Man and the Microscope

...Far from it: "The reforming leaders were, if anything, less sympathetic to scientific investigation than were the Catholic leaders for one sixteenth-century man of science of the reformed faith, like Paracelsus, a dozen Catholics might be named...

...He asked how the young stu- dents would be able to withstand the tempest raised by science as then expounded...

...They told their students that they did, and why they did, and so were charged with resisting the progress of civilization and showing that the Catholic Church was the necessary opponent of science...

...It is probably a lying allegation invented at a comparatively recent date...

...The heresies of the day are explained to them by their professors of philosophy and science, and they are taught how these heresies are to be met...

...So Dr...

...A more curious piece of crass intolerance is not to be found...

...And as all truth in the natural order is power- less to destroy belief in the teachings of revelation, but can do much to confirm it, and as every newly discovered truth may serve to further the knowledge or the praise of God, it follows that whatever spreads the range of knowledge will always be willingly and even joyfully welcomed by the Church...

...Much of the plunder had slipped into the itching palms of certain families, of which the Cecils were the most important...

...We need not strive any further to prove the fact that the error is more or less widely held...

...The reply was: The same as in the past...

...He did so, but he did not stop at that, for he succeeded in implanting in the minds of men the notion that to attempt in any way to interfere with science, even the science thus far achieved, was a crime hardly second to treason felony...

...The second field of evidence which might have en-gaged Huxley's attention was the vast number of names eminent in the science of the post-Reformation period whose owners were not merely nominal Catho- lics, but fervent children of the Church...

...Again, what shall be said of Nicolaus Stensen, the father of modem geology, a convert from Lutheran- ism who died a Catholic bishop ? Safeguarding myself by an admission that the quo- tation that follows could have been written before Huxley, let me take an official utterance by Pope Leo XIII : When it is said that the Church is jealous of the modern political system, and that she repudiates the discoveries of modern research, the charge is a groundless and wicked calumny...

...It must be confessed that all this leaves one not a little puzzled...

...While some of them seem to have no sponsors but just oc-curred, like Oxford and Cambridge, a large number of the older universities were founded by papal bulls...

...Further, he tells us that Roger Bacon "realized in advance of his age the nature and application of the experimental method" and "frequently uses the phrase 'experimental science,' which is for him the sole means of obIOO T H E C O M M O N W E A L December I, I926 taining knowledge...

...He was the first to propose a reform of the calendar, similar to that later introduced by Pope Gregory...

...Oddly enough, that line of attack has so far shifted that modern reformers condemn the Church for a too ardent adherence to the Bible...

...What about the Abb~ Haiiy, the father of crystallography, who died the same year as Pasteur, who began his triumphant scientific progress by investigations along lines made possible by the researches of the Abb...

...Finally, let it be noted that Professor Whitehead says that we really owe what is supposed to be an even more modern conception, the union of science with technology, or applied science as it is sometimes called, to the pre-Reformation Benedictines...

...And one other thing that he had in mind to do, and very nearly succeeded in doing, was to establish in the minds of men his own mistaken idea, conceived in ignorance and nurtured in bias, that between the Church and science there could be neither agreement nor even truce...

...wicked and seditious projects she does condemn...

...First of all, I mention the universities...

...they caused Darwin to make some alterations in later editions, which have in many ways since been justified...

...But there was another and a more potent factor...

...Its author had recently been on a visit to Maynooth, the well-known place of education for Irish priests...

...They did not bother to allege that the Church and science were opposed, first because they neither knew nor cared anything about either, and second because no one would then have minded if they were opposed...

...Mivart ventured to put out his hand and touch the ark of the covenant by criticizing Darwin's recently published Origin of Species...

...The inversion of the sentence makes it awkward reading, but the meaning is obvious...

...Yet over the mantle of its senate room is the head of Nicholas V, crowned with the tiara, by whose bull, obtained by the then Catholic archbishop of that city, the university was founded...

...Again, what shall be done about Cardinal Nicholas de Cusa (I4ot-x464) who not only did work according to the ex-perimental method, as shown in his treatise on the balance, but who stated in print, years before either Copernicus or Galileo was born, that the earth was in motion...

...The Catholic priest," he continues, "is trained to know his business, and do it effectually...

...Each was a studium generale, a place of general instruction...

...Your Church would have taken good care that there was no such thing as science I" Well, again it is curious that, though the rush in output of scien- tific work was small compared with what we are now accustomed to, the pre-Reformation period was by no means devoid of scientific work or scientific work- ers, nor was the Reformation in the least a revolt on behalf of science...

...December I, I926 THE COMMONWEAL 99 MAN AND THE MICROSCOPE By BERTRAM C. A. WINDLE I N ONE of the Lay Sermons, Huxley writes of "our great antagonist--I speak as a man of science--the Roman Catholic Church, the one spiritual organization which is able to resist, and must as a matter of life and death, resist, the progress of science and modern civilization...

...The Reformation, especially in England, had been accompanied by a seizure of religious property un-paralleled even in those days...

...I am aware that certain authorities, and even the Encyclopaedia Britannica, say so, but the fact remains that the ancient records contain not one word to justify such an asser- tion...

...Again, Saint Andrews was founded by a body of clerics, headed by the Abbot of Scone...

...What is perfectly well known is that all Bacon's important works were sent to Clement IV at that Pontitt's special wish, but that unfortunately he died too soon to make the use that he would otherwise undoubtedly have made of them for the advancement of learning...

...Yet there was a whole series of facts to the contrary open to his eyes if he had cared to look...

...It avails nothing to say that these and other similarly founded universities were mere schools of theology, for that is patently not in accord with the facts...

...Huxley's final judgment was: "I heartily respect an organization which faces its ene-mies in this way...

...He was much struck with the place and the professors...

...Well, we all know that "orthodoxy is my doxy," and even so it was Huxley in the Mivart case...

...Wild opinions she does repudiate...

...Singer tells us and his righ.t to speak on such a matter will not be doubted...

...and confirmed in its privileges by no less than six bulls issued by Bene- dict XIII...

...The Church, which cannot exist side by side with science, yet maintains professors of science to teach its embryo clergymen--evidently able and competent, from what Huxley tells us, for without exception he declares that the professors were "learned, zealous and determined...

...It may be well to consider the circumstances which served as the con- text of this very cocksure deliverance...

...and I wish that all ecclesiastical organizations were in as effective a condition...

...Glasgow University, eminently fair to all denomina- tions as it is, may nevertheless be fairly described as a Presbyterian institution...

...These men were never tired of declaring that the Catholic Church did not pay sufficient attention to the Bible and its teachings and withheld them both from its children...

...together with that habit of mind which points to the beginning of a wilful departure from God...

...The series of facts thus brought forward surely ought to be sufficient to dispose of the myth that there must of necessity be a conflict between the Church and science...

...A few have been already spoken of, but what of Galvani, Volta, Ampere, Coulomb, Ohm, all of whose names are now immortalized in the nomenclature of electricity...

...Of course not," I can hear someone exclaim...

...It is now time to endeavor to trace its origin and for that pur- pose some delving into history is necessary...

...But in the fulness of time Huxley came along and took up the mission, as someone has put it, of mak- ing science respectable...

...These able men, whilst teaching the facts of science, differed from Huxley and his colleagues in some of the implications drawn from these facts...

...Here again I seem to hear someone remark, "But surely your Church imprisoned Bacon for a dozen or more years on account of his views...

...char- tered by Bishop Henry Wardlaw...

...Where is the conflict...

...His criticisms were of a purely scientific character...

...It can be in only one direction...

...The first thing that stands out quite clearly is that it did not in any way arise from any action of the Reformers, though this attitude came in the wake of, or at least is of a later date than, the Reformation...

...Yet, as he proceeds to show, "there is no trace in Roger Bacon's writings of any consciousness of opposition to religion...

...That is, as far as general and fundamental opposition is concerned, for it is to be admitted that occasional clashes may have occurred...

...A further fact, which may startle many to read, emerges quite clearly, namely, that but for the Refor- ma.tion and its consequences there would probably never have been any trouble between religion and science at all...

...But as all truth must necessarily proceed from God, the Church recognizes in all truth that is reached by research, a trace of the divine intelli- gence...

...and there are instances where ecclesiastical preferments were given to laymen as well as to clerics on the understanding that they were to teach scientific subjects...

...But he appended some pages from the writings of the fathers of the Church, to show, what few then knew, that their utterances, so far from being opposed to evolution, were more than patient of it...

...It seemed to me that the difference between these men and the comfortable champions of Anglicanism and of Dis-sent, was comparable to the difference between our gallant volunteers and the trained veterans of Napo- leon's Old Guard...

...He thinks he is writing in support of the Faith...

...Seeing that at the moment, ecclesiastics outside the Church, from Samuel Wilberforce upward or downward as you please, were raging against a doctrine which scarce one of them understood, one might have supposed that Darwin and Huxley would have accepted this unexpected religious aim ~t least from the writings of the fathers of the Church, to correspondence of the period and it will be seen that Huxley was possessed with the idea--the result of in- grained and ignorant bias--that the scientific criticism was based purely on religious bigotry and that the apparent religious toleration really rested on igno-rance of what the Catholic writers meant...