|
but the most common of all
_offerings_ were _pictures_
representing the history of the miraculous
cure or deliverance vouchsafed
upon the vow of the donor." Of which
offerings, the _blessed Virgin_ is so
sure always to carry off the
greatest share, that it may be truly said of her
what _Juvenal_ says of
the _Goddess Isis_, whose religion was at that time in
the greatest
vogue in _Rome_, that the "_painters got their livelihood out of
her_."
Middleton tells the story from Cicero which, not without
covert
sympathy, Montaigne quotes in his Essay on Prognostications.
Diagoras,
surnamed the Atheist, being found one day in a temple, was
thus
addressed by a friend: "You, who think the gods take no care of
human
affairs, do not you see here by this number of pictures how many
people,
for the sake of their vows, have been saved in storms at sea, and
got
safe into harbour?" "Yes," answered Diagoras, "I see how it is;
for
those are never painted who happen to be drowned." There is nothing
new
under the sun. Horace (Odes, Bk. I, v) tells of the shipwrecked
sailor
who hung up his clothes as a thank-offering in the temple of the
sea-god
who had preserved him; Polydorus Vergilius, who lived in the early
part
of the sixteenth century, that is, some 1,500 years after
Horace,
describes the classic custom of _ex voto_ offerings at length,
while
Pennant the antiquary, describing the well of Saint Winifred
in
Flintshire in the last century, tells of the votive offerings, in
the
shape of crutches and other objects, which were hung about it. To
this
day the store is receiving additions. The sick crowd thither as of
old
they crowded into the temples of Æsculapius and Serapis; mothers
bring
their sick children as in Imperial Rome they took them to the Temple
of
Romulus and Remus. A draught of water from the basin near the bath, or
a
plunge in the bath itself, is followed by prayers at the altar of
the
chapel which incloses the well. When the saint's feast-day is held,
the
afflicted gather to kiss the reliquary that holds her bones. Perhaps
one
of the most pathetic sights in Catholic churches, especially
in
out-of-the-way villages, is the altars on which are hung
votive
offerings, rude daubs depicting the disease or danger from which
the
worshipper has been delivered.
As to the images, tricked out in
curious robes and gewgaws, Middleton
"could not help recollecting the picture
which old Homer draws of _Q.
Hecuba of Troy_, prostrating herself before the
_miraculous Image of
Pallas_," while his wonder at the Loretto image of the
"Queen of Heaven"
with "a face as black as a Negus" reminds him of the
reference in Baruch
to the idols black with the "perpetual smoak of lamps and
incense." In
his Hibbert Lectures Professor Rhys refers to churches dedicated
to
Notre Dame in virtue of legends of discovery of images of the Virgin
on
the spot. These were usually of wood, which had turned black in
the
soil. Such a black "Madonna" was found near Grenoble, in the commune
of
La Zouche. Then, in the titles of the new deities, Middleton
correctly
sees those of the old. The Queen of Heaven reminds him of Astarte
or
Mylitta; the Divine Mother of the Magna Mater, the "great mother"
of
Oriental cults. In other attributes of Mary, lineal descendant of
Isis,
there survive those of Venus, Lucina, Cybele, or Maria. He gives
amusing
examples of myths and misreadings through which certain "saints" have
a
place in the Roman Calendar. He apparently knew nothing of the
strange
confusion by which Buddha appears therein under the title of
Saint
Josaphat; but he tells how, by misinterpretation of a boundary
stone,
Proefectus Viarum, an overseer of highways, became S. Viar; how
S.
Veronica secured canonization through a blunder over the words
Vera
Icon: still more droll, how hagiology includes both a mountain and
a
mantle!
The marks of hands or feet on rocks, said to be made by the
apparition
of some saint or angel, call to mind "the impression of Hercules'
feet
on a stone in Scythia"; the picture of the Virgin, which came
from
heaven, suggests the descent of Numa's shield "from the clouds"; that
of
the weeping Madonna the statue of Apollo, which Livy says wept
for
three successive days and nights; while the periodical miracle of
the
liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius is obviously paralleled
in
the incidents named by Horace on his journey to Brundusium, when
the
priests of the temple at Gnatia sought to persuade him that
"the
frankincense used to dissolve and melt miraculously without the help
of
fire" (Sat., v, 97-100).
Middleton, and those of his school,
thought that they were near primary
formations when they struck on these
suggestive classic or pagan
parallels to Christian belief and custom. But in
truth they had probed
a comparatively recent layer; since, far beneath, lay
the unsuspected
prehistoric deposits of barbaric ideas which are coincident
with,
and composed of, man's earliest speculations about himself and
his
surroundings. When, however, we borrow an illustration from geology,
it
must be remembered that our divisions, like those into which the
strata
of the globe are separated, are artificial. There is no real
detachment.
The difference between former and present methods of research
is
that nowadays we have gone further down for discovery of the
common
materials of which barbaric, pagan, and civilized ideas are
compounded.
They arise in the comparison which exists in the savage mind
between the
living and the non-living, and in the attribution of like
qualities to
things superficially resembling one another; hence belief in
their
efficacy, which takes active form in what may be generally termed
magic.
For example, the rite of baptism is explained when we connect it
with
barbaric lustrations and water-worship generally; as also that of
the
Eucharist by reference to sacrificial feasts in honour of the
gods;
feasts at which they were held to be both the eaters and the
eaten.
Middleton, himself a clergyman, shows perplexity when watching
the
elevation of the host at mass. He lacked that knowledge of the origin
of
sacramental rites which study of barbaric customs has since
supplied.
In Mr. Frazer's Golden Bough, the "central idea" of which is
"the
conception of the slain god," he shows at what an early stage in
his
speculations man formulated the conception of deity incarnated
in
himself, or in plant or animal, and as afterward slain, both
the
incarnation and the death being for the benefit of mankind. The god
is
his own sacrifice, and in perhaps the most striking form, as
insisted
upon by Mr. Frazer, he is, as corn-spirit, killed in the person of
his
representative; the passage in this mode of incarnation to the
custom
of eating bread sacramentally being obvious. The fundamental idea
of
this sacramental act, as the mass of examples collected by Mr.
Frazer
further goes to show, is that by eating a thing its physical and
mental
qualities are acquired. So the barbaric mind reasons, and extends
the
notion to all beings. To quote Mr. Frazer: "By eating the body of
the
god he shares in the god's attributes and powers. And when the god is
a
corn-god, the corn is his proper body; when he is a vine-god, the
juice
of the grape is his blood; and so by eating the bread and drinking
the
wine the worshipper partakes of the real body and blood of his god.
Thus
the drinking of wine in the rites of a vine-god like Dionysus is not
an
act of revelry; it is a solemn sacrament." It is, perhaps, needless
to
point out that the same explanation applies to the rites attaching
to
Demeter, or to add what further parallels are suggested in the
belief
that Dionysus was slain, rose again, and descended into Hades to
bring
up his mother Semele from the dead. This, however, by the way.
What
has to be emphasized is, that in the quotation just given we
have
transubstantiation clearly anticipated as the barbaric idea of
eating
the god. In proof of the underlying continuity of that idea
two
witnesses--Catholic and Protestant--may be cited.
The Church of
Rome, and in this the Greek Church is at one therewith,
thus defines the term
transubstantiation in the Canon of the Council of
Trent:
"If any one
shall say that in the most holy sacrament of the
Eucharist there remains
the substance of bread and wine together
with the body and blood of our
Lord Jesus Christ, and shall deny
that wonderful and singular conversion of
the whole substance of the
bread into the body, and of the whole substance
of the wine into the
blood, the species of bread and wine alone
remaining--which
conversion the Catholic Church most fittingly
calls
Transubstantiation--let him be anathema."
The Church of
England, through the medium of a letter to a well-known
newspaper, the
British Weekly (29th August, 1895), supplies the
following illustration of
the position of its "High" section, and this,
it is interesting to note, from
the church of which Mr. Gladstone's son
is rector, and in which the
distinguished statesman himself often reads
the lessons:
"A few
Sundays ago--8 o'clock celebration of Holy Communion. Rector,
officiating
minister (Hawarden Church).
"When the point was reached for the
communicants to partake, cards
containing a hymn to be sung after Communion
were distributed among
the congregation. This hymn opened with the
following couplet:--
Jesu, mighty Saviour,
Thou art _in_
us now.
And my attention was arrested by an asterisk referring to
a
footnote. The word 'in,' in the second line, was printed in
italics,
and the note intimated that those who had _not_ communicated
should
sing '_with_' instead of '_in_,' i. e. those who had taken
the
consecrated elements to sing 'Thou art _in_ us now,' and those
who
had not, to sing 'Thou art _with_ us now.'"
Whether, therefore,
the cult be barbaric or civilized, we find theory
and practice identical. The
god is eaten so that the communicant thereby
becomes a "partaker of the
divine nature."
In the gestures denoting _sacerdotal benediction_ we have
probably an
old form of averting the evil eye; in the act of _breathing_ on a
bishop
at the service of consecration there was the survival of belief
in
transference of spiritual qualities, the soul being, as
language
evidences, well-nigh universally identified with breath. The
modern
spiritualist who describes apparitions as having the "consistency
of
cigar-smoke," is one with the Congo negroes who leave the house of
the
dead unswept for a time lest the dust should injure the delicate
substance of
the ghost. The inhaling of the last breath of the dying
Roman by his nearest
kinsman has parallel in the breathing of the risen
Jesus on his disciples
that they might receive the Holy Ghost (John xx,
22). In the offering of
_prayers for the dead_; in the _canonization_
and _intercession_ of _saints_;
in the _prayers_ and _offerings_ at the
_shrines of the Virgin_ and _saints_,
and at the _graves of martyrs_;
there are the manifold forms of that great
cult of the departed which is
found throughout the world. To this may be
linked the _belief in
angels_, whether good or bad, or guardian, because the
element common to
the whole is animistic, the peopling of the heavens above,
as well as
the earth beneath, with an innumerable company of spiritual
beings
influencing the destinies of men. Well might Jews and Moslems
reproach
the Christians, as they did down to the eighth century, with
having
filled the world with more gods than they had overthrown in the
pagan
temples; while we have Erasmus, in his Encomium Moriae, when
reciting
the names and functions of saints, adding that "as many things as
we
wish, so many gods have we made." Closely related to this group
of
beliefs is the _adoration of relics_, the vitality of which has
springs
too deep in human nature to be wholly abolished, whether we carry
about
us a lock from the hair of some dead loved one, or read of the
fragments
of saints or martyrs which lie beneath every Catholic altar, or of
the
skull-bones of his ancestor which the savage carries about with him as
a
charm. Then there is the long list of _church festivals_, the
reference
of which to pagan prototypes is but one step toward their
ultimate
explanation in nature-worship; there are the _processions_ which are
the
successors of Corybantic frenzies, and, more remotely, of savage
dances
and other forms of excitation; there is that now somewhat casual
belief
in the _Second Advent_ which is a member of the widespread group
wherein
human hopes fix eyes on the return of long-sleeping heroes; of
Arthur
and Olger Dansk, of Vainamoinen and Quetzalcoatl, of Charlemagne
and
Barbarossa, of the lost Marko of Servia and the lost King Sebastian.
We
speak of it as "casual," because among the two hundred and
eighty-odd
sects scheduled in Whitaker's Almanack the curious in such
inquiries
will note only three distinctive bodies of Adventists.
All
changes in popular belief have been, and, practically, remain
superficial;
the old animism pervades the higher creeds. In our own
island, for example,
the Celtic and pre-Celtic paganism remained
unleavened by the old Roman
religion. The legions took back to Rome the
gods which they brought with
them. The names of Mithra and Serapis occur
on numerous tablets, the worship
of the one--that "Sol invictus" whose
birthday at the winter solstice became
(see p. 42) the anniversary
of the birth of Christ--had ranged as far west as
South Wales and
Northumberland; while the foundations of a temple to the
other have been
unearthed at York. The chief Celtic gods, in virtue of common
attributes
as elemental nature-deities, were identified with certain _dii
majores_
of the Roman pantheon, and the _deae matres_ equated with the
gracious
or malevolent spirits of the indigenous faith. But the old names
were
not displaced. Neither did the earlier Christian missionaries effect
any
organic change in popular beliefs, while, during the submergence
of
Christianity under waves of barbaric invasion, there were infused
into
the old religion kindred elements from oversea which gave it yet
more
vigorous life. The eagle penetration of Gibbon detected this
persistent
element at work when he described the sequel to the futile efforts
of
Theodosius to extirpate paganism. The ancestor worship which lay at
the
core of much of it took shape among the Christianized pagans in
the
worship of martyrs and in the scramble after their relics. The bodies
of
prophets and apostles were discovered by the strangest coincidences,
and
transported to the churches by the Tiber and the Bosphorus, and
although
the supply of these more important remains was soon exhausted,
there
was no limit to the production of relics of their person or
belongings,
as of filings from the chains of S. Peter, and from the gridiron
of S.
Lawrence. The catacombs yielded any number of the bodies of martyrs,
and
Rome became a huge manufactory to meet the demands for
wonder-working
relics from every part of Christendom. A sceptical feeling
might be
aroused at the claims of a dozen abbeys to possession of the
veritable
crown of thorns wherewith the majesty of the suffering Christ
was
mocked, but it was silenced before the numerous fragments of his
cross,
since ingenuity has computed that this must have contained at least
one
hundred and eighty million cubic millemetres, whereas the total
cubic
volume of all the known relics is but five millions. "It must,"
remarks
Gibbon (Decline and Fall, end of chap. xxviii), "ingeniously
be
confessed that the ministers of the Catholic Church imitated the
profane
model which they were impotent to destroy. The most respectable
bishops
had persuaded themselves that the ignorant rustics would more
cheerfully
renounce the superstitions of paganism if they found some
resemblance,
some compensation, in the bosom of Christianity. The religion
of
Constantine achieved, in less than a century, the final conquest of
the
Roman Empire, but the victors themselves were insensibly subdued by
the
arts of their vanquished rivals."
Enough has been said on a topic
to which prominence has been given
because it brings into fuller relief the
fact that in a religion for
which its apologists claim divine origin and
guidance "to the end of
the world" we have the same intrusion of the rites
and customs of
lower cults which marks other advanced faiths. Hence, science
and
superstition being deadly foes, the explanation of that
hostile
attitude toward inquiry and that dread of its results which
marked
Christianity down to modern times. While the intrusion of
corrupting
elements presents difficulties which the theory of the
supernatural
history of Christianity alone creates, it accords with all that
might
be predicted of a religion whose success was due to its early
escape
from the narrow confines of Judaism; and to its fortunate contact
with
the enterprising peoples to whom the civilization of Europe and
the
New World is due.
2. _From Augustine to Lord Bacon._
A.
D. 400-A. D. 1600.
The foregoing slight outline of the causes which
operated for centuries
against the freedom of the human mind will render it
needless to follow
the history of the development of Christian polity and
dogma--the
temporalizing of the one, and the crystallizing of the other. Yet
one
prominent actor in that history demands a brief notice, because of
the
influence which his teaching wielded from the fifth to the
fifteenth
centuries. The annals of the churches in Africa, along whose
northern
shores Christianity had spread early and rapidly, yield notable
names,
but none so distinguished as that of Augustine, Bishop of Hippo from
395
to 430 A. D. This greatest of the Fathers of the Church sought, as
has
been remarked already, to bring the system of Aristotle, the greatest
of
ancient naturalists, into line with Christian theology. His range
of
study was well-nigh as wide as that of the famous Stagirite, but we
are
here concerned only with so much of it as bears on an attempt to
graft
the development theory on the dogma of special creation.
Augustine,
accepting the Old Testament cosmogony as a revelation,
believed
that the world was created out of nothing, but, this initial
paradox
accepted, he argued that God had endowed matter with certain powers
of
self-development which left free the operation of natural causes in
the
production of plants and animals. With this, however, as already
noted,
he held, with preceding philosophers and with his
fellow-theologians,
the doctrine of spontaneous generation. It explained to
him the
existence of apparently purposeless creatures, as flies, frogs,
mice,
etc. "Certain very small animals," he says, "may not have been
created
on the fifth and sixth days, but may have originated later
from
putrefying matter." Not till the seventeenth century did the
experiments
of Redi refute a doctrine which had held part of the biological
field
for above two thousand years, and which still has adherents. Of
course
Augustine, as do modern Catholic biologists, excepted man from
the
operation of secondary causes, and held that his soul was created
by
the direct intervention of the Creator. Augustine's concessions
are,
therefore, more seeming than real, and, moreover, we find him
denying
the existence of the antipodes on the ground that Scripture is
silent
about them, and also, that if God had placed any races there, they
could
not see Christ descending at his second coming. To Augustine the air
was
full of devils who are the cause of "all diseases of Christians."
In
other words, he was not ahead of the illusions of his age. Then, too,
he
shows that allegorizing spirit which was manifest in Greece a
thousand
years earlier; the spirit which reads hidden meanings in Homer,
in
Horace, and in Omar Khayyam; and which, in the hands of
present-day
Gnostics, mostly fantastic or illiterate cabalists, converts the
plain
narratives of Old and New Testaments into vehicles of mysterious
types
and esoteric symbols. It is in such allegorical vein that
Augustine
explains the outside and inside pitching of the ark as typifying
the
safety of the Church from the leaking-in of heresy; while the
ghastly
application of symbolical exegetics is seen in his citation of the
words
of Jesus, "Compel them to come in," as a Divine warrant for
the
slaughter of heretics.
We shall meet with no other such commanding
figure in Church history
till nine hundred years have passed, when Thomas
Aquinas, the "Angel of
the Schools," appears, but although that period marks
no advance of the
Church from her central position, it witnessed changes in
her fortune
through the intrusion of a strange people into her territory
and
sanctuaries.
* * * *
*
Perhaps there are few events in history more impressive than
the
conversion of the wild and ignorant Arab tribes of the seventh
century
from stone-worship to monotheism. The series of conquests which
followed
had also, as an indirect and unforeseen result, effects of
vast
importance in the revival and spread of Greek culture from the Tigris
to
the Guadalquivir. It is not easy, neither does the inquiry fall
within
our present purpose, to discover the special impulses which
led
Mohammed, the leader of the movement, to preach a new faith whose
one
creed, stripped of all subtleties, was the unity of God. Large
numbers
of Jews and Christians had settled in Arabia long before his time,
and
he had become acquainted with the narrowness of the one, and with
the
causes of the wranglings of the other, riven, as these last-named
were,
into sects quarrelling over the nature of the Person of Christ.
These,
and the fetichism of his fellow-countrymen, may, perhaps, have
impelled
him to start a crusade the mandate for which he, in fanatic
impulse,
believed came from heaven. The result is well known. The
hitherto
untamed nomads became the eager instruments of the prophet. Under
his
leadership, and that of the able Khalifs who succeeded him, the flag
of
Islam was carried from East to West, till within one hundred years
of
the flight of Mohammed from Mecca (622 A. D.) it waved from the
Indian
Ocean to the Atlantic. With the conquest of Syria there was
achieved
one of the greatest and most momentous of triumphs in the capture
of
Jerusalem, and the seizure of sites sanctified to Christians
by
association with the crucifixion, burial, and resurrection of
Jesus.
Only a few years before (614 A. D.), the holy city had been taken
by
Chosroes; the sacred buildings raised over the venerated tomb had
been
burned, and the cross--a spurious relic--carried off by the
Persian
king. These places have been, as it were, the cockpit of
Christendom
from the time of the siege of Jerusalem under Titus to that of
the
Crimean war, when blood was spilt like water in a conflict stirred
by
squabbles between Latin and Greek Christians over possession of the
key
of the Church of the Nativity at Bethlehem. In the Church of the
Holy
Sepulchre these sectaries are still kept from flying at one
another's
throats by the muskets of Mohammedan soldiers.
The Arabian
conquest of Persia followed that of Syria. The turn of Egypt
soon came, the
city of Alexandria being taken in 640, seven years after
the prophets' death.
Since the loss of Greek freedom, and the decay of
intellectual life at
Athens, that renowned place had become, notably
under the Ptolemies, the
chief home of science and philosophy. Through
the propagandism of
Christianity among the Hellenized Jews, of whom, as
of Greeks, large numbers
had settled there, it was also the birthplace
of dogmatic theology, and,
therefore, the fountain whence welled the
controversies whose logomachies
were the gossip of the streets of
Constantinople and the cause of bloody
persecution. After a few years'
pause, the Saracens (Ar., _sharkiin_,
orientals) resumed their
conquering march. They captured and burnt Carthage,
another famous
centre of Christianity, and then crossed over to Spain. In
"the fair and
fertile isle of Andalusia" the Gothic king Roderick was aroused
from his
luxurious life in Toledo to lead his army in gallant, but vain,
attempt
to repel the infidel invaders. So rapid was their advance that in
six
years they had subdued the whole of Spain, the north and
northwestern
portions excepted, for the hardy Basque mountaineers maintained
their
independence against the Arabs, as they had maintained it against
Celt,
Roman, and Goth. Only before the walls of Tours did the invaders
meet
with a rebuff from Charles Martel and his Franks, which arrested
their
advance in Western Europe; as, in a more momentous defeat
before
Constantinople by Leo III. in 718, fourteen years earlier, the
torrent
of Mohammedan conquest was first checked.
Enough, however, of
Saracenic wars and their destructive work, which, if
tradition lies not,
included the burning of the remnants of the vast
Alexandrian library. "A
revealed dogma is always opposed to the free
research that may contradict
it," and Islam has ever been a worse foe to
science than Christianity. Its
association, as a religion, with the
renaissance of knowledge, was as wholly
accidental as the story of it is
interesting.
Under the Sassanian
kings, Persia had become an active centre of
intellectual life, reaching the
climax of its Augustan age in the reign
of Chosroes. Jew, Greek, and
Christian alike had welcome at his court,
and translations of the writings of
the Indian sages completed the
eclecticism of that enlightened monarch. Then
came the ruthless Arab,
and philosophy and science were eclipsed. But with
the advent of the
Abbaside Khalifs, who number the famous Haroun al-Raschid
among them,
there came revival of the widest toleration, and consequent
return of
intellectual activity. Baghdad arose as the seat of empire.
Situated on
the high road of Oriental commerce, along which travelled foreign
ideas
and foreign culture, that city became also the Oxford of her
time.
Arabic was the language of the conquerors, and into that poetic,
but
unphilosophic, tongue, Greek philosophy and science were rendered.
Under
the rule of those Khalifs, says Renan, "nontolerant,
nonreluctant
persecutors," free thought developed; the _Motecallenim_ or
"disputants"
held debates, where all religions were examined in the light of
reason.
Aristotle, Euclid, Galen, and Ptolemy were text-books in the
colleges,
the repute of whose teachers brought to Baghdad and Naishapur (dear
to
lovers of "old" Khayyam) students westward from Spain, and eastward
from
Transoxiana.
"Arab" philosophy, therefore, is only a name. It has
been well
described as "a system of Greek thought expressed in a Semitic
tongue;
and modified by Oriental influences called into existence by
the
patronage of the more liberal princes, and kept alive by the zeal of
a
small band of thinkers." In the main, it began and ended with the
study
of Aristotle, commentaries on whom became the chief work of scholars,
at
whose head stands the great name of Averroes. Through these--a
handful
of Jews and Moslems--knowledge of Greek science, of astronomy,
algebra,
chemistry, and medicine, was carried into Western Europe. By the
latter
half of the tenth century, one hundred and fifty years after
the
translation of Aristotle into Arabic, Spain had become no mean rival
of
Baghdad and Cairo. Schools were founded; colleges to which the
Girton
girls of the period could repair to learn mathematics and history
were
set up by lady principals; manufactures and agriculture were
encouraged;
and lovely and stately palaces and mosques beautified Seville,
Cordova,
Toledo, and Granada, which last-named city the far-famed Alhamra or
Red
Fortress still overlooks. Seven hundred years before there was a
public
lamp in London, and when Paris was a town of swampy roadways
bordered
by windowless dwellings, Cordova had miles of well-lighted,
well-paved
streets; and the constant use of the bath by the "infidel"
contrasted
with the saintly filth and rags which were the pride of
flesh-mortifying
devotees and the outward and odorous signs of their
religion. The pages
of our dictionaries evidence in familiar mathematical and
chemical
terms; in the names of the principal "fixed" stars; and in the
words
"admiral" and "chemise"; the influence of the "Arab" in science,
war,
and dress.
It forms no part of our story to tell how feuds
between rival dynasties
and rival sects of Islam, becoming more acute as time
went on, enabled
Christianity to recover lost ground, and, in the capture of
Granada in
1492, to put an end to Moorish rule in Spain. Before that event,
a
knowledge of Greek philosophy had been diffused through Christendom
by
the translation of the works of Avicenna, Averroes, and other
scholars,
into Latin. That was about the middle of the twelfth century,
when
Aristotle, who had been translated into Arabic some three
centuries
earlier, also appeared in Latin dress. The detachment of any branch
of
knowledge from theology being a thing undreamed of, the deep
reverence
in which the Stagirite was held by his Arabian commentators
ultimately
led to his becoming "suspect" by the Christians, since that
which
approved itself to the followers of Mohammed must, _ipso facto_,
be
condemned by the followers of Jesus. Hence came reaction, and
recourse
to the Scriptures as sole guide to secular as well as sacred
knowledge;
recourse to a method which, as Hallam says, "had not untied a
single
knot, or added one unequivocal truth to the domain of
philosophy."
So far as the scanty records tell (for we may never know how
much was
suppressed, or fell into oblivion, under ecclesiastical frowns
and
threats; nor how many thinkers toiled in secret and in dread),
none
seemed possessed either of courage or desire to supplement the
revealed
word by examination into things themselves. To supplant it was
not
dreamed of. But, in the middle of the thirteenth century, one
notable
exception occurred in the person of Roger Bacon, sometimes called
Friar
Bacon in virtue of his belonging to the order of Franciscans. He
was
born in 1214 at Ilchester, in Somerset, whence he afterward removed
to
Oxford, and thence to Paris. That this remarkable and many-sided
man,
classic and Arabic scholar, mathematician, and natural
philosopher,
has not a more recognised place in the annals of science is
strange,
although it is, perhaps, partly explained by the fact that his
writings
were not reissued for more than three centuries after his death. He
has
been credited with a number of inventions, his title to which is
however
doubtful, although the doubt in nowise impairs the greatness of
his
name. He shared the current belief in alchemy, but made a number
of
experiments in chemistry pointing to his knowledge of the properties
of
the various gases, and of the components of gunpowder. If he did
not
invent spectacles, or the microscope and telescope, he was skilled
in
optics, and knew the principles on which those instruments are made,
as
the following extract from his Opus Majus shows: "We can place
transparent
bodies in such a form and position between our eyes and
other objects that
the rays shall be refracted and bent toward any place
we please, so that we
shall see the object near at hand, or at a
distance, under any angle we
please; and thus from an incredible
distance we may read the smallest
letters, and may number the smallest
particles of sand, by reason of the
greatness of the angle under which
they appear." He knew the "wisdom of the
ancients" in the cataloguing of
the stars, and suggested a reform of the
calendar--following the then
unknown poet-astronomer of Naishapur. But he
believed in astrology, that
bastard science which from remotest times had
ruled the life of man, and
which has no small number of votaries among
ourselves to this day. Roger
Bacon's abiding title to fame rests, however, on
his insistence on
the necessity of experiment, and his enforcement of this
precept by
practice. As a mathematician he laid stress on the application of
this
"first of all the sciences"; indeed, as "preceding all others, and
as
disposing us to them." His experiments, both from their nature and
the
seclusion in which they were made, laid him open to the charge of
black
magic, in other words, of being in league with the devil. This, in
the
hands of a theology thus "possessed," became an instrument of
awful
torture to mankind. Roger Bacon's denial of magic only aggravated
his
crime, since in ecclesiastical ears, this was tantamount to a denial
of
the activity, nay more, of the very existence of Satan. So,
despite
certain encouragement in his scientific work from an old friend
who
afterward became Pope Clement IV., for whose information he wrote
his
Opus Majus, he was, on the death of that potentate, thrown into
prison,
whence tradition says he emerged, after ten years, only to
die.
The theories of mediæval schoolmen--a monotonous record of
unprogressive
ideas--need not be scheduled here, the more so as we approach
the period
of discoveries momentous in their ultimate effect upon opinions
which
now possess only the value attaching to the history of
discredited
conceptions of the universe. Commerce, more than scientific
curiosity,
gave the impetus to the discovery that the earth is a globe. Trade
with
the East was divided between Genoa and Venice. These cities were
rivals,
and the Genoese, alarmed at the growing success of the
Venetians,
resolved to try to reach India from the west. Their schemes
were
justified by reports of land indications brought by seamen who
had
passed through the "Pillars of Hercules" to the Atlantic. The sequel
is
well known. Columbus, after clerical opposition, and rebuffs from
other
states, "offering," as Mr. Payne says, in his excellent History
of
America, "though he knew it not, the New World in exchange for
three
ships and provisions for twelve months," finally secured the support
of
the Spanish king, and sailed from Cadiz on the 3d of August, 1492.
On
11th of October he sighted the fringes of the New World, and
believing
that he had sailed from Spain to India, gave the name West Indies
to the
island-group. America itself had been discovered by roving Norsemen
five
hundred years before, but the fact was buried in Icelandic
tradition.
Following Columbus, Vasco de Gama, a Portuguese, set sail in 1497,
and
taking a southerly course, doubled the Cape of Good Hope.
Twenty-two
years later, Ferdinand Magellan started on a voyage more famous
than
that of Columbus, since his ambition was to sail round the world,
and
thus complete the chain of proof against the theory of its flatness.
For
"though the Church hath evermore from Holy Writ affirmed that the
earth
should be a widespread plain bordered by the waters, yet he
comforted
himself when he considered that in the eclipses of the moon the
shadow
cast of the earth is round; and as is the shadow, such, in like
manner,
is the substance." Doubling Cape Horn through the straits that bear
his
name, Magellan entered the vast ocean whose calm surface caused him
to
call it the Pacific, and after terrible sufferings, he reached
the
Ladrone Islands where, either at the hands of a mutinous crew, or
of
savages, he was killed. His chief lieutenant, Sebastian
d'Eleano,
continued the voyage, and after rounding the Cape of Good Hope,
brought
the San Vittoria--name of happy omen--to anchor at St. Lucar,
near
Seville, on 7th of September, 1522. Brought, too, the story of
a
circumnavigated globe, and of new groups of stars never seen
under
northern skies.
The scene shifts, for the time being, from the
earth to the heavens. The
Church had barely recovered from the blow struck at
her authority on
matters of secular knowledge, when another dealt, and that
by an
ecclesiastic, Copernicus, Canon of Frauenburg, in Prussia. But
before
pursuing this, some reference to the revolt against the Church of
Rome,
which is the great event of the sixteenth century, is necessary, if
only
to inquire whether the movement known as the Reformation justified
its
name as freeing the intellect from theological thraldom. Far-reaching
as
were the areas which it covered and the effects which it wrought,
its
quarrel with the Church of Rome was not because of that
Church's
attitude toward freedom of thought. On the Continent it was a
protest of
nobler minds against the corruptions fostered by the Papacy; in
England,
it was personal and political in origin, securing popular support by
its
anti-sacerdotal character, and its appeal to national irritation
against
foreign control. But, both here and abroad, it sought mending
rather
than ending; "not to vary in any jot from the faith Catholic."
It
disputed the claim of the Church to be the sole interpreter
of
Scripture, and contended that such interpretation was the right and
duty
of the individual. But it would not admit the right of the individual
to
call in question the authority of the Bible itself: to that book
alone
must a man go for knowledge of things temporal as of things
spiritual.
So that the Reformation was but an exchange of fetters, or, as
Huxley
happily puts it, the scraping of a little rust off the chains
which
still bound the mind. "Learning perished where Luther reigned,"
said
Erasmus, and in proof of it we find the Reformer agreeing with
his
coadjutor, Melanchthon, in permitting no tampering with the
written
Word. Copernicus notwithstanding, they had no doubt that the earth
was
fixed and that sun and stars travelled round it, because the Bible
said
so. Peter Martyr, one of the early Lutheran converts, in his
Commentary
on Genesis, declared that wrong opinions about the creation as
narrated
in that book would render valueless all the promises of Christ.
Wherein
he spoke truly. As for the schoolmen, Luther called them
"locusts,
caterpillars, frogs, and lice." Reason he denounced as the "arch
whore"
and the "devil's bride," Aristotle is a "prince of darkness,
horrid
impostor, public and professed liar, beast, and twice
execrable."
Consistently enough, Luther believed vehemently in a personal
devil, and
in witches; "I would myself burn them," he says, "even as it is
written
in the Bible that the priests stoned offenders." To him
demoniacal
possession was a fact clear as noonday: idiocy, lunacy, epilepsy
and all
other mental and nervous disorders were due to it. Hence, a
movement
whose intent appeared to be the freeing of the human spirit riveted
more
tightly the bolts that imprisoned it; arresting the physical
explanation
of mental diseases and that curative treatment of them which is
one of
the countless services of science to suffering mankind. To Luther,
the
descent of Christ into hell, which modern research has shown to be
a
variant of an Orphic legend of the underworld, was a real event,
Jesus
going thither that he might conquer Satan in a hand-to-hand
struggle.
Therefore, freedom of thought, as we define it, had the
bitterest foe in
Luther, although, in his condemnation of "works," and his
fanatical
dogma of man's "justification by faith alone," which made him
reject the
Epistle of James as one "of straw," and as unworthy of a place in
the
Canon, he unwittingly drove in the thin end of the rationalist
wedge.
The Reformers had hedged the canonical books with theories of
verbal
inspiration which extended even to the punctuation of the
sentences.
They thus rendered intelligent study of the Bible impossible, and
did
grievous injury to a collection of writings of vast historical
value,
and of abiding interest as records of man's primitive speculations
and
spiritual development. But Luther's application of the right of
private
judgment to the omission or addition of this or that book into a
canon
which had been closed by a Council of the Church, surrendered the
whole
position, since there was no telling where the thing might
stop.
Copernicus waited full thirty years before he ventured to make
his
theory public. The Ptolemaic system, which assumed a fixed earth
with
sun, moon, and stars revolving above it, had held the field for
about
fourteen hundred years. It accorded with Scripture; it was
adopted
by the Church; and, moreover, it was confirmed by the senses,
the
correction of which still remains, and will long remain, a condition
of
intellectual advance. Little wonder is it, then, that
Copernicus
hesitated to broach a theory thus supported, or that, when
published, it
was put forth in tentative form as a possible explanation more
in accord
with the phenomena. A preface, presumably by a friendly hand,
commended
the Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies to Pope Paul III. It urged
that
"as in previous times others had been allowed the privilege of
feigning
what circles they chose in order to explain the phenomena,"
Copernicus
"had conceived that he might take the liberty of trying whether,
on the
supposition of the earth's motion, it was possible to find
better
explanations than the ancient ones of the revolutions of the
celestial
orbs." A copy of the book was placed in the hands of its author
only a
few hours before his death on 23d of May, 1543.
This "upstart
astrologer," this "fool who wishes to reverse the entire
science of
astronomy," for "sacred Scripture tells us that Joshua
commanded the sun to
stand still, and not the earth"--these are Luther's
words--was, therefore,
beyond the grip of the Holy Inquisition. But a
substitute was forthcoming.
Giordano Bruno, a Dominican monk, had added
to certain heterodox beliefs the
heresy of Copernicanism, which he
publicly taught from Oxford to Venice. For
these cumulative crimes he
was imprisoned and, after two years, condemned to
be put to death
"as mercifully as possible and without the shedding of his
blood," a
Catholic euphemism for burning a man alive. The murder was
committed in
Rome on 17th of February, 1600.
The year 1543 marks an
epoch in biology as in astronomy. As shown in the
researches of Galen, an
Alexandrian physician of the second century,
there had been no difficulty in
studying the structure of the lower
animals, but, fortified both by tradition
and by prejudice, the Church
refused to permit dissection of the human body,
and in the latter part
of the thirteenth century, Boniface VIII. issued a
Bull of the major
excommunication against offenders. Prohibition, as usual,
led to
evasion, and Vesalius, Professor of Anatomy in Padua
University,
resorted to various devices to procure "subjects," the bodies
of
criminals being easiest to obtain. The end justified the means, as
he
was able to correct certain errors of Galen, and to give the
_quietus_
to the old legend, based upon the myth of the creation of Eve, that
man
has one rib less than woman. This was among the discoveries announced
in
his De Corporis Humani Fabrica, published when he was only
twenty-eight
years of age. The book fell under the ban of the Church because
Vesalius
gave no support to the belief in an indestructible bone, nucleus of
the
resurrection body, in man. The belief had, no doubt, near relation
to
that of the Jews in the _os sacru_, and may remind us of
Descartes'
fanciful location of the soul in the minute cone-like part of the
brain
known as the _conarium_, or pineal gland. On some baseless charge
of
attempting the dissection of a living subject, the Inquisition
haled
Vesalius to prison, and would have put him to death "as mercifully
as
possible," but for the intervention of King Charles V. of Spain,
to
whom Vesalius had been physician. Returning in October, 1564, from
a
pilgrimage taken, presumably, as atonement for his alleged offence,
he
was shipwrecked on the coast of Zante, and died of
exhaustion.
While the heretical character and tendencies of discoveries
in astronomy
and anatomy awoke active opposition from the Church, the work of
men of
the type of Gesner, the eminent Swiss naturalist, and of
Caesalpino,
professor of botany at Padua, passed unquestioned. No dogma
was
endangered by the classification of plants and animals. But when
a
couple of generations after the death of Copernicus had passed,
the
Inquisition found a second victim in the famous Galileo, who was born
at
Pisa in 1564. After spending some years in mechanical and
mathematical
pursuits, he began a series of observations in confirmation of
the
Copernican theory, of the truth of which he had been convinced in
early
life. With the aid of a rude telescope, made by his own hands,
he
discovered the satellites of Jupiter; the moon-like phases of Venus
and
Mars; mountains and valleys in the moon; spots on the sun's disk;
and
the countless stars which composed the luminous band known as the
Milky
Way. Nought occurred to disturb his observations till, in a work on
the
Solar Spots, he explained the movements of the earth and of the
heavenly
bodies according to Copernicus. On the appearance of that book
the
authorities contented themselves with a caution to the author.
But
action followed his supplemental Dialogue on the Copernican
and
Ptolemaic Systems. Through that convenient medium which the
title
implies, Galileo makes the defender of the Copernican theory an
easy
victor, and for this he was brought before the Inquisition in
1633.
After a tedious trial, and threats of "rigorous personal
examination,"
a euphemism for "torture," he was, despite the plea--too
specious to
deceive--that he had merely put the _pros_ and _cons_ as between
the
rival theories, condemned to abjure all that he had taught. There is
a
story, probably fictitious, since it was first told in 1789, that
when
the old man rose from his knees, he muttered his conviction that
the
earth moves, in the words "e pur si muove." As a sample of the
arguments
used by the ecclesiastics when they substituted, as rare exception,
the
pen for the faggot, the reasoning advanced by one Sizzi against
the
existence of Jupiter's moons, may be cited. "There are seven
windows
given to animals in the domicile of the head, through which the air
is
admitted to the tabernacle of the body, viz.: two nostrils, two
eyes,
two ears, and one mouth. So, in the heavens, as in a macrocosm,
or
great world, there are two favourable stars, Jupiter and Venus;
two
unpropitious, Mars and Saturn; two luminaries, the sun and moon,
and
Mercury alone undecided and indifferent. From these and many
other
phenomena of Nature, which it were tedious to enumerate, we gather
that
the number of planets is necessarily seven. Moreover, the satellites
are
invisible to the naked eye, and, therefore, can exercise no
influence
over the earth, and would, of course, be useless; and, therefore,
do not
exist."
In this brief summary of the attitude of the Church
toward science, it
is not possible, and if it were so, it is not needful, to
refer in
detail to the contributions of the more speculative philosophers,
who,
although they made no discoveries, advocated those methods of
research
and directions of inquiry which made the discoveries possible.
Among
these a prominent name is that of Lord Bacon, whose system
of
philosophy, known as the Inductive, proceeds from the
collection,
examination and comparison of any group of connected facts to
the
relation of them to some general principle. The universal is
thus
explained by the particular. But the inductive method was no
invention
of Bacon's; wherever observation or testing of a thing
preceded
speculation about it, as with his greater namesake, there the
Baconian
system had its application. Lord Bacon, moreover, undervalued
Greek
science; he argued against the Copernican theory; and either
knew
nothing of, or ignored, Harvey's momentous discovery of the
circulation
of the blood. A more illustrious name than his is that of
Rene
Descartes, a man who combined theory with observation; "one who,"
in
Huxley's words, "saw that the discoveries of Galileo meant that
the
remotest parts of the universe were governed by mechanical laws,
while
those of Harvey meant that the same laws presided over the operations
of
that portion of the world which is nearest to us, namely, our own
bodily
frame." The greatness of this man, a good Catholic, whom the
Jesuits
charged with Atheism, has no mean tribute in his influence on an
equally
remarkable man, Benedict Spinoza. Spinoza reduced the Cartesian
analysis
of phenomena into God, mind and matter to one phenomenon, namely,
God,
of whom matter and spirit, extension and thought, are but
attributes.
His short life fell within the longer span of Newton's, whose
strange
subjection to the theological influences of his age is seen in
this
immortal interpreter of the laws of the universe wasting his
later
years on an attempt to interpret unfulfilled prophecy. These and
others,
as Locke, Leibnitz, Herder, and Schelling, like the great Hebrew
leader,
had glimpses of a goodly land which they were not themselves to
enter.
But, perhaps, in the roll of illustrious men to whom prevision
came,
none have better claim to everlasting remembrance than Immanuel
Kant.
For in his Theory of the Heavens, published in 1755, he anticipates
that
hypothesis of the origin of the present universe which, associated
with
the succeeding names of Laplace and Herschel, has, under
corrections
furnished by modern physics, common acceptance among us. Then, as
shown
in the following extract, Kant foresees the theory of the development
of
life from formless stuff to the highest types: "It is desirable
to
examine the great domain of organized beings by means of a
methodical
comparative anatomy, in order to discover whether we may not find
in
them something resembling a system, and that too in connection
with
their mode of generation, so that we may not be compelled to stop
short
with a mere consideration of forms as they are--which gives no
insight
into their generation--and need not despair of gaining a full
insight
into this department of Nature. The agreement of so many kinds
of
animals in a certain common plan of structure, which seems to be
visible
not only in their skeletons, but also in the arrangement of the
other
parts--so that a wonderfully simple typical form, by the shortening
or
lengthening of some parts, and by the suppression and development
of
others, might be able to produce an immense variety of species--gives
us
a ray of hope, though feeble, that here perhaps some results may
be
obtained, by the application of the principle of the mechanism
of
Nature; without which, in fact, no science can exist. This analogy
of
forms (in so far as they seem to have been produced in accordance
with
a common prototype, notwithstanding their great variety)
strengthens
the supposition that they have an actual blood-relationship, due
to
derivation from a common parent; a supposition which is arrived at
by
observation of the graduated approximation of one class of animals
to
another, beginning with the one in which the principle of
purposiveness
seems to be most conspicuous, namely, man, and extending down
to the
polyps, and from these even down to mosses and lichens, and
arriving
finally at raw matter, the lowest stage of Nature observable by us.
From
this raw matter and its forces, the whole apparatus of Nature seems
to
have been derived according to mechanical laws (such as those
which
resulted in the production of crystals); yet this apparatus, as seen
in
organic beings, is so incomprehensible to us, that we feel
ourselves
compelled to conceive for it a different principle. But it would
seem
that the archæologist of Nature is at liberty to regard the
great
Family of creatures (for as a Family we must conceive it, if
the
above-mentioned continuous and connected relationship has a
real
foundation) as having sprung from their immediate results of
her
earliest revolutions, judging from all the laws of their
mechanisms
known to or conjectured by him."
In our arrival at the age
of these seers, we feel the play of a freer,
purer air; a lull in the
miasmatic currents that bring intolerance on
their wings. The tolerance that
approaches is due to no surrender of its
main position by dogmatic theology,
but to that larger perception of the
variety and complexity of life,
ignorance of, or wilful blindness to,
which is the secret of the survival of
rigid opinion. The demonstration of the earth's roundness; the discovery of
America; the growing conception of inter-relation between the lowest and the
highest life-forms; the slow but sure acceptance of the Copernican theory; |
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