construction of
canals, of sanitary engineering, or of census reports; nothing of
the invention of stereotyping, bleaching by chlorine, the
cotton-gin, or of the marvelous contrivances with which
cotton-mills are filled--contrivances which have given us cheap
clothing, and therefore added to cleanliness, comfort, health;
nothing of the grand advancement of medicine and surgery, or of
the discoveries in physiology, the cultivation of the fine arts,
the improvement of agriculture and rural economy, the
introduction of chemical manures and farm-machinery. I have not
referred to the manufacture of iron and its vast affiliated
industries; to those of textile fabrics; to the collection of
museums of natural history, antiquities, curiosities. I have
passed unnoticed the great subject of the manufacture of
machinery by itself--the invention of the slide-rest, the
planing-machine, and many other contrivances by which engines can
be constructed with almost mathematical correctness. I have said
nothing adequate about the railway system, or the electric
telegraph, nor about the calculus, or lithography, the airpump,
or the voltaic battery; the discovery of Uranus or Neptune, and
more than a hundred asteroids; the relation of meteoric streams
to comets; nothing of the expeditions by land and sea that have
been sent forth by various governments for the determination of
important astronomical or geographical questions; nothing of the
costly and accurate experiments they have caused to be made for
the ascertainment of fundamental physical data. I have been so
unjust to our own century that I have made no allusion to some of
its greatest scientific triumphs: its grand conceptions in
natural history; its discoveries in magnetism and electricity;
its invention of the beautiful art of photography; its
applications of spectrum analysis; its attempts to bring
chemistry under the three laws of Avogadro, of Boyle and
Mariotte, and of Charles; its artificial production of organic
substances from inorganic material, of which the philosophical
consequences are of the utmost importance; its reconstruction of
physiology by laying the foundation of that science on chemistry;
its improvements and advances in topographical surveying and in
the correct representation of the surface of the globe. I have
said nothing about rifled-guns and armored ships, nor of the
revolution that has been made in the art of war; nothing of that
gift to women, the sewing-machine; nothing of the noble
contentions and triumphs of the arts of peace--the industrial
exhibitions and world's fairs.

What a catalogue have we here, and yet how imperfect! It gives
merely a random glimpse at an ever-increasing intellectual
commotion--a mention of things as they casually present
themselves to view. How striking the contrast between this
literary, this scientific activity, and the stagnation of the
middle ages!

The intellectual enlightenment that surrounds this activity has
imparted unnumbered blessings to the human race. In Russia it has
emancipated a vast serf- population; in America it has given
freedom to four million negro slaves. In place of the sparse dole
of the monastery-gate, it has organized charity and directed
legislation to the poor. It has shown medicine its true function,
to prevent rather than to cure disease. In statesmanship it has
introduced scientific methods, displacing random and empirical
legislation by a laborious ascertainment of social facts previous
to the application of legal remedies. So conspicuous, so
impressive is the manner in which it is elevating men, that the
hoary nations of Asia seek to participate in the boon. Let us not
forget that our action on them must be attended by their reaction
on us. If the destruction of paganism was completed when all the
gods were brought to Rome and confronted there, now, when by our
wonderful facilities of locomotion strange nations and
conflicting religions are brought into common presence--the
Mohammedan, the Buddhist, the Brahman-modifications of them all
must ensue. In that conflict science alone will stand secure; for
it has given us grander views of the universe, more awful views
of God.

AMERICAN AND FRENCH REVOLUTIONS. The spirit that has imparted
life to this movement, that has animated these discoveries and
inventions, is Individualism; in some minds the hope of gain, in
other and nobler ones the expectation of honor. It is, then, not
to be wondered at that this principle found a political
embodiment, and that, during the last century, on two occasions,
it gave rise to social convulsions--the American and the French
Revolutions. The former has ended in the dedication of a
continent to Individualism--there, under republican forms, before
the close of the present century, one hundred million people,
with no more restraint than their common security requires, will
be pursuing an unfettered career. The latter, though it has
modified the political aspect of all Europe, and though
illustrated by surprising military successes, has, thus far, not
consummated its intentions; again and again it has brought upon
France fearful disasters. Her dual form of government--her
allegiance to her two sovereigns, the political and the
spiritual--has made her at once the leader and the antagonist of
modern progress. With one hand she has enthroned Reason, with the
other she has re-established and sustained the pope. Nor will
this anomaly in her conduct cease until she bestows a true
education on all her children, even on those of the humblest
rustic.

SCIENCE AND CIVILIZATION. The intellectual attack made on
existing opinions by the French Revolution was not of a
scientific, but of a literary character; it was critical and
aggressive. But Science has never been an aggressor. She has
always acted on the defensive, and left to her antagonist the
making of wanton attacks. Nevertheless, literary dissent is not
of such ominous import as scientific; for literature is, in its
nature, local--science is cosmopolitan.

If, now, we demand, What has science done for the promotion of
modern civilization; what has it done for the happiness, the
well-being of society? we shall find our answer in the same
manner that we reached a just estimate of what Latin Christianity
had done. The reader of the foregoing paragraphs would
undoubtedly infer that there must have been an amelioration in
the lot of our race; but, when we apply the touchstone of
statistics, that inference gathers precision. Systems of
philosophy and forms of religion find a measure of their
influence on humanity in census-returns. Latin Christianity, in a
thousand years, could not double the population of Europe; it did
not add perceptibly to the term of individual life. But, as Dr.
Jarvis, in his report to the Massachusetts Board of Health, has
stated, at the epoch of the Reformation "the average longevity in
Geneva was 21.21 years, between 1814 and 1833 it was 40.68; as
large a number of persons now live to seventy years as lived to
forty, three hundred years ago. In 1693 the British Government
borrowed money by selling annuities on lives from infancy upward,
on the basis of the average longevity. The contract was
profitable. Ninety-seven years later another tontine, or scale of
annuities, on the basis of the same expectation of life as in the
previous century, was issued. These latter annuitants, however,
lived so much longer than their predecessors, that it proved to
be a very costly loan for the government. It was found that,
while ten thousand of each sex in the first tontine died under
the age of twenty-eight, only five thousand seven hundred and
seventy-two males and six thousand four hundred and sixteen
females in the second tontine died at the same age, one hundred
years later."

We have been comparing the spiritual with the practical, the
imaginary with the real. The maxims that have been followed in
the earlier and the later period produced their inevitable
result. In the former that maxim was, "Ignorance is the mother of
Devotion in the latter, "Knowledge is Power."

CHAPTER XII.

THE IMPENDING CRISIS. Indications of the approach of a religious
crisis.--The predominating Christian Church, the Roman, perceives
this, and makes preparation for it.--Pius IX convokes an
Oecumenical Council--Relations of the different European
governments to the papacy.--Relations of the Church to Science,
as indicated by the Encyclical Letter and the Syllabus.

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