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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2. For the increase of knowledge. One of the chief objects of the
Museum was that of serving as the home of a body of men who
devoted themselves to study, and were lodged and maintained at
the king's expense. Occasionally he himself sat at their table.
Anecdotes connected with those festive occasions have descended
to our times. In the original organization of the Museum the
residents were divided into four faculties--literature;
mathematics, astronomy, medicine. Minor branches were
appropriately classified under one of these general heads; thus
natural history was considered to be a branch of medicine. An
officer of very great distinction presided over the
establishment, and had general charge of its interests. Demetrius
Phalareus, perhaps the most learned man of his age, who had been
governor of Athens for many years, was the first so appointed.
Under him was the librarian, an office sometimes held by men
whose names have descended to our times, as Eratosthenes, and
Apollonius Rhodius.

ORGANIZATION OF THE MUSEUM. In connection with the Museum were a
botanical and a zoological garden. These gardens, as their names
import, were for the purpose of facilitating the study of plants
and animals. There was also an astronomical observatory
containing armillary spheres, globes, solstitial and equatorial
armils, astrolabes, parallactic rules, and other apparatus then
in use, the graduation on the divided instruments being into
degrees and sixths. On the floor of this observatory a meridian
line was drawn. The want of correct means of measuring time and
temperature was severely felt; the clepsydra of Ctesibius
answered very imperfectly for the former, the hydrometer floating
in a cup of water for the latter; it measured variations of
temperature by variations of density. Philadelphus, who toward
the close of his life was haunted with an intolerable dread of
death, devoted much of his time to the discovery of an elixir.
For such pursuits the Museum was provided with a chemical
laboratory. In spite of the prejudices of the age, and especially
in spite of Egyptian prejudices, there was in connection with the
medical department an anatomical room for the dissection, not
only of the dead, but actually of the living, who for crimes had
been condemned.

3. For the diffusion of knowledge. In the Museum was given, by
lectures, conversation, or other appropriate methods instruction
in all the various departments of human knowledge. There flocked
to this great intellectual centre, students from all countries.
It is said that at one time not fewer than fourteen thousand were
in attendance. Subsequently even the Christian church received
from it some of the most eminent of its Fathers, as Clemens
Alexandrinus, Origen, Athanasius.

The library in the Museum was burnt during the siege of
Alexandria by Julius Caesar. To make amends for this great loss,
that collected by Eumenes, King of Pergamus, was presented by
Mark Antony to Queen Cleopatra. Originally it was founded as a
rival to that of the Ptolemies. It was added to the collection in
the Serapion.

SCIENTIFIC SCHOOL OF THE MUSEUM. It remains now to describe
briefly the philosophical basis of the Museum, and some of its
contributions to the stock of human knowledge.

In memory of the illustrious founder of this most noble
institution--an institution which antiquity delighted to call
"The divine school of Alexandria"--we must mention in the first
rank his "History of the Campaigns of Alexander." Great as a
soldier and as a sovereign, Ptolemy Soter added to his glory by
being an author. Time, which has not been able to destroy the
memory of our obligations to him, has dealt unjustly by his work.
It is not now extant.

As might be expected from the friendship that existed between
Alexander, Ptolemy, and Aristotle, the Aristotelian philosophy
was the intellectual corner-stone on which the Museum rested.
King Philip had committed the education of Alexander to
Aristotle, and during the Persian campaigns the conqueror
contributed materially, not only in money, but otherwise, toward
the "Natural History" then in preparation.

The essential principle of the Aristotelian philosophy was, to
rise from the study of particulars to a knowledge of general
principles or universals, advancing to them by induction. The
induction is the more certain as the facts on which it is based
are more numerous; its correctness is established if it should
enable us to predict other facts until then unknown. This system
implies endless toil in the collection of facts, both by
experiment and observation; it implies also a close meditation on
them. It is, therefore, essentially a method of labor and of
reason, not a method of imagination. The failures that Aristotle
himself so often exhibits are no proof of its unreliability, but
rather of its trustworthiness. They are failures arising from
want of a sufficiency of facts.

ETHICAL SCHOOL OF THE MUSEUM. Some of the general results at
which Aristotle arrived are very grand. Thus, he concluded that
every thing is ready to burst into life, and that the various
organic forms presented to us by Nature are those which existing
conditions permit. Should the conditions change, the forms will
also change. Hence there is an unbroken chain from the simple
element through plants and animals up to man, the different
groups merging by insensible shades into each other.

The inductive philosophy thus established by Aristotle is a
method of great power. To it all the modern advances in science
are due. In its most improved form it rises by inductions from
phenomena to their causes, and then, imitating the method of the
Academy, it descends by deductions from those causes to the
detail of phenomena.

While thus the Scientific School of Alexandria was founded on the
maxims of one great Athenian philosopher, the Ethical School was
founded on the maxims of another, for Zeno, though a Cypriote or
Phoenician, had for many years been established at Athens. His
disciples took the name of Stoics. His doctrines long survived
him, and, in times when there was no other consolation for man,
offered a support in the hour of trial, and an unwavering guide
in the vicissitudes of life, not only to illustrious Greeks, but
also to many of the great philosophers, statesmen, generals, and
emperors of Rome.

THE PRINCIPLES OF STOICISM. The aim of Zeno was, to furnish a
guide for the daily practice of life, to make men virtuous. He
insisted that education is the true foundation of virtue, for, if
we know what is good, we shall incline to do it. We must trust to
sense, to furnish the data of knowledge, and reason will suitably
combine them. In this the affinity of Zeno to Aristotle is
plainly seen. Every appetite, lust, desire, springs from
imperfect knowledge. Our nature is imposed upon us by Fate, but
we must learn to control our passions, and live free,
intelligent, virtuous, in all things in accordance with reason.
Our existence should be intellectual, we should survey with
equanimity all pleasures and all pains. We should never forget
that we are freemen, not the slaves of society. "I possess," said
the Stoic, "a treasure which not all the world can rob me of--no
one can deprive me of death." We should remember that Nature in
her operations aims at the universal, and never spares
individuals, but uses them as means for the accomplishment of her
ends. It is, therefore, for us to submit to Destiny, cultivating,
as the things necessary to virtue, knowledge, temperance,
fortitude, justice. We must remember that every thing around us
is in mutation; decay follows reproduction, and reproduction
decay, and that it is useless to repine at death in a world where
every thing is dying. As a cataract shows from year to year an
invariable shape, though the water composing it is perpetually
changing, so the aspect of Nature is nothing more than a flow of
matter presenting an impermanent form. The universe, considered
as a whole, is unchangeable. Nothing is eternal but space, atoms,
force. The forms of Nature that we see are essentially
transitory, they must all pass away.

STOICISM IN THE MUSEUM. We must bear in mind that the majority of
men are imperfectly educated, and hence we must not needlessly
offend the religious ideas of our age. It is enough for us
ourselves to know that, though there is a Supreme Power, there is
no Supreme Being. There is an invisible principle, but not a
personal God, to whom it would be not so much blasphemy as
absurdity to impute the form, the sentiments, the passions of
man. All revelation is, necessarily, a mere fiction. That which
men call chance is only the effect of an unknown cause. Even of
chances there is a law. There is no such thing as Providence, for
Nature proceeds under irresistible laws, and in this respect the
universe is only a vast automatic engine. The vital force which
pervades the world is what the illiterate call God. The
modifications through which all things are running take place in
an irresistible way, and hence it may be said that the progress
of the world is, under Destiny, like a seed, it can evolve only
in a predetermined mode.

The soul of man is a spark of the vital flame, the general vital
principle. Like heat, it passes from one to another, and is
finally reabsorbed or reunited in the universal principle from
which it came. Hence we must not expect annihilation, but
reunion; and, as the tired man looks forward to the insensibility
of sleep, so the philosopher, weary of the world, should look
forward to the tranquillity of extinction. Of these things,
however, we should think doubtingly, since the mind can produce
no certain knowledge from its internal resources alone. It is
unphilosophical to inquire into first causes; we must deal only
with phenomena. Above all, we must never forget that man cannot
ascertain absolute truth, and that the final result of human
inquiry into the matter is, that we are incapable of perfect
knowledge; that, even if the truth be in our possession, we
cannot be sure of it.

What, then, remains for us? Is it not this--the acquisition of
knowledge, the cultivation of virtue and of friendship, the
observance of faith and truth, an unrepining submission to
whatever befalls us, a life led in accordance with reason?

PLATONISM IN THE MUSEUM. But, though the Alexandrian Museum was
especially intended for the cultivation of the Aristotelian
philosophy, it must not be supposed that other systems were
excluded. Platonism was not only carried to its full development,
but in the end it supplanted Peripateticism, and through the New
Academy left a permanent impress on Christianity. The
philosophical method of Plato was the inverse of that of
Aristotle. Its starting- point was universals, the very existence
of which was a matter of faith, and from these it descended to
particulars, or details. Aristotle, on the contrary, rose from
particulars to universals, advancing to them by inductions.

Plato, therefore, trusted to the imagination, Aristotle to
reason. The former descended from the decomposition of a
primitive idea into particulars, the latter united particulars
into a general conception. Hence the method of Plato was capable
of quickly producing what seemed to be splendid, though in
reality unsubstantial results; that of Aristotle was more tardy
in its operation, but much more solid. It implied endless labor
in the collection of facts, a tedious resort to experiment and
observation, the application of demonstration. The philosophy of
Plato is a gorgeous castle in the air; that of Aristotle a solid
structure, laboriously, and with many failures, founded on the
solid rock.

An appeal to the imagination is much more alluring than the
employment of reason. In the intellectual decline of Alexandria,
indolent methods were preferred to laborious observation and
severe mental exercise. The schools of Neo-Platonism were crowded
with speculative mystics, such as Ammonius Saccas and Plotinus.
These took the place of the severe geometers of the old Museum.

PHYSICAL SCIENCE IN THE MUSEUM. The Alexandrian school offers the
first example of that system which, in the hands of modern
physicists, has led to such wonderful results. It rejected
imagination, and made its theories the expression of facts
obtained by experiment and observation, aided by mathematical
discussion. It enforced the principle that the true method of
studying Nature is by experimental interrogation. The researches
of Archimedes in specific gravity, and the works of Ptolemy on
optics, resemble our present investigations in experimental
philosophy, and stand in striking contrast with the speculative
vagaries of the older writers. Laplace says that the only
observation which the history of astronomy offers us, made by the
Greeks before the school of Alexandria, is that of the summer
solstice of the year B.C. 432. by Meton and Euctemon. We have,
for the first time, in that school, a combined system of
observations made with instruments for the measurement of angles,
and calculated by trigonometrical methods. Astronomy then took a
form which subsequent ages could only perfect.

It does not accord with the compass or the intention of this work
to give a detailed account of the contributions of the
Alexandrian Museum to the stock of human knowledge. It is
sufficient that the reader should obtain a general impression of
their character. For particulars, I may refer him to the sixth
chapter of my "History of the Intellectual Development of
Europe."

EUCLID--ARCHIMEDES. It has just been remarked that the Stoical
philosophy doubted whether the mind can ascertain absolute truth.
While Zeno was indulging in such doubts, Euclid was preparing his
great work, destined to challenge contradiction from the whole
human race. After more than twenty-two centuries it still
survives, a model of accuracy, perspicuity, and a standard of
exact demonstration. This great geometer not only wrote on other
mathematical topics, such as Conic Sections and Porisms, but
there are imputed to him treatises on Harmonics and Optics, the
latter subject being discussed on the hypothesis of rays issuing
from the eye to the object.

With the Alexandrian mathematicians and physicists must be
classed Archimedes, though he eventually resided in Sicily. Among
his mathematical works were two books on the Sphere and Cylinder,
in which he gave the demonstration that the solid content of a
sphere is two-thirds that of its circumscribing cylinder. So
highly did he esteem this, that he directed the diagram to be
engraved on his tombstone. He also treated of the quadrature of
the circle and of the parabola; he wrote on Conoids and
Spheroids, and on the spiral that bears his name, the genesis of
which was suggested to him by his friend Conon the Alexandrian.
As a mathematician, Europe produced no equal to him for nearly
two thousand years. In physical science he laid the foundation of
hydrostatics; invented a method for the determination of specific
gravities; discussed the equilibrium of floating bodies;
discovered the true theory of the lever, and invented a screw,
which still bears his name, for raising the water of the Nile. To
him also are to be attributed the endless screw, and a peculiar
form of burning-mirror, by which, at the siege of Syracuse, it is
said that he set the Roman fleet on fire.

ERATOSTHENES--APOLLONIUS--HIPPARCHUS. Eratosthenes, who at one
time had charge of the library, was the author of many important
works. Among them may be mentioned his determination of the
interval between the tropics, and an attempt to ascertain the
size of the earth. He considered the articulation and expansion
of continents, the position of mountain-chains, the action of
clouds, the geological submersion of lands, the elevation of
ancient sea-beds, the opening of the Dardanelles and the straits
of Gibraltar, and the relations of the Euxine Sea. He composed a
complete system of the earth, in three books--physical,
mathematical, historical--accompanied by a map of all the parts
then known. It is only of late years that the fragments remaining
of his "Chronicles of the Theban Kings" have been justly
appreciated. For many centuries they were thrown into discredit
by the authority of our existing absurd theological chronology.

It is unnecessary to adduce the arguments relied upon by the
Alexandrians to prove the globular form of the earth. They had
correct ideas respecting the doctrine of the sphere, its poles,
axis, equator, arctic and antarctic circles, equinoctial points,
solstices, the distribution of climates, etc. I cannot do more
than merely allude to the treatises on Conic Sections and on
Maxima and Minima by Apollonius, who is said to have been the
first to introduce the words ellipse and hyperbola. In like
manner I must pass the astronomical observations of Alistyllus
and Timocharis. It was to those of the latter on Spica Virginis
that Hipparchus was indebted for his great discovery of the
precession of the eqninoxes. Hipparchus also determined the first
inequality of the moon, the equation of the centre. He adopted
the theory of epicycles and eccentrics, a geometrical conception
for the purpose of resolving the apparent motions of the heavenly
bodies on the principle of circular movement. He also undertook
to make a catalogue of the stars by the method of alineations--
that is, by indicating those that are in the same apparent
straight line. The number of stars so catalogued was 1,080. If he
thus attempted to depict the aspect of the sky, he endeavored to
do the same for the surface of the earth, by marking the position
of towns and other places by lines of latitude and longitude. He
was the first to construct tables of the sun and moon.

THE SYNTAXIS OF PTOLEMY. In the midst of such a brilliant
constellation of geometers, astronomers, physicists,
conspicuously shines forth Ptolemy, the author of the great work,
"Syntaxis," "a Treatise on the Mathematical Construction of the
Heavens." It maintained its ground for nearly fifteen hundred
years, and indeed was only displaced by the immortal "Principia"
of Newton. It commences with the doctrine that the earth is
globular and fixed in space, it describes the construction of a
table of chords, and instruments for observing the solstices, it
deduces the obliquity of the ecliptic, it finds terrestrial
latitudes by the gnomon, describes climates, shows how ordinary
may be converted into sidereal time, gives reasons for preferring
the tropical to the sidereal year, furnishes the solar theory on
the principle of the sun's orbit being a simple eccentric,
explains the equation of time, advances to the discussion of the
motions of the moon, treats of the first inequality, of her
eclipses, and the motion of her nodes. It then gives Ptolemy's
own great discovery--that which has made his name immortal-- the
discovery of the moon's evection or second inequality, reducing
it to the epicyclic theory. It attempts the determination of the
distances of the sun and moon from the earth--with, however, only
partial success. It considers the precession of the equinoxes,
the discovery of Hipparchus, the full period of which is
twenty-five thousand years. It gives a catalogue of 1,022 stars,
treats of the nature of the milky-way, and discusses in the most
masterly manner the motions of the planets. This point
constitutes another of Ptolemy's claims to scientific fame. His
determination of the planetary orbits was accomplished by
comparing his own observations with those of former astronomers,
among them the observations of Timocharis on the planet Venus.

INVENTION OF THE STEAM-ENGINE. In the Museum of Alexandria,
Ctesibius invented the fire-engine. His pupil, Hero, improved it
by giving it two cylinders. There, too, the first steam-engine
worked. This also was the invention of Hero, and was a reaction
engine, on the principle of the eolipile. The silence of the
halls of Serapis was broken by the water-clocks of Ctesibius and
Apollonius, which drop by drop measured time. When the Roman
calendar had fallen into such confusion that it had become
absolutely necessary to rectify it, Julius Caesar brought
Sosigenes the astronomer from Alexandria. By his advice the lunar
year was abolished, the civil year regulated entirely by the sun,
and the Julian calendar introduced.

The Macedonian rulers of Egypt have been blamed for the manner in
which they dealt with the religious sentiment of their time. They
prostituted it to the purpose of state-craft, finding in it a
means of governing their lower classes. To the intelligent they
gave philosophy.

POLICY OF THE PTOLEMIES. But doubtless they defended this policy
by the experience gathered in those great campaigns which had
made the Greeks the foremost nation of the world. They had seen
the mythological conceptions of their ancestral country dwindle
into fables; the wonders with which the old poets adorned the
Mediterranean had been discovered to be baseless illusions. From
Olympus its divinities had disappeared; indeed, Olympus itself
had proved to be a phantom of the imagination. Hades had lost its
terrors; no place could be found for it.

From the woods and grottoes and rivers of Asia Minor the local
gods and goddesses had departed; even their devotees began to
doubt whether they had ever been there. If still the Syrian
damsels lamented, in their amorous ditties, the fate of Adonis,
it was only as a recollection, not as a reality. Again and again
had Persia changed her national faith. For the revelation of
Zoroaster she had substituted Dualism; then under new political
influences she had adopted Magianism. She had worshiped fire, and
kept her altars burning on mountain-tops. She had adored the sun.
When Alexander came, she was fast falling into pantheism.

On a country to which in its political extremity the indigenous
gods have been found unable to give any protection, a change of
faith is impending. The venerable divinities of Egypt, to whose
glory obelisks had been raised and temples dedicated, had again
and again submitted to the sword of a foreign conqueror. In the
land of the Pyramids, the Colossi, the Sphinx, the images of the
gods had ceased to represent living realities. They had ceased to
be objects of faith. Others of more recent birth were needful,
and Serapis confronted Osiris. In the shops and streets of
Alexandria there were thousands of Jews who had forgotten the God
that had made his habitation behind the veil of the temple.

Tradition, revelation, time, all had lost their influence. The
traditions of European mythology, the revelations of Asia, the
time-consecrated dogmas of Egypt, all had passed or were fast
passing away. And the Ptolemies recognized how ephemeral are
forms of faith.

But the Ptolemies also recognized that there is something more
durable than forms of faith, which, like the organic forms of
geological ages, once gone, are clean gone forever, and have no
restoration, no return. They recognized that within this world of
transient delusions and unrealities there is a world of eternal
truth.

That world is not to be discovered through the vain traditions
that have brought down to us the opinions of men who lived in the
morning of civilization, nor in the dreams of mystics who thought
that they were inspired. It is to be discovered by the
investigations of geometry, and by the practical interrogation of
Nature. These confer on humanity solid, and innumerable, and
inestimable blessings.

The day will never come when any one of the propositions of
Euclid will be denied; no one henceforth will call in question
the globular shape of the earth, as recognized by Eratosthenes;
the world will not permit the great physical inventions and
discoveries made in Alexandria and Syracuse to be forgotten. The
names of Hipparchus, of Apollonius, of Ptolemy, of Archimedes,
will be mentioned with reverence by men of every religious
profession, as long as there are men to speak.

THE MUSEUM AND MODERN SCIENCE. The Museum of Alexandria was thus
the birthplace of modern science. It is true that, long before
its establishment, astronomical observations had been made in
China and Mesopotamia; the mathematics also had been cultivated
with a certain degree of success in India. But in none of these
countries had investigation assumed a connected and consistent
form; in none was physical experimentation resorted to. The
characteristic feature of Alexandrian, as of modern science, is,
that it did not restrict itself to observation, but relied on a
practical interrogation of Nature.

CHAPTER II.

THE ORIGIN OF CHRISTIANITY.--ITS TRANSFORMATION ON ATTAINING
IMPERIAL POWER.--ITS RELATIONS TO SCIENCE.

Religious condition of the Roman Republic.--The adoption of
imperialism leads to monotheism.--Christianity spreads over the
Roman Empire.-- The circumstances under which it attained
imperial power make its union with Paganism a political
necessity.--Tertullian's description of its doctrines and
practices.--Debasing effect of the policy of Constantine on
it.--Its alliance with the civil power.--Its incompatibility with
science.--Destruction of the Alexandrian Library and prohibition
of philosophy.--Exposition of the Augustinian philosophy and
Patristic science generally.--The Scriptures made the standard of
science.

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