SCIENTIFIC INSTRUCTION.
But an outline of this kind would be too meagre without some sketch of the warfare on instruction in science. Not without profit would it be to note more at length how instruction in the Copernican theory was kept out of the Church universities in every great Catholic country of Europe; how they concealed the discovery of the spots on the sun; how many of them excluded the Newtonian demonstrations; how, down to the present time, the two great universities of Protestant England and nearly all her intermediate colleges, under clerical supervision, have excluded the natural and physical sciences as far as possible; and how, from probably nine-tenths of the universities and colleges of the United States, the students are graduated with either no knowledge or with clerically emasculated knowledge of the most careful modern thought on the most important problems in the various sciences, in history, and in criticism.
From the dismissal of the scientific professors from the University of Salamanca by Ferdinand VII. of Spain, in the beginning of this century, down to sundry dealings with scientific men in our own land and time, we might study another interesting phase of the same warfare; but, passing all this, I shall simply present a few typical conflicts that have occurred within the last ten years.
During the years 1867 and 1868 the war which had been long smouldering in France, between the Church and the whole system of French advanced education, came to an outbreak. Toward the end of the last century, after the Church had held possession of advanced instruction in France for more than a thousand years, and had, so far as it was able, made experimental science contemptible; and after the Church authorities had deliberately resisted and wrecked Turgot's noble plans for the establishment of a system of public schools, the French nation decreed the establishment of the most thorough and complete system of the higher public instruction then known. It was kept under lay control, and became one of the great glories of France.
But, emboldened by the restoration of the Bourbons, the Church began to undermine the hated system, and in 1868 had made such progress that all was ready for an assault.
Foremost among the leaders of the besieging party was the Bishop of Orleans—Dupanloup—a man of much buzzing vigor. In various ways, and especially in an open letter, he had fought the "Materialism" of the School of Medicine at Paris, and especially were his attacks leveled at Professors Vulpian and See, and the Minister of Public Instruction, Duruy, a man of great merit, whose only crime was a quiet resistance to clerical control. [154]
In these writings, Bishop Dupanloup stigmatized Darwin, Huxley, Lyell, and others, as authors of "shameful theories," and made especial use of the recent phrase of a naturalist, that "it is more glorious to be a monkey perfected than an Adam degenerated."
The direct attack was made in the French Senate, and the storming party in that body was led by a venerable and conscientious prelate, Cardinal de Bonnechose.
It was charged by Archbishop de Bonnechose and his party, that the tendencies of the teachings of these professors were fatal to religion and morality. A heavy artillery of phrases was hurled, such as "sapping the foundations," etc., "breaking down the bulwarks," etc., etc., and, withal, a new missile was used with much effect, the epithet of "materialist." The result can be easily guessed; crowds came to the lecture-rooms of these professors, and the lecture-room of Prof. See, the chief offender, was crowded to suffocation.
A siege was begun in due form. A young physician was sent by the cardinal's party into the heterodox camp as a spy. Having heard one lecture of Prof. See, he returned with information that seemed to promise easy victory to the besieging party. He brought a terrible statement, one that seemed enough to overwhelm See, Vulpian, Duruy, and the whole hated system of public instruction in France.
Good Cardinal Bonnechose seized the tremendous weapon. Rising in his place in the Senate, he launched a most eloquent invective against the Minister of State who could protect such a fortress of impiety as the College of Medicine; and, as a climax, he asserted, on the evidence of his spy fresh from Prof. See's lecture-room, that the professor had declared, in his lecture of the day before, that so long as he had the honor to hold his professorship he would combat the false idea of the existence of the soul. The weapon seemed resistless, and the wound fatal; but M. Duruy rose and asked to be heard.
His statement was simply that he held in his hand documentary proofs that Prof. See never made such a declaration. He held the notes used by Prof. See in his lecture. Prof. See, it appeared, belonged to a school in medical science which combated the idea of an art in medicine. The inflamed imagination of the cardinal's too eager emissary had, as the lecture notes proved, led him into a sad mistake as to words and thoughts, and had exhibited Prof. See as treating a theological when he was discussing a purely scientific questions. Of the existence of the soul the professor had said nothing.
The forces of the enemy were immediately turned; they retreated in confusion, amid the laughter of all France; and a quiet, dignified statement as to the rights of scientific instructors by Wurtz, the dean of the Faculty, completed their discomfiture. Thus a well-meant attempt to check what was feared might be dangerous in science simply ended in bringing ridicule on religion, and thrusting still deeper into the minds of thousands of men that most mistaken of all mistaken ideas—the conviction that religion and science are enemies. [155]
But justice forbids our raising an outcry against Roman Catholicism alone for this. In 1864 a number of excellent men in England drew up a declaration to be signed by students in the natural sciences, expressing "sincere regret that researches into scientific truth are perverted by some in our time into occasion for casting doubt upon the truth and authenticity of the Holy Scriptures." Nine-tenths of the leading scientific men of England refused to sign it. Nor was this the worst. Sir John Herschel, Sir John Bowring, and Sir W. R. Hamilton, administered, through the press, castigations which roused general indignation against the proposers of the circular, and Prof. De Morgan, by a parody, covered memorial and memorialists with ridicule. It was the old mistake, and the old result followed in the minds of multitudes of thoughtful young men. [156]
And in yet another Protestant country this same wretched mistake was made. In 1868, several excellent churchmen in Prussia thought it their duty to meet for the denunciation of "science falsely so called." Two results followed: Upon the great majority of these really self-sacrificing men—whose first utterances showed crass ignorance of the theories they attacked—there came quiet and widespread contempt; upon Pastor Knak, who stood forth and proclaimed views of the universe which he thought Scriptural, but which most schoolboys knew to be childish, came a burst of good-natured derision from every quarter of the German nation. [157]
Warfare of this sort against Science seems petty indeed; but it is to be guarded against in Protestant countries not less than in Catholic; it breaks out in America not less than in Europe. I might exhibit many proofs of this. Do conscientious Roman bishops in France labor to keep all advanced scientific instruction under their own control—in their own universities and colleges; so do very many not less conscientious Protestant clergymen in our own country insist that advanced education in science and literature shall be kept under control of their own sectarian universities and colleges, wretchedly one-sided in their development, and miserably inadequate in their equipment: did a leading Spanish university, until a recent period, exclude professors holding the Newtonian theory; so does a leading American college exclude professors holding the Darwinian theory: have Catholic colleges in Italy rejected excellent candidates for professorships on account of "unsafe" views regarding the Immaculate Conception; so are Protestant colleges in America every day rejecting excellent candidates on account of "unsafe" views regarding the Apostolic Succession, or the Incarnation, or Baptism, or the Perseverance of the Saints.
And how has all this system resulted? In the older nations, by natural reaction, these colleges, under strict ecclesiastical control, have sent forth the most bitter enemies the Christian Church has ever known—of whom Voltaire and Renan and Saint-Beuve are types; and there are many signs that the same causes are producing the same result in our own country.
I might allude to another battle-field in our own land and time. I might show how an attempt to meet the great want, in the State of New York, of an institution providing scientific instruction, has been met with loud outcries from many excellent men, who fear injury thereby to religion. I might picture to you the strategy which has been used to keep earnest young men from an institution which, it is declared, cannot be Christian because it is not sectarian. I might lay before you wonderful lines of argument which have been made to show the dangerous tendencies of a plan which gives to scientific studies the same weight as to classical studies, and which lays no less stress on modern history and literature than on ancient history and literature.
I might show how it has been denounced by the friends and agents of denominational colleges and in many sectarian journals; how the most preposterous charges have been made and believed by good men; how the epithets of "godless," "infidel," "irreligious," "unreligious," "atheistic," have been hurled against a body of Christian trustees, professors, and students, and with little practical result save arousing a suspicion in the minds of large bodies of thoughtful young men, that the churches dread scientific studies untrammeled by sectarianism.