The Freedom of Science

by Josef Donat

The Yoke of the Sun.

The gifted Danish writer and convert, J. Jörgensen, tells a parable which is pregnant with thought. “In the midst of a large rye-field,” he relates, “there stood a tall poplar, with other trees standing nearby. One day the poplar turned to the other trees and plants, and thus began to speak: ‘Sisters and brothers! To us, the glorious tribe of plants, belongs the earth, and everything upon it is dependent on us. We fertilize and feed ourselves, while beasts and men are fed and clothed by us. Indeed, the earth itself feeds upon our decaying leaves, upon our boughs and branches. There is only one power in the world our existence and growth is said to depend on; I refer to the Sun. I purposely used the words, “is said,” because I am sure that we do not depend on the Sun. This doctrine of sunlight being a necessity and a benefit to our plant life is nothing but a superstition, which at last ought to give way to enlightenment.’ Here the poplar paused. From some old oaks and elms in the neighbouring grove there came signs of disapproval, but the inconstant rye-field muttered assent. Thus encouraged and raising its voice the poplar continued: ‘I know well that there is a musty faction amongst us which clings obstinately to obsolete views. However, I have confidence in the independence of the younger generation of plants. They will realize the baseness of continuing to do homage to an absurd superstition. Our freeborn heads shall never bow to a yoke, not even to the yoke of the Sun. Down, therefore, with that yoke! And free from restraint there will arise a free and beautiful generation that will astonish the world.’ The poplar paused for the second time, and now the applause was long and loud, the fields cheered and the groves gave boisterous applause, so that the disapproval of a few old [pg 230] trees could not be heard. The following days looked upon an odd spectacle. At daybreak, when the Sun ascended and cast its first rays over the landscape, the flowers closed their cups and denied admission, as if asleep; the leaves no longer turned toward the Sun. But when the dispenser of warmth and light had gone down behind the hills, the gayly coloured flowers opened in the dim starlight, as if now the time had come for them to grow and blossom.

“Alas, how sad was the fate of these poor rebels! The rye soon began to languish till it lay prone on the ground; green leaves turned yellow, the flowers drooped, faded and withered. Then the plants began to grumble at the poplar. There it stood, its leaves a seared yellow. ‘What simpletons you are, brothers and sisters!’ it said. ‘Can't you see that now you are much more like yourselves than under the rule of the Sun? Now you are refined, independent beings, well rid of the sluggish health of yore.’ There were some who still believed what the poplar said. ‘We are independent, we are unfettered,’ they clamoured, till the last spark of life was gone. Not long after the poplar, too, stood there with its branches bared,—it had died. The farmers, however, complained about the failing of the crop, and consoled themselves by hoping for better success the next year.”

A parable of deep meaning! It may serve as an illustration for the facts stated, and for those yet to be dealt with.

According to the Christian view, man is dependent on his Creator, from whom he receives life and light, and, in the same way, his mind depends on truth, by which it lives as the plants live, by the light and the warmth of the sun. To many generations this was self-evident, and withal they felt themselves free, because they looked for the freedom only of the dependent creature. And, keeping within these bounds, they had a cheerful existence in the happy possession of their faith, contented and serene in the possession of truth; their higher spiritual life throve and flourished, promoted by the Eternal Giver of light and warmth, who held out to them the prospect of completing their mental life in the contemplation of His eternal truth.

What the fathers deemed self-evident has now become a problem to their sons. What to their fathers was lofty and revered, the things to which they ascribed their ennoblement, have become to the sons an obstacle to free development. They have forgotten what they are. They demand independence and freest realization of their own individuality, in which they see the sole source of greatness and progress. In every dependence they perceive a hampering of their natural development.

We have in previous chapters become acquainted with this liberal freedom, particularly in reasoning and in scientific research, the child of the philosophy of humanitarianism and subjectivism, the philosophy that emancipates man from God's rule, from the immutable religious truths, and which sees in this emancipation perfect freedom. We have listened to the arguments in behalf of this position, especially arguments against the duty to believe. All that we have set forth hitherto was to prove that such a freedom is not required. In the faithful adherence to God's revelation and to His Church there is no degradation of reason, an exaltation rather; because to join in the eternal reason of its Creator is not bondage but a privilege.

We proceed. We shall demonstrate that this freedom is not only not required, but that it is entirely untenable and ruinous; that it is especially so because it is urged and demanded in the name of truth and proper order, in the name of uplift of human intellectual life, and of progress towards real enlightenment. We shall see that this freedom is not a liberation from mean fetters, but simply a revolt against the natural order, an apostasy from God and the supernatural which one shuns. Hence, not the natural and orderly development of the human individual, but a principle of negation under the garb of freedom, the severance of man from the sources of his greatness and strength, the perversion of true science; not the only admissible scientific method, but an altogether unscientific method. We shall show that it becomes thereby the principle of mental pauperization and decay, a principle of mental decadence, which in the sphere of idealism will reduce mankind to beggary. [pg 232] Thereby public testimony is given that in the midst of mankind there is needed an intelligent force that preserves, with conscientious earnestness and unyielding firmness, the intellectual inheritance of mankind, the ideal treasures of truth and of morality.

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Chapter I. Free From The Yoke Of The Supernatural.

Ignoramus, We Ignore.

The liberal principle of research rests on the basis of the humanitarian view of the world, which makes man autonomous, and causes him to turn his eyes from above and downward, and to fix them upon his earthly existence. To remain true to its own idea, this liberal science will feel the necessity to sever itself gradually from the restraining powers of the world beyond, and to shun the thought of God and of His divine influence and supremacy over the world and human life. It must resent such truths as a burdensome yoke that oppresses human freedom.

And to this thought it remains faithful, if not in all its representatives, then at any rate in a good many of them. With unremitting persistency it enforces in all its domains the demand: Science must not reckon with supernatural factors. Ignoramus is its watchword, “we do not know it” in the sense of its usual agnosticism, but “we ignore it” in the spirit of the impulse which dreads the loss of its freedom through higher powers. Creation and miracles, divine revelation and the God-imposed duty of belief, it does not know. A moral law, as given by God, does not exist for this science. It wants nothing to do with a religion that worships a personal God, much less with a supernatural religion, with mysteries, miracles, and grace. It praises all the higher that modern religion of sentiment, without dogmas and religious duties, which sovereign man creates for himself, a poetical adornment of his individuality, a religion he need not ask what he owes it, but rather what it offers him. All connection with the world beyond is cut off. Man is now free in his own house. We shall show this in detail, by the testimony [pg 234] chiefly of men generally accepted as foremost representatives of modern science. We do not assert, however, that all representatives of modern science belong here. Far be it from us to sit in judgment as to the good intentions of the champions of liberal science. We know very well that an education indifferent to religion, early habitual association with the ideas of a sceptical, naturalistic philosophy, the acquisition of prejudices and unsolved difficulties, a continuous stay in an intellectual atmosphere foreign and inimical to religious belief—all this, we well understand, will gradually rob the mind of all inclination and unbiassed judgment for religious truth, and thus make for apostasy from religion. Nor do we assert that the idea of God and Christianity are extinct in the hearts of the representatives of liberal science, but we do assert that their science no longer wants to know God and His true religion, that only too often it is in the grip of a Theophobia, which slinks past God and His works, with its eyes designedly averted.

At the same time the unprepossession of this science will be made clear. “A feeling of degradation pervades the German university circles,” so the learned Mommsen expressed himself some years ago when Strassburg was to get a Catholic chair of history; therefore a Catholic who takes his Catholic view of the world as his guide cannot be unprepossessed, hence cannot be a true scientist. We have become used to this reproach; nevertheless it is very painful to a Catholic, especially when he devotes his life to scientific work. The other side claims very emphatically to have a monopoly on unprepossession and truthfulness; it gives most solemn assurances of not desiring anything but the truth, of serving the truth alone, with persevering unselfishness, unaffected by disposition and party interest, and that it has its unbiassed spiritual eye turned only to the chaste sunlight of truth. Hence, we may be permitted to inquire whether these assurances square with the facts. As they demand belief, we may also demand proofs; and if those assurances are accompanied by sharp accusations, the accused will have even a greater right to examine the deeds and records of this assertive science.

What about the unprepossession of liberal science, especially in the province of philosophy and religion? It cannot be our intention to explore the whole territory in every direction. We shall keep to the central and main road, the road to which chiefly lead all other roads of life, we mean the attitude of this school of research towards the world beyond. We find this attitude to be one of persistent ignoring! Science cannot acknowledge the supernatural; this presumption, unproved and impossible of proof, it never loses sight of, it is even made a scientific principle, which is called:

The Principle of Exclusive Natural Causation.

This principle demands that everything belonging to nature in its widest sense, consequently all objects and events of irrational nature and of human life, must be explained by natural causes only; supernatural factors must not be brought in. To assume an interposition by God, in the form of creation, miracle, or revelation, is unscientific; he who does so is not a true scientist. A presumption, a mandate of truly stupendous enormity! How can it be proved that there is no God, that creation, miracles, the supernatural origin of religion, are impossible things? And if they are possible, why should it be forbidden to make use of them in explaining facts which cannot otherwise be explained?

However, it is readily admitted that the principle is merely a postulate, an unproved presumption.

“The postulate of exclusive natural causation tells us that natural events can have their causes only in other natural events, and not in conditions lying outside of the continuity of natural causality”; so W. Wundt. This is a “postulate, accepted by modern natural science partly tacitly, partly by open profession.” “Even where an exact deduction is not possible, natural science nevertheless acts under this supposition. It never will consider a natural event to be causally explained, if it is attempted to derive that event from other conditions than preceding natural events.”

Professor Jodl protests against alliance with the Catholic Church, for the reason that the latter does not acknowledge the fundamental presumption of all scientific research, namely, the uninterrupted natural causation, and because the Church is essentially founded on supernatural presumptions. Prof. A. Messer thinks he has proved sufficiently the untenableness of the Catholic faith by the simple appeal to this [pg 236]presumption: “Natural sciences rest upon the presumption that everything is causally determined. This means, that the same causes must be followed by the same effects, and all natural events take their course according to invariable laws. It is against this presumption that the Church exacts a belief in miracles, in immediate divine manifestations, not explainable by natural causes. God is not a causal factor in the eyes of natural science, because everything, and for that very reason, nothing, could be explained through Him.” We see that the principle is expressly admitted to be a mere presumption. “I concede readily,” says Paulsen, “that the law of natural causation is not a proven fact, but a demand or presumption with which reason approaches the task of explaining natural phenomena. But this postulate ... is the hard-fought victory of long scientific effort.... Gradually there were eliminated from the course of nature demoniacal influence and the miraculous intervention of God, and in their stead the idea of natural causation was installed.”

It is merely another expression for the same thing if one calls, with Paulsen, the unbroken causal connection “the fundamental presumption of all our natural research”; or concludes, with A. Drews, that the assumption of a transcendental God, beyond the visible, and in causal relation to the world, destroys the universal conformity to laws in the world, the self-evident presumption of all scientific knowledge; or one may say, with F. Steudel, “The theory of unbroken causal connection has become the fundamental presupposition of all philosophical explanation of world happenings. This finally disposes of a transcendental God, together with his empiric correlative, the miracle, as a philosophical explanation of the world.” The same result is achieved by declaring evolution from natural factors as the universal world-law.

“I Know not God the Father, Almighty Creator of Heaven and of Earth”

With inexorable persistency this principle is now applied wherever science meets with God and the world beyond. Hence, let us proceed on our way and halt at some points to watch this science at work.

The unbiassed reasoning of the mind shows that this world, limited and finite, in all its phenomena accidental and perishable, cannot have in itself the cause of its existence, hence, that it [pg 237] demands a supernatural creative cause. This solution of the question is by no means demonstrated by liberal science as untenable, it is simply declined.

“Natural science, once for all, has not the least occasion to assume a supernatural act of creation”; this we are told by the famous historian of materialism, F. A. Lange. “To fall back upon explanations of this sort amounts always to straying from scientific grounds, which not only is not permissible in a scientific investigation, but should never enter into consideration.” And L. Plate states: “A creation of matter we cannot assume, nor would such an assumption be any explanation at all; at most, it would be tantamount to exchanging one question mark for another. We natural scientists are modest enough, as matters now stand, to forego a further solution of the question.”They will subscribe to Du Bois-Reymond's “ignoramus” rather than assume the only solution of the question, an act of creation. This scientist, asking himself the question, from where the world-matter received its first impulse, argues: “Let us try to imagine a primordial condition, where matter had not yet been influenced by any cause, and we arrive at the conclusion that matter an infinite time ago was inactive, and equally distributed in infinite space. Since a supernatural impulse does not fit into our theory of the universe, an adequate cause for the first action is lacking.”

Thus they frankly violate the scientific method that demands acceptance of the explanation demonstrated as necessary, and violate it only for the reason to dodge the acknowledgment of a Creator. This is not science, but politics.

But let us ask, Why should it be against science to reckon with supernatural factors? Is it because we cannot disclose with certainty the other world? Are they not aware that such a principle is opposed by the conviction of all mankind, that always held these conceptions to be the highest, and therefore not to be considered illusions? Do they not see, moreover, how they involve themselves in flagrant contradictions? Does not science by means of its laws of reasoning, especially on the principle of causality, constantly infer invisible causes from visible facts? From physical-chemical facts ether and physical atoms, which no man has ever seen, are deduced: from falling stones and the movement of astral bodies is inferred a universal gravitation, undemonstrable by experience; from an anonymous letter is deduced an author. The astronomer deduces from certain facts that fixed stars must have dark companions, [pg 238] visible to no one; from disturbances in the movements of Uranus Leverrier found by calculation the existence and location of Neptune, then not as yet discovered. Hence, what does it mean: “to fall back upon explanations of this sort always amounts to straying away from scientific ground”? Let us imagine a noble vessel on the high seas to have become the victim of a catastrophe. It lies now at the bottom of the sea. Fishes come from all sides and stop musingly before the strange visitor. Whence did this come? Was it made out of water? Impossible! Did it creep up from the bottom of the sea? No! At last a fish reasons: “What we see here has undoubtedly come down to us from a higher world, far above us, and invisible to us.” The speech meets with approval. But another fish objects: “Nonsense! To fall back upon explanations of this sort always amounts to straying away from the scientific grounds on which we fish must stand. We cannot assume such a world to exist, because this would offend against the first principle of our science, the principle of the exclusive natural causation of sea and water.” With these words the speaker departs, wagging his tail, his speech having been received with stupefaction rather than with understanding.

To this philosophy may be applied the word of the Apostle: “Beware lest any man cheat you by philosophy and vain deceit” (Col. ii. 8). No, it is not the spirit of true science that opposes the belief in supernatural factors, but it is the desertion of the traditions and the spirit of a better science. To the representatives of paganism, to Plato and others, the highest goal of human quest of truth was to find God and to worship Him. For the great leaders in recent natural science, Copernicus, Kepler, Newton, Linné, Boyle, Volta, Faraday, and Maxwell, the highest achievement was to point to God's wisdom in the wonderful works of nature; their science ended in prayer. A principle of unbroken natural causation, as a boycott of the Deity, was to them not a postulate of science but an abomination. They were carried by a conviction expressed by a later scientist, W. Thomson, in the following words: “Fear not to be independent thinkers! If you think vigorously enough, you will be forced by science to believe in a God, Who [pg 239] is the basis of all religion”; and expressed by R. Mayer in the following words: “True philosophy must not and cannot be anything else but the propædeutics of the Christian religion.”

But let us proceed. We have before us an astonishing order, we behold uncounted wonders of well-designed purpose in the world. The question suggests itself: Whence this Order? The watch originates from the intelligence of a maker, an accident could not have produced it; hence also the great world-machine must have had an intelligent maker. This is the logic of unbiassed reason. But the principles of liberal research object to the acceptance of this explanation. What is theirs?

There have been some scientists endeavouring to discover the purposeless in nature, and they have gleaned various things. Haeckel invented for them the name Dysteleologists; and this is now the name they go by. Why the destruction of so many living embryos? What is the purpose of pain, of the vermiform appendix? “To what purpose is the immense belt of desert extending through both large continents of the Old World? Could the Sahara not have been avoided?... Indeed, numerous forms of life we cannot look at but with repugnance and horror; for instance, the parasitical beings.” ... (F. Paulsen). Hence the order claimed for the world does not exist, on the contrary, “it is beyond doubt that the most essential means of nature is of a kind which can only be put on a level with the blindest accident” (F. A. Lange). But they do not feel satisfied with this. They feel that even if all these things were actually purposeless, they would amount only to a few drops in the immense ocean of order which still has to be explained. At most, they would form but a few typographical errors in an otherwise ingenious book,—errors that evidently are no proof that the whole book is a mass of nonsense and not dictated by reason.

There appears to them, like a rescuing plank in a shipwreck, Darwin's Natural Selection. The artistic forms in the kingdom of plants and animals arose, says Darwin, by the fact that, among numerous seemingly tentative formations, there were some useful organs or their rudiments which survived in the struggle for existence and became hereditary in the offspring, while others disappeared. It was seen very soon, and it is even better understood to-day, that this enormous feat of “natural selection” is contrary to the facts, and would be, above all, an incredible accident. Nevertheless Darwin has become the rescuing knight for many who became alarmed about the threatening Supernaturalism.

Du Bois-Reymond speaks very frankly: “Albeit, in holding to this theory we may feel like a man kept from drowning only by holding firmly to a plank just strong enough to keep him afloat. But when we have to choose between a plank and death, the preference will decidedly be with the plank.” The same idea is expressed somewhat more gracefully by W. Ostwald: “That the quite complicated problem concerning the purposiveness of organism loses its character of a riddle, at least in principle, and assumes the aspect of a scientific task, all by virtue of this simple thought ... is a gain that cannot be sufficiently appreciated.” With vehement plainness H. Spitzer maintains: “Purposiveness in nature, which was feared by positive research like a ghost, because it really seemed only to be due to the intervention of ghosts in the course of the world, has now been traced by Darwin to its origin from natural causes, and he thereby made it a fit object for the science that is at home only in the sphere of natural causes.” “To the height of this point of view,” D. F. Strauss boasts, “we have been led by modern natural research in Darwin.”[8]

At any rate one thing is settled: “The theological explanation must be rejected,” as Plate puts it. “It sees in adaptation the proof for the love and kindness of a Creator, who has ordered all organisms most conformable to their purpose. Natural Science cannot accept such an explanation.”

Is this the boasted spirit of truthfulness, which desires only the truth,—but is evading it persistently? Is this that unbiassed eye that seeks only the truth? Truly, it seems to be unsound, since it cannot bear the rays of truth. Let us go to another workshop of liberal science. It is known now that our earth has once been a ball of glowing fluid, with a temperature in which no living being could exist. Consequently the latter must have appeared at a later stage of evolution. As a fact, palæontology does not show any remnants of organisms in the lower strata of the earth. Now again a question suggests itself to the scientist, Whence did the first life come from? We have the choice of only two explanations: either it has risen by itself, out of unorganic, dead matter, or it was produced by [pg 241] the hand of a Creator: either by generatio aequivoca or the act of creation. Now there has never been observed a generatio aequivoca, as is testified to by natural science itself, and never has it been accomplished in the laboratory. Therefore, inasmuch as the natural laws of olden times cannot have been any different from those of the present, there has never been a primordial genesis. Do they perhaps give the Creator his due here, where the case is so obvious? Let us see.

The noted zoölogist, R. Hertwig, writes: “Inasmuch as there has doubtless been a time when the prevailing temperature of our globe made any life impossible, there must have been a time when life on it arose either by an act of creation or by primordial genesis. If, conformable to the spirit of natural sciences, we are relying only on natural forces for an explanation of natural phenomena, then we are necessarily led to the hypothesis of primordial genesis,” although it contradicts all experience. But the deduction is only brought forth as a “logical postulate”: there “must” be such genesis after creation is eliminated. “We natural scientists say,” states Plate, “that all living beings must have originated some time in former geological periods ... from dead, unorganic matter; to assume a creation would be no explanation at all, exactly as it would be no explanation to assume the creation of matter.” Which philosophy teaches that it is not an explanation of a fact to assume for it the only reasonable cause? But just this cause they do not want. Virchow says in this respect: “If I do not wish to assume a creative act, if I desire to explain the matter in my way, then it is clear that I must resort to generatio aequivoca. Tertium non datur. There is nothing else left, if one once has said: ‘I do not accept creation, but I want an explanation of it.’ If this is the first thesis, the second thesis is, ergo, I accept the generatio aequivoca. But we have no actual proof of it.” Hence Haeckel only follows the lead of others when he writes: “We admit that this process (primordial genesis) must remain a pure hypothesis, as long as it is not directly observed or duplicated by experiment. But I repeat that this hypothesis is indispensable for the entire coherence of the history of natural creation. Unless you accept the hypothesis of primordial genesis at this one point in the theory of evolution, you must take refuge in the miracle of a supernatural creation.”

Is this science, or is it not rather Theophobia? Does the freedom of science consist, first of all, in the privilege of emancipating one's self from truth, whenever truth is not to one's taste? True, liberal science will then be free from distasteful truths, but all the more shackled by its irreligious prejudices.

In modern times, the theory of evolution is in high favour. [pg 242] On earth we do not only see life, but life in a great variety of forms, from plant to man. The question, whence this variety, admits in its turn only of the alternative: either it was immediately created by God's hand, or it is the result of a slow evolution from common original forms. Whether there has been an evolution within the vegetable and animal kingdom is a problem for natural science. But it is a philosophical question, whether the essentially superior human soul, endowed with spirituality and reason, could have evolved from the inferior animal soul. Philosophy must answer: No, just as impossible as to evolve ten from two, or a whole book from a single proofsheet. Faith says the human soul is created by God. We do not intend to discuss the problem here any further, but shall only point out how science here, too, expressly or tacitly, is determined very energetically by the presumption of the exclusive natural causation; this is applied to the entire theory of evolution, but especially in regard to man.

“The notion of the evolution of the living world on earth,” thus states Weismann quite significantly, “extends far beyond the provinces of individual sciences, and it influences our entire range of thoughts. This notion means nothing less than the elimination of miracle from our knowledge of nature, and the classification of the phenomena of life on an equal footing with the rest of natural events.”The guiding motive is plainly in evidence.

The aim to eliminate the “miracle of creation” is manifested even more conspicuously in the question about the origin of man: man with his entire equipment, intellectual as well as cultural, must have evolved upward from the most imperfect rudiments; this is regarded as a self-evident proposition.

M. Hoernes, for instance, writes: “The Cosmogonies, i.e., the theories of creation, of all nations ascribe the origin of man to a supernatural act of creation, whereby the Creator is imagined as a human being, because at the intellectual stage corresponding to these notions something created could only be conceived as something formed, something constructed.” Thus the theory of creation, and the Christian doctrine of the genesis of man, is disposed of as a notion of the lower intellect. “On the contrary, we are taught by science to look upon the highest mammals as our nearest blood-relatives.” This “we are taught by science,” although it is confessed: “We know the fact of the existence of the man of the fourth, or glacial, period, but we have [pg 243]not a solitary fact that would throw light upon his origin and his previous existence.”

“The theory of miracles can be given up only when we shall cease to contemplate man as a creature apart from the rest of creation, and look upon him as a being developed within creation to what he is now. Then, however, reason and language, as well as man himself, are the products of a continuous evolution,” says Wundt in his “Psychology of Nations.” Fr. Müller, in a text-book on the science of language, argues: “According to Darwin and to modern natural science, man was not created but has evolved from a lower organism during a process of thousands and thousands of years.... For this reason, we must (?) assume that the first language of primitive man could not have ranked above the speech by which animals living in families communicate with each other.”

On the basis of this truly dogmatical presumption, that the “miracle theory” of creation must not be accepted, they proceed then to construe one hypothesis upon another, of the origin of language, of thought, of conscience, of religion, according to the method of Darwin and Spencer, hypotheses of utmost arbitrariness, and frequently most fantastic. “Ethnographical researches,” so we are told by E. Lehmann, “made by travellers, representatives of science and of practical life, in all parts of the globe, ... are starting to-day, almost without exception, from the tacit presumption that the civilization of peoples living in the primitive state represent an early and low stage in a historical chain of evolution.”

All these are suitable commentaries upon the trite proposition that natural science, or more generally science, is incompatible with religious belief. Of course research, like that described above, does not agree with Faith. But the fault lies in its unscientific method, rather than in its scientific character, in its latent atheistic presumption which prevents an unbiassed conception of truth.

In February, 1907, the well-known biologist and priest of the Jesuit order, E. Wasmann, gave three lectures in Berlin on the theory of evolution, before a large audience; they were followed on the fourth evening by a discussion, in the course of which eleven opponents voiced for nearly three hours their objections and attacks, to which Wasmannreplied briefly at midnight, but little time having been allotted to him for this purpose. Wasmann, as well as his chief opponent, Prof. Plateof Berlin, have published the arguments on both sides with notes, comments, and supplements. The report of Prof. Plate lays stress upon the assertion, which had also formed the refrain of all opposing speeches, viz., “the discussion has shown, in the first place, that true research in natural science is impossible for those taking the position of the Roman Catholic Church; secondly, the glaring and irreconcilable [pg 244]opposition of the scientific theory of the world to the Orthodox-Christian view was sharply manifested.” In examining how this was demonstrated by this particular natural science, one meets with a painful surprise.

Even the facts concerning the arrangements for the discussion make an unpleasant impression. It is true, Plate accused Wasmann of calumny on account of the latter's complaint. However, upon comparing closely the statements of both, the following facts remain undisputed. Wasmann notified Plate that he desired to speak twice during the discussion, and that the entire discussion should not last much over two hours. Plate promised to arrange matters accordingly. But on the forenoon of February 18th, the opponents held a meeting, Plate presiding, and they resolved, without the least notification to Wasmann, that there should be eleven speakers against Wasmann, and that the latter should reply but once, at the end. Only just before the beginning of the discussion, the same evening, Plate informed Wasmann of the arrangement, making it practically impossible for the latter to change the situation. Furthermore, upon Plate's proposal, an intermission of five minutes before the appearance of the tenth speaker was decided upon, “in order to give those in the audience, who might find the session too exhausting, a chance to leave.” Thus the audience was to be subjected for three long hours to the influence of heated attacks on Theism, Christianity, and the Church, and without hearing the reply unless they held out from half-past eight in the evening to half-past twelve in the morning.

Plate's Monism rejects principally everything metaphysical: “Monism is the short term for the natural science view of the world, that rejects all preternatural and supernatural ideas.” Solutions, not given by the natural sciences, simply do not exist for him; for him the sun sets on the horizon of his natural science. “Natural laws comprise all that we are able to fathom: what is behind them, or what is living in them and operates in them, is the ultimate question for philosophy, and there one thinks this way, another that way” (Plate). Nevertheless, he knows that “Out of nothing can come nothing: hence matter is eternal,” and he is certain that there is no personal God, no angel nor devil, no beyond nor immortality. Whoever fails to think the same way is no scientist, he is not even a man of sound reason: because “he who has grasped even the elements of natural science, the unity and strict conformity to law of the natural forces, and has a head for sound reasoning, will become a monist all by himself, while the rest are past help, anyhow.”

“The Polytheism of the orthodox Church,” he says further, referring to the mystery of the Trinity, “is irrational”; for “Common Sense says that 3 is not equal to 1, nor 1 to 3,” and this is sufficient for Plate. “Trinity, the Incarnation of the Son of God, Christ's Ascension and His descent into hell, Original Sin, Redemption from sin by Christ's sacrifice, Angels and Devils, the Immaculate Conception, the Infallibility of the Pope, all these and many other doctrines of the orthodox Church are thrown to the winds by anybody convinced of the permanence and imperviousness of the natural laws.” This again is [pg 245]sufficient for him. “The question whether God is personal or impersonal,”says he, in another place, “should never be raised: it is just as preposterous as the question whether God has eyes or not.”Another of his arguments reads: “If the body after death can become dust by natural means, then there must have been conditions under which the dust became by natural means a body.” An analogous argument would be: “If a book can of itself finally wear away into withered and loosened leaves, then there must be conditions under which the perfect book could originate all by itself, and without Prof. Plate, out of withered, loose leaves.”

Plate assures us: “I do not know anything about metaphysics.”We do not want to dispute that. It is regrettable that so many scientists of our times are betraying a pitiable lack of philosophical training, a lack which becomes a social danger if they, nevertheless, yield to the temptation to invade the domain of Philosophy. Even the Protestant scientist G. Wobbermin in referring to the above-mentioned discussion remarked: “Wasmann's opponents on that evening have betrayed without exception a really amazing lack of philosophical training.” In glaring contrast with this ignorance stands their intolerance for any different theory of the world. Because he thinks as a Christian, Wasmann is peremptorily expelled from the ranks of natural scientists. “Father Wasmann is not a true natural scientist, he is not a true scholar.” With this crushing verdict Prof. Plate concluded his speech. He repeats this finding on the last page of his book in conspicuous type: “Father Wasmann, S. J., no true natural scientist, no true scholar.” That his opponent, in answer to questions that go beyond mere natural science, is giving philosophical replies, in accord with the doctrine of Christianity, is explained by “his voluntary or involuntary submission to the Church,” “natural science bows to Theology.” He therefore lacks “the freedom of thought and of deduction.” Sophistical stunts in the service of intolerance! But let us proceed on our way.

The compulsory dogma of the inadmissibility of a supernatural order of the world, and of its operation in the visible world, becomes most manifest when liberal science comes in contact with the miracle. Forsooth, it shirks this contact. But time and again, now and in the past, it is confronted by clearly attested facts and it cannot avoid noticing them. However, it is determined from the outset that miracles are impossible. Of course, this cannot be proved except by the presumption that there is no supermundane God. Even the agnostic Stuart Mill admits that if the existence of God is conceded, an effect produced by His will, which in every instance owes its origin to its creator, appears no longer as a purely arbitrary hypothesis, but must be considered a serious possibility (Essays, 1874). [pg 246] Generally, however, liberal science does not try hard to demonstrate in a scientific way the impossibility.

“It is my unyielding conviction,” so speaks A. Harnack, and his is perhaps the most telling expression of this dogmatic mood, “that anything that happens within time and space is subject to the laws of motion. Hence, that in this sense, i.e., of interrupting the natural connection, there cannot be any miracles.” One simply does not believe such things. “That a tempest at sea,” thus Harnack again, “could have been stilled by a word we do not believe, nor shall we ever again believe it.” Similarly reads Baumgarten's declaration regarding the resurrection of Christ: “Even if all the reports had been written on the third day, and had been transmitted to us as a certainty ... nevertheless modern consciousness could not accept the story.” And W. Foerster writes: “The supposition that such interferences do not occur, and that everything in the world is advancing steadily and in accordance with fixed laws, forms the indispensable presumption of scientific research.” And H. von Sybel holds “An absolute concord with the laws of evolution, a common level in the existence of things terrestrial, forms the presumption of all knowledge: it stands and falls with it.”

This is the presumption, from which is drawn the most extravagant conclusion, which, though so manifestly improper, is made the basis for rejecting the entire supernatural religion of Christianity. Because God's Incarnate Son, in a small town of Palestine, once turned water into wine, will the Christian housewife lose her confidence in the stability of water? When it was suddenly discovered that the orbit of the planet Uranus was not a perfect ellipsis, as required by the law of Kepler, was it thought that these deviations are impossible because there must not be any exception to the law of perfect elliptical movements? Happily, this law continued to be accepted without deeming an irregularity impossible, and shortly afterwards Neptune was discovered and found to be the cause of the disturbance. But anything miraculous, no matter how well proven, must be considered unacceptable by reason of such unsound presumption. Philosophical a-priorism is superior to facts.

Thus St. Augustine tells in his work “De civitate Dei” (1. xxii. c. 8) of a number of miracles happening in his time, of which he had knowledge either as eye-witness or by authentical reports from eye-witnesses. E. Zeller renders judgment on the historical value of the statement as follows: “The narrator is a contemporary, and partly even [pg 247]an eye-witness, of the events reported: by virtue of his episcopal office he is particularly commissioned to closely investigate them; we know him as a man overtowering his contemporaries in intellect and knowledge, second to none in religious zeal, strong faith, and moral earnestness. The wonderful events happened to well-known persons, sometimes in the presence of big crowds of people; they were attested and recorded by official order.” Hence the statement must be accepted without objection. But must it not also be believed? is the query of an unbiassed listener. Not in the judgment of one who is in the tyrannical yoke of his presumptions. “What are we to say about it?” continues Zeller, and finds that “in this unparalleled aggregation of miracles we can after all see nothing else but a proof of the credulity of that age.”The report is incontestable, but it must not be believed!

In our times Lourdes has become the scene of events which are founded on facts, and the miraculous character has been proven at least of some of them. Bertrin, in his “Histoire critique des evénéments de Lourdes,” deals with the attitude of the physicians toward the miracles. The believing physician can enter upon his investigation without prejudice: not so the unbelieving physician and scientist, who is shackled by his prejudice against the possibility of miracles. Of this a few examples:

“How did you get cured?” was the question put by a physician to a young woman who, after having suffered for four years from a suppurating inflammation of the hip joints, complicated by caries, had a few days previously suddenly regained her full health. Pains and sores had disappeared. “By whom was I cured? By the Blessed Virgin!” “Never mind the Blessed Virgin,” replied the physician. “Young woman, why don't you admit that you had been assured in advance that you would get well. You were told that, once in Lourdes, you would suddenly rise from the box wherein you were lying. That sort of thing happens—we call it suggestion.” The girl replied, unhesitatingly, that it did not happen this way at all. Finally the physician offered her money if she would admit having really been cured by suggestion. The girl declined the offer.—Another girl arrived in Lourdes, with a physician's attestation that she was a consumptive. She is cured after the first bath. At the bureau of verification her lungs were found to be no longer diseased. Her physician's statement having been very brief, a telegram was sent to him as a matter of precaution, asking him for another statement without, however, informing him of the cure. The physician immediately wired back: “She is a consumptive.” This was also the opinion of other physicians who had treated the girl. The girl joyfully returns home, and hurries to her physician, requesting him to certify to her cure. He does so quite reluctantly. Upon reading his certificate, she discovers that it said she had been cured, but only of a cough. The case of consumption of his original testimonial had changed into a cough. His dread of a miracle had induced this physician to commit a falsehood.

A. Rambacher, as he relates in a pamphlet, sent the scientific treatise on Lourdes by Dr. Boissarie to Prof. Haeckel, with the request to read [pg 248]it, in order to gain a better notion of the existence of a supernatural world. After some urging he finally received the following reply, which speaks volumes for the attitude of the natural scientist towards facts: “With many thanks I hereby return the book by Dr. Boissarie on the Great Cures of Lourdes which you sent me. The perusal of the same has convinced me anew of the tremendous power of superstition (glorified as ‘pious belief’) of naïve credulity (without critical examination), and of contagious collective suggestion, as well as of the cunning of the clergy, exploiting them for their gain.... The physicians, said to testify in behalf of the ‘miracles’ and the supernatural phenomena, are either ignorant and undiscerning quacks, or positive frauds in collusion with the priests. The most accurate description of the gigantic swindle of Lourdes I know of, is that of Zola in his well-known novel.... With repeated thanks for your kindness ... Ernst Haeckel.” Against all the facts in evidence this dogmatic scientist was safely intrenched behind the stone wall of his presumptions. He knew in advance that everything was superstition or the fraud of cunning priests, that all physicians who certified to cures were quacks and cheats. Zola's tendentious romance considered the best historical source! Mention should be made here how this celebrated novelist dealt with facts at Lourdes. In the year 1892, the time of the great pilgrimage, Zola went to Lourdes. He wanted to observe and then tell what he had seen. An historical novel it was to be; time and again he had proclaimed in the newspapers that he would tell the whole truth. At Lourdes all doors were opened to him; he had admittance anywhere; he could interview and obtain explanations at will. How he kept his promise to report the truth may be shown by a single instance: Marie Lebranchu came to Lourdes on August 20, 1892, suffering from incurable consumption. She was suddenly cured, and never had a relapse. One year after her cure she returned to the miraculous Grotto. The excellent condition of her lungs was again verified. Now, what does Zola make of this event? In his novel the cured girl suffers a terrible relapse upon her first return home, “a brutal return of the disease which remained victorious,” we read in Zola's book. One day, the president of the Lourdes Bureau of Investigation introduced himself to Zola in Paris, and asked him “How dare you let Marie Lebranchudie in your novel; you know very well that she is alive and just as well as you and I.” “What do I care,” was Zola's reply, “I think I have the right to do as I please with the characters I create.” If a romancer desires to avail himself of this privilege he certainly has not the right to proclaim his novels as truthful historical writings, much less may others see in such a novel the “most accurate description of the events at Lourdes.”

Renan at one time said: “Oh, if we just once might have a miracle brought before professional scientists! But, alas! this will never happen!” He borrowed this saying from Voltaire, with the difference that the latter demanded God to perform a miracle before the Academy of Sciences, as if there were need for miracles in a physical or chemical laboratory. Those who desire in earnest to investigate miracles ought to go where they are performed. And even there, where the eyes can [pg 249]see them, it also takes good will to acknowledge them. In this respect an interview is instructive which Zola once had with an editor. The latter asked: “If you were witness to a miracle, that would occur under strictest conditions suggested by yourself, would you acknowledge the miracle? Would you then accept the teachings of the faith?” After a few moments of serious thought, Zola replied: “I do not know, but I do not believe I would” (Bertrin). On April 7, 1875, there came to the Belgian sanctuary, Oostacker, a Flemish labourer, by name Peter de Rudder, whose leg had eight years before been broken below the knee, and who was then suffering from two suppurating cancerous sores, that had formed at the place of the fracture and on the foot. He suddenly was entirely cured. The case was investigated in a most exact way. In 1900 a treatise concerning the case was published by three physicians. E. Wasmann had as early as 1900 published a short extract of it in the “Stimmen aus Maria Laach.” In February, 1907, when, at Berlin, he delivered his lectures which were followed by a discussion, his opponents, headed by Prof. Plate, did not know of this article. When they learned of it, some time afterwards, he was put under the ban because he “had degraded himself to the position of a charlatan by vouching with his scientific repute for the happening of a miraculous cure”; and they said “they would fight him in the same way as they would fight every quack, but as a scientist he was discarded.” Plate had on the evening of the discussion asked of the assembled scientists the question: “Have we ever observed anything like a suspension of the natural laws? The reply to it is an unconditional ‘we have not’; consequently Theism becomes inadmissible to the natural scientist.” Here, in the de Rudder case, is found the required instance. But Plate knows, in advance of any investigation, that it is a fairy tale, believed without critical examination. And Prof. Hansemann, another opposing speaker of that evening, subsequently sent word to Wasmann that: “One can pretty well judge what to think of a natural scientist who publishes such stuff. For this reason I now declare that I shall never in future, no matter how or where, enter into discussion of matters of natural science with Mr. Wasmann.” When on a certain occasion Hegel was advised that some facts did not agree with his philosophical notions, he replied: “The more pity for the facts.”

The English natural scientist, W. Thomson, once said before the British Society at Edinburgh: “Science is bound by eternal honour to face fearlessly every problem that can be clearly laid before it.” The equally famous Faraday, in the name of empirical research, demands of its adherents the determination to stand or to fall with the results of a direct appeal to the facts in the first place, and with the strict logical deductions therefrom in the second. In general these principles are adhered to so long as religious notions are not encountered. [pg 250] But as soon as these are sighted, the engine is reversed, and all scientific principles are forgotten.

A science led by this spirit will set out to emancipate man's moral conduct of life from God and religion. Indeed, the first postulate of modern ethics directs that morality must be independent of religion. That God and eternal salvation is the end of man, the ultimate norm of his moral life, that God's Command is the ultimate reason of the moral obligation, and divine sanction its strongest support, it does not want to acknowledge. Here, too, we find the principle of natural causality in operation. “As in physics God's will must not be made to serve as an explanation, so likewise in the theory of moral phenomena. Both the natural and the moral world, as they exist, may point beyond themselves to something transcendental. But we cannot admit the transcendental ... a scientific explanation will have to be wholly immanent, and anthropological” (Paulsen). According to this approved principle of ignoration, the supreme aim and law of a morality without religion is man, his earthly happiness, and his culture.

Its aims, according to Prof. Jodl, one of its noted champions, are: “Promotion of moral life, fostering of a refined humanity, development of a true fellow-feeling, without the religious and metaphysical notions upon which mankind hitherto has mostly built its ethical ideals.” Kant was the pioneer here: “In so far as morality is based on the conception of man as a free, being, it requires neither the idea of a superior being to make him cognizant of his duties, nor any motive but the law itself in order to observe it ... hence morality for its own sake does not by any means need religion.” This is the viewpoint of the autonomous man, who is his own law. “From the viewpoint of authority,” so tells us E. von Hartmann, “autonomy does not mean anything else but that in ethical matters I am for myself the highest court without appeal.... The God, Who in the beginning spoke to His children from a fiery cloud ... has descended into our bosom, and, transformed into our own being, speaks out of us as a moral autonomy.” Diis extinctis successit humanitas.

“Although an individual representative of science may be a believer in God in his private life,” so argues the English philosopher, W. James, “at any rate the times have passed when it could be said that the heavens announce to science the glory of God, and that the heaven shows the works of His hands.” [pg 251] The flight from divinity, atheism open or disguised, is the psychological effect of the liberal principle. Free thought aims to free man of all authority, it aims at severing from religion his entire existence, marriage, state, schools, and likewise science. “It is undeniable,” we hear from the lips of champions of modern man, standing on the pinnacle of religious liberalism, “that there is a certain forsakenness in this existence of man, as compared to a life brightened by the idea of a God,” but that forsakenness is not purchased too dearly, for “it is the solitude of autonomy, a possession so precious that no price for it could be too high” (Carneri).

Indeed, these modern men use even plainer language: science is applauded for having at last freed man from God. With Kant's principle that we cannot know anything of the supernatural, we are told, there “were thrown overboard the cosmogonic notions of the Semitic races, notions that have so severely oppressed our science and religion, and are still oppressing them.... By this insight an idol is smashed. In a previous chapter I called the Israelites the worshippers of abstract idols; now, I believe, I shall be fully understood.” Indeed, we understand. It means: Away with God. “This German metaphysics frees us from idolatry and reveals to us the living divinity in our own bosom” (Chamberlain).

This is the manner in which this free thought, within science and without, is fulfilling the earnest admonition of the Psalmist: “Seek ye the Lord and be strengthened: seek His face evermore” (Ps. civ. 4), and it turns into irony the words: “This is the generation of them that seek Him, of them that seek the face of the God of Jacob” (Ps. xxiii. 6).

“I Know not Jesus Christ, His Only Begotten Son, Our Lord.”

Where the thought of independence and of this world enslaves the minds, and holds them captive in harsh aversion to the supernatural, an objective judgment on the nature and history of the Christian religion, to say nothing of the Catholic Church, can hardly be hoped for. What may be expected is that [pg 252] we will also meet here with a science which, with its hands held before the eye that fears the light, wards off and combats everything that is specifically Christian. It is to be feared only that it will turn light into darkness regarding the view of life, as also the doctrine and history, of the Christian religion.

Regarding the Christian view of life we need only read the superficial and yet so arrogant discussions of Christian philosophy, as found in Paulsen, Wundt, or E. von Hartmann. From this judicial bench the wisdom of Him, of Whom it is said “And we saw His glory, full of grace and truth,” we see condemned, if not even treated with subtle ridicule.

Let us for instance take Paulsen's presentment of the “View of Life under Christianity.” Whoever reads it, and believes it, to him the teaching of Jesus Christ can only be, what the Apostle said it was to the heathens, foolishness. No longer can he have adoration for its Founder, but rather the pity that one has for an enthusiastic visionary devoid of any knowledge of the world and men. The wisdom taught by Christ is distorted into a sombre grimace, while side by side with it the conception of life of Hellenic paganism is transfigured into a beautiful ideal.

We are told there: “While classical antiquity saw as the task of life the perfect development of the natural powers and talents of man, ... Christianity with clear consciousness makes the contrary the goal of life.” “The cultivation and exercise of intellectual faculties was of great importance to the Greeks.... Primitive Christianity looks upon reason and natural cognition with indifference, even with suspicion and contempt ... indeed, natural reason and knowledge are an obstacle for the kingdom of God. Christianity at first was indifferent, even inimical, not only to philosophy and science, but also to art and poetry. It cuts off not only sensual but also æsthetical gratification,”because St. John condemned the gratification of the eyes (which means something quite different from æsthetical gratification) Christianity is said to reject “the arts of the Muses and athletics: they belong to that sowing of the flesh of which the harvest is perdition.” “What the Christians valued highly was not erudition and eloquence, but silence. Silence is the first thing recommended by Ambrose” (and he the great and renowned representative of early Christian eloquence!). There is more: “In the primitive view the first virtue was valour, especially valour in war; indeed, in Greek and Latin speech the word 'virtue' meant valour; the Christian's virtue, however, is patience and endurance. He does not draw the sword; to him are expressly forbidden not only anger, hatred, and private revenge, but even litigation.”

In this tendentious strain Paulsen continues, with exaggerations and misrepresentations that have nothing in common with science. According to the Greek view, he says, high-mindedness was a great virtue, but, naturally, the Christian is not allowed to have it; “the virtue of the Christian is humility,” i.e., in Paulsen's sense low-mindedness; this is “the starting point of Christianity.” True, the author assures us that Christianity of to-day is no longer the one he is describing; it has adapted itself more to the world. But it is sad to have this gloomy, visionary fanaticism described to us as the one which was taught by the words of Jesus Himself.

The adherent of this Christianity looks upon governments and their aims as something essentially foreign to it, even to be an official “would doubtless have been felt as a contradiction”; but a sudden change is said to have taken place under Constantine. Earthly joys and benefits, the holy ties of the family, those that Jesus in person blessed at Cana, they were, according to St. Paul, so we are told, in the spirit of Christ things to avoid and condemn.

And how are these theological discoveries proven, what sources are quoted in substantiation? By some arbitrarily selected passages of the Scriptures, that one must hate father and mother, wife and child, brother and sister; that the poor in spirit are blessed, that the lust of the eye is sinful, that evil should not be resisted; and in quoting these passages all scientific interpretation is carefully avoided, all the writers who have amply explained them are ignored. And what the scriptural passages fail to prove must be demonstrated by some extreme statement borrowed from Tertullian, who is generally prone to exaggeration. As a matter of course, gloomy Christianity then seems inferior to the brilliancy of Greek paganism; Christianity is directly a danger to civilization; it may be good enough for those tired of life. “The objection has been made that the fulfilment of this command would destroy our entire civilization. Most probably this would be the case. But where is it written (in Holy Writ) that our civilization must be preserved?” We have here the picture formed of the doctrine of Christ by the world, whereof the Lord has predicted: the world will hate you. Paulsen admits frankly: “Whence this hatred? Because the Christian despises that which to the world is the highest good. There can be no better reason for hating any one....”

It is easy to understand that one who has for a long time mentally abandoned his Christian faith, cannot carry in mind its picture as undistorted as he did in his better days, and as would conform to reality. But it is reprehensible to exhibit in public this picture, without having previously and conscientiously examined the main lines, to see whether they are not caricatures. And they are caricatures, traced by a hand that is led by the mood of a secret anti-Christianity.

A treatment identical with that of its view of life is accorded to the doctrine and history of the Christian religion. Not science and uncorrupted truthfulness, but antipathy, presumption, harsh denial of everything divine, only too often point [pg 254] the way. Let us listen again to the author named above, since he knows to express modern thought with a clearness and precision almost unequalled by any one else.

It made a painful impression to find in the Christmas number, 1908, of the liberal-theological “Christliche Welt” a posthumous article by Fr. Paulsen: “What think you of Christ: Whose Son is He?” The article was without doubt one of the last he had written. It contains the program of modern liberal science. “With the seventeenth century,” we read there, “begins the reorganization of the theory of the universe by science. Its general tendency may be described by the formula: Elimination of the supernatural from the natural and historical world.” “Consequently, no miracles in history, no supernatural birth, no resurrection, no revelation, in fact no interference by the Eternal in temporal events.” Hence, the man who “thinks scientifically in this wise can have no doubt that the old ecclesiastical dogma cannot be reconciled with scientific thought.” This, of course, amounts to a complete renunciation of positive Christianity.

This scientific thought, in the words of Baumgarten, “rejects any projection of the supernatural into tangible reality”; especially is “the metaphysical genesis and nature of the Saviour highly offensive to our ethical consciousness,” even “absolutely unbearable.” The Christian religion can no longer be permitted to overtower other religions by its supernaturalness. “The distinction between a revealed and a natural religion becomes an impossibility,” says W. Bousset. And Wundt declares: “Christianity, as an ‘absolute’ or a ‘revealed’ religion, would stand opposed to all other religious development, as an incommensurable magnitude. This point of view, evidently, cannot be competent for our speculations.”

Having become the ruling mode of thought, these presumptions determine from the outset the results to be obtained by “research,” and they force it to violate its own method, so that it may be dragged along the by-ways and false ways of a mistaken, philosophical a-priorism, thereby making freedom of science a mockery. From the abundant material at our disposal let us take only one example, viz., the Modern Criticism of the Gospels.

The Gospels contain many records of facts of a supernatural character, of miracles and prophecies. That these records are necessarily false is the first principle of the historical, or critical, method, as it is called. “As a miracle of itself is unthinkable, so the miracles in the history of Christianity, and in the Christianity of the New Testament, are likewise unthinkable. [pg 255] Hence, when miracles are nevertheless narrated, these narratives must be false, in as far as they report miracles: that is, either the relation did not happen at all, or, if it did, there was a sufficient natural explanation”; “the historian must under all circumstances answer, ‘No,’ to the question whether the report of a miracle is worthy of belief” (T. Zeller). Thus instructed, “unprejudiced” research proceeds to construct its results of the investigation of the genuineness, time and date, of the writing of the Gospels and of the Acts, as well as of their credibility. Let us see how this is done.

The tradition of the early Church, as well as intrinsic evidence, testify that the first Gospel was really written by the Apostle Matthew, and this certainly before the destruction of Jerusalem. Liberal-Protestant criticism, however, assigns its origin to a time after the year 70, chiefly for two reasons: First, the striking prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem, conforming so accurately to the actual event, could have been written only after the year 70; otherwise it would have amounted to a real prophecy subsequently fulfilled, a conclusion that cannot be accepted. The second reason is this: The contents of St. Matthew's Gospel is already wholly Catholic, hence it must have been written during a later, Catholic, period. For as there can be no influences from above, and as everything is evolved in a natural way, the principle must govern: that the more supernatural and the more dogmas, so much later the period in question; at first there could have been only a religion of sentiment without dogma, which gradually developed into Catholic dogmatism. Similar are the presumptions which direct modern research in respect to the genuineness of the other Gospels and the Acts. A few proofs:

Prof. Jülicher thinks that, “While we cannot go prior to the beginning of the second century, because of external testimony, we cannot on the other hand maintain a later date. The most probable time for our Gospel is the one shortly before the year 100....” Why? “Because the ill-fitting feature in the parable of the wedding feast, that the king in his wrath, because his invitation had been made light of, sent forth his armies and destroyed those murderers and burned up their city, could hardly have been invented before the conflagration of Jerusalem”—a prophecy, namely, of the coming destruction of Jerusalem [pg 256]cannot be admitted. “But to my mind, the decisive point is found in the religious position of Matthew. Despite his conservative treatment of tradition, he already stands quite removed from its spirit; he has written a Catholic Gospel.... To Matthew the congregation, the Church, forms the highest court of discipline, being the administrator of all heavenly goods of salvation; his Gospel determines who is to rule, who to give laws: in its essential features the early Catholicism is completed.”

Jülicher arrives at a similar conclusion in his research on St. Luke's Gospel: “That Luke's Gospel was written sometime after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 a.d., is proven beyond any doubt, by xxi. 22-24, where the terrible events of the Jewish war are ‘foretold.’... All arguments in favor of a later date of writing concerning Matthewhold good also of Luke.” Even more unreserved is O. Pfleiderer, until recently a prominent representative of liberal-Protestant theology at Berlin: “In this Gospel we find the elements of dogma, morals, the constitution of the developing Catholic Church. Catholic is its trinitarian formula of christening, this embryo of the Creed and of the apostolic symbol. Catholic is its teaching of Christ ... Catholic, the doctrine of Salvation ... Catholic are the morals ... Catholic, finally, is the importance attached to Peter as the foundation of the Church and as the bearer of the power of the key.” In regard to this latter point Pfleiderer remarks expressly: “In spite of all attempts of Protestants to mitigate this passage (Matt. xvi. 17-20) there is no doubt that it contains the solemn proclamation of Peter's Primacy.”The unsophisticated reader thereupon would be likely to deduct: If the oldest Gospel is already Catholic, then it must be admitted that earliest Christianity was already Catholic. In so reasoning he might have rightly concluded, but he would have shown himself little acquainted with the method of liberal science. This infers contrariwise: early Christianity must not be Catholic, hence the Catholic Gospel cannot be so old, it must be the fraudulent concoction of a later time; “hence the origin of the Gospel of Matthew is to be put down not before the time of Hadrian; in the fourth century rather than in the third.”

A. Harnack fixes the date of the Gospel at shortly after 70, because “Matthew, as well as Luke, are presupposing the destruction of Jerusalem. This follows with the greatest probability from Matt. xxii. 7 (the parable of the marriage feast).” This is to be held also of Luke's Gospel. “This much can be concluded without hesitation: that, as now admitted by almost all critics, Luke's Gospel presupposes the destruction of Jerusalem.”

Remarkable is Harnack's latest attitude towards the Acts; it shows again that the results of modern biblical criticism are less the results of historical research than of philosophical presumptions. In his “Acts of the Apostles” Harnack admits: “Very weighty observations indicate that the Acts (hence also the Gospels) were already written at the beginning of the sixties.” In substantiation he cites not less than six reasons which evidently prove it: they are based upon the principles of sound historical criticism. “These are opposed solely by the observation [pg 257]that the prophecy about the catastrophe of Jerusalem in some striking points comes near to the actual event, and that the reports about the Apparition and the legend of the Ascension would be hard to understand prior to the destruction of Jerusalem. It is hard to decide.... But it is not difficult to judge on which side the weightier arguments are” (viz., on the part of the contention for an earlier date). Yet Harnack is loath to accept the better scientific reasons: they must suffer correction by presumptions. He formulates his final decision in the following way: “Luke wrote at the time of Titus, or during the earlier time of Domitian (?), but perhaps (only perhaps, in spite of decisive arguments) already at the beginning of the sixties.” (Recently Harnack recedes to the time before the destruction of Jerusalem without, however, acknowledging a divine prophecy of this catastrophe.) Similar is this theologian's proof that the fourth Gospel could not have been written by John, the son of Zebedee; because xxi. 20-23 (I will that he tarry till I come) cannot be a prophecy, but must have been written down after the death of the favourite disciple. “The section xx. 20-23 obviously presupposes the death of the beloved disciple; on the other hand he cannot be left out of the 21st Chapter. This 21st Chapter, however, shows no other pen than that which had written Chapters 1-20. This proves that the author of Chapter 21, hence the author of Chapters 1-20, could not have been the son of Zebedee, whose death is there presupposed.” The whole argument again rests upon the refusal to hold possible a prophecy from the lips of Jesus.

The main reason, however, for disputing the genuineness of the fourth Gospel, although external tradition and internal criterions testify to it as the writing of St. John, is, because it teaches so clearly the divinity of Christ: and this must be denied. Significant are, for instance, the words in which Weizsäcker sums up his objections to this gospel: “That the Apostle, the favorite disciple according to the Gospel, who sat at the table beside Christ, should have looked upon and represented everything that he once experienced, as the living together with the incarnate divine Logos, is rather a puzzle. No power of faith and no philosophy can be imagined big enough to extinguish the memory of real life and to replace it by this miraculous image of a divine being ... of one of the original Apostles, it is unthinkable. Upon this the decision of this point will always hinge. Anything else that may be added from the contents of the Gospel is subordinate.”This means, Christ cannot be admitted to be a Divine Being—impossible. An eye-witness could not take Him for it: therefore, this “miraculous picture of a Divine Being” cannot have been the work of an eye-witness.

Like the genuineness of the Gospels, so is also their credibility beyond a doubt. Two of them are written by Apostles, the two others by Disciples of the Apostles: they also have all the marks peculiar to writings of eye or ear witnesses, or of persons who have heard the narratives directly from the lips of [pg 258] eye-witnesses. Nor would any one doubt their credibility if they did not report supernatural facts. But, this being the case, infidel research is bound to arrive at the opposite result.

The writers were frauds—this was long ago the hypothesis of the superficial Hamburg Professor, Samuel Reimarus, whose “Fragments” were published by Lessing. But even to a D. F. Strauss “such a suspicion was repulsive.” The Heidelberg Professor, H. E. Paulus, sought his salvation in trying to reduce the reports of miracles to a natural sense, by doing painful violence to the text: for instance, the Lord did not walk upon the sea, but only along the sea; the miracle of the wine at Cana was only a wedding joke. Then came D. F. Strauss (died 1874), and he tried it in a different way. “If the Gospels are really historical documents, then the miracle cannot be removed from the life of Jesus.” Hence, it is to remain? Indeed not! The Gospels must not be accepted as historical sources. They are products of purposeless poetic legends, the miracles are garlands of religious myths, gradually twined around the picture of Jesus. Myths, however, need time for their formation, hence Strauss fixes the date of the Gospels within the second century. He openly admits that his hypothesis would fall to the ground if but a single Gospel has been written in the first century. As a fact, more recent rationalistic criticism has found itself constrained to drop this hypothesis. F. Ch. Baur (died 1860) fell back upon the fraud-hypothesis of a Reimarus. It, too, has been laid among the dead. Thus they have exhausted themselves in the attempt to shake off the burdensome yoke of truth.

Influenced by Strauss, Baur, and other German critics, E. Renan (died 1892) wrote his “Life of Jesus,” a frivolous romance. Quite frank are the words he wrote down in the preface to the thirteenth edition of his “Vie de Jésus” (1883): “If miracle has any reality, then my book is nothing but a tissue of errors.... If the miracle and the inspiration of certain books are real things, then our method is abominable.” But he silences all doubts by the phrase: “To admit the supernatural is alone sufficient to place one's self outside of science.”

The newer “historical-critical” school, while having disposed [pg 259] of many contentions of the old schools, is nevertheless in its research bound just as energetically by the postulate of conformity to natural laws. The fourth Gospel is pushed aside: in the others all miraculous occurrences are expounded away, till the “historically credible core” is reached.

The books of the Old Testament fare even worse, if possible.

“Does Genesis relate history or a legend?” asks Prof. Gunkel, and continues: “this is no longer a question to the historian.” Well, a legend, then. But how does the historian know this? From his own pantheistic philosophy, which recognizes no God differing from this world: “The narratives of Genesis being mostly of a religious nature, they continuously speak of God. The way, however, in which narratives speak of God is one of the most reliable standards to judge whether they are meant historically or poetically. Here, too, the historian cannot do without a world philosophy. We believe that God acts in the world as the latent, hidden motive of all things ... but He never appears to us as an acting factor jointly with others(the italics are the author's), but always as the ultimate cause of all things. Quite different in many narratives of Genesis. We are able to understand these narratives of miracles and apparitions as the artlessness of primitive people, but we refuse to believe them.”

Analogous to Bible-criticism is the research in other branches of theology. The origin of Christianity, this wonderful power which so suddenly made its appearance in history and speedily vanquished a whole world, must of course not be a work of Heaven. Hence its origin must be explained at any cost in a natural way, or “historically,” as they put it. The religious notions of Christianity must not be conceded a supernatural certainty over all other religions; and “to understand an event historically means: to conceive it by its causal connection with the conditions of a given place and at a certain time of the human life. Hence science cannot consider such a thing as the appearance of a supernatural being upon the earth” (Pfleiderer).

And then they proceed to show that Christianity is a natural, evolutionary product of the Israelite religion, of Greek philosophy, of Oriental myths, and Roman customs. That it is far superior to all these, and that it is the opposite to them in various ways, is carefully hushed up. The inadequacy and impossibility of such an explanation is adroitly concealed. Nor [pg 260] could the Israelite religion of the Old Covenant, according to the naturalistic principle of liberal theology, have had its origin in revelation and the prophets; hence it comes from Babylon, as the product of natural evolution from Oriental myths and customs. Any old and new analogies, hypotheses, and fancies are good enough then to demonstrate this as “historical.”

The Truth is not in Them.

We pause here. We might thus continue for a long time; but it is enough. The patient reader, who has accompanied us on the tedious way to this point, may begin to feel tired. May he excuse the detailed recital for the reason that we had to do some extensive reconnoitring, through the precincts of modern philosophical-religious research, to avoid the reproach that we were making accusations without furnishing proofs. Our contention was, that liberal science is trying to shake off the yoke of religious truth, and to explain it away by its self-made presumptions. We believe that we have proved our contention.

We are confronted by a science that boasts of monopolizing the spirit of truthfulness; as a matter of fact, we see that it uses all scientific devices to shirk the truth and to disguise its effort. In loquacious protests it rejects the “rigid dogmatism,” the “fixed views,” of the Christian faith, and it proclaims experience and reason as the sole criterions of scientific cognition; yet it always stands upon the platform of rigid presumptions, that are derived from no experience, and which no reason can prove. It clamours for research free from presumption, and, without winking an eye, substitutes its own presumption, secretly or openly. It is dishonest.

It promises to preserve for man the highest ideals and blessings for which his mind is yearning, yet it has no religion and no God. It recalls to mind the words spoken by St. Augustine of the philosophers whom he had followed in the false ways of his youth: “They said: truth, and always truth, and talked much of truth, but it was not in them.... Oh, truth, truth, how deeply my inmost spirit sighed after thee, while they filled my ears incessantly with thy bare name and with the palaver of their bulky volumes.” [pg 261] Free it wants to be, this science. One of its disciples boasted: “It has taught its disciples to look down without dizziness from the airy heights of sovereign scepticism. How easy and free one breathes up there!” Aye, it has made itself free,—from the yoke of unpalatable truth. So much more firmly is it fettered, not with the holy bonds of belief in God, but by the more burdensome mental yoke of a disbelief that weakens and blinds the eyes against the cognition of the higher truth:—and bound by the chains of public opinion, which threatens anathema to every one who fails to stop at the border of the natural. Truly free is only the science that enjoys a clear and free perception for the truth. Unfree is a science that restrains the mental eye with the blinkers of theophoby. Our age seeks for the lost happiness of the soul, it seeks longingly God and the supernatural that have been removed from its sight. But science, so often its leader, loathingly dodges God, and refuses to fold the hands and pray. As long as our age does not break with a science that refuses to know a God and a Saviour, so long will it hopelessly grope about without result, and look in vain for an escape from the wretched labyrinth of doubt.

[pg 262]

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Chapter II. The Unscientific Method.

The efforts of liberal science, to remove more and more from its scope the supernatural powers, show clearly that man may feel the truth to be a yoke, and that he may attempt to free himself from this yoke by opposing the truth and by substituting postulates for knowledge. Sceptical, autonomous subjectivism, the philosophy of liberal free thought, has changed the nature of human reasoning, and its relation to truth, and perverted it to its very opposite. No longer is the human mind the vassal of Queen Truth, as Plutarch put it, but the autocratic ruler who degrades truth to the position of a servant. Thus liberal freedom of thought becomes the principle of an unscientific method, because it loses, by false reasoning and false truth, the first condition of solid and scientific research; furthermore, by treating the highest questions with consequent levity, it betrays a lack of earnestness which again renders it unfit for scientific research in serious matters.

False Reasoning.

“The philosophical thinkers of to-day,” says an admirer of Kant, A. Sabatier, “may be divided into two classes, the pre-Kantian and those who have received their initiation and their philosophical baptism from Kant's Critic.”

The Christian philosophy of a St. Thomas, which is, as even representatives of modern philosophy are constrained to admit, “a system carried out with clear perception and great sagacity” (Paulsen), contains many a principle, the intrinsic merit of which will be fully appreciated only when contrasted with the experiments of modern philosophy. An instance is the principle of the old school, that cognition is the likeness of that [pg 263] which is cognized. Apart from the cognition by sense, we are given here the only correct principle, coinciding with the general conviction that reasoning is the mental reproduction of an objective order of existence, independent of us, even in our conception of the metaphysical world. Thinking does not create its object, but is a reproduction of it; it is not a producer, but a painter, who copies the world with his mental brush within himself, sometimes only in the indistinct outlines of indefinite conception, often, however, in the sharp lines of clear cognition.

If, according to its nature, thinking is subject to standards and laws given it by an objective world, then subjective arbitrariness, a method of thought which, while pretending to be a free producer of truth, yet determines it according to necessity or desire; and, even more so, a method of thought which feels itself justified to hold an opinion upon the same question in one way to-day, and another and entirely opposite one to-morrow, is wholly incomprehensible: just as incomprehensible as if a draughtsman, attempting to draw a true picture of St. Peter's Church, would not follow the reality but prefer to draw the picture at random, according to his fancy and mood.

We have stated these fundamental principles already at the beginning of our book, we have also set forth how greatly liberal freedom of thought is lacking the first presumption of any proper science, namely, the clear perception that there is an objective truth in philosophical-religious questions, to which we must submit, there, in fact, most of all.

No! We also want autonomy of thought, especially in questions of metaphysics, where, anyway, there can only be postulates! so shouted Kant to the modern world on the threshold of the nineteenth century. There are no stable truths, everything is relative and changing, adds the modern theory of evolution. At last there is freedom for thought and research, freedom from the yoke of absolute truth! Behold the aberrations of an unbridled rush for freedom which moves the world of to-day. This unruly hankering for a freer existence than allowed by their nature and position, makes unbearable to many modern children of man the idea of iron laws of truth and marked boundaries of thought. Revelling in the consciousness [pg 264] of their sovereign personality, they want to measure all things by their individuality, even religion, philosophy, truth, and ethics. Only that what is created and experienced by them within the sanctuary of their personality, only what is made important and legitimate by their sentiment, is truth and of value to them. Autonomism thus changes unnoticeably into individualism; the own individuality, in its peculiar inclinations, moods, and humours, its exigencies and egotistical aims, its infirmities and diseases—they have, under the name of individual reason, become the law of thinking and reasoning.

Without Knowledge of the Human Nature.

“Varied, according to character, are the demands made by heart and mind,” assures us a representative of modern philosophy, “corresponding to them is the image of the world to which the individual turns by inner necessity. He may waver hither and thither, uncertain as to himself; at last, however, his innermost tendency of life will prevail and press him into the view of the world corresponding to his individuality. Upon its further development worldly and local influences will play a very important part. But the deciding factor in giving the direction is personality.” “And,” continues Prof. Adickes, “the sharper and more one-sided a character type is brought to expression, the more it will be urged into a certain metaphysical or religious tendency, and this man will find no rest, nor feel himself at home in the world, until he has found the view of life that fits him. Nor does man assemble his metaphysics with discrimination on the grounds of logical necessity, choosing here, rejecting there, but it grows within himself by that inner compulsion identical with true freedom.” Hence, not unselfish yielding to truth, no, the inclinations of heart and mind, the “personality” must form the view of the world. Let every type of character therefore develop itself sharply and one-sidedly, let every one get the view of the world corresponding to himself, without regard to objective truth and logical necessity. This precisely is the “true freedom.” “For when is a man more free, than when he chooses and does—without any [pg 265] compulsion, even resisting compulsion—what his innermost soul is urging him to choose and do? How could he be more true to himself, more like himself?” With such a freedom “the outer compulsion” of an absolute truth, to say nothing of the duty to believe, will not agree. “The core of one's very being,” so Harnack informs us, “should be grasped in its depths, and the soul should only know its own needs and the way indicated by it to gratify them.” “According to my character,” says Adickes again, “is the world reflected within myself by intrinsic necessity just as my creed represents it, and no opponent is able to shake my position by arguments of reason or by empirical facts.”

Hence it is not only true, as has been known from the beginning, that the inclinations of the heart are trying to prevail upon reason to urge their desires, and to oppose what displeases them, and that reason must beware of the heart—no, inclination and character are now directly called upon to shape our religion and view of the world. Every type of man, every period, may construct its own philosophical system, or, if this is beyond it, at least its own ideas; it may also shape its own Christianity, according to its experience. As the individual chooses his clothes, and puts his individuality into them, in like manner may the individual put on the view of life that fits him.

These principles represent the apostasy from objective truth, and, at the same time, the apostasy from the principles of true science: their first demand, the proper understanding of truth, is perverted into its very opposite. A necessary quality of scientific research is exactness; exactness, however, demands most conscientious cleaving to truth; scale and measure are its instruments. The reverse of exactness is to cast away scale and measure, to turn eye and ear, not toward reality, but toward one's self, so as to observe personal wishes and inclinations, and then shape the results of the “research” accordingly. This may be a method of freedom, but it cannot be the method of science. The very thing that true research would eliminate in the first place, viz., to have the decision influenced by hobbies and moods, is most important in the method of individualism; objectiveness, deemed by true science the highest requirement, is to that method [pg 266] the least one: what true science first of all insists on, namely, to prove that which is claimed, this method knows but little of. It recalls the method of the gourmet who selects that which gratifies his taste: it may be likened to the dandy picking frock-coat and trousers that suit his whim. True research, with a firm hand at the helm, aims to direct its craft so as to discover new coasts, or at least a new island; the exploring done by liberal research is like casting off the rudder to be tossed by the waves, for its task is only to hold to the course which the waving billows of individual life give to it. True science, finally, seeks for serious results, able to withstand criticism: the research by individualism produces results which, as individualism itself confesses, must not be taken seriously. They are the subjective achievements of amateurs, creations of fashion, cut to the pattern of the ruling principle: nihil nisi quod modernum est. A science that professes such a method is beyond a doubt unfit to play a beneficial part in the endeavour of mankind.

Do not say: but it is not claimed that religion and view of life are matters of scientific research: on the contrary, they are always distinguished from science. It is true, this is not infrequently claimed. But it is also known how energetically just these matters are appropriated by science. Is it not exactly this sphere in which free research is to be active? Is it not its aim to construct a “scientific view of the world,” as opposed to the Christian belief? Is there not the conviction that science has already carried much light and enlightenment into this very sphere, that it has upset the old tenets of faith?

And what an amount of ignorance of human nature underlies these principles! It is the same complete misconception that has always characterized liberalism, and which it has also manifested in economical matters. There, too, it demanded boundless freedom for all economic sources, ignoring man's disordered inclinations that will work disorder and destruction if not restrained by laws. In a similar manner they dream that man, if left to the unrestrained influence of his personality, will soar without fail to the heights of the pure truth. They know no longer the maxim once engraved by the wisdom of the ancient [pg 267] world upon Delphi's sanctuary: “Know thyself”! They no longer know the beguiling and benumbing influence exerted upon reason by inclination, how it fetters the mind. Amor premit oculos, says Quintilian. The thing we like, we desire to establish as true; favourable arguments are decisive, counter arguments are ignored or belittled, inclinations guide the observation, determine the books and sources drawn from. If we meet with something unsympathetic, something that interferes with the liberties we have grown fond of, it takes a rare degree of unselfishness to love the painful truth more than one's self. It is easy to leave cool reason in control in mathematical speculations: they seldom affect the heart; quite different, however, in questions of philosophy and religion that often have vexatious consequences.

We have to concede that D. F. Strauss was right when he wrote: “He who writes about the Rulers of Nineveh or the Pharaohs of Egypt, may pursue a purely historical interest: but Christianity is a power so alive, and the question of what occurred at its origin is involved in such vast consequences for the immediate present, that the inquirer would have to be dull-witted to be interested only in a purely historical way in the solution of these questions.” But we must also regret that this personal interest has misled him, for one, into pernicious ways.

In view of the frequent assurances of the noted historian, Th. Mommsen, that he hates the sight of old Christian inscriptions[9]we may perhaps welcome it in the interest of history that he refrained from writing the fourth volume of his Roman history, wherein the Origin of Christianity was to be treated. One of his biographers asserts that the downfall of paganism through Christianity was a fact not to Mommsen's liking, that “a description of the decomposition of all things ancient, and the substitution therefor of the Nazarene spirit would not have been a labour of love.”[10] And again, when we see the well-known historian of philosophy, F. Ueberweg, in a letter to F. A. Lange, denouncing from the bitterness of his heart “the miserable beggar-principle of Christianity,” and the “surrendering of independence and of personal honour in favour of a servile submission to the master, [pg 268]who is made a Messiah, nay, even the incarnate Son of God,” then we may well dread the historical objectivity of a man of such notions in writing about the religion of Jesus Christ.

With reference to the chief subject of psychology, the noted psychologist, W. James, writes with utmost frankness: “The soul is an entity, and truly one of the worst kind, a scholastic one, and something said to be destined for salvation or perdition. As far as I am concerned, I must frankly admit that the antipathy against the particular soul I find myself burdened with, is an old hardness of heart, which I cannot account for, not even to myself. I will admit that the formal disposition of the question in dispute would come to an end, if the existence of souls could be used for an explanatory principle. I admit the soul would be a means of unification, whereas the working of the brain, or ideas, show no harmonizing efficacy, no matter how thoroughly synchronical they be. Yet, despite these admissions, I never resort in my psychologizing to the soul.”

If we read such statement, if, in addition, we remember the popular-philosophical science of men like Haeckel, particularly perhaps the literature which he recommends for information about Christianity, and of which he himself makes use; if we have read Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, or the “Philosophy of Races” of a Chamberlain,—we can no longer be at a loss what to think of the “rule of reason” and of the “search for pure truth.” Observe, also, the restless haste of those who, having turned their back upon the Catholic Church, now proceed to attack her, observe their agitated work and incitement, how they rummage and ransack the nooks and corners of the history of the Church in quest of refuse and filth, and if the find is not sufficient how they even help it along by forgery, all this to demonstrate to the world that the grandest fact in history is really absurdity and filth;—then one will understand what instincts may be found there to guide “reason and science.” How even sexual impulses are trying to shape their own ethics we shall not examine here. F. W. Foerster relates: “I once heard a moral pervert expound his ethical and religious notions; they were nothing but the reflection of his perverse impulses. But he thought them to be the result of his reasoning.” Is there not known in these days the inherited disorder of the human heart as characterized by the Apostle in the words: “But I see another law in my members, fighting against the law of my mind, and captivating me in the law of sin (Rom. vii. 23)”? The Ancients [pg 269] knew it. The wisdom of Plato knew it, who speaks of the “pricks of sin, sunk into man, coming from an old, unexpiated offence, giving birth to wickedness.” The wise Cicero knew of it: “Nature has bestowed upon us but a few sparks of knowledge, which, corrupted by bad habits and errors, we soon extinguish, with the result that the light of nature does nowhere appear in its clearness and brightness.” Truth is often disagreeable to nature. And if not subdued and ruled by strong discipline, nature proceeds to oppose the truth. Only to lofty self-discipline and purity of morals is reserved the privilege of facing the highest truths with a calm eye. “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”

Mental Bondage.

Of this wisdom the admirer of liberal freedom knows little. Instead of distinguishing the good from the evil in man, of unfolding his inner kernel, the pure spirit, and making it rule; instead of demanding, like Pythagoras, discipline as a preparatory school for wisdom, he has learned from Rousseau, the master of modern Liberalism, that everything in man is good. Depravity of nature, original sin, are unsympathetic things to his ear. Even Goethe wrote to Herder, when Kant had in his religious philosophy found a radical Evil in man: “After it has taken Kant a lifetime to clean his philosophical gown of many filthy prejudices, he now outrageously slabbers it with the stain of the radical Evil, so that Christians, too, may be enticed to come and kiss the seam.” Instead of exhorting for a redemption from internal fetters, as the sages of all ages did, the principle of wisdom now proposed is to quietly let individuality develop, with all its inclinations. They call this freedom. Is it not the freedom whereof the slave of sensuality avails himself to form his theory of life? It, too, “grows up in man with that inner compulsion which is identical with true freedom” (Adickes).

Freedom this may be. But only external freedom, the only freedom they often know. They are unaware that they forfeit thereby the real, the inner freedom. “Thou aimest at free heights,” admonishes even the most impetuous herald of freedom, [pg 270] “thy soul is athirst for stars. But also thy wicked impulses are athirst for freedom. Thy wild hounds want to be free, they bark joyfully in their kennel when thy spirit essays to throw open all dungeons.”[11] They think to be free and speak of the self-assurance of individual reason, and they cannot see that the mind is in the fetters of bondage.

Else how is it that the atheistic free science, considered in general, arrives with infallible regularity at results that obviously tend to a morally loose conduct of life? How is it, that it tries throughout to shirk the acceptance of a personal God, and is at home only in open or disguised atheism? that it so persistently avoids the acceptance of anything supernatural? Why does it in its researches never arrive at theism, which has as much foundation at least as pantheism and atheism? Why does it, nearly without exception, deny or ignore the personal immortality of the soul and a Beyond; why does it never reach the opposite result which, in intrinsic evidence, ranks at least on a par with it? Why is it not admitted, that the will is free and strictly responsible for its acts, although this fact is borne out by the obvious experience and testimony of mankind? Why does it so regularly arrive at the conclusion that the Christian religion has become untenable, and needs development; that its ethics, too, must be reformed, more especially in sexual matters? Why does it not defend the duty to believe, but reject it persistently? A striking fact! The matters in question here concern truths that impose sacrifices upon man, whereas their opposites have connections of intimate friendship with unpurged impulses. It may be noted also that this same science, that announces to the world these results of research, meets with the boisterous applause from the elements that belong to the morally inferior part of mankind.

St. Augustine prays: “Redeem me, O God, from the throng of thoughts, which I feel so painfully within my soul, which feels lowly in Thy presence, which is fleeing to Thy mercy. Grant me that I may not give my assent to them; that I may disapprove of them, even if they seek to delight me, and that I may not stay with them in sleepiness. May they not have the power to insinuate themselves into [pg 271]my works; may I be protected from them in my resolution, may my conscience be protected by Thy keeping.” It is the realization of the want of freedom of the human reason, the only way to the liberation from the fetters of our own imperfection. He, who has seriously begun to take up the struggle with his inner disorders, will, by his own experience, pray as St. Augustine prayed.

Recognizing this fact, man will try to rise above himself, to cleave to a superior Power and Wisdom, who, in purer heights, untouched by human passions, holds aloft the truth, in order to rise thereby above his own bondage; he will understand the necessity of an authority clothed with divine power and dignity, so that it may hold in unvanquished hands the ideal against all onslaughts of human passions. He will without difficulty find this power in the religion of Jesus Christ and in His Church: in Him, who could not be accused of sin, who by His Cross has achieved the highest triumph over flesh and sin, who has surrounded His Church with the bright throng of saints. And if he sees this religion and Church an object of persecution, he will behold in it the signature of its truth. For truth is a yoke despised by sensualism and pride, and the spiritual power that contends for purity and truth will be hated.

Without Earnestness.

The regrettable conception of truth proper to the modern freedom of thought, leads to that flippancy with which our time is prone to treat the highest questions. Why conscientiousness and anxious care? All that is needed is to form one's personal views; there is no certain, generally valid, truth in religious matters. Hence there is often in this sphere of scientific research a method wholly different from that in use anywhere else. In history, philology, natural science, there is a striving for exactness, but in these matters exact reasoning is replaced only too often by discretionary reasoning, by loose forming of ideas; in the very domain which has ever pre-eminently been called the province of the wisdom of life, there is now in vogue the method of flippancy.

True wisdom is convinced that reason has not been given [pg 272] to man to grope in the dark in respect to the most momentous questions of life; that reason, though limited and liable to err, is given him to find the truth. True wisdom knows its difficulties when the matter in quest is metaphysical truth: it knows how, in this case, more than in any other, reason is exposed to the influence of inclinations from within, and to the power of error and of public opinion from without; that in these matters, least of all, reason is not in the habit of taking the truth by assault. True, there are intuitions, and inspiration by genius—they have their rights, but they are the exceptions. The ordinary, and only safe, way is to advance cautiously, by discoursive thinking, from cognition to cognition, otherwise there is danger of a sudden fall from the steep path.

In the early Christian ages this insight led to careful cultivation and application of certain methodical means of thinking and terms of expressions, to definitions, distinctions, and forms of syllogism, with that “insulting lucidity,” in the words of a modern philosopher, which gives to them the stamp of scrupulousness. The same insight into the cognitive weakness of reason leads to the noble union between science and modesty.

What, however, do we see in modern philosophic-religious thinking? Often unsolidity, with hardly a remnant of the principles of the serious pursuit of knowledge.

The autonomous freethinker of these days lacks chiefly humility and modesty. The ancient Sage of Samos once declined the name of “sage,” saying that God alone is wise, while man must be content to be wisdom-loving (φιλόσοφος). Not always so the sages of modern times.

Kant believed of his system: “Critical philosophy must be convinced that there is not in store for it a change of opinions, no improvement nor possibly a differently formed system, but that the system of criticism, resting on a fully assured basis, will be established forever, indispensable for all coming ages to the highest aims of mankind.” Hegel, in turn, was no less convinced of the indispensability of his doctrine. In the summer term of 1820 he began his lectures with the words: “I would say with Christ: I teach the truth, and I am the truth.” Yet, to Schopenhauer Hegel's philosophy is nonsense, humbug, and worse. Schopenhauer knew better, and was convinced that he had lifted the veil of truth higher than any mortal before him; he claimed that he had written paragraphs “which may be taken to [pg 273]have been inspired by the Holy Ghost.” Shortly before his death he wrote: “My curse upon any one, who in reprinting my works shall knowingly make a change; be it but a sentence, or a word, a syllable or a punctuation point.” Nietzsche held: “I have given to the world the most profound book in its possession.” To the eyes of this philosophy, modesty and humility are no longer virtues. B. Spinoza, a leader in later philosophy, states expressly: “Humility is no virtue; it does not spring from reason. It is a sadness, springing from the fact that man becomes aware of his impotence.”

An arrogant mind is not capable of finding the higher truth with certainty; conscientious obedience to truth, unselfish abstention from asserting one's ego, and one's pet opinion, can dwell only in the humble mind. Here applies what St. Augustine said of the Neoplatonists: “To acquiesce in truth you need humility, which, however, is very difficult to instil into your minds.”[12]

When God's authority steps before scientists and earnestly demands faith, they will talk excitedly about their human dignity that does not permit them to believe; about reason being their court of last resort that must not know of submission; and if the Church, in the name of God, steps before them, they become abusive.

Men who have scarcely outgrown their minority often feel it incumbent upon themselves to furnish humanity with new thought and to discard the old. D. F. Strauss, a young under-master of twenty-seven years, writes his “Life of Jesus, critically analyzed” (1835); he tells the Christian world that everything it has hitherto held sacred is a delusion and a snare; he feels the vocation to “replace the old, obsolete, supernatural, method of contemplating the history of Jesus with a new one,” which changes all divine deeds into myths. Hardly out of knickerbockers and kilts, they feel experienced enough to come forth with novel and unheard-of propositions on the highest problems. In business and office, as in public service, sober-mindedness and maturity are demanded; but to work out the ultimate questions of humanity, inexperience and lack of the deeper knowledge of life do not disqualify in our time. If Schiller's [pg 274] complaint of the Kantians of his time was that, “What they have scarcely learned to-day, they want to teach to-morrow,” what is to be said of those who teach even before they have learned? And what superficial thinking do we meet in the philosophy of the day! Lacking all solid training, they proceed to construct new systems, or at least fragments of them. As regards their competence, one is often tempted to quote the harsh words of a modern writer: “I believe Schopenhauer would have formed a better opinion of the human intellect, had he paid less attention to authors and newspaper-writers, and more to the common sense evinced by men in their work and business” (Paulsen).

It would be highly instructive to take a longer journey through the realm of modern philosophy, in so far as it touches upon questions concerning the theory of the world, or even liberal Protestant theology, so as to subject to a searching criticism the untenable notions and attempts at demonstration even of acknowledged representatives of this science, whereby they generally do away with God and miracles, the soul and immortality, freedom of the will, the divine moral laws, the Gospel, the divinity of Christ, and so much more, and show what they offer in place of all this. It would disclose an enormous lack of scientific method: instead of assured results they offer questionable, even untenable theories; in place of proofs, emphatical assertions, imperatives, catch phrases; or else arguments which under the simplest test will prove miscarriages of logic. These philosophers vault ditches and boundaries with ease, and derive full gratification from imperfect and warped ideas. Of course, exactness in philosophical thinking is not a fruit to be plucked while out taking a walk; it is the product of serious mental work, of sterling philosophical training, which, alas, is wanting to-day in large circles of scientists.

As an instance, we point to the method described in a previous chapter, by which all supernatural factors are rejected by the arbitrary postulate of “exclusively natural causation,” without valid proofs, based only upon the arbitrary decision of so-called modern science—in the gravest matter an unscientific process that cannot be outdone.

Another instructive instance, of serious matters treated with levity, is furnished in the unscrupulous way in which the Catholic Church, her teaching, institutions, and history, are passed upon in judgment by those having neither knowledge nor fairness.

Without Reverence.

True wisdom accepts advice and guidance. It feels reverence for sacred and venerable traditions, for the convictions of mankind on the great questions of life, and greater reverence still for an authority of faith that has received from God its warrant to be the teacher of mankind, and which has stood the test of time. True wisdom is convinced that continuity in human thinking and in knowledge is necessary. Life is short, and gives to the individual hardly time to attain mental maturity. Philosophy, and this is the matter before us at present,—philosophy can never be the work of a single person; it is the achievement of centuries; succeeding generations, with searching eye and careful hand, building further upon the achievement for which past ages have laid the foundations. By nailing together beams and boards the individual may erect a house good enough for a short time to serve his sports and pleasures; and if wrecked by the first storm, it may be replaced by another. But the building of massive and towering cathedrals that last for ages required the work of generations. And only skilful and experienced hands may do the work; haste is out of place here. The ancient sages of Greece, Plato, Pythagoras, and Aristotle, had this reverence for the philosophical and religious traditions of the past. These representatives of true wisdom did not consider philosophy and theology as the product of individual sagacity, they did not attempt to be free rulers in the realm of thought; on the contrary, they looked upon wisdom as the patrimony of the past, which it was their duty to preserve.

They pointed to their venerable traditions, however meagre they were. “Our forefathers,” says Plato, “who were better than we are, and stood nearer to the gods than we, have handed down to us this revelation.”[13] That the testimony of the great sages, to the effect [pg 276]that the most essential elements of their philosophy had their origin in religious traditions, is based upon truth and not on fancy has been proven by O. Willmann, whose knowledge of ancient civilization was very extensive, in his monumental “History of Idealism.” Delhi, the home of mysteries, the generations of priests in ancient Egypt, the doctrinal traditions of the Chaldeans, the Magi of Medes and Persians, and the wisdom of the Brahmins of ancient India are witnesses to the fact. “The Ancients were correct,” says Willmann, “in tracing their philosophy to earliest traditions ... they knew what they owed to their forefathers better than we do. They direct our astonished eyes to a very ancient reality, to a towering remoteness of living thought.” This fact is very much against the taste of our times.... An inherited wisdom, springing from an original revelation, adapted to the nations, shining with renewed brightness in true philosophy, is quite the opposite to a philosophy that seeks the source of mental life only in isolated thinking; that thinks its success to be conditioned upon unprepossession; that holds the refutation of tradition to be the test of its strength.

Unfortunately this latter view is widespread in our time. Research is often directed, not by reverence for the wisdom inherited from many Christian centuries, but by the mania, unwise and fatal alike, of seeking new paths. “Love of truth,” so we are told, “is what urges on the great leaders of humanity, the prophets and reformers, to seek new and untrodden paths of life. ‘Plus ultra’ is the rallying-cry of these pathfinders of the future, who are clearing the way for the mental life of mankind. No authority can restrain them, no prejudice, however holy: they are following the light which has dawned upon their soul” (Paulsen).

And a multitude discover this light in their souls, and join the prophets and pathfinders! Everybody goes abroad looking for untrodden paths; from all directions comes the cry: Here and there, to the right, to the left, is the right way! Do we not only too often see self-willed and self-satisfied thinkers, whose shortsighted conceit gets within the four walls of their study puffed up against God and religion, offer us for holy truth the fanciful products of their narrow brains? Do we not see, only too often, champions of shallow reasoning, without discipline of thought and without ethical maturity, recommending their undigested efforts as the wisdom of the world? Youthful thinkers there are in numbers, each of whom claims that he at last has succeeded in solving the world riddle; they [pg 277] offer us new theories of the world, new ideas on ethics, on law and theology, for a few dollars per copy or less. The holy abode of truth has become the campus for saunterers, each eager to displace the other so that he may be sole proprietor, or at least a respected partner. Day by day new solutions of “problems,” “vital questions,” or at least “outlines” of them; new “views of the world”; new forms of religion and of Christianity for the “modern man”; “reforms” of marriage and of sexual ethics, and so on. Truth had not been discovered until the newcomer puts his pen to the paper. Every one is free to join in. Yea, more, he may not only join in, but lash those who do not applaud him. According to this notion, nothing has a right to exist, no “sacred prejudice” may be claimed once this self-appointed representative of science takes the field for “research.” Behold the Christian truth, it has stood the test of centuries: but it cannot resist these scientific freebooters, they rush over it with banners flying.

Severe speech would here be in order. A painful spectacle, these doings of modern thought in the sacred precincts of truth. “Put off the shoes from thy feet; for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground,” we imagine to hear; yet this sanctuary of truth has been made a profane place of bartering.

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While still a pagan, but moved by his desire for truth, the philosopher Justin went to the schools of his day to seek the solution of his doubts and queries. First he turned to a Stoic, but as he taught nothing of God, Justin was unsatisfied. He next went to a Peripatetic teacher, then to a Pythagorean, but failed to find what he desired. The Platonist at last gave him something. Walking alone along the beach, and musing over Plato's principles, he met an old man who referred him to the truth of Christianity, to the Prophets and the Apostles: “They alone have seen the truth and proclaimed it unto man, they were afraid of no one, knew no fear; yielded to no opinion; filled with the Holy Ghost, they spoke only what they saw and heard. The Scriptures are still extant, and he who takes them up will find in them a treasure of information about principles and ultimate things, and all else the philosopher must know, [pg 278] if he believes them.”[14] And Justin found truth and peace, and bowed to the yoke of the doctrine of Jesus Christ.

What a striking contrast between this serious love of truth in the days of passing heathendom, and the uncontrolled thinking of so many in our Christian age! To them truth is no longer a sacred treasure, a yoke to be assumed in reverence; it has become the plaything of their impressions and inclinations. Indeed, they consider it a burden to accept the old Christian truth, with which they meet on all their ways.

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Chapter III. The Bitter Fruit.

The Vocation of Science.

Science is, and ever was, an influential factor operating upon the thought, aims, and actions of man. Hence science must remain conscious of its vocation. First of all it is to hold aloft and preserve the spiritual possessions of mankind. True, science must also progress; but progress means growth, which presupposes the preservation of what has been received from of old. This applies pre-eminently to the philosophical-religious patrimony of the past; no error could be more fatal than to presume that each generation must start from the beginning, that the foundations, which have safely supported human life for centuries, must be obsolete because human nature is suddenly considered changed.

What are these foundations? They are the tested religious and moral convictions of mankind, and, for our nations particularly, the divine tenets of Christianity, that have been their highest ideals for centuries, and have produced serenity and a high standard of morality. If science aims to be the principle of conservation and not of destruction, it must look upon the safeguarding of those possessions of the nations as its sacred task. Indeed, it would perform this task but poorly were it to waste this patrimony piece by piece, or to shatter it with wicked fist, instead of respecting and honouring it, or to set fire to the sanctuary where mankind hitherto has dwelled in peace and happiness. A science of this kind would not only cease to be a bulwark for the mental life of mankind, but turn into a positive danger.

In as far as it follows the principles of liberal freedom of research, present-day science does present this danger. This cannot [pg 280] be denied, the facts speak too plainly. By its very nature it must become such danger. For it recognizes no belief, neither in God nor in the Church; no dogmas, no “prejudices,” no traditions, however sacred, are to be respected; it is fundamental unbelief, the principle of opposition to the Christian religion. Its autonomous Subject emancipates himself from the yoke of objective truth which he cannot procreate free out of himself. It confesses the principle that there are neither truths nor values that endure; plus ultra! always new ideas! Quieta movere, hitherto the watchword of unwisdom, is this science's maxim. And liberal freedom of research is what its nature compels it to be. Can it do any more than it has done, to prove itself a principle of mental pauperism? We shall not demand a list of the things it has thrown aside and shattered. Let us rather ask, what it has left whole of the sacred institutions of truth, inherited from a Christian past. Alas, it has cast off and denied everything; it has lost not only the things a Christian age has treasured, but even those a higher paganism had revered. Let us examine this sad work of negation and annihilation. It is a more melancholy spectacle than any war of extermination that was ever waged against Europe's Christian civilization by a people bent on trampling down every flower of Christian culture, and on razing every castle to the ground.

Are We Still Christians?

This was the question proposed some scores of years ago by D. Strauss to himself, and to those of his mind. With this question we will begin. To our forefathers, especially of the German nation, nothing was more sacred than the Christian religion; no people like the German has absorbed it so fully, has been so permeated with it. But now, wherever liberal science—here especially modern Protestant theology that brings liberal freedom of research into full application—wherever it has made the Christian religion a subject of its study, one treasure after another has been lost; of the whole of Christendom nothing remains but an empty name and a formal homage, reminding of the courtesy paid to deposed rulers.

In the first place, there has been dropped the fundamental thesis of the divinity of Christ, whereupon rests the entire structure of Christianity. Man's modern emancipation from everything supernatural has been accomplished also with respect to the person of Christ: the man Christ is divested of His divinity and of everything miraculous; His birth by the virgin, His miracles and prophecies, His resurrection and ascension, once the subjects of exalting feasts, have fallen a victim to unbelieving science. It is true, they exert themselves to keep His person in view, they want the purely human Jesus to hold His old position of God and man in the believing consciousness, to conceal the mental pauperization. But this trick is failing more and more. The Son of God sees Himself gradually placed among the great men of history; we are becoming accustomed to find in the “Biographies of Celebrated Men,” among “Religious Educators,” side by side with Confucius, Buddha, Augustine, Mohammed, Luther, Kant, and Goethe, also the name of Jesus. The lustre of the past belief in His divinity is paling. In the eyes of unbelieving science He has ceased to be the infallible, all-surpassing Authority, and the basis of the faith. The teaching of Jesus has become the subject of an analyzing and eliminating criticism, and whenever deemed advisable His authority is simply ignored; He was human, affected by the views and errors of His age.

Thus they know, as does H. Gunkel, that “Jesus and the Apostles evidently have taken those narratives (the miracles of Genesis) to be reality and not poetry”; “the men of the New Testament on such questions take no particular attitude but share the (erroneous) opinions of their times.” They also know “that in regard to persons possessed with demons Jesus shared the erroneous notions of his time” (Braun), and Fr. Delitzsch informs us that it was “particularly a Babylonian superstition,” in consequence of which “the belief in demons and devils assumed such importance in the imagination of Jesus of Nazareth and of his Galilean disciples.” Thus the word is fulfilled literally: “He is a sign which will be contradicted.”

No one knows really who Jesus was. His person is the football of opinions. “If any one desiring reliable information, as to who Jesus Christ was, and what message He brought, should consult the literature of the day, he would find buzzing round [pg 282] him contradictory voices.... Taken all in all, the impression made by these contradicting opinions is depressing: the confusion seems past hope,” admits Prof. Harnack.

Also E. V. Hartmann remarks: “Thus, according to some, Jesus was a poet, to others a mystic visionary, a third sees in him the militant hero for freedom and human dignity, to a fourth he was the organizer of a new Church and of an ecclesiastical system of ethics, to a fifth the rationalistic reformer ... to the eleventh a naturalistic pantheist like Giordano Bruno, to the twelfth a superman on the order of Nietzsche's Zarathustra....” A chaos of opinions agreeing only in the one aim of rejecting His divinity. A. Schweitzer, himself a representative of liberal Protestant research, says, “Nothing is more negative than the result of the research concerning the life of Jesus.” And knowing Jesus's person no longer, they no longer know anything certain about His teaching, as is clear from the above. According to I. Wellhausen, from the “unsufficient fragments at hand we can get but a scanty conception of the doctrine of Jesus.”—The fathers were rich, the children have grown poor. Dissipaverunt substantiam suam!

To many even the existence of Jesus has become doubtful; and this not only to men of an irreligious propaganda, like Prof. A. Drews, who, carried away by the corroding tendency of a radical age, journeyed from town to town in order to proclaim, in the twentieth century of Christian reckoning, the scientific discovery of the “Myth of Christ”; but even to others the existence of Jesus has become doubtful or at least valueless. The task now is to do away entirely with the person of Jesus, and to solve the problem of preserving a Christian faith without a Christ. In this sense Prof. M. Rade writes: “Serious and gifted men having asserted that Jesus never existed (or, what amounts to the same, that, if He ever lived, nothing is known of Him; hence, His existence is of no historical importance), we dogmatists almost have to be grateful to them for having helped us to put a very concrete question no longer in general terms: how does religious certainty face historical criticism? but quite specifically: how does religious certainty (of the Christian) regard the historic-scientific possibility of the non-existence of the historical Jesus?” They frankly assert that they could entirely forego the person of Christ. Thus Prof. P. W. Schmiedeldeclares: “My innermost religious conviction would not suffer injury were I to be convinced to-day that Jesus never lived.... I would know that I could not lose the measure of piety that has become my property long since, even if I cannot derive it any longer from Jesus.” “Neither does my piety require me to see in Jesus an absolutely perfect type, nor would it disturb me were I to find someone else actually surpassing Him, which undoubtedly is the case in some respects.”For him to whom Christ is no longer God but a man and capable of error, His person and existence have necessarily lost their value.

Thus we have arrived at a Christianity without a Christ. As yet the person of the Lord is usually surrounded by a halo: [pg 283] it is the after-effect of a faithful past, the last rays of a setting sun. That this last glimmer, too, will pale and give way to darkness is but a question of time, when with more honesty expression will be given to the conclusion necessarily arrived at. If Christ is not what He claimed to be, God and Messiah, then the belief in His being the Son of God and the Messiah, in His right to abrogate the religion of the Old Testament and to found a new religion, commanding its acceptance under penalty of damnation—all this can be nothing but the result of religious fanaticism and mental derangement. And science is, in all seriousness, preparing to turn into this direction.

It is true, many are hesitating to draw these fearful conclusions and to utter them; arriving at this point, they cautiously stop: so Harnack. “How Jesus could arrive at the consciousness of His unique relation to God as His Son, how He became conscious of His power as well as of the obligation and task involved in this power, that is His secret, and no psychology will ever disclose it.... Here, all research must halt.” It is the silence of embarrassment, but equally of unscientific method. Having arrived at untenable conclusions, when question upon question is impetuously suggested, they stop suddenly and have nothing to say but a vague word about inscrutableness.

But there are those who actually speak the word so horrible to a Christian heart: Jesus was demented, a subject for pathology. Straussindicated this cautiously: “One who expects to return after his death in a manner in which no human being had ever returned, he is to us ... not exactly a lunatic, but a great visionary.” Others speak more plainly. Holtzmann's answer to the question: Was Jesus an Ecstatic, is an emphatic: “Yes, He was.” De Loosten considers him insane. E. Rasmussen thinks Him an epileptic, but grants to physicians the right to reckon him among paranoiacs or lunatics. To A. JülicherJesus is a visionary, “a mystic, not satisfied to dream of his ideals, but who lived with them, worked with them, even saw them tangibly before his eyes, deceiving himself and others.” Thus the supernatural has become madness; Jesus Christ, for whose divinity the martyrs went to their death, wears now, before the forum of a false science, Herod's cloak of foolishness.

With the fall of this fundamental dogma there must necessarily fall all other specific truths of Christianity, and they have fallen. The Holy Writ, once the work of the Holy Ghost, has now become a book like the Indian Vedda, to some perhaps even more unreliable; original sin, Redemption and grace, the Sacrifice of the Mass and the Sacraments, have been dropped or [pg 284] changed into symbols, of which every one may think what he pleases. They have tried to make Christianity “acceptable to our times,” to “bring it nearer to the modern idea.” There is really nothing left to offend modern man, nothing that could get in conflict with any idea. The essence of Christianity is depreciated and emptied until it has become only a vague sentiment, without thought; a few names, without ideas. “Christianity as a Gospel,” so teaches Harnack, “has but one aim: to find the living God, that every individual may find Him as his God, gaining strength and joy and peace. How it attains this aim through the centuries, whether with the Coefficient of the Jewish or the Greek, of flight from the world or of civilization, of Gnosticism or Agnosticism—this all is of secondary consideration.” Of secondary consideration it is, then, whether one is convinced of the existence of God or whether he doubts with the agnostics, whether he believes in a personal God or not. To-day even the pantheist who does not acknowledge a Creator of Heaven and Earth may be a Christian; and so can he who no longer believes in personal immortality and in a hereafter; for, we are informed, “this religion is above the contrasts of here and the beyond, of life and death, of Reason and Ecstatics, of Judaism and Hellenism” (Harnack). Thus there is no thought which could not be made to agree with this despoiled Christianity. For, we are told further, “much less does the Gospel presuppose, or is joined to, a fixed theory of nature—not even in a negative sense could this be asserted” (Harnack). Materialism and Spiritualism, Theism and Pantheism, Belief or Negation of Creation, everything will harmonize with a Christianity thus degraded to a thing without character or principle.[15]

All that is left is a word of love, of a kind Father, of filiation to God, and union with God: words robbed of their true meaning; a shell without a kernel, ruins with the name “Christianity” still inscribed thereon, telling of a house that once [pg 285] stood here, wherein the fathers dwelt, but long since vacated by their children. Dissipaverunt substantiam suam!

As to God and divine filiation, everybody is welcome to his own interpretation. He may form with O. Pfleiderer the “Neoprotestantism”which, “after breaking with all ecclesiastical dogmas, recalled to mind the truths of the Christian religion, hidden beneath the surface of these dogmas, in order to realize, more purely and more perfectly than ever before, the truth of God's incarnation in the new forms of autonomous thought and of the moral life of human society.” Christianity and God—the symbols of autonomous man! Or he may follow Bousset, to whom nature is God, and in this way combines harmoniously Christianity and Atheism. “This is the forceful evolution of Christian religion,” says he, “the notion of redemption, the Dogma of the divinity of Christ, the trinity, the idea of satisfaction and sacrifice, miracles, the old conception of revelation—all these we see carried off by this wave of progress.” “What is left? Timid people may think: a wreck. But to our pleasant surprise we found stated at many points in our inquiry: what is left is the simple Gospel of Jesus.” And what does this simplified Gospel contain? “Of course we cannot simply accept in full the Gospel of Jesus.... There is the internal and the external. The external and non-essential includes the judgment of the world, angels, miracles, inspiration, and other things.” All this may be disregarded. “But even the essentials, the internal of the Gospel cannot be simply subscribed to. They must be interpreted.” What, then, is this essential, this internal of the Gospel, and what is its interpretation? “The belief of the Gospel in the personal heavenly Father; to this we hold fast with all our strength. But we carry this belief in God into our modern thought.” And what becomes then of “God”? “To us, God is no longer the kind Father above the starry skies. God is the Infinite, Omnipotent, who is active in the immense universe, in infiniteness of time and space, in infinitely small and in infinitely large things. He is the God whose garb is the iron law of nature which hides Him from the human eye by a compact, impenetrable veil.” We see the belief of the Gospel has dwindled down to atheistic Monism.

As early as 1874 Ed. von Hartmann, in his book “Die Selbstzersetzung des Christentums,” came to the conclusion that “liberal Protestantism has in no sense the right to claim a place within Christendom.” In a later book his keen examination demonstrates how the speculation of liberal Protestantism has changed the Christian religion step by step into pantheism: “Not a single point in the doctrine of the Church is spared by this upheaval of principle, every dogma is formally turned into its very opposite, in order to make its religious idea conform to the tenet of divine immanence.”

This is called the development of Christianity. It is this “religious progress,” the same “free Christianity,” that they are now trying to promote by international congresses. The invitation to the “World's Congress for free Christianity and religious progress” at Berlin, in 1910, was signed by more than 130 German professors, including [pg 286]47 theologians. We have here the development of the dying into the lifeless corpse, the progress of the strong castle into a dilapidated ruin, the advance of the rich man to beggary.

We began our inquiry with the question proposed some years ago by D. Strauss to his brethren-in-spirit: Are we still Christians? We may now quote the answer, which he gives at the conclusion of his own investigation: “Now, I think, we are through. And the result? the reply to my question?—must I state it explicitly? Very well; my conviction is, that if we do not want to make excuses, if we do not want to shift and shuffle and quibble, if yes is to be yes, and no to remain no, in short, if we desire to speak like honest, sincere men, we must confess: we are no longer Christians.”

This is the bitter fruit of autonomous freedom of thinking, which, declining any guidance by faith, recognizes no other judge of truth than individual reason, with all the license and the hidden inclinations that rule it. Protestantism has adopted this freedom of research as its principle; in consistently applying it, Protestantism has completely denatured the Christian religion. If anything can prove irrefutably the monstrosity and cultural incapacity of modern freedom of research, it is the fate of Protestantism. Any one capable of seriously judging serious things must realize here how pernicious this freedom is for the human mind.

Reduced to Beggary.

But the loss is even greater. The better class of paganism still clung to the general notion of an existing personal God, of a future life, of a reward after death; it was convinced of the existence of an immortal soul and a future reward, of the necessity of religion, of immutable standards for morals and thought. Has liberal science at least been able to preserve this essential property of a higher paganism? Alas, no! It has lost nearly everything.

No longer has it a personal God. While belief in God may still survive in the hearts of many representatives of this science, it has vanished from science itself. It begs to be [pg 287] excused from accepting any solution of questions, if God is a factor in the solution. The opinion prevails that Kant has forever shattered all rational demonstrations of the existence of God. Yet Kant permits this existence as a “postulate,” which, according to Strauss, “may be regarded as the attic room, where God who has been retired from His office may be decently sheltered and employed.” But now He has been given notice to quit even this refuge. There must be nothing left of Him but His venerable name, which is appropriated by the new apostasy in the guise of pantheism or a masked materialism. Monism is the joint name for it: this is the modern “belief in God.” In days gone by it was frankly called “atheism.”

This disappearance of the old belief in God is noted with satisfaction by modern science: “It is true,” says Paulsen, “the belief in gods ... is dying out, and will never be resurrected. Nor is there an essential difference whether many or only one of these beings are assumed. A monotheism which looks upon God as an individual being and lets him occasionally interfere in the world as in something separate from and foreign to him, such a monotheism is essentially not different from polytheism. If one should insist on such conception of theism, then, of course, it will be difficult to contradict those who maintain that science must lead to atheism.”

Therefore God, as a personal being, is dead, and will never come to life again. While there is an enormous exaggeration in these words, they nevertheless glaringly characterize the ideas of the science of which Paulsen is the mouthpiece. It does not want directly to give up the name of God; it serves as a mask to conceal the uncanny features of pantheism and materialism.

“The universe,” we hear often and in many variations, “is the expression of a uniform, original principle, which may be termed God, Nature, primitive force, or anything else, and which appears to man in manifold forms of energy, like matter, light, warmth, electricity, chemical energy, or psychical process.... These fundamental ideas of monism are by no means ‘atheistic.’ Many monists in spite of assertions to the contrary believe in a supreme divine principle, which penetrates the whole world, living and operating in everything. Of course, if God is taken to mean a being who exists outside of the world ... then it is true we are atheists” (Plate). We have already seen that one can even be a Protestant theologian and yet be satisfied with a “God” of this description.

In the place of God has stepped man, with his advanced civilization, radiant in the divine aureole of the absolute as its [pg 288] highest incarnation. But what has liberal research done even to him? According to the Christian idea, man bears the stamp of God on his forehead: “after My image I have created thee”; in his breast he carries a spiritual soul, endowed with freedom and immortality—gloria et honore coronasti eum. Liberal science pretends to uplift and exalt man; but in reality it strips him of his adornments, one after the other. He is no longer a creature of God because this would contradict science. His birthplace and the home of his childhood are no longer in Paradise, but in the jungles of Africa, among the animals, whose descendent man is now said to be. Liberal science, almost without exception, denies the freedom of will which raises man high above the beast, and as a rule it calls such freedom an “illusion”: of a substantial soul, of immortality, of an ultimate possession of God after death, it frequently, if not always, knows nothing.

Let us take up a handbook of modern Psychology of this kind, Wundt's, for instance. We see at a glance that it is a very learned work. The thirty lectures inform us in minute investigations of the various methods and resources of psychological research. The reader has reached the twentieth lecture, and he asks, how about the soul? The title of the book states that the chapters would treat of the human soul, but so far not a word has been said about it. But there are ten lectures more; he continues to turn over the leaves of the book. He finds beautiful things said about expression and emotions, about instincts in animal and man, about spontaneous actions and other things. At last, the third before the last page of the book, there arises the question, what about the soul, and what does the reader learn? “Our soul is nothing else, but the sum total of our perception, our feeling and our will.” The conviction he held hitherto, that he possessed a substantial, immortal soul, which remains through changing conceptions and sentiments, he sees rejected as “fiction.” The reader learns that, though he may still use the term “soul,” he has no real soul, much less a spiritual soul, least of all an immortal soul. In its stead he is treated to some learned statements about muscular sensations and such things, by way of compensation. Jodl, too, speaks of the “illusions, based upon the old theories about the soul,” and he rejects the dualistic psychology which “mistook an abstract thought, the soul, for a real being, for an immaterial substance”; and which defended this notion “with worthless reasons.”

It is manifest that, together with the substantial soul, immortality is also disposed of. True, here too the word is cautiously retained; but by immortality is now understood perpetuation in the human race, in the ideas of posterity, in “objective spirit,” in the “imperishable [pg 289]value of ethical possessions,” for which the individual has laboured. Some fine words are said about it, as roses are used to cover a grave. Yet, it is only the immortality of the barrel of Regulus, or the Gordian knot in history, the immortality of which the printers' press may partake in the effect of the books it prints. To quote Jodl again: “The fact of the objective spirit, together with the organic connection of the generations to one another, form the scientific reality of what appears in popular, mythological tenets of faith as the idea of personal immortality ... and which has been defended by the dualistic psychology with worthless, invalid arguments.” The refutation of these arguments does not bother him. “A refutation of these scholastic arguments is as little needed as a refutation of the belief in the miracles and demons of former centuries is needed by a man standing on the ground of modern natural science.” This reminds one of Haeckel's method. The latter nevertheless found it worth while in his “Weltraetsel” to dispose in thirteen lines of six such arguments, and then to assure the reader that “All these and similar arguments have fallen to the ground.” That the matter in question is an idea that has been the foundation of Christian civilization and ethics for thousands of years, that has led millions to holiness; an idea, indeed, that has been the common property of all nations at all times—this seems to count for very little.

This technique of a superficial speculation, which, devoid of piety, casts everything overboard, finds no trouble in disposing of the entire spiritual world. “No one is capable,” says Jodl again, “of imagining a purely spiritual reality.” This is disposed of. “Since the war between the Aristotle-scholastic and the mechanical method has been waged, spiritual powers have never played any other part in the explanation of the world than that of an unknown quantity in equations of a higher degree, which, unsolvable by methods hitherto prevalent, are only awaiting the superior master and a new technique (sic) in order to disappear” (p. 77 seq.).

With the denial of a personal God and of the immortality of the soul, true religion is abandoned. Of course, there is much said and written about religion in our days: the scientific literature about it has grown to tremendous proportions—to say nothing of newspapers, novels, and plays. One might welcome this as a proof that this world will never entirely satisfy the human heart. But it is also a sign that religion is no longer a secure possession, but has become a problem—that it has been lost. Even on the part of free-thought it is not denied that “only unhappy times will permit the existence of religious problems; and that this problem is the utterance of mental discord.” Yet they do not want to forego religion entirely, for they feel that irreligion is tantamount to degeneration. But what has become [pg 290] of religion? It has been degraded to a vague sentiment and longing, without religious truths and duties, a plaything for pastime.

For Schleiermacher religion is a feeling of simple dependence, though no one knows upon whom he is dependent: according to Wundtreligion consists in “man serving infinite purposes, together with his finite purposes, the ultimate fulfilment whereof remains hidden to his eye,” which probably means something, but I do not know what. Haeckel calls his materialism the religion of the true, good, and beautiful; Jodl even thinks, “As the realm of science is the real, and the realm of art the possible, so the realm of religion is the impossible.”Religion having been degraded to such a level, it is no longer astonishing that religion is attributed even to animals, and in the words of E. von Hartmann, “we cannot help attributing a religious character, as far as the animal is concerned, to the relation between the intelligent domestic animals and their masters.”

What, finally, has become of the old standard of morals? A modern philosopher may answer the question.

Fouillée writes: “In our day, far more so than thirty years ago, morality itself, its reality, its necessity and usefulness, is in the balance.... I have read with much concern how my contemporaries are at fundamental variance in this respect, and how they contradict one another. I have tried to form an opinion of all these different opinions. Shall I say it? I have found in the province of morals a confusion of ideas and sentiments to an extent that it seemed impossible to me to illustrate thoroughly what might be termed contemporaneous sophistry” (Le Moralisme de Kant, etc.).

Where is left now to liberal science a single remnant of those great truths on which mankind has hitherto lived, and which it needs for existence? There was a God—but He is gone. There was a life to come, and a supernatural world; they are lost. Man had a soul, endowed with freedom, spirituality, and immortality; he has it no longer. He had fixed principles of reasoning and laws of morals; they are gone. He possessed Christ, full of grace and truth, he possessed redemption and a Church; everything is lost. Burnt to the ground is the homestead. In the blank voids, that cheerful casements were, sits despair; man stands at the grave of all that fortune gave!

The names alone have survived; now and then they speak [pg 291] of God and religion, of Christianity and faith, immortality and freedom; but the words are false, pretending a possession that is lost long since. They are patches from a grand dress, once worn by our ancestors; ruins of the ancestral house that the children have lost. They are still cherished as the memories of better times. People thus acknowledge the irreparable forfeiture which those names denote, without realizing how they pronounce their own condemnation by having destroyed these possessions.[16] Dissipaverunt substantiam suam.

The son came to his father. In his heedless anxiety for freedom he would leave the father's house, to get away from restraining discipline and dependence. “Father, give me the portion of the goods that falleth to me.” And he departed into a far country. Soon he had spent all and had nothing to appease his hunger.

Despairing of Truth.

These, then, are the achievements liberal research can boast of in the fields of philosophy and religion: Negations and again negations; temples and altars it has destroyed, sacred images it has broken, pillars it has knocked down. Free from Christianity, free from God, free from the life to come and the supernatural, free from authority and faith—it is rich in freedom and negation. But what does it offer in place of all the things it has destroyed? What spiritual goods does it show to the expectant eyes of its confiding followers? The most hopeless things imaginable, namely, despair of all higher truth, mental confusion, and decay. One other brief glance at the consequences [pg 292] and we shall be competent to judge of the fitness of liberal freedom of thought for the civilization of mankind.

As far as it is inspired by philosophy, modern science confesses the principle: “No objective truth can be positively known, at least not in metaphysics”; restless doubt is the lot of the searching intellect. We have amplified this elsewhere in these pages. This result of the modern doctrine of cognition is not infrequently boasted of. It was good enough, say they, for the ancients to live in the silly belief of possessing eternal truth; they were simple and unsuspecting; we know there is in store for man only doubt and everlasting struggle for truth.

“We confess that we do not know whether there are for mankind as a whole, and for the individual, tasks and goals that extend beyond this earthly existence” (Jodl). “There is no scientific philosophy of generally recognized standard, but only in the form of various experiments for the purpose of defining and expressing the harmony and the idea of the active principle; consequently there cannot be a final philosophy, it must be ready at all times to revise any point that previously seemed to have been established” (Paulsen). “Only to dogmatism,”says another, “are the various theories of the world contradictory; to science they are hypotheses of equal value, which, as they are all limited, may exist side by side, the theistic as well as the atheistic, the dualistic, the monistic, and whatever their names may be. Man, who conceives these hypotheses, is master over them all and makes use of them, here of one, there of another, according to the kind of the problem he is occupied with at the time. Thus, he is independent of any view of the world”(L. von Sybel). Again we are told: “There has been formulated a free variety of metaphysical systems, none of them demonstrable.... Is it our task, perhaps, to select the true one? This would be an odd superstition; this metaphysical anarchy is teaching, as obviously as possible, the relativity of all metaphysical systems” (W. Dilthey). Therefore, nothing but impressions and opinions, and not the truth; indeed, for the cognition of transcendental, metaphysical truths, they often have only words of disdain.

“The fact should be emphasized,” says G. Spicker, “that philosophy really is devoid of any higher ideal; that, through its doubt of the objective cognizability of things above us, outside and inside of us, it has fallen prey to scepticism, even if philosophers do not admit it and try to evade the issue with the phrase ‘theory of cognition.’ ”

A science cannot sink to a lower level than by the admission that it has nothing to offer and nothing to accomplish. It is tantamount to bankruptcy. This science undertakes to nourish the human mind, but offers stones instead of bread; it [pg 293] wants to uplift and to instruct, and confesses that it has nothing to tell. Amphora coepit institui, currente rota urceus exit. In the beginning a proud consciousness and the promise to be everything to mankind; at the end mental pauperism and scepticism, a caricature of science.

This, then, is the terminal at which the free-thought of subjectivism has arrived: the loss of truth, without which man's mind wanders restlessly and without a goal. That is the penalty for gambling boldly with human perception, the retribution for rebelling against the rights of truth and for the vainglorious arrogance of the intellect, which would draw only from its own cisterns the water of life, while alone those lying deep in the Divine may offer him the eternal fountains of objective truth. Scepticism is gnawing at the mental life of the world. A scepticism cloaked with the names of criticism and research, and of positivism and empiric knowledge, but which, nevertheless, remains what it is, an ominous demon, liberated from the grave into which has been lowered the Christian spiritual life, the spirit of darkness now pervading the world.

In All Directions of the Compass.

They have lost their way, puzzled by mazes and perplexed with error they are in hopeless confusion; a correlative of individualistic thinking. If the absolute subject and his experiences of life are the self-appointed court of last resort, the result must be anarchy and not accord. This is manifest; moreover, it is frankly admitted by the spokesmen of freethought.

This anarchy is described in vivid words by Prof. Paulsen, recently the indefatigable champion of freest thought: “We no longer have a Protestant philosophy, in the sense of a standard system. Hegel'sphilosophy was the last to occupy such a position. Anarchy rules ever since. The attempted rally around the name of Kant failed to put an end to the prevalent anarchy, or to the division into small fractions and individualisms. Then there is the mental neurasthenia of our times, the absolute lack of ideas, especially noticeable among so-called educated people.... Billboard art has found a counterpart in billboard-philosophy. Here, there, and everywhere we meet the cry: here [pg 294]is the saviour, the secret ruler, the magic doctor, who cures all ills of our diseased age.... After a while, the mob has again dispersed and the thing is forgotten” (“Philosophia Militans”).

“There is no uniform philosophic theory of the world, such as we, at least to a certain extent, used to have,” says Paulsen elsewhere, “the latest ideas are diverging in all directions of the compass.”When one buildeth up, and another pulleth down, what profit have they but the labour? (Ecclus. xxxiv. 28). “We have no metaphysics nowadays,” says R. Eucken in the same strain, “and there are not a few who are proud of it. They only would have the right to be so if our philosophy were in excellent shape, if, even without metaphysics, firm convictions ruled our life and actions, if great aims held us together and lifted us above the smallness of the merely human. The fact is an unlimited discordance, a pitiful insecurity in all matters of principle, a defencelessness against the petty human, and soullessness accompanied by superabounding exterior manifestation of life.”

This is the status of modern philosophy and also of liberal, Protestant, theology. Of views of the world, of notions and forms of Christianity, of ideas, essays and contributions to them, there is choice in abundance. Here, materialistic Monism is proclaimed, warranted to solve all riddles. There, spiritualistic Pantheism is retailed in endless varieties. Yonder, Agnosticism is strutting: no longer philosophy, but facts and reality, is its slogan. Then comes the long procession of ethical views of life: “Contemplations of life; theories of human existence surround us and court us in plenty; the coincidence of ample historical learning with active reflection induces manifold combinations, and makes it easy for the individual to draw pictures of this kind according to circumstance and mood; and so we see individual philosophies whirling about promiscuously, winning and losing the favour of the day, and shifting and transmuting themselves in kaleidoscopic change” (Eucken). Hegel, although he lectured with great assurance on his own system, lamented: “Every philosophy comes forth with the pretension to refute not only the preceding philosophy, but to remedy its defects, to have at last found the right thing.” But past experience shows, that to this philosophy, too, the passage from Holy Writ is applicable: “Behold, the feet that will carry thee away are already at the threshold.” Indeed, often it has come to pass that these philosophers themselves bury their ideas, preparatory to entering another camp. Consider the changes that men like [pg 295] Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Strauss, Nietzsche, have essayed in the short course of a few decades, and we are justified in assuming that they would again have changed their last ideas had death not interfered.

Now and then such confusion of opinions is considered an advantage, the advantage of fertility. To be sure, it is fertility,—the fertility of fruitless attempts, of errors, and of fancies, the fertility of disorder and chaos. If this fertility be a cause of pride for science, then mathematics, physics, astronomy, and other exact sciences, are indeed to be pitied for having to forego this fertility of philosophy, and the privilege of being an arena for contradictory views.

Without Peace and without Joy.

After the hopeless shipwreck of the modern, godless thought, can we wonder at meeting frequently the despondency of pessimism? Is not pessimism the first born of scepticism? At the close of the nineteenth century we read, again and again, in reviews of the past and forecasts of the future, how the modern world stands perplexed before the riddles of life, confessing in pessimistic mood that it is dissatisfied and unhappy to the depth of its soul. With proud self-consciousness, boasting of knowledge and power of intellect, they had entered the nineteenth century, praising themselves in the words: How great, O man, thou standest at the century's close, with palm of victory in thy hand, the fittest son of time! With heads bowed in shame these same representatives of modern thought make their exit from the same century.

Of the number that voiced this sentiment we quote but one, Prof. R. Eucken, who wrote: “The greatness of the work is beyond doubt. This work more and more opens up and conquers the world, unfolds our powers, enriches our life, it leads us in quick victorious marches from triumph to triumph.... Thus, it is true, our desired objects have been attained, but they disclosed other things than we expected: the more our powers and ideas are attracted by the work, the more we must realize the neglect of the inner man and of his unappeased, ardent longing for happiness. Doubts spring up concerning the entire work; we [pg 296]must ask whether the new civilization be not too much a development of bare force, and too little a cultivation of the being, whether because of our strenuous attention to surroundings, the problems of innermost man are not neglected. There is also noticeable a sad lack in moral power: we feel powerless against selfish interests and overwhelming passions: mankind is more and more dividing itself into hostile sects and parties. And such doubts arouse to renewed vigour the old, eternal problems, which faithfully accompany our evolution through all its stages. Former times did not finally solve them, (?) but they were, at least to a degree, mollified and quieted. But now they are here again unmitigated and unobscured. The enigmatical of human existence is impressed upon us with unchecked strength, the darkness concerning the Whence and Whither, the dismal power of blind necessity, accident and sorrow in our fate, the low and vulgar in the human soul, the difficult complications of the social body: all unite in the question: Has our existence any real sense or value? Is it not torn asunder to an extent that we shall be denied truth and peace for ever?... Hence it is readily understood why a gloomy pessimism is spreading more and more, why the depressed feeling of littleness and weakness is pervading mankind in the midst of its triumphs.”

Similar, and profoundly true, are the words spoken some years ago by a noted critic in the “Literarische Zentralblatt” (1900): “A painful lament and longing pervades our restless and peaceless time. The bulk of our knowledge is daily increasing, our technical ability hardly knows of difficulties it could not overcome ... and yet we are not satisfied. More and more frequently we meet with the tired, disheartened question: What's the use? We lack the one thing which would give support and impetus to our existence, a firm and assured view of the world. Or, to be more exact, we have found that we cannot live with the view of the world which in this century of enlightenment has stamped its imprint more and more upon our entire mental life. Materialism, in coarser or finer form, has penetrated deeply our habits of thought, even in those who would indignantly protest against being called materialists; the name seemed to imply scientific earnestness and liberal views. However, there was still left a considerable fund of old, idealistic values, and as long as we could draw upon them we saw in materialism only the power to clear up rooted prejudices, and to open the road for progress in every field. To the newer generation, however, little or nothing is left of this old fund, hence, having nothing else but materialism to depend upon, they are confronted by an appalling dreariness and emptiness of existence. And ever since the man on the street has absorbed the easy materialistic principles, and looks down from the height of his ‘scientific’ view of life contemptuously upon all reactionaries, we have become aware of the danger that imperils everything implied by the collective word ‘humanism.’ This explains the plethora of literature which in these days deals with the questions of a world philosophy.” Who is not reminded after reading this mournful confession of the words of St. Augustine: “Restless is our heart, till it finds rest in Thee”?

If it be true, then, that philosophical thought stands in closest connection with civilization, determining the latter in its loftier aspects, then the freedom of thought of modern subjectivism has proved its incompetence as a power for civilization; it can produce only a sham-civilization, it can incite the minds and keep them in nervous tension, until, tired of fruitless endeavour, they yield to pessimism. However painful it may be to admit it, this freedom of thought is and remains the principle of natural decadence of all the higher elements of a culture that is not determined by the number of guns, by steam-engines, and high-schools for girls, but which consists, chiefly, in a steadfast, ideal condition of reason and will, from which all else obtains significance and value. What further proof of intellectual and cultural incompetence can be demanded which this principle has not furnished already?

If this be the fact, then it follows in turn that in the life of higher culture, where the health of the soul and the marrow of mental life is at stake, there can rule but a single principle, the objectivism of Christian thought, the principle of absolute submission, without variance and change, to a truth against which man has no rights. The submission of Christian thought to a religious, teaching authority, recognized as infallible in all matters pertaining to its domain, while not an exhaustive presentment of this principle, is its perceptive and concrete effect.

A Rock in the Waters.

The history of human thought of all ages, but especially of the last centuries, proves how necessary a divine revelation is to man; viz., the clear exposition of the highest truths in the view of world and of life, emphasized by a divine authority, which links the human mind to the one immutable truth; not only in ignorant nations, not only in the man of the common people, but also, and more especially, in the educated man and in the scientist, he, namely, who, through the moderate studies of a small intellect, has collected a little sum of knowledge that is apt to confuse his limited understanding and to rob him [pg 298] of modesty. It is just as manifest that revelation alone does not suffice, that there is needed also the enduring forum of a teaching Church, which in the course of centuries gives expression to truth with infallible, binding authority.

The full truth of this is felt even by those unfavourably disposed toward this authority. A recent champion of autonomous freedom of thought, the Protestant theologian, F. Troeltsch, makes this concession in the words: “The immediate consequence of such autonomy is necessarily a steadily more intensified individualism of convictions, opinions, theories, and practical ends and aims. An absolute supra-individual union is effected only by an enormous power such as the belief in an immediate, supernatural, divine, revelation, as possessed by Catholicism, and organized in the Church as the extended and continued incarnation of God. This tie gone, the necessary sequel will be a splitting up in all sorts of human opinions.”[17]

This is to the Catholic a caution to appreciate the ministry of his Church ever more highly, and to cleave to it still closer. He will not agree with those who think that in our time the principle of Authority must retire. The more his eyes are opened by the present situation, the more clearly he realizes where thought emancipated from faith and authority has led, the more he will affirm his conscious belief in authority. His foothold upon the rock of the Church will be the firmer the more restless the billows of unsafe opinions rise and roll about him. The Catholic of mature, Catholic, conviction would consider it folly to abandon the rock for the restless and turbulent play of the waves. Many, indeed, who are looking for a safe place of truth, we see for this reason taking refuge in a [pg 299] strong Church; many are impressed by the stability of Catholic authority.[18]

The present situation is similar socially to that of the ancient world at its close, and also in regard to the spiritual life. Then, as now, there was learning without idealism, corroded by scepticism, without harmony and cheer. Then, as now, there was but one power to offer rescue. Faith and Church. A longing for help is now also prevailing in the world. It feels its helplessness. If they only had the conviction of a St. Augustine, who prayed for deliverance from his errors: “When I often and forcefully realized the agility, sagacity, and acumen of the human mind, I could not believe that truth was hidden completely from us—rather only the way and manner how to discover it, and that we must accept these from a divine authority” (De utilit. credendi, 8).

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It was a solemn hour, pregnant with profound significance, when at midnight at the beginning of this century all the churchbells of the Catholic globe were ringing, and, while everything around was silent, their blessed sound was resounding alone over the earth, over villages and cities, over countries and nations. Grandly there resounded into the whole world, over the heads of the children of men about to enter upon a new century of their history, that the Catholic Church is the Queen in the realm of mind, that she alone preserves infallibly the truths and ideals of which mankind is in quest, by which they are raised above earthly turmoil—those truths and [pg 300] ideals in which the heart and mind of earthly pilgrims find rest and peace on their long journey to the goal of time. Since she assumed the mission of Him who said, “I am the Way and the Truth,” and, “I am with you all days, even unto the consummation of the world,” the Church has travelled a long way through the centuries, has withstood hard times and fierce storms. And she has faithfully preserved for mankind the precious patrimony from God's hand. And now, at the dawn of new times, her bells proclaimed that she is still alive, holding the old truths in a strong hand. And after another century the bells of the globe will ring again, they will, so we hope—ring more loudly and more forcefully, over the nations. And these bells will also ring over the graves of this present generation, over fallen giants of the forest and over collapsed towers, over mouldy books, and the wreckage left by a culture that the emancipated, fallible human mind created, but which truth did not consecrate. And again the bells will proclaim to a new century that God, and the world's history, are thinking greater thoughts than the puny child of man is capable of thinking within the narrow compass of his years and of his surroundings.

[pg 301]

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Fourth Section. Freedom of Teaching.

Preliminary Conceptions and Distinctions.

Acquisition and distribution, labour and communication of the fruits of labour, are the two factors that determine the progress of mankind. Thus the precious metal is mined and brought to the surface by the labourer, whence it speeds through the world; thus the faithful missionary journeys into remote countries, to disseminate there the mental treasures acquired by study and hard religious effort. And thus science desires to work, and should work, for the culture and progress of mankind, and this work is pre-eminently its task. To properly pursue this vocation science demands freedom, freedom in research and teaching. There is, as we have already pointed out, an important distinction between the two. Although research and teaching are mostly joined, the former only attaining its chief end in teaching, there is a real difference between the two elements; and not unfrequently they are separated. It makes quite a difference whether some one within the four walls of his room studies anarchy, or whether he proceeds to proclaim its principles to the world; it is quite different whether a man embraces atheism for his personal use only, or whether he makes propaganda for it from the pulpit; it makes also a world of difference whether a man is personally convinced that materialism is the sole truth, or whether he proclaims it as a science, and is able to affirm that of the German edition of “Welträtsel” 200,000 copies have been sold, of the English edition about as many, and that a dozen other translations have spread the fundamental notions of monism broadcast through the world (E. Haeckel, Monismus u. Naturgesetz). Teaching must be viewed from a different point. Research is a personal function, whereas Teaching is a social one. This fact, of itself, makes it evident that teaching cannot be allowed the same measure of freedom as [pg 304] research, hence that teaching must be confined within narrower limits.

But Freedom is demanded not only for research, but also for teaching, in most cases even an unlimited freedom. It is demanded as an inalienable right of the individual, it is demanded in the name of progress, which can be promoted only by new knowledge. Some countries grant this freedom in their constitutions. Before discussing this demand and its presumptions, we shall have to make clear some preliminary conceptions.

First, the meaning of freedom of teaching. How is it precisely to be understood? Freedom in teaching in general means, evidently, exemption from unwarranted restraint in teaching. Teaching, however, to use the words of a great thinker of the past, means Causare in alio scientiam, to impart knowledge to some one else (Thomas Aquinas, Quaest. disp. De verit. q. XI al.). Thus the pious mother teaches the child truths about God and Heaven, the school-teacher teaches elementary knowledge, the college-professor teaches science. Teaching is chiefly understood to be the instruction by professional teachers, from grammar school up to university. Hence freedom in teaching does not necessarily refer to scientific matters only; we may also speak of a freedom of teaching in the elementary school. As a rule, however, the term is used in the narrower sense of freedom in teaching science.

Here it may not be amiss to mention further distinctions. As we may distinguish in teaching three essentials, namely, the matter, the method, and the teacher, so there is a corresponding triple freedom of teaching. If we regard the matter, we meet with the demand, that no one be excluded in an unjust way from exercising his right to teach, that no single party should have the monopoly of teaching: the right to found free universities also belongs here. It is part of the freedom of teaching. As it has relation to the state, we shall return to this point later on. A second freedom, which might be called methodological, concerns the choice of the method. This is naturally subject to considerable restraint; not only because the academic teacher may frequently have to get along without desirable paraphernalia, but also because of the commission he receives with his appointment, wherein his field and scope are prescribed. This is necessary for the purpose of the university; the students are to acquire the varied knowledge needed later on in their vocations of clergyman, lawyer, teacher, or physician. There is frequent complaint that this freedom in method is abused to a certain extent, that the students are taught many fragments of science with thoroughness, [pg 305]but too little of that which they actually need later on; they are trained too much for theoretical work and not enough for the practical vocation. Thus there is limitation here, too. But this is not the freedom in teaching which occupies the centre of interest to-day.

The trophy for which the battle is waged is the freedom relating to the subject of teaching; we shall term it “doctrinal” freedom in teaching: Shall the representative of science be permitted to promulgate any view he has formed? Even if that view conflicts with general religious or moral convictions, with the social order? Or must this freedom be curbed? This is the question.[19]

Obviously, teaching need not always be done verbally, it can be done also by writing. The professor lectures in the classrooms, but he may also expound his theories in books; this latter the private scholar may also do. In this way Plato and Aristotle and the Fathers are still teaching by their writings, though their lips have long been silent. True, this way of teaching has not the force of the spoken word, vibrating with personal conviction, but it reaches farther out, with telling effect upon masses and remote circles. Thus, freedom in teaching includes also the freedom to print and publish scientific theories, hence it includes part of the freedom of the press; in its full meaning, however, the freedom of the press relates also to unscientific periodicals, especially newspapers.

A counterpart to the freedom in teaching is presented by the freedom in learning. It concerns the student, and may consist of the right granted to the “academic citizen” to choose at his discretion, but within the restrictions set by his studies, his university, his teachers, and his curriculum.

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Chapter I. Freedom Of Teaching And Ethics.

Now for a closer examination of the problem of freedom of teaching, from the point of general ethics, not of law. This is an important distinction, not seldom overlooked. The former point of view deals with freedom in teaching only in as far as regulated or circumscribed by ethical principles, by the moral principles of conscience, without regard to state-laws or other positive rules. The freedom in teaching as determined by governmental decrees may be called freedom of teaching by state-right. It may happen that the state does not prohibit the dissemination of doctrines which may be forbidden by reason and conscience, for instance, atheistical doctrine. There may be immoral products of art not prohibited by the state; yet ethics cannot grant license to pornography. The state grants the liberty of changing from one creed to another, or of declaring one's self an atheist; yet this does not justify the act before the conscience. The statutes do not forbid everything that is morally impermissible; their aim is directed only at offences against the good of the commonwealth. Moreover, even such offences may not be prohibited by statute, for the simple reason that the enactment of such laws may be impossible on account of the complexion of legislative bodies, or because of other conditions.

We will now take the ethical position and try to judge the freedom of teaching from this point of view. First of all, we shall have to explain the social character of teaching and the responsibility attached thereto. We start again with the meaning of freedom of teaching. It demands that the communication of scientific opinions should not be restrained in unwarranted manner. “In unwarranted manner”; because, manifestly, not all bars are to be removed; no one will assert that a man may teach things he knows to be false. Every activity, including [pg 307] scientific activity, must conform to truth and morals. Hence there is only the question to determine, when is freedom in teaching morally reprehensible, and when not; which are the bars that must not be transgressed, and which bars may be disregarded? Is it allowed or not to teach any opinion, if the teacher subjectively believes it to be true? Here the views differ. However, one thing at present is clear:

Freedom of Teaching is Necessary.

Also in respect to method. Even the teacher in public and grammar schools, though minutely guided by the plan of instruction, must be granted, by the demands of pedagogy, a certain liberty; he should be free to arrange and to try many things. Only where individual spontaneity is given play will love for work be aroused, which in turn stimulates devotion to the cause and makes for success. This applies with even greater force to the college-professor, in respect to method, course of instruction, subject, and the results of his research. He must be free to communicate them, without consideration for unwarranted prejudices, or for private and party interests.

If the scientist were condemned to do nothing but repeat the old things, without change and variance, without improvement and correction, without new additions and discoveries, all alertness and impulse would disappear; but his alacrity and ardour will increase, if allowed to contribute to progress, if assured beforehand of publicity for the new solutions he hopes to find, if allowed to promulgate new discoveries.

This freedom is demanded, even more imperatively, by the vocation of science to work for the progress of mankind, primarily for the intellectual and through this for the general progress. The demand in behalf of the individual is even more urgent in behalf of science at large: no standing still, ever onward to new knowledge and the enrichment of the mind, to moral uplift, to a beautifying of life—and ultimately to the glorification of God! For, verily, the purpose of the whole universe is the glory of the Creator. Glory is given to Him by the world of stars, as they speed through space, conforming [pg 308] to His laws; glory is given to Him by the dewdrop, as it reflects the rays of the morning sun; glory is given to Him by the butterfly, as it unfolds the brilliancy of colours received from His hand. The chief glory of all is given to Him by the reason-endowed human mind, developing its powers ever more fully, the crowning achievement of visible creation, wherein God's wisdom reflects brighter than the sun in the morning-dew. And for this is needed the freedom of scientific progress, which would be impossible without a freedom in teaching.

And this applies not only to fixed conclusions; it must also be permitted, within admissible bounds, to teach scientific hypotheses. Science needs them for its progress; they are the buds that burst forth into blossoms. Had men like Copernicus, Newton, Huygens, not been free to propound their hypotheses, the sun would still revolve around the earth, we still would have Ptolemy's revolution of the spheres, and the results of optical science would be denied us.

A Twofold Freedom of Teaching and Its Presumption.

There cannot be any doubt that science must have freedom in teaching. But of what kind? One that is necessary and suitable. Yes, but what kind of freedom is that? Here is the crux of the question. Now we are again at the boundary line where we stood, when defining the freedom of science in general, at the parting of the ways of two contrary conceptions of man.

One is the Christian idea, and also that of unbiassed reason. Man is a limited creature, depending on God, on truth and moral law, at the same time dependent on social life, hence also dependent on social order and authority; consequently he cannot claim independence, but only the freedom compatible with his position. Therefore the barriers demanded by truth and by the duty of belief are set to his research; hence his freedom in teaching can only be the one permitted by his social position; personal perception of truth and consideration for the welfare of mankind will be the barriers of this freedom.

This view is opposed by another, claiming full independence for both research and teaching, a claim prompted by the modern philosophy of free humanity, which sees in man an autonomous [pg 309] being, who needs only follow the immanent impulses of his own individuality; and this especially in that activity which is deemed the most perfect, the pursuit of science: this hypostatized collective-being of the highest human pursuit is also to be the supreme bearer of autonomism. As a matter of course this results in the claim for unlimited freedom in teaching, a freedom we shall term liberal: in communicating his scientific view the scientist need merely be guided by his perception of truth, without any considerations for external authorities or interests, provided his communication is a scientific one, viz., observing the usual form of scientific teaching. This latter limitation is usually added, because this freedom is to apply to the teaching of science only; to the popular presentation of scientific views, appealing directly to the masses, such a freedom is not always conceded.

“Research,” we are told, “demands full freedom, with no other barrier but its own desire for truth, hence the academic teacher who teaches in the capacity of an investigator is likewise not to know any barriers but his inner truthfulness and propriety.” “In this sense we demand to-day freedom in teaching for our universities. The freedom of the scientist and of the academic teacher must not be constrained by any patented truth, nor by faint-hearted consideration. We let the word of the Bible comfort us: ‘if this doctrine is of God, it will endure; if not, it will pass away’ ” (Kaufmann). Whatever the academic teacher produces from his subjective veracity must be inviolable; he may proclaim it as truth, regardless of consequences. “The searching scientist,” so says another, “must consider only the one question: What is truth? But inasmuch as there cannot be research without communication(?), we must go a step further: the teaching, too, must not be restricted. The scientific writer has to heed but one consideration: How can I present the things exactly as I perceive them, in the clearest and most precise manner?” (Paulsen). “Scientific research and the communication of its results must, conformable to its purpose, be independent of any consideration not innate in the scientific method itself,—hence independent of the traditions and prejudices of the masses, independent of authorities and social groups, independent of interested parties. That this independence is indispensable needs no demonstration.” “Nor can any limitation of the freedom of research and teaching be deduced from the official position of the scientist or teacher” (Von Amira). Just as soon as he begins his research according to scientific method, i.e., adapts his thoughts to scientific rules, customs, and postulates, he may question Christianity, God, everything; neither state nor Church must object, no matter if thousands are led astray.

This freedom is pre-eminently claimed for philosophical and religious thought, for ideas relating to views of the world and the foundations of social order; because only in this province is absolute freedom of teaching likely to be seriously refused. In mathematics and the natural sciences, in philology and kindred sciences, there is hardly occasion for it; there only petty disputes occur, differences among competitors, things that do not reach beyond the precinct of the learned fraternity. Whether one is for or against the theory of three-dimensional space, for or against the theory of ions and the like, all that touches very little on the vital questions of mankind; but the case is quite different when it comes to publicly advocating the abolition of private property, to the preaching of polygamy: it is here where great clashes threaten. Here, also, there enter into the plan the social powers, whose duty it is to shield the highest possessions of human society against wanton attack. Nevertheless the demand is for unlimited freedom in teaching. What, then, are the arguments used in giving to this exceptional claim the semblance of justification? This shall be the first question.

Unlimited Freedom in Teaching not Demanded.

1. Not by Veracity.

Veracity is appealed to first; it obligates the teacher, so it is said, to announce his own convictions unreservedly, for to “deny one's own convictions would offend against one of the most positive principles of morals”; hence the academic teacher could not grant to the state the right to set a barrier in this respect, “it would be a violation of the duty of veracity, which is innate to the teacher's office” (Von Amira).

Was it realized in making this claim what the duty of truthfulness really demands? This duty is complied with when one is not untruthful, that is to say, does not state something to be his opinion when secretly he believes the contrary to be true; to force him to do this would of course be instigating untruthfulness. Truthfulness, however, does not require any one to speak out publicly what he thinks; one may be silent. Or is cautious [pg 311] silence untruthfulness? It is oftentimes prudence, but not untruthfulness. There is a considerable difference between thinking and communicating thought, even to the scientist.

Or is the scientist obliged, for instance, to proclaim publicly views he has formed contrary to the prevailing principles of morals,—views he calls the “results of his research,” so that mankind at last may learn the truth? Was Nietzsche in duty bound to proclaim to the wide world his revolutionary ideas? Any sober-minded man might have told him he need not worry about this duty. Has the teacher of science this duty? How will he prove it? How are they going to prove that it is incumbent upon an atheistic college-professor to teach his atheism also to others? Or, must he teach that the fundamental principles of Christian marriage are untenable, if this has become his personal opinion? Is it, perhaps, impossible for him to refrain from such teaching in the lectures he is appointed to give? This view will mostly prove a delusion. A conscientious examination of his opinion would convince him that he, too, had better abandon it, since it is merely an aberration of his mind. But let us assume that he could neither correct his views nor refrain from proclaiming them, that he would declare: “I should lie if, in discussing the question in how far this or that public institution is morally sanctioned, I were to halt before certain institutions; for instance if, having the moral conviction that monarchy is a morally objectionable institution, I omitted to say so” (Th. Lipps).

Well, he has the option to change his branch of teaching, or to resign his office; he is not indispensable, no one forces him to retain his office. Indeed, he owes it to truthfulness to leave his post the very instant he finds he is not able to occupy it in a beneficial way; he owes it to honesty to yield his position, if he has lost the proper relation to religion, state, and the people, to whom his position is to render service.

2. Not the Duty of Science.

“Nevertheless,” we are told, “the representatives of science have the duty of freely communicating their opinions; they are [pg 312] called by people and state to find the truth for the great multitude, that is not itself in the position to pursue laborious research. Where else could it get the truth but from science?” “The multitude participates in truth generally in a receptive, passive manner; only a few pre-eminent minds are destined by nature to be the dispensers and promoters of knowledge” (Paulsen), and with this vocation of science a restriction of its freedom of speech would be incompatible.

The idea has something enticing about it. It also has its justification, if the matter at issue concerns things outside of the common scope of human knowledge, such as the more precise research of nature, of history, and so on. But the idea is not warranted when applied to the higher questions of human life. Here it is based on the false premise that man cannot arrive at the certain possession of truth without scientific research. We have demonstrated previously how this notion involves a total misconception of the nature of human thought.

There is, beside the scientific certainty, another true certainty, a natural certainty, the only one we have in most matters, and a safe guide to mankind especially in higher questions, nay, in general much safer than science, which, as proved by history, goes easily astray in such matters. Long before there was a science, mankind possessed the truth about the principles of life; and it possesses this truth still, through common sense and, even more, through divine revelation, which offers enlightenment to every one regardless of science. Here apply the words of the poet:

“Das Wahre ist schon laengst gefunden

Hat edle Geisterschaar verbunden

Das alte Wahre, fasst es an!”

Nevertheless, it is claimed, science remains the sole guide to truth and progress. Must not truth be searched for and struggled for always anew? There are no patented truths for all times—each age must sketch its own image of the world, must form new values. And it is for science to point out these new roads. Therefore, full swing for its doctrines. “Science knows not of statutes of limitations or prescription, hence of no absolutely established possession. Consequently real, scientific, instruction can only mean absolutely free instruction” (Paulsen). We may be brief. Every line bears the imprint of [pg 313] that sceptical subjectivism which we have met so often as the philosophical presumption of modern freedom of science. It is the wisdom of ancient sophistry, which even Aristotle stigmatized as a “sham-science,” “a running after something that invariably slips away.” A freedom in teaching with such a theory of cognition can never be a factor of mental progress, least of all when it seeks to rise above a God-given, Christian truth to “higher” forms of religion. This, however, is often the very progress for which freedom in teaching is intended—the unhindered propagation of an anti-Christian view of the world.

3. No Innate Right.

Very well, we are told, leave aside the appeal to the province of science; but it cannot be denied that man has at least an innate right of communicating his thoughts in the freest manner. The first right of the human individual, a right which must not be curtailed in any way, is his right to free development according to his inner laws, provided the freedom of the fellow-man is not thereby injured. Hence every man has the right of freely uttering his opinion, in science especially, because the free right of others is thereby not infringed upon in any matter whatsoever.

This is the claim. It is again rooted in the autonomy of the human subject, the main idea of the liberal view of life, and, at the same time, the principal presumption of its freedom of science. It leads to the individualistic theory of rights, which declares freedom to be man's self-sufficient object, viz., freedom in all things regardless of the weal and woe of others, no matter if the sequel be error, scandal, or seduction, if only the strict right to freedom be not violated.

“Act outwardly so,” says the philosophic preceptor of autonomism, “that the free use of thy free will may be consistent with the liberty of others according to a general law.” “This liberty,” continues Kant, “is the sole, original right of every man by virtue of his humanity.”And Spencer concurrently teaches: “Every one is free to do what he wants, as long as he does not infringe upon the liberty of others.”

This is termed the “Maxim of Co-existence.” Accordingly any one may say and write anything at will, no matter if people are led [pg 314]astray by his errors. Even the government must in no way limit this freedom, except where rights are violated; to defend religion and morals against attacks, to guard innocence and inexperience against seduction, is, according to this theory, not allowed to the state. W. von Humboldt writes: “He who utters things or commits actions, offending the conscience or the morals of other people, may act immorally: but unless he is guilty of obtrusiveness, he does not injure any right.” Hence the state must not interfere. “Even the assuredly graver case, when the witnessing of an action, the listening to certain reasoning, would mislead the virtue or the thought of others, even this case would not permit restraint of freedom.”

We are dealing here with that misconception of the social nature of man which has always characterized liberalism. It knows only of the right and liberty of the individual; of his duties to society it knows nothing, not even that men should not injure the possessions of others, but rather promote them; nor does it know that men are placed in a society that requires the free will of the individual to yield to the common weal of the many. To liberal thought human society is only an accidental aggregation of individuals, not connected by social unity. The autonomous spheres of the single individuals are rolling side by side, each one for itself: wherever it pleases them to roll, there they are carried by the autonomous centre of gravity, whatever they upset in their career has no right to complain. This principle of freedom was given free rein in the economical legislation of the nineteenth century. Free enterprise, free development of energy, was the rallying cry; the result was devastation and wreckage.

Unrestricted Freedom of Teaching Inadmissible.

Hence the claim for absolute freedom in teaching is not warranted; on the contrary, its chief arguments are borrowed from a philosophy that is unacceptable to the Christian mind. Is it even admissible? Though not warranted, is it permissible at least from the viewpoint of ethics? It is not even this. The claim is ethically inadmissible, because the religious, moral, and social institutions, especially the Christian faith and the Christian morals of mankind, would be seriously injured. [pg 315] In other words: The claim that it is permissible to proclaim scientific theories which are apt to do great damage to the foundations of religious, moral, and social life, especially to Christian conviction and morals, is ethically reprehensible.

A few remarks in explanation. We merely speak here of the freedom in teaching relating to the philosophical-religious foundations of life; that it cannot be the subject of serious objection in other matters we have previously mentioned. Nor do we yet inquire what social powers should fix the needed limitations, whether state or Church should regulate them; we are merely investigating, from the viewpoint of ethics, what barriers are set by the law of reason, and would have to be set even in the absence of state laws, because of the important influence exercised by scientific doctrine upon the social life—the social welfare of mankind is the consideration beside the truth that is decisive in considering freedom in teaching.

The teacher or writer may himself be of the opinion that his pernicious errors are not dangerous; he may fancy them even of utmost importance to the world; hence he thinks he has the right, even the duty, to communicate them to the world. And do we not hear them all assure us that they desire only the truth? We do not wish to sit in judgment on the good faith of them individually; we make no comment when a man like D. F. Strauss, looking back upon the forty years of his career as a writer, vouches for his unwavering and pure aim for truth; and when even Haeckel asserts this of himself. Every fallacy has made its appearance with this avowal.

But, by way of parenthesis, there is no reason to boast in a general way of the sincere aim at truth and the pure mind for the ideal, alleged to prevail in the modern literature of our times, especially in philosophical literature. He who stands upon Christian ground knows that the denial of a personal God, of immortality and other matters, are errors of gravest consequence. Furthermore, if one is convinced of the capability of man to recognize the truth, at least in the most important matters, and if one knows that God has made His Revelation the greatest manifestation in history, and proved it sufficiently by documents—indeed, had to prove it; that He will let all who are of good will come to the knowledge of the truth; then it remains incomprehensible how modern philosophy considered as a whole is said on the one hand to be guided by a sincere desire for truth, while on the other hand it clings with hopeless obstinacy to the most radical errors.

Such talk of general sincere searching for truth is apt to deceive the inexperienced. He who has obtained a deeper insight into modern philosophy, he who steadily watches it at work, will recall to mind only too often the word of the Holy Ghost: “For there shall be a time when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires shall they heap to themselves teachers ... and will indeed turn away their hearing from the truth and shall be turned unto fables” (2 Tim. iv. 3).

Even if the teacher is himself convinced of the truth and inoffensiveness of his theory, it does not follow by any means that society is obliged to receive it. Indeed not. The state prohibits cults dangerous to the common weal: it does not intend to suffer damage just because the adherents of such cults may be in good faith. And if some one thinks himself called to deliver a people from its legitimate ruler, let it be undecided whether his purpose is good or not, he will nevertheless be restrained by rather drastic means from proceeding according to his idea. This proves that the principle of “no barrier but one's own veracity” is not conceded in practical life. The teacher and author, this is the sense of our thesis, must ever be conscious of the grave responsibility of science, against whose power the unscientific are so often defenceless; his great duty will be to make use of this power with utmost compunction, to teach nothing whereof he is not fully convinced, nor to announce for truth anything he is still investigating.

As we turn to the demonstration of our proposition, a start from the definition of scientific teaching suggests itself; manifestly this must be decisive for the measure of its freedom. No doubt, its purpose obviously is: to promote the weal of mankind by communicating the truth, by guarding men against errors, especially against those which would most harm them, by elevating and increasing the blessings of this life: for knowledge guides man in all his steps, it is the light on his way.

Science is not self-sufficient. It is an equally false and pernicious notion to make science a sovereign authority, throning above man, who must pay homage, and subordinate his interests to it, but which he must not ask to serve him for [pg 317] his own ends in life. There are such notions of science and also of art. Art, too, it is sometimes claimed, should serve its own ends only; the demand, that it should edify, or promote the ideals of society, is deemed a desertion of its purposes, “the furtherance of worldly or heavenly ideals may be eliminated from its task” (E. von Hartmann). These are the excrescences of unclarified cultural thoughts. Since man and his culture is more and more replacing the divine Ideal, this culture itself has grown to be the overshadowing ideal of the Deity, without whom evidently man cannot live. The Egyptians worshipped Sun and Moon; modern man often burns incense before the products of his own mind. It is a reversal of the right proportion. Science and its doctrine are activities of life, results of the human mind. Activities of life, however, have man for their end, they are to develop and perfect him: man does not exist for the clothes he wears—the clothes exist on account of man; the leaves exist for the sake of the tree that puts them forth, nor can grapes be of more importance than the vine that has produced them.

Hence, where science does not serve this end, where it in consequence becomes not a blessing, but an injury to man, where it tears down, instead of building up, there it forfeits the right to exist; it is no longer a fruitful bough on the tree of humanity, but a harmful outgrowth. Like every organism actively opposes its harmful growths, society, too, must not tolerate within its bosom any scientific tendencies which act as malign germs, perhaps attack its very marrow.

From the true object of science, as above stated, it follows that it is wrong to disseminate doctrines that are apt to injure mankind in the possession of the truth, which may even imperil the authenticated foundations of life. For nobody will deny that firm foundations are needed to uphold and support the highest ideals of life; they can no more withstand a constant jarring and shaking than can a house of frame and stone. Such foundations are, first of all, the moral and religious truths and convictions about the Whence and Whither of human life, about God and the hereafter, the social duties toward the fellow-man, obedience to authority, and so on. If man is to perform [pg 318] burdensome duties as husband and father, if, as a citizen, he is to do justice to others and yield in obedience to authority, he must have powerful motives; else his impulses will take the helm, the sensible, moral being becomes a sensual being who reverses the order and drives the ship of life towards the cataract of ethical and social revolution. And these motives must rest deeply in the mind, like the foundation that supports the house; they must become identified with it, as the vital principle penetrates the tree, as the instinct of the animal is part of its innermost being. If new notions are continually whizzing without resistance through the mind, like the wind over the fields, repose and permanence are impossible in human life. To jolt the foundations invites collapse and ruin.

It is the duty of self-preservation, for which every being strives, that society guard these foundations of order against subversion and capricious experimentation. Of the Locrians it is told that any one desiring to offer a resolution for changing existing laws, was required to appear at the public meeting with a rope around his neck. He was hanged with it if he failed to win his fellow-citizens over to his view. This custom pictures the necessity of erecting a powerful dam against the inundation by illicit mental tidal waves, that endanger the stability of the order of life. This, of course, does not oppose every new progress. In building a house, firm foundations do not prevent the house from growing in size; but the foundations are a necessary preliminary to a suitable construction. Under no circumstances must a man be permitted, in his individualistic mania for reform, to lay an impious hand at the fundamental principles of life; and the scientist must bear in mind the fact that it is not the task and privilege of his individualistic reason to put the seal of approval on these principles as if the truth had never before been discovered.

To Christian nations the immutable truths of Christianity are these safe foundations. They are vouched for by divine authority, they have stood all historical tests of fitness; they sustain the institutions of family and of government, they determine thought, education, the ideas of right and wrong—a venerable patrimony of the nations. Shall every Nietzsche, [pg 319] big or little, be free to attack them? Experiments may be made with rabbits, flowers, or drugs; but it would violate the first principle of prudence and justice to allow every Tom, Dick, and Harry, who may have the neological itch, to experiment on the highest institutions of mankind.

Primum non nocere is an old caution to the physician; for many medical practitioners and surgeons not an untimely admonition. It is asserted, and vouched for by proof, that patients are made the subjects of experiment for purposes of science; not, indeed, rich people, but the poor in hospitals and clinics (comp. A. Moll, Arztliche Ethik, 1902). Every conscientious physician will turn with moral abhorrence from such action. Indeed, man and his greatest possession, life, is not to be made the victim of scientific experiment. If this holds good as to the physical things of life, then how much more of the ideal things of mankind!

“Every One to Form His Own Judgment”?

But, then, cannot every one decide for himself as to the teachings of science, and reject whatever he thinks to be false? Then would be avoided all damage that might result from a freedom in teaching. Science does not force its opinion upon any one. With due respect for the discernment of its disciples, science lays its results before them, leaving it to them to judge and choose, whatever they think is good.

Such words voice the optimism of an inexperienced idealism. To be sure, were the devotee to science, be he a student at a university or a reader of scientific works, a clear-sighted diagnostician, who could at once perceive error, and, moreover, if he were a mathematical entity, without personal interest in the matter, the argument might be listened to. But any one past the immaturity of youth, he, especially, who has earnestly commenced to know himself, is aware that unfortunately the opposite is the case.

First the lack of ability to distinguish error from truth. Even when recognized, error is not without danger; it shares with truth the property to act suggestively, especially when [pg 320] it repeatedly and with assurance approaches the mind. And often error does pose with great assurance, as the result of science, as the conclusion of the superior mind of the teacher, perhaps of a famous teacher! It is taken for granted that whatever serious men assert in the name of science must be right; or, if not that, there is the overawing feeling that there must be some justification for the confidence of the assertion. Authority impresses even without argument, and impresses the more strongly, the less there is of intellectual independence. The latter is at lowest ebb at the youthful age. That which in hypnotic suggestion is intensified into the morbid: the effective psychical transfer of one's own thought into some one else, occurs in a lesser form through the influence of the morbid scepsis of our times; it is a poisonous atmosphere, affecting imperceptively the susceptible mind which remains long in it.

For this reason the religious savant, who has to do a great deal with infidel books, must be on his watch incessantly, even though he has the knowledge and the intellect to detect wrong conclusions. Thus we find that great scholars often display a striking fear of irreligious books. Of Cardinal Mai it is told: “He said—and this we can vouch for—‘I have the permission to read forbidden books; but I never make use of it nor do I intend to do so’ ” (Hilger, Der Index, 1905, 41).

The learned L. A. Muratori wrote a refutation of a heretic book. In the preface he thought it necessary to apologize for having read the book. He said: “The book got into my hands very late, and for a long time I could not get myself to read it. For why should one read the writings of innovators except to commit one's self to their folly? I seek and like books which confirm my faith, but not those which would lead me away from my religion. But when I heard that the book was circulated in Italy, I resolved to muster up my strength for the defence of truth and religion, and for the safety of my brethren.”

Saint Francis of Sales, with touching simplicity, gives in his writings praise to God for having preserved him from losing his faith through the reading of heretical books. Of the learned Spanish philosopher Balmes is preserved a saying that he once addressed to two of his friends: “You know, the faith is deeply rooted in my heart. Nevertheless, I cannot read a fallacious book without feeling the necessity of regaining the right mood by reading Holy Writ, the Imitation of Christ, and the writings of blessed Louis of Granada.”

What then must happen when the needed training is lacking? when one easily grasps the objections to the truth, but cannot find the answer? when one is not in a position to ascertain [pg 321] whether the asserted facts are based on truth, whether something important is kept back, whether there are stated positive facts, or mere hypotheses, or perhaps even idle suppositions? If one is not capable to recognize wrong conclusions, to note the ambiguities of words? Our present treatise cites proof of it. How many earnest men, who in good faith are the warm advocates of freedom of science, are aware how ambiguous that term is; how a whole theory of cognition and view of the world is hidden behind it? How many can at once see the ambiguity of phrases like “Difference between knowledge and faith,” of “experiencing one's religion,” of “evolution and progress,” of “humanism,” of “unfolding personality”? And of the self-conscious postulate that science cannot reckon with supernatural factors, how many perceive that it is nothing but an undemonstrated supposition? We are told that all great representatives of science reject the Christian view of the world; who knows at once that such assertion is untrue? We read that the Copernican theory was condemned by Rome, even prohibited up to 1835, and this cannot fail to make an impression; but the part omitted in the story, who will at once supplement or even suspect it?

Then there is the great want of philosophical training. Formerly a thorough philosophical education was the indispensable condition for maturity, and considered the indispensable foundation for higher studies. All this has changed; frequently there is not even the desire for philosophical training. Of course, modern philosophy in its present state does not promise much of benefit. “Students of medicine and law remain for the larger part without any philosophical education, and among those of the other two faculties but few students do better than come into a more or less superficial touch with philosophy” (Paulsen). The consequence is, they cannot scientifically get their bearings in respect to ultimate questions, and easily lose their faith, succumbing to errors and sophisms.

Imagine a young man, untrained; in books, in the lecture room, in his intercourse, everywhere, he is courted by a disbelieving science, with its theories, its objections, its doubts,—tension everywhere that is not relieved, accusations that are [pg 322] not explained; how is he to bring with a steady hand order in all this? To clinch it, he hears the obtrusive exhortation to form forthwith his own conviction by his own reasoning!

He is, moreover, likely to be informed as follows: “The university is a place for mental struggle, for incessant investigation of inherited opinions. For years and years the student was fed with prescribed matter which he had to swallow believingly, ... at last the moment has arrived when he can choose and decide for himself. True, this freedom of mental choice—and it is the essence of academic freedom—has also its anguish. But how magnificent it is, on the other hand, when the gloomy walls of the classroom vanish, and the bright ether of research dawns into view with its wide horizon! He who cannot grasp and enjoy this moment in its grandeur and exquisiteness, he who prefers to the free life of the colt on the vast prairies the dull existence in a narrow fold ... he has taken the wrong road when he came to the gates of the Alma Mater to study worldly science—he should have remained at the restful hearth of the pious, parental home, in the shadow of the old village-church” (Jodl).

What a lack of earnestness and of knowledge of man, what lack of the sense of responsibility! Of young men, without thorough philosophical and theological preparation, it is demanded to doubt at once their Christian religion, despite all compunctions of their conscience, and to argue the dangerous theses of an anti-Christian view of the world. They are expected, as if they were heirs to the wisdom of all centuries, to judge and correct forthwith that which their teachers call the result of their long studies—for they are not supposed to follow them blindly, they are expected to sit in judgment over theological tendencies and philosophical systems, and to struggle through doubts and aberrations, untouched by error, to display a mental independence which even the man of highest learning lacks. Such a knowledge of human nature might be left to itself, if the wrecks it causes were not so saddening.

“How terrible is the power of science!” a voice of authority warned a short time ago. “The unlearned are defenceless against the learned, those who know little against those that know much; the unlearned are incapable of independently judging the theories of the learned; error in the garb of knowledge impresses them with the force of truth, especially when it finds an ally in their evil lusts. No wielder of state-power can lay waste, can destroy, as much as an unconscientious, or even merely careless, wielder of the weapons of knowledge. [pg 323]Exalted as is the pursuit of knowledge, and as knowledge itself is if guided by strong moral sentiment and earnest conscience, so degraded it becomes if it tears itself from the self-control of conscience. This fatal rupture will happen the instant science deviates but a hair's breadth from the truth it can vouch for upon conscientious examination.... Sacred is the freedom of science keeping within the bounds of the moral laws; but transgressing them it is no longer science, but a farce staged with scientific technique, a negation of the essence of science” (Count A. Apponyi, former Hungarian Minister of Education, officiating at a Promotio sub auspiciis, 1908).

In the year 1877, at the Fiftieth Congress of Natural Scientists in Munich, Prof. R. Virchow, founder and leader of the Progressive Party in Germany, sounded a warning to be conscientious in the use of the freedom in teaching, and in the first place, to announce as the result of science nothing but what has been demonstrated beyond doubt: “I am of the opinion that we are actually in danger of jeopardizing the future by making too much use of the freedom offered to us by present conditions, and I would caution not to continue in the arbitrary personal speculation, which spreads itself nowadays in many branches of natural science. We must make rigid distinction between that which we teach and that which is the object of research. The subjects of our research are problems. But a problem should not be made a subject of teaching. In teaching, we have to remain within the small, and yet large domain which we actually control. Any attempt to model our problems into doctrines, to introduce our conjectures as the foundation of education, must fail, especially the attempt to simply depose the Church and to replace its dogma without ceremony by evolutionary religion; indeed, gentlemen, this attempt must fail, but in failing it will carry with it the greatest dangers for science in general.... We must set ourselves the task, in the first place, to hand down the actual, the real knowledge, and, in going further, we must tell our students invariably: This, however, is not proved, it is myopinion, my notion, my theory, my speculation.... Gentlemen, I think we would misuse our power, and endanger our power, if in teaching we would not restrict ourselves to this legitimate province.”

And is nothing known of the inclinations and passions, especially of the youthful heart, to which truth is so often a heavy yoke, constraining and oppressing them? Will they not try to use every means to relieve the tension? Will they not gravitate by themselves to a science that tells them the old religion with its oppressive dogmas, its unworldly morals, is a stage of evolution long since passed by, and that many other things, once called sin by obsolete prejudices, are the justified utterances of nature? Will they not worship this science as their liberator? He who once said “I am the truth,” He was crucified; a sign for all ages. Base nature will at all times crucify the truth. [pg 324] F. Coppée, a member of the French Academy, led back by severe sickness to the faith of his youth, relates the following in his confessions: “I was raised a Christian, and fulfilled the religious duties with zeal even for some years after my first Holy Communion. What made me deviate from my pious habits were, I confess it openly, the aberrations of youthful age and the loathing to make certain confessions. Quite many who are in the same position will admit, if they will be frank, that at the beginning they were estranged from their creed by the severe law which religion imposes on all in respect to sensuality, and only in later years they felt the want to extenuate and justify the transgressions of the moral law by a scientific system.” “Having taken the first step on the downward road, I could not fail to read books, listen to words, see examples, which confirmed my notion that nothing can be more warranted but that man obey his pride and his sensuality; and soon I became totally indifferent in respect to religion. As will be seen, my case is an everyday case.”

Only exalted moral purity can keep the mind free from being made captive and dragged down by the passions.

In a college town in southern Germany a Catholic Priest some time ago met a college girl who belonged to a club of monists. They started upon a discussion, and soon the college girl had no argument left. But as a last shot she exclaimed, “Well, you cannot prevent me from hating your God.”

Prof. G. Spicker relates in his autobiography instructive reminiscences of his college years. Religiously trained in his youth, and in his early years for some time a Capuchin, he left this Order to go to the university. Previous to this he had been led to doubt by the perusal of modern philosophical writings, and at Munich he sank still more deeply into doubt. Prof. Huber advised him to hear the radical Prantl. In his dejection he went to a fellow-student in quest of comfort, and received the significant advice: “Indeed, Huber is right: you are not a bit of a philosopher; you still believe in sin, that is only a theological notion; go and hear Prantl, he'll rid you of your fancies.” Of the impression Prantl's lectures made upon the susceptible young students he relates: “They were especially overawed by his passionate enthusiasm, his trenchant criticism, his sarcastic treatment of everything mediocre and superficial, and, chiefly, by his self-conscious, authoritative, demeanor. Like a tornado he swept through hazy, obscure regions, whether in science, art, poetry, or religion. Even by only attending the lectures one became more conscious of one's knowledge and looked down with silent contempt upon semi-philosophers and theologians.” In regard to himself he admits that a few weeks sufficed to destroy the last remnants of his former religious persuasion: “Huber's prophecy was completely fulfilled, the last stump of my dogmatic belief was smashed into a thousand splinters.”

Vae mundo a scandalis! What a responsibility rests especially upon those who become the scandal for inexperienced youth!

In the upper classes of a largely Protestant college in northern Germany the professor of mathematics, some years ago, asked the [pg 325] question, who among the students had read Haeckel's “Weltraetsel.” All except four or five rose to their feet. Upon his further question, who of them believed in what is said in the book, about half of the classroom rose. “The immature youth who read the ‘Weltraetsel,’ ” so says A. Hansen, “unfortunately conclude: ‘Haeckel says there is no God, therefore we may boldly live as it suits our natural immorality....’ Is Haeckel the strong mind to assume for a long future the responsibility for this conclusion?”

One is frightened by the manner the highest ideals of mankind are often juggled with, what they dare offer with easy conscience to the tenderest youth. Prof. Forel is known by his widely spread book on “The Sexual Question,” perhaps better known even by his lectures on the subject, which some cities prohibited in the interest of public morals. In the seventh edition of his book we find published as a testimonial, also as proof of the good reading the book makes for early youth, a letter of a young woman whose opinion of the book had been requested by the author. Her answer reads: “You ask me what impression your book made upon me. I should state that I am very young, but have read a great deal. My mother has given me a very liberal education, and so I have a right to count myself among the unprejudiced girls.” She assures the author: “I never thought for a single moment that your book was immoral, hence I do not believe that you have corrupted me.” And such books are offered to young girls as fit reading!

Some years ago a sensation was created when in Berlin a young author, twenty-two years of age, George Scheufler by name, killed himself. Though of a religious training, he began at an early age to read the writings of infidel natural scientists and philosophers. His belief became weaker and weaker, and he finally abandoned it entirely. Only a few years afterwards, the young man, who had become a writer of repute, put a revolver to his heart, nauseated by the world, tortured by religious doubts. An organ of modern infidelity commented upon the event in the cold words: “The truth is probably that the undoubtedly talented author had not nerves strong enough for the Berlin life, hence he dies. May his ashes rest in peace!” Heartless words on the misfortune of a poor victim of the modern propaganda of disbelief.

Heavy, indeed, is the responsibility courted by representatives of science when they sin against the holiest ideals of mankind, especially when they induce the maturing youth, with his susceptibilities and awakening impulses, to emancipate himself from the belief of his childhood, and to tear down the fortifications of innocence! If the teacher is high-minded, this cannot mitigate the perniciousness of his teaching, but only increase it, neither can the fact that his personal morals are without a flaw vindicate him. If a man by strewing poison does no harm to himself, this does not give him the right to injure others. If science [pg 326] demands the privilege of assuming the mental education of our people, then science assumes also the duty of administering these interests conscientiously, and the gravest responsibility will rest upon him in whose hand science spreads ruin.

“Knowledge does no Harm”?

“The increase and spread of knowledge” (this is a further objection) “can never harm society, only benefit its interests” (Von Amira). Hence, do not get alarmed: nothing is to be feared from science. The apostles of the enlightened eighteenth century tried to quiet their age with similar assertions. “It is not true,” says Lessing, “that speculations about God and divine things have ever done harm to society; not the speculations did it—but the folly and tyranny to forbid them.”

If this were amended to read true knowledge can never do harm, then the mind might be set at rest, although even then it might become dangerous to teach the truth without discrimination or caution. Not all are ripe for every truth: truth can often be misunderstood, lead to false conclusions. Thus, it may become certain, perhaps, that a much-worshipped relic, a much-visited shrine, is not genuine: nevertheless in giving such explanation to simple, pious people one would have to display caution in order to keep them from doubting even the tenets of the creed.

But there is also false knowledge; can this “never do harm but only benefit?” Will all knowledge exert the same influence, whether the Christian tenets of love and mercy, or Nietzsche's moral for the wealthy, whether young people are given to read Christian books, or those of Haeckel, Buechner, and Strauss? The story is told of Voltaire, that he sent all servants out of the room when he had friends for guests and philosophical discussions started at the dining-table, because he did not wish to have his throat cut the next night. So this free-thinker, too, did not think that all knowledge is beneficial.

But, we are further assured, let science peacefully pursue its way; if it should err it will correct itself.

It is true, sciences of obvious subjects, that have no direct [pg 327] relation to moral conduct of life, do, sooner or later, correct their mistakes; recent physics has corrected the mistakes of the physics of past ages; historical errors, too, are disappearing with the times. Quite different is the matter when philosophical-religious questions are at issue. Pantheism, subjectivism, “scientific” rejection of faith, are errors, grave errors, yet it does not follow that they will fall of themselves into desuetude; they may prevail for a long time, may return with the regularity of certain diseases. Their error is not tangible, and the desires of the heart incline to them by the law of least resistance. From the earliest ages to this day the same philosophical errors have returned, in varied form.

But let us assume that this would be the case; that these errors, too, would disappear after some time, disappear for good. Is it demanded that the errors in the meanwhile ought to have free play? Shall the surgeon be allowed to perform risky experiments on the patient, because later on he will realize that his act was objectionable? Will the father hand to his son an improper book, consoling himself that truth must prevail in the end, even though defeated temporarily?

These are delusions of the abstract intellectualism of our times, which sees all salvation and human perfection merely in learning and knowledge, and forgets that knowledge signifies education and benefit for mankind only when attached to truth and moral order. Not knowledge, but knowledge of the truth, and moral dignity, make for civilization and perfection; knowledge no longer controlled by truth and ethics becomes the hireling of the low passions, and fights for their freedom.

“The Vehicle of Truth.”

Back of the urgent demands for unrestricted freedom in teaching stands invariably a thought that operates with palsying effect upon the minds: to wit, that science is the embodiment of truth, a genius carrying the unextinguishable beacon of light: to silence it would be to resist the truth.

Our first thought when we began our dissertation of the Freedom of Science was, that science is not the poetical being so [pg 328] often described: it is an individual activity, a product of the human mind, sharing its defects and weaknesses. For this reason science is not the infallible bearer of the truth; least of all in the higher questions of life, where its eyes are dimmed, and where inclinations of the heart still further obscure its strength of vision. And this is admitted, even to the point of despairing of the ability to find the truth on these questions, and if one is not ready to admit this, the fact is made apparent by a glance at the countless errors exhibited in the history of human thinking.

Is error to have the same right that truth has? If wholesome beverage may rightly be offered to anybody, can, with the same right, poison be given? May one follow his false sense of truth, calling it science, and teach anything he thinks right?

Moreover, is not this science, which, according to its exponents, need not regard anything but its own method, entirely a special kind of science? Indeed it is, as we have learned to know it. We have learned to know this free science, with its autonomous subjectivism, that shapes its changing views according to personal experience; this feeble but proud scepticism; we have learned of those ominous imperatives, that banish everything divine from the horizon of knowledge—a science with its torch turned upside down. And its aim—negation. The beautiful thought is frequently expressed that science, especially the science of our universities, is to act as the leader in the mental life of the nation, “a universal Parliament of science, which would represent the authoritative power so urgently needed by our discordant and sceptical age, an age that has lost faith in authority.”

The idea is beautiful, it is sublime; it coincides with a conception of the divine Spirit, who has already realized it, though, it is true, in another manner. The divine Spirit has founded in the bosom of mankind such a centre of mental life; namely, the Church. She, and only she, bears all the marks of the universal teacher of truth. By virtue of divine aid the Church alone has the prerogative of infallibility, as necessary to the teacher of the nations; human philosophy is not infallible, least of all a science that despairs of the highest truth, nay, that often [pg 329] deals with it as the cat does with the mouse. A teacher of the nations must possess unity of doctrine. The Church has this unity, her view of the world stands before us in perfect concord; while discord reigns in the philosophy of a free mankind, one thought opposed to another. The Church is holy, holy in her moral laws, holy in her service of the truth; she never shirks truth, not even where truth is painful; the Church never surrenders the truth to human passions. The Church is Catholic, general, for the learned and the unlearned; she is apostolic, with faithful hand she preserves for all generations the spiritual patrimony of the forefathers. And the unbelieving science of liberalism, where is its holiness, when its eye cannot bear the sight of heaven? when it numbers among its admirers all the unholy elements of humanity? Where is its catholicity, its reverence for traditions, its historic sense, the indispensable requirement for the teacher of centuries? The ruins of overthrown truths, amongst which wanton thought holds its orgies, bear witness to the unfitness of infidel science to be the teacher of mankind.

Serious Charges.

The science of our day must often listen to charges of the gravest nature. They are uttered not only by servants of the Church, but in public meetings, legislative bodies, and in numerous articles by the press: science, we are told, has become a danger to faith and morals, it has become the teacher of irreligion, a leader in the war against Christianity. The force of the accusation is felt and attempts are made to ward it off. And then we are assured that science is not the enemy of religion, nor of the precious possessions of society.

It is clear, without further proof, that science in itself cannot be a social danger; hence the charge cannot apply to science in general, but only to that special brand of science cultivated in an anti-Christian spirit. The assurance from its champions, that their intentions are the best, may often be a proof that they do not realize the scope of their doctrines; nevertheless, it cannot be denied that this science has become, through its principles, as taught in lectures and in print, the greatest [pg 330] danger to the religious-moral possessions of our nations and to the foundations of public order, hence an unlimited freedom for the activities of this science means unlimited freedom for a destructive power that spells ruin to our mental culture.

Can the principles of this science be anything but a danger? Their sharp antagonism to the principle of authority, must it not undermine the respect for state authority, must it not strengthen the elements of social disorder? Its contempt of sacred traditions, must it not become a danger to everything existing? “If all mankind were of one opinion,” it teaches, “and but one single man were of a different opinion, then mankind would have no more right to impose silence on him than he to silence all of mankind, if he could,” must not such an individualism become the fertile soil of revolutionary ideas? Its ethics without religion tells every one that his own individuality is the court of last resort for his moral doings, that moral laws are subject to change, and must such views not become a danger to moral order? Finally, the separation of mankind from God and its eternal destiny, must it not necessarily lead the whole of life to materialism? and from the scullery it is not far to the sewer. Through its antagonism to Christian faith this science becomes the chief factor in dechristianizing the nations.

It is objected that this accusation is not true, because science addresses itself to professional circles only; the people, of course, cannot digest these things, therefore religion is to be preserved for the people.

Why this distinction? The principles of liberal science of to-day are either true or they are not true. If not true, why profess them? If they are true, as is vehemently asserted, then why should the people be excluded from a true view of the world? Have the people not an equal right to the truth in important questions, equal right to light and happiness? Ah, the consequences of this doctrine of freedom are feared; it is feared the people's natural logic would take hold of these principles and draw from them its conclusions. And by that very fear these principles stand condemned of themselves. The truth can stand its consequences, as does the Christian view [pg 331] of the world; and the more zealously its consequences are pursued, the more blessed the fruits. It is otherwise with error. Therefore, if the principles of liberal science cannot stand their consequences, they must be erroneous. “Consider chiefly to be good that which enhances when communicated to others,” is a wise maxim of the Pythagoreans. Anything spelling damage and ruin, when communicated to others, is not good, but evil.

Nor is it true that science confines itself to professional circles. Any one who does not lead the isolated existence of pedantry knows that this is not the case. What the professor of our day teaches in the lecture room, finds its way into the minds of his students, and from there into preparatory and public schools; ideas committed by the scientific writer to paper and print, go into all the world, and, transformed into popular speech, become the common property of the millions. The flood of books, pamphlets, and leaflets attacking and vilifying the Christian tenets of faith is ever swelling, and day by day tons of this literature are spread without hindrance over Christian countries. There is not a single book against the Christian truth, be its author named Feuerbach, Strauss, Darwin, Haeckel, Carneri, Nietzsche, or otherwise, that does not soon circulate in popular editions in every country, or at least has to lend its subject to pamphlets and booklets, which then carry these “results of science” to every nook and corner, to the remotest backwoods village. And the fruits? All those who in these days profess infidelity and radicalism, they all unanimously profess adherence to modern free science.

Tell Me with Whom Thou Goest.

In stately array they come along nowadays, free-thinkers and freemasons, free-religionists and representatives of the free view of the world, monists, agitators for “free school” and socialists, all impetuously active in the service of anti-Christianity, bent on reviving and spreading ancient heathendom. All are avowed disciples of free science, all spread its doctrines, and all work for the popularizing of their ideas. There they press on, the living proof that modern science, as far as it is infidel, has become, [pg 332] voluntarily or involuntarily, the teacher of radicalism, of paganism, and the leader in the battle against religion and Christian morals.

And in its train is marching Free-thought in all its varieties. Its aim at destruction, its dismal designs against religion and state, have become manifest in its books and conventions; for instance, the international free-thinker conventions lately held at Rome and at Prague were plainly of anarchistical sentiment. In their midst we see men of science, academic teachers. Under their auspices are arranged “scientific lectures” to make known the “results of modern science,” with the conviction that this will suffice for the overthrow of religion; they demand that “the instruction in public institutions be only a scientific one”; itinerant orators are sent to speak with preference on “Science and the Church,” on the theocratic view of the world and free science. The doctrines of liberal science are adopted by freemasonry, its rallying-cry is “freedom from God, freedom of the human reason.” And following the band-wagon of free science, we see a shouting and jeering multitude, its clenched fists threatening any one who would dare to attack this fine science, their liberator from the yoke of religion; they are the thousands of the common people, whose faith has been torn out of their hearts, and, with faith, also peace and good morals. We see marching there hundreds from the ranks of youth, who in the heedless impulse of their inexperience have cast off belief, and, with belief, frequently all moral discipline; they, too, look upon science as their liberator. The morally inferior part of mankind, which declares anything to be ethical that “promotes life”; which fights against “love-denying views” and against obsolete maxims of morals, it, too, follows in the tracks of free science. And wherever the issue is to fight Christian institutions, under the name of marriage-reform, free-school, or what not, there we are sure to see representatives of science and of universities, and to hear them hold forth for free science.

Where the purpose is to kindle the fires of revolt against religious authority, there we are certain to meet in the first rank the modern teachers of science.

Science and its representatives have an ideal vocation. They should be the hearth of the spiritual goods of the nations; new and wholesome forces should at all times emanate from the abodes of science, and the people should look up with confidence to these watch-towers of knowledge and truth. What a shocking contrast to this exalted ideal it is, to hear time and again the believing people and their leaders raise a complaining and indignant voice against a science that has become a most dangerous antagonist to their holiest goods! Is it not painful to see the devout mother apprehensively cautioning her son, who departs for the university, not to let his faith be taken from him by teaching and association? Is it not sad to observe that it has become the common saying: “He has lost his faith at the university”? Is it not regrettable to see that Catholic universities have become necessary to preserve the ideal goods of the Christian religion? It is unavoidable that such complaints are sometimes exaggerated. In their generality they include universities that have given small reason for them; honourable men and representatives of sciences who should not be reproached are being mixed up in these charges. But it is true, nevertheless, that many have given such occasion. Is it not true also that many remain silent instead of protesting in the name of true science? that they feel it incumbent upon themselves to protect such a procedure, for the sake of the freedom of science?

For a generation and longer, Haeckel misused science to make war upon religion, and went to the extreme in his scientific outrageousness, not even stopping at forgery. Professor W. His had already in 1875 expressed his opinion of Haeckel in relation to the false drawings of his embryonic illustrations in the words: “Others may respect Haeckel as an active and reckless leader: in my judgment he has on account of his methods forfeited the right to be considered an equal in the circle of serious investigators.” When Dr. Brass, a member of the Kepler Bund, recently disclosed new forgeries of this kind, it should have been made the occasion for a protest in the interest of science and its freedom against such methods. Instead of that, however, forty-six professors of biology and zoölogy published a statement in defence of Haeckel, declaring that while not approving of Haeckel's method in some instances, they condemned in the interest of science and of freedom of teaching most strongly the war waged against Haeckel by Brass and the Kepler Bund. Is the freedom to use methods like Haeckel's included in the freedom of teaching, which they consider must be defended? Can it surprise any one that this freedom of teaching is viewed with concern?

Much excitement was caused a few years ago by a pamphlet of an Austrian professor. Another Austrian professor, of high rank in science, criticized the pamphlet as “A reckless and absolute negation of the foundation of the Christian dogma in the widest sense of the word, proclaimed as the verdict of science and of common sense. It is replete with blasphemous jokes, such as may usually be heard only in the most vulgar places.”

A cry of indignation was raised by the Catholic people of the Tyrol against this base insult to their creed; it was shown that the author of this pamphlet had misused his lectures on Catholic Canon Law, to speak to his Catholic students disdainfully of the Divinity of Christ, of the Sacraments, of the Church, and the prime foundations of Christianity. Upon indictment by the public prosecutor, the pamphlet was condemned in Court as a libel upon the Christian religion.

It was expected that the representatives of science, in defence of the threatened honour of science, would repudiate all community of interest with a production that was merely the expression of an anti-Christian propaganda. That expectation was not fulfilled; on the contrary, those in authority at the Austrian universities, and numerous professors of other countries, joined in a protest against the violation of the rights of a professor, against the attacks on freedom of science. They demanded full immunity for the author of the libel. Even the state department of Religion and Education expressed the opinion that the accused “had only availed himself of the right of free research.”Is this the freedom in teaching that is to be protected by the state? And yet there are those who indignantly deny that there is danger for religion in this freedom!

He who really has at heart the honour of science and of the universities, and is inspired by their ideals, should bear in mind that to realize these ideals the first thing necessary is public confidence: not the confidence of a revolutionizing minority,—a scrutiny of those elements that give them their plaudits ought to arouse reflection,—but the confidence of earnest, conservative circles of the uncorrupted people.

In academic circles the increasing lack of respect for the university and its teachers is complained of. Professor Von Amira writes: “Thirty years ago the academic teacher was reverenced by the highest society; his association was sought; he had no need of any other title than the one that told what he was. To-day we see a different picture, particularly as to the title 'professor.' To-day they smile at it. Nowadays, if a professor desires to impress, he must bear a title designating something else than what he really is. A literature has grown up that deals with the decline of the universities. The fact of a decline is taken for granted, only its causes and remedies are discussed. And this is not all. Invectives are bestowed upon the institutions, upon the teachers as a body, upon the individual teacher. And there is no one to take up [pg 335]the cudgels in our defence!” A fact suggesting earnest self-examination, and the resolution not to forfeit still more this respect. It is not sufficient to repudiate with indignation the complaints. Nor will it do to pretend a respect for religion and Christianity, and a desire to see both preserved, that are not really felt. What is needed is the admission that the road taken is the wrong one.

The Responsibility before History.

The distressing fact is realized that the worm of immorality is devouring in our day the marrow of the most civilized nations. It is also known that its wretched victims are in no class so numerous as in the class of college men. Earnest-minded men and women are raising a warning cry, and are forming societies to stem the ruin of the nations. The alarm bell is ringing through the lands.

Remarkable words on this subject are those written not long ago by Paulsen: “It looks as if all the demons had been let loose at this moment to devastate the basis of the people's life. Those who know Germany through reading only, through its comic weeklies, its plays, its novels, the windows of its bookshops, the lectures delivered and attended by male and female, must arrive at the opinion that the paramount question to the German people just now is whether the restrictions put on the free play of the sexual impulse by custom and law are evil and should be abolished?” Paulsen puts the responsibility for it upon the sophistry on the sexual instinct and the present naturalism in the view of the world: “The prevailing naturalism in the view of world and life is leading to astonishing aberrations of judgment, and this is true also of men otherwise discerning. If man is nothing else but a system of natural instincts, similar in this to the rest of living beings, then, indeed, no one can tell what other purpose life could have than the gratification of all instincts.... Reformation of ideas—this is the cry heard in all streets; cast off a Christianity hostile to life, that is killing in embryo thousands of possibilities for happiness. True, even in past ages young people were not spared temptation. But the barriers were stronger; traditional, moral, religious sentiment, and sensible views. Our time has pulled down these barriers; young people everywhere are advised by all the leading lights of the day: old morals and religion are dead, slain by modern science; the old commandments are the obsolete fetters of superstition. We know now their origin; they are but auto-suggestions of common consciousness which mistakes them for voices from another world, that has been deposed long since by the scientific thought of to-day.”

These are words of indignation of a well-meaning friend of mankind. Do they not rebound upon the speaker himself [pg 336] to become terrible self-accusations for him and others, who, while perhaps of similar well-meaning sentiment, are actually working for the annihilation of the moral-religious sentiment, as Paulsen himself has done by his books?

“The old religion is dead, slain by science,” is proclaimed in innumerable passages of his books; the idea of another world has long been disposed of by the scientific reasoning of the present time, “hence a philosophy,” he tells us, “which insists upon the thesis that certain natural processes make it necessary to assume a metaphysical principle, or a supernatural agency, will always have science for an irreconcilable opponent.” “It will be difficult for a future age to understand,” he writes elsewhere, “how our times so complacently could cling to a system of religious instruction originated many centuries ago under entirely different conditions of intellectual life, and which in many points forms the decided opposite to facts and notions which, outside of the school, are taken by our times for granted.” In respect to morals, too, one can do without a supernatural law. “According to the view presented here, ethics as a science does not depend on belief.... Moral laws are the natural laws of the human-historical life of time and place.... Nor does it seem advisable in pedagogical-practical respect to make the force or the significance of ethical commands dependent on a matter so uncertain as the belief in a future life.” We might cite many similar expressions from his writings.

It is significant that they have to condemn their own science in view of its sad consequences.

Paulsen loudly demands restriction for the freedom of art, for the industry of lewdness, for the literature of perversity.

He says: “The English people, admired by us because of their liberal principles and free institutions, are less afraid to show by the sternest means the door to salacious minds ... the feeling of responsibility for preserving the roots of the strength of the people's life is in England far more wide awake than with us, who still feel in our bones the fear of censure and the policeman's club.... But what are the things committed by our nasty trades and the publications in their service other than so many assaults upon our liberty? Are they not primarily an assault upon the inner freedom of adolescent youth who are made slaves of their lowest instincts by the industries of these merchants? Therefore admonish the hangman not to be swerved by the plea of freedom.”

No one will deny approval to these words. But do they not, again, become a severe condemnation of the reckless freedom [pg 337] in teaching, that claims the right to assault without hindrance the truths which are the foundation of our nation? If art must not become a danger, why may science? If the artist is asked to take into consideration the innocence and weal of young people, if he is cautioned not to follow solely “his sense for beauty,” why should the teacher be allowed to follow his “sense for truth” without regard for anything else? If no statute of limitation and restriction exist for science, neither prescribed nor prohibited ideas for the academic teacher, why should there be any prohibited “æsthetic principles” for the artist? Manifestly, because here the absurdity of this freedom is more clearly perceptible, because it leads to shamelessness. At this juncture, therefore, they are constrained to concede the untenability and the senselessness of the unlimited human freedom, that is defended with so much volubility.

Paulsen points to an age in which, similarly to our times, progressive men arose and, in the name of science, discarded religion and morals; they called themselves men of science, sages, “sophists.” “It is remarkable that the very same occurrence was observed more than 2,000 years ago, when Plato experienced it in his time with the young people of Athens, who became fascinated by similar sophistical speech.”

The noble Sage of Greece had caustic words for Protagoras, the champion of sophistry, and his brethren in spirit: “If cobblers and tailors were to put in worse condition the shoes and clothes they receive for improving, this would soon be known and they would starve; not so Protagoras, who is corrupting quietly the whole of Hellas, and who has dismissed his disciples in a worse state than he received them, and this for more than forty years.... Not Protagoras alone, but many others did this before and after him. Did they knowingly deceive and poison the youth or did they not realize what they were doing? Are we to assume that these men, praised by many for their sagacity, have done so in ignorance? No, they were not blind to their acts, but blind were the young people who paid them for instruction, blind were their parents who confided them to these sophists, blindest were the communities that admitted them instead of turning them away.”

What a responsibility to co-operate in the intellectual corruption of entire generations! And the corruption by dechristianizing is increasing in all circles, owing to the misuse of science. That the condition is not even worse is not the merit of this science, nor evidence of the harmlessness of its [pg 338] freedom; it is the merit of the after effect of a Christian past, which continues to influence, consciously or unconsciously, the thought and feeling even of those circles that seem to be long since estranged from Christianity.

Concerning the decline of morality in our age Paulsen observes: “Foerster rightly emphasizes the fact that the old Church rendered an imperishable service in moralizing and spiritualizing our life, by urging first of all the discipline of the will, and by raising heroes of self-denial in the persons of her Saints. That we still draw from this patrimony I, too, do not doubt. That we waste it carelessly is indeed the great danger.”

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“It was a wonderfully balmy evening in the fall of 1905,” relates Rev. L. Ballet, missionary in Japan, “and the sun had just set behind Mount Fiji. Unexpectedly a young Japanese appeared in front of me, desiring to talk to me. I noticed that he was a young student. I bade him enter, and we saluted each other with a low bow, as persons meeting for the first time. I asked him to take a seat opposite to me, and took advantage of the first moments of silence to take a good look at him. But imagine my astonishment when his first question was, ‘Do you believe life is worth living?’ asked in an earnest but calm manner. I confess this question from lips so young alarmed me and went to my heart like a thrust. ‘Why, certainly,’ was my reply, ‘life is worth living, and living good. How do you come to ask a question that sounds so strange from the lips of a young man? You certainly do not desire to follow the example of your fellow-countryman Fijimura Misao, who jumped into the abyss from Mount Kegon?’—‘No, sir, at least not yet. I confess, however, that I feel my hesitation to be cowardice, for I have made this resolution for some time. In my opinion man is purely a thing of blind accident, a wretched, ephemeral fly without importance, without value. Why then prolong a life in which a little pleasure is added to so much sorrow, so much disappointment; a life that at any rate finally melts away into nothing? I am more and more convinced that this is the truth.’—‘And what brought you to such views?’—‘Well, science, philosophy, the books which I have read for pastime or study. If it were only the opinion of our few Japanese scientists one might hesitate; but the science, the philosophy, of Europe, translated and expounded by our writers, teach the same thing. God, soul, future life, all is idle delusion. Nothing is eternal but only matter. After twenty, thirty, sixty years, man dies, and there remains nothing of him but his body, which will decay in order to pass into other beings, matter like he was. This is what science teaches us; a hard doctrine, I confess; but what is there to be said against it, considering the positive results of scientific research?’ ”

Great responsibility is borne by a science that despoils mankind of its best, of all that gives it comfort and support in [pg 339] life! In faraway Japan there is not the spiritual power of Christianity to counteract the misuse of science; the poison does its work and there is no antidote.

That the Christian nations “carelessly waste their patrimony, that, indeed, is the great danger.”

[pg 340]

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Chapter II. Freedom Of Teaching And The State.

Close bonds of mutual dependence and solidarity interlink all created beings, especially men. Insufficient in himself, both physically and mentally, man finds in uniting with others everything he needs; thus do individuals and families join forces, generations join hands; what the fathers have earned is inherited and increased by new generations. Human life is essentially social life and co-operation—in the indefinite form social life within the great human society, in the definite form social life within the two great bodies, Church and state. Within both bodies human benefits are to be attained and protected against danger by common exertion—within the Church the spiritual benefits of eternal character, within the state the temporal benefits.

Hence both bodies, or societies, will have to take a position in relation to science and its doctrine. Indeed, in civilized nations there is hardly a public activity of mightier influence upon life than science. The contemplation of this position shall now be our task.

Science, as we have above set forth, addresses itself to mankind—a fallible science addressing itself to men easily deceived; therefore, an unrestricted freedom in teaching is ethically inadmissible. Hence it follows, as a matter of course, that the authorities of state and Church, who must guard the common benefits, have the duty of keeping the freedom in scientific teaching within its proper bounds, so far as this lies in their power. Hitherto we have left these social authorities out of consideration; the position taken was the general ethical one.

The case might be supposed that the Church had provided few restrictions of this kind, and the state none at all; nevertheless, [pg 341] an absolute freedom in teaching would still present a condition dangerous to the community at large, contrary to the demands of morality; we should then have an unrestricted freedom in teaching, permitted by law, but ethically inadmissible.

The distinction is important. Quite often freedom in teaching is spoken of as permitted by the state, as if it was identical with ethical permission. If freedom in teaching is permitted by the state, this evidently means only that the state permits teaching without interference on its part; it says, I do not stand in the way, I let things proceed. But this does not mean that it is right and proper. The burden of personal responsibility rests upon him who avails himself of a freedom which, though not hindered by the state, is in conflict with what is right. The state tolerates many things—it does not interfere against unkindness, nor against extravagance, nor deceit; nevertheless everybody is morally responsible for such doings.

If, then, we take up the question, what position social authority should take toward scientific teaching, whether it be in the higher schools, or outside of them, we are considering chiefly the state. It is the state that enters most into consideration when freedom in teaching nowadays is discussed; the state may interfere most effectively in the management of schools and universities, for these are state institutions in most countries.

Universities as State Institutions.

They were not always state institutions. The universities of the Middle Ages were autonomous corporations, which constituted themselves, made their own statutes, had their own courts, but enjoyed at the same time legal rights. Conditions gradually changed after the Reformation. The power of princes began more and more to interfere in the management of the universities, until in the seventeenth century, and still more in the eighteenth, the universities became state institutions, subject to the reigning sovereign, the professors his salaried officials, and text-books, subject and form of instruction were prescribed by the minute, paternal directions of the sovereign, and with the [pg 342] mania for regulating that was a feature of the eighteenth century. The nineteenth century brought more liberty; it was demanded by the enlarged scope of universities, which no longer were only the training schools for the learned professions, but became the home of research, needing freedom of movement.

Nevertheless, universities are in many countries still state institutions. They are founded by the state, are given organization and laws by the state; the teachers are appointed and given their commissions by the state. They are state officials, though less under government supervision than other state officials. At the same time these universities are possessed of a certain measure of autonomy, a remainder of olden times. They elect their academic authorities, which have some autonomy and disciplinary jurisdiction. Likewise the separate faculties have their powers; they confer degrees, administer their benefices, and exert considerable influence in filling vacant chairs.

The state then considers it its duty to grant freedom in teaching. “Science and its teaching are free,” says the law in some countries. No doubt a loosely drawn sentence; at any rate, it means that science should be granted the proper freedom. And this freedom it must have. We have become more sensitive of unjustified paternal government than were the people of the eighteenth century.

The Object of the State.

What kind of a freedom in teaching, then, should be granted by the state? Unlimited freedom? This is, at any rate, not a necessary conclusion. The state must also grant freedom to the father for the education of his children, to the landowner for the culture of his fields, to the artist in the production of his works; but that freedom would not be understood to be an unlimited one, having no regard to the interests of society, but merely as the exclusion of unwarranted interference. Hence if the state, for reasons of the commonwealth, were to restrict freedom of teaching, the restraint could not be considered unjust. The purpose of the state must not suffer injury; to attain this purpose the state has the right to demand, [pg 343] and must demand, all that is necessary to the purpose in view, even though it entails a restriction of somebody's freedom. Now for a definition of this purpose of the state.

Like any other society, the state seeks to attain a definite object, so much the more because the state is necessary to man, who otherwise would have to forego the things most needed in life; and but for the public co-operation of the many these could be attained not at all, or at least not sufficiently. To provide these things is the object of the state, viz., the public welfare of the citizens; it is to bring about public conditions which will enable the citizens to attain their temporal welfare. To this end the state must protect the rights of its subjects, and must protect and promote the public goods of economic life, but especially the spiritual benefits of morals and religion. The state, through its legislative, judicial, and executive functions, is to direct effectively the community to this end; therefore it is incumbent upon the state to care for the preservation and promotion of both material and spiritual benefits, for the protection of private rights, and for the conditions necessary to its own existence, even against the arbitrary will of its subjects.

Protection for the Spiritual Foundations of Life.

From this the conclusion naturally follows, that the state must not grant freedom to propound in public, by speech or writing, theories that will endanger the religious and moral goods of its citizens and the foundation of the state.

We claim that the state neglects a solemn duty if it permits without hindrance—we will not say, the ridicule and disparagement of religion and morals: the less so, as freedom to ridicule and to slander has nothing to do with freedom in teaching—but the public promulgation of theories which are either irreligious, or against morals, or against the state. Even though they be done in scientific form, injuries to the common weal remain injuries, and they do not change into something else by being committed in scientific form. The state must seek to prevent such injuries by strictly enforced penalties and by the [pg 344] selection of conscientious teachers. The enforcement of the principle may not be possible under circumstances, legislatures may lack insight or good will, or the complexion of the state may not admit of it for the time being, or permanently. Then we would simply see a regrettable condition, a government incapable of ridding itself of the morbid matter which is poisoning its marrow. But if there is good will and energy, one thing may always be done to check injurious influences, and that is the awakening and employment of forces of opposition.

The University of Halle is said to have been the first one to enjoy modern freedom in teaching. What, at that time, however, was meant by freedom in teaching, is shown by the words of Chr. Thomasius in 1694: “Thank God that He has prompted His Anointed (the prince) not to introduce here the yoke under which many are now and then languishing, but gracefully to grant our teachers the freedom of doctrines that are not against God and the state.” One hundred and fifty years later Minister Eichhorn advised the University of Koenigsberg that in natural sciences neither the individual freedom in teaching nor of research are limited, that the case is different, however, with philosophy as applied to life, with history, theology, and the science of laws. “The first requisite there,” he said, “is a proper bent of mind, which, however, can find its basis and its lasting support only in religion. With the proper bent of mind there will be no desire to teach doctrines which attack the roots of the very life of one's own country.”

Now, what considerations make it plain that the duty of the state is as stated? Two: consideration for its subjects, and consideration for the state itself. The state must protect the highest possessions of its citizens. For that reason men are by nature itself prompted to found states, so as to protect better their common goods, by the strong hand of an authority, against foes from within and without, and to enable them to bequeath those goods inviolate to their sons and grandsons. Hence they must demand of state-power not to tolerate conditions which would greatly jeopardize those goods, and certainly not to allow attacks thereon by its own educational organs. The highest spiritual benefits of civilization, and at the same time the necessary foundations of a well-ordered life, are, first of all, morality and religion; not morality alone, but also religion, do not forget this. Man's first duty is the duty of worshipping God, of recognizing and worshipping his Creator, the ultimate [pg 345] end of all things. A profound truth was stated by Aristotle, when, coupling the duties to God with those to parents, he said that those merit punishment who question the duty of worshipping the gods and of loving one's parents. Hence the first thing to be preserved to the nations is religion; it is in many ways their most precious possession, too. Not only do all nations possess religion, not excepting the most uncivilized; but there is no power that influences life and stirs the heart more than religion. Consider the religious wars of history; while they were surely deplorable, they demonstrate what religion is to man. Even in individuals who to all appearance are irreligious, religion never fully dies out; it appears there in false forms, or is their great puzzle, maybe the incubus of their lives, giving them no rest. Only in conjunction with firm religious principle can morality stand fast. Nowadays they work for ethics without religion, for education and school without God. Theoreticians in their four walls, removed from all real life, are busily working out systems of this sort. This new ethics has not yet stood the test of life, or, if it did, it has succeeded in gaining for its adherents only those who are at odds with religion and morals. These theories must first be otherwise attested before they may replace the old, well-tried religious foundations.

The noted and justly esteemed pedagogue, Fr. W. Foerster, writes: “On the part of free-thinkers vigorous complaint has been made that my book so decidedly confesses the unparalleled pedagogic strength of the Christian religion. The author therefore repeats emphatically that this confession has not grown out of an arbitrary metaphysical mood, but directly out of his moral-pedagogic studies. For over ten years of a long period of instructing the youth in ethics, he has been engaged exclusively in studying psychologically the problem of character-forming, and the result of his studies is his conviction that all attempts at educating youth without religion are absolutely futile. And, in the judgment of the author, the only reason why the notion that religion is superfluous in education is prevalent in such large circles of modern pedagogues, is, that they have no extensive practical experience in character-training, nor made thorough and concentrated studies.” “The fact is, that all education in which religion to all outward appearance is dispensed with, is still deeply influenced by the after-effect of religious sanction and religious earnestness. What education without religion really means will become more clearly known in the coming generation.”

The state is zealous in protecting the property of its citizens, to which end a powerful police apparatus is constantly at work. If the state deems it its duty to interfere in this matter, must it not consider it a still higher duty to protect religion and morals, for the very reason that they are the property of its citizens, and even their most precious? Pro aris et focis, for home and altar, was what was fought for by the old Romans. Is it possible that a pagan government was more sterling and high-minded than the Christian state of the present? If it is to be the bearer of civilization, it ought to consider that man liveth not by bread alone. The only true mental civilization is the one which does not hamper but helps man in attaining his eternal goal.

Modern state power is being urged from all sides to take measures against the corruption of morals by the novel and the shop window, and not to look on apathetically when the consuming fire is spreading all about, in the name of art. Are the dangers to the spiritual health of society any less if reformers, in the name of science, shake at the foundations of matrimony, advocate polygamy, teach atheism? Because a so-called reformer has lost the fundamental truths of our moral-religious order, must all the rest submit to an attack upon the sacred possessions of themselves and their descendants?

That the rights of the teacher are not unrestricted was set forth by an American paper (“Science,” No. 321) in its comment upon the removal of certain professors: “There are barriers set to them on the one hand by the rights of the students, and by the rights of the college where he teaches, on the other. The college must preserve its reputation and its good name, the student must be protected against palpable errors and waste of time.... If a professor of sociology should attack the institution of matrimony, and propound the gospel of polygamy and of free love, then neither the right to teach his views nor his honesty of purpose would save him from dismissal. This is of course a very extreme case, not likely to happen.”

Is it so very extreme? Certainly not in regard to teaching by books. Listen: “From the foregoing it is self-evident that polygyny based upon the rivalry of men for women (analogous to the animal kingdom) presents the natural sexual practice of mankind. Whether there is to be preferred a simultaneous or a successive polygyny, or a combination of both, would depend on varying conditions. The ethical type of the sexual [pg 347]condition, viz., in general the desirable biological type, is the one that would best suit a polygyny based upon a selection of man.” It is taught further: “The monogamic principle of marriage in general is only conditionally favorable to civilization, whereas it is destructive of it constitutionally, hence in need of reform.” “Our contemporaneous sexual reform wave has not yet assumed the position of this knowledge; on the contrary, notwithstanding its revolutionary aspect in some particulars, it is still under the ban of the traditional ideal of marriage”; continence before marriage is an “absurd” proposition!

This new system of morals, fit for the barnyard, but for women the lowest degradation, is now to become the ideal of men, nay, even of women: “True motherly pride, true womanly dignity, are incompatible with the exclusiveness of the monogamic property principle. If our movement for sexual reform is to elevate us instead of plunging us into the mire, then this view must become part and parcel of our women.” “The picture of the motherly woman, of the woman with the pride of sexual modesty, instead of with the exciting desire of possession ... this picture must become the ideal of men, and sink down to the bottom of their soul and into the fibres of their nervous system; it must animate their fancy and awaken their sensual passions.”[20] We stand right in the midst of the world of beasts!

This perilous moral teaching is allowed also in public lectures. On November 14, 1908, the “Allgemeine Rundschau” wrote: “Imagine a spacious concert-hall, brightly illuminated, every one of the many seats occupied, the boxes filled to the last place, the aisles crowded, by a most variegated audience: men and women, young maidens, youths with downy beard; gentlemen of high rank with their ladies, faces upon which are written a life of vast experience side by side with childish faces whose innocence is betrayed by their looks, and on the platform a university professor and physician, holding forth about the most intimate relations of sexual life: the unfitness of celibacy, the Catholic morals of matrimony, prostitution and prostitutes, the causes of adultery, ‘sterile marriage,’ onanism, and many kinds of perversities. The man is, moreover, speaking in a fashion that makes one forget the admonishments of conscience.”

The city council of Lausanne, in its meeting of February 10, 1907, prohibited Forel's lecture as an attack upon decency and public morals, making reference in its resolution to Forel's ideas as laid down in his book. In protest, Forel made a public statement, saying among other things: “If the council desires to be logical it would have to prohibit also the sale of my book.” We have no objection to make to his conclusion.

We stated that religion is man's first duty. This applies not only to the individual, but also—and this is forgotten too often—to the state. Man, by his nature, and hence in all [pg 348] forms of his life, including his citizenship, is obliged to have religion. He remains in all conditions the creature which is dependent upon God. And does not the state, too, owe special duties of gratitude to God? It owes its origin to God: the impulse to found states has been put into the human nature by its Creator; the state owes to God the foundation of its authority: in a thousand difficulties the state is thrown upon His help. Therefore a public divine service is found with all peoples. Does the state comply with this duty by silently supporting a public atheism when it might do otherwise? by even becoming its patron, when, posing as science, it ascends to the lecturing desk to teach adolescing youth?

Of course, free-thought is of a different opinion, especially the one of to-day. Its principle is: the state need not trouble itself about God and Religion, that is the private matter of each individual. In the eyes of free-thought the state is an imaginary being, hovering over the heads of its citizens; though they may be religious, the state itself should have no Religion. What absurdity! It is nothing short of nonsense to demand of the members of a state, the overwhelming majority of whom hold Religion to be true and necessary, that as a political community they are to act as if their Religion were false and worthless, as if to deny and to destroy it were quite proper. What else is the state but an organized aggregation of its citizens? To make of religious citizens, a state without Religion is just as absurd as a Catholic state composed wholly and entirely of Protestant citizens. This leads us to a further consideration. The state must protect its own foundations. Just as it must defend its existence against enemies from without, it must protect itself against those enemies from within, who, whether realizing the consequences or not, are by their actions actually shaking its foundations. These foundations consist of proper views on social and political principles, on morals and Religion. If the state does not intend to abolish itself, it must not permit doctrines to be disseminated which imperil these foundations and, consequently, the peaceful continuance of the state. In fact, no state power in its senses would permit a teacher, who directly attacks the validity of the state order, to continue; it [pg 349] would retire every professor of law who would dare to teach that regicide is permissible, or who would with the oratory of a Tolstoy preach the unnaturalness of a state possessing coercive power.

As a rule, open advocates of Socialism are kept out of college-chairs. And rightly so. So long as the adherents of Socialism see in the state but the product of the egotism of the ruling classes, and an institute for subjugating the masses, and in the obtainment of political power the means of doing away with this state of affairs, so long will it be impossible for the state to trust the education of the future citizen to a Socialist, nor can the latter, as an honest man, accept a position of trust from the state, much less bind himself by the oath of office to co-operate in the work of the state. Prof. C. Bornhakmakes the following comment: “The decisive point is not freedom in teaching, but the circumstance that the Socialist professor takes advantage of the respect connected with a state office, or of his position at a state institution, to undermine the state. A state that would stand for this would deserve nothing better than its abolition.”

And Paulsen similarly writes: “A state that would allow in the lecture rooms of its colleges Socialistic views to be taught as the results of science ... such a state will be looked for in vain.”

Hence it is certain the state cannot grant a freedom in teaching that would jeopardize the foundation of its existence. It must consequently recognize no freedom which, in lectures and publications, will seriously injure public morality and religion. Morality and religion are, first of all, the indispensable conditions for the continuance of the state.

Aristotle says the first duty of the state is to care for religion. Plato proposes heavy penalty for those who deny the existence of the gods; a well-ordered state, he claims, must care first of all for the fostering of religion. Plutarch calls religion the bond of every society and the foundation of the law. Cicero declares that there can be neither loyalty nor justice without regard for God. Valerius Maximuscould say of Rome: “It has ever been the principle of our city to give preference to religion before any other matter, even before the highest and most glorious benefits.” Washington, in his speech to Congress in 1789, declared religion and morality to be the most indispensable support of the commonweal. He stated that it would be in vain for one, who tries to wreck these two fundamental pillars of the social structure, to boast of his patriotism.

Without religion there can be no firm resistance by conscience against man's lower nature, no social virtues and sacrifices, there can only be egotism, the foe of all social order. No [pg 350] secure state-life can be built upon the principles that formed the basis of the French Revolution. So we see, generally and instinctively, the endeavour to prevent as much as possible anti-religious doctrines from being expounded directly to the broad masses of the people. This of itself is tantamount to the acknowledgment of their danger to the state. Yet, millions have tasted the fruit of an atheistic science, and the poison shows its effect; they have shaken off the yoke of religion; in its place dissatisfaction and bitterness are filling their breast, and fists are clenched against the existing order.

Bebel said in a speech in the German Reichstag, on September 16, 1878: “Gentlemen, you attack our views in respect to religion, because they are atheistic and materialistic. I acknowledge them to be so.... I firmly believe Socialism will ultimately lead to atheism. But these atheistic doctrines, that now are causing so much pain and trouble for you, by whom were they scientifically and philosophically demonstrated? Was it by Socialists? Men like Edgar and Bruno, Bauer, Feuerbach, David Strauss, Ernst Renan, were they Socialists? They were men of science.... What is allowed to the one—why should it be forbidden to the other?”

The notorious anarchist Vaillant said: “I have demonstrated to the physicians at Hotel-Dieu that my deed is the inexorable consequence of my philosophy, and of the philosophy of Buechner, Darwin, and Herbert Spencer.”

The youthful criminal Emil Herny read at his trial a memorandum wherein he said among other things: “I am an anarchist since 1891. Up to this time I was wont to esteem and even to idolize my country, the family, the state, and property.... Socialism is not able to change the present order. It upholds the principle of authority which, all affirmations of so-called free-thinkers notwithstanding, is an obsolete remnant of the belief in a higher power. I however was a materialist, atheist. My scientific researches taught me gradually the work of natural forces. I conceived that science had done away with the hypothesis of ‘God,’ which it needs no longer, hence that also the religious-authoritative doctrine of morals, built upon it, as upon a false foundation, had to disappear.”

What political wisdom would it be to honor as science any doctrine that becomes a social danger the moment it is taken seriously; what logic to denounce those as dangerous who are putting into practice a science that is hailed as the bearer of civilization!

One may object: How is the state to determine whether scientific doctrines are warranted or not warranted? The state [pg 351] has the conviction that in its political offices it has no organs for the cognition of scientific truth, for this reason it leaves science to self-regulation. Only the scientist, it is said, is able to revise the scientist.

Nothing but scholarly conceit can engender such ideas. Then any one would have the right to pin upon himself the badge of the scientist and become thereby completely immune. Thus, the bearers of practical political wisdom are declared incompetent to recognize the chief foundation of their state-structure; to realize, what daily experience and the experience of centuries teaches, that disbelief in God, even if sailing under false colors, undermines authority, that communism and upheaval of moral conceptions are tantamount to social danger. They are directed to depend for their information in such matters upon the latest ideas of impractical scientists. The fact is, the matters at issue have, with hardly an exception, long been decided. And where the Christian faith is concerned, the Church and the Christian centuries tell us clearly enough, what has hitherto been understood by Christianity. If the objection here advanced were true, then the state would not have a right to decide in the matter of exhibiting immoral pictures in show windows, without having argued the matter previously with representatives of art. The state would not be allowed to pronounce a death sentence because some scientists denounce capital punishment: the state would have to expunge “guilt,” “expiation,” and “liberty” from its penal code, because many recent scientists, by rejecting the freedom of choice, have removed the dividing line between crime and insanity, between punishment and correction.

Protection for Christianity.

Hitherto we have, in respect to religion, considered chiefly the rational truths, which are the foundations of every religion and also common to non-Christian creeds; the existence of a supermundane God and of a life after death are the most important of them. The revealed Christian religion contains, beside these truths, some others, which supplement them and surround them like a living garland, viz., original sin, redemption, [pg 352] resurrection, the divinity of Christ, grace and the Sacraments, the existence of a Church with its God-given rights, indissolubility of matrimony, etc. Should state-power protect the Christian and Catholic religion by warding off attacks against it, though such attacks are made in scientific form? This, too, in a state in which perhaps other confessions are enjoying the freedom of worship?

It would seem superfluous to propose this question specifically. If, according to the gist of our argument, religion is to be protected, what other religion can be meant than the Christian religion? That is the religion of our nations; none other is. While the stated distinction may have more of an academic than a practical interest, the discussion of this question will not be idle, if only for the reason that it will shed even more light upon our previous statements. Besides, there are manifest efforts to dislodge Christianity from the life of our people, and with it all true religion, under the pretext of opposing church-doctrines and dogmatism. The war against Christianity has not since the days of a Celsus been waged as it is to-day.

We premise a principle of a general nature. Of conflicting religions and views of the world, only one can be true; this is clear to every one who still believes in truth. It is equally clear that this one truth only can have the right to come forward and to enlist support in public life as a spiritual power; error has no right to prevail against truth. Hence it will not do to say simply: There are also the convictions of minorities in the state; some claim that none of the existing religions is the right one, others have dropped all belief in God; in our times we wish to concede to any conviction the right to enter into competition with others, provided mockery and abuse are barred. These remarks are quite true, in the sense that neither the individual nor the state may directly interfere with conscience or prescribe opinions: leaving entirely aside the question whether any one really could have a serious conviction of atheism. The foregoing is true also in the sense that public avowal of opinion must not be hindered by individuals. To interpret this to mean that the state must grant freedom to any expression of doctrine would be a grave misconception of the social influence which false ideas are liable to exercise. Does the state grant this freedom to any kind of medical practice, [pg 353] whether exercised skilfully or awkwardly, conscientiously or unscrupulously?

Moral-religious error may in public life expect only tolerance—just as many other evils must be tolerated, because their prevention would cause greater evils to arise. This is the reason why the state may, and often must, grant freedom of worship even to false creeds, because its denial would give rise to greater harm to the public weal (St. Thomas, 2, 2 q. 10, 11). Freedom of teaching, likewise, must not be granted in the sense of acknowledging that false doctrines and truth have equal rights; this would amount to an assassination of truth. Freedom can be conceded to error for the one reason only, that by not granting it there would be engendered greater evils. Consequently, if a state-power, or the organs of its legislative part, are convinced that the Christian religion is the only true one, they cannot possibly concede to contrary doctrines the right to pose as the truth and thus deceive minds; they may be granted the same freedom in teaching only because restrictive laws can either not be enforced at all, or not without creating a disorder that would give rise to greater evils. Hence the lesser evil must be carefully ascertained.

With this general principle in mind, it is easily seen that a freedom large enough to include an open attack on the fundamental, rational, truths of religion and morals—this having been our subject hitherto—could be conceded only if disbelief and atheism had gained so much power as to make impossible its prohibition. In this case, however, the state should be conscious of the fact that it allows the undermining of its foundations. If, in another state, religious feeling were at so low an ebb, that the freedom of the Christian truth could not be obtained in any other way than by granting full freedom for everything, then even such unlimited freedom would be a good thing to be striven for; of itself a deplorable condition and contrary to God's intentions, but good as the lesser evil.

But let us return to the revealed religion. In the eyes of those who are convinced that the Christian religion, namely, the Catholic religion, is the only true religion, the ideal condition would be to have the entire population united in its [pg 354] faithful confession; then matters would simplify themselves in our case. But this ideal hardly exists anywhere. True, in many countries the population is almost wholly Christian; but the denominations are mixed, and many have separated at heart from Christianity. What standards, then, should rule in this case?

Looking at it specially, the demand of ethical reason is no doubt this: Nations and governments whose past was Christian, whose institutions and civilization are still Christian, and an overwhelming majority of whose members still think and believe in a Christian way, would fail in their gravest duties if they would expose or permit the Christian religion to remain unprotected against the attacks and the attempts at destruction by a false science, or by conceding to the adversaries of Christianity equal rights or even preference. The Christian religion will not be destroyed; but whole nations may lose it, and its loss will in great measure be the fault of those in whose hands their fate was laid. Here might be applied Napoleon's well-known saying: “The weakness of the highest authority is the greatest misfortune of the nations.”

It remains an anomaly that a state, the members of which for the most part are Christians, should treat this religion with indifference, and tolerate that its tenets and traditions be represented as fairy-tales and fables, its moral law as a danger to civilization, and perhaps its divine Founder as a victim of religious frenzy. If the state is the expression and the representative of its subjects, then such disharmony between public and private life is unnatural. Moreover, the Christian religion is held by the majority of its citizens to be the most precious legacy of their forefathers; they must demand from the state protection for their greatest good. And this may be claimed with even greater right by provinces where the population almost unanimously clings to the creed of their ancestors; at the colleges in these parts the faithful people will be entitled to protection more than elsewhere against dangers to its inherited religion. It would be unnatural in this case to apply the thoughtless principle of dealing uniformly with all provinces of the state. The state is not a heap of uniform pebbles, but an organism [pg 355] composed of different parts, each desiring to retain its own peculiar life.

Do not say this presumption does not admit of application to our conditions, the majority of the people of this age being long since estranged from Christianity. It is true, if we turn our eye only to the more conspicuous classes of society, the classes that control the newspapers and mould public opinion, this view might be admitted as to some countries. But if we look at the masses, those not infected by half-education, then this opinion is true no longer. And there are many who at heart are not so distant from faith as it would seem. In public life they pose as free-thinkers, but their domestic life bears frequently a Christian character. And often they approach more and more the faith, the older they grow. This is known to be the fact even of scientists. Instances are men like Ampère, Foucault, Flourens, Hermite, Bion, Biran, Fechner, Lotze, Romanes, Littré, and others. Plato claimed that no one who in his youth disputed the existence of the gods retained this view to his old age. “Christianity,” observes Savigny rightly, “is not only to be acknowledged as a rule of life, it has actually transformed the world, so that all our thoughts are ruled and penetrated by it, no matter how foreign, even hostile, to Christianity they may appear.”

It is a sign how deeply Christian religion has sunk its roots into the heart, that it remains the religion even for those who have turned away from it. To be sure, for our nations Christianity is the religion. For them the religion of a Confucius or Zoroaster does not enter into consideration; nor any of the products of modern religious foundations, which would replace Christianity with substitutions of all kinds of religious essences; they are on a level with the attempts at reconstructing sexual ethics: both are regrettable delusions. “Improvement” of Christian morality is tantamount to abandoning all morals, and desertion from the Christian religion, amongst our people, has always been apostasy from all religion. The Christian religion is so true, that no one can renounce it inwardly and then find peace in a self-made one. And all efforts aimed at displacing Christianity lead only to an abandonment of all religion.

Look at the number of people from whom slander and insinuation have torn their old religion to be replaced by another—a freer, higher religion; their moral decadence soon bears testimony of the religious consecration which has been given to them. Woe unto those authorities who, while able to oppose, are indifferent, and who lend a hand in causing Christian thought [pg 356] to withdraw more and more from our mental atmosphere, to be replaced by another spirit, a spirit that will gradually control the decision of the judge, the practice of the physician, the instruction of the teacher, and thus more and more enter into the life of the people.

It is not assured to those nations of Europe, whose public life is feeding to-day upon the remnants of their Christian past, that they will not relapse into a state of moral and religious barbarity. “Maybe civilized mankind, or our nation at least, is really losing its hold more and more upon definite moral standards,” so complains a modern pedagogue; “possibly the emancipation of sensuality will increase without end, perhaps we have passed forever the stage of true humanity and of a live idealism, and we shall henceforth glide downward.... These are no mere, feverish dreams; there is good reason for facing these possibilities with a determined eye, and no accidental or philosophical optimism can ignore them” (Münch).

“It is quite possible,” we are told by another, “that much will go down in our old Europe during the next centuries; and the downfall will not be restricted by any means to Church and Christianity, and in the crises that will come Europe will hardly get the needed support from an æsthetic heathendom, from the Monists' Union, or from the evidences of science” (Troeltsch).

If it does not come to it, it will not be the merit of authorities who let the vessel of state drift rudderless toward the rocks of dechristianization.

They do not realize that they greatly endanger thereby also the foundations of the state. The foundations of our governments rest upon Christianity. The Christian faith created the state, created matrimony, family, and the education of the youth; created the social virtues of loyalty and of obedience. What we have of religion is Christian, what we have of the religious support of morality is equally Christian; “Christianity, Christian faith, Christian formation of life penetrates all vital utterances of the Occidental world like an all-pervading element” (Paulsen).

It is one of the first principles of political prudence not to shake the foundations upon which the state rests. States and nations are not ephemeral beings, existing from one day to the other, they are historical structures measuring their lives by centuries; past generations join hands with present generations, deeds and customs of the fathers live on in their sons.

States must remain on the historical tracks on which they have travelled to success, at least until the new track has stood the test of reliability. So far anti-Christian philosophy has terribly shaken governments; it has not yet proved itself a state-conserving principle.

It is a sad condition to see the guardians of states, devoid of historical appreciation, allow their people to tear themselves away from the soil wherein reposed the roots from which they drew life and strength. Sad, too, that complaints are made of college-professors who abuse freedom in teaching by constructing an unproved contradiction between knowledge and faith, by misrepresenting Christian tenets, by lowering the prestige of the Church, by distorting her historical picture. It would be regrettable for a Christian state, if the complaint were justified that for the most part our colleges have become places where religion is ignored; where the name of Jesus Christ, the Redeemer of mankind, is no longer mentioned; where the name of God never occurs in history, in natural and political science; where religion is considered the most unessential factor of mental life, a factor that has nothing to offer, that can answer no question—a treatment which, by the force of suggestion, must lead young men to think that religion is of no account. It is a banishment which in its effect is little different from an attack upon religion.

Sadder still would it be if the following view were to prevail at our colleges: “A right of the student to see protected and not destroyed any views and convictions, including those of a religious nature, which he may bring to the university from his home surroundings, from his preliminary education, as it is asserted time and again in the frequent complaints about the dechristianizing of youth at the universities—does not exist and cannot exist, because it would be in contradiction to the very essence of the university and its tasks” (Jodl).

Is not this the ethical principle of the bird of prey? Is it not allowed to guard the defenceless chick against the hawk? Christian people send their sons to the university, and demand that the education of the parental home be spared, that the inexperience of youth be not misused. The state must demand that the religious-moral education which it furthers in its public schools be not destroyed by the higher schools. Yet, all these rights must be silenced the moment the vision of the absolute freedom of teaching makes its appearance, since to refrain from dechristianizing the youth would be contrary to his tasks.

If such abuse in the management of the power of knowledge, within and without colleges, is not counteracted by all possible means, then none need be surprised when a science free from religion and Christianity is followed by an elementary school free from religion, when in public and preparatory schools the free-thinking teacher is telling the pupils that there is no creation but only evolution, and that the gospels and biblical history are poetical stories such as the Nibelungenlied and the Iliad and Odyssey.

We cannot be astonished to find the following rules advocated for the instruction in public schools: “Religious instruction in schools should not differ from the instruction in other subjects, namely, one of full freedom, bound only by recognized documents and personalities of religious literature and religious science. The school must teach that which is, it must present the tenets of all times and all nations in so far as this is possible within its modest compass.... But if the pupil should ask, What really is? What position should the teacher assume toward this question? In my opinion, he should speak in plain terms. He should say: There are people who believe all that is taught by the different systems of religion.... The child may further ask of the teacher whether he himself believes. No teacher who claims the confidence of the children should shirk the answer. He may confess his faith or disbelief, without need of worry. It cannot hurt his prestige in the eyes of the child, because, if for no other reason, either way he will find himself in an equally large and good company” (Tews).

But we hear much more radical utterances. For instance, the official organ of teachers in a Catholic country urges defection from the Church in the following words: “How long will Social-Democracy, now so formidable, remain inactive against clerical arrogance? How much longer will it shirk a duty that is clear to the dullest eye? If the millions of our Social-Democrats, including the women and children, would break away from Rome, the priestcraft in Austria is as good as defeated. A grave responsibility rests upon the Social-Democratic leaders. Should they miss the moment to act, they will be judged by history!” (Deutsch-oesterreichische Lehrerzeitung, June 1, 1909).

Another organ of teachers declares Christianity to be nothing else but victorious heresy, for which Christ had to lay down His life the same as Giordano, Hus, and countless others. “The subject of religion as taught in the preparatory schools is for the most part taken from ages whose customs and morals are—happily—no longer ours.” We see radicalism rampant in large circles of public school teachers, demanding noisily, excitedly, and, of course, in the name of modern science and enlightenment, the abolition of the divine service, of prayer, and religious instruction in school, giving as reason that, “as to matters of mental freedom no difference should be made between a [pg 359]university and a village school.” That our people will “carelessly waste their Christian patrimony, this is the great danger.”

Our argument is not that only Catholics should be professors, nor even to limit the teaching office to Christians. But one thing must be demanded of the college-teacher, that he possess the pedagogic qualifications to render him competent of educating the hope of the Christian people. As a rule this demands a religious, Christian disposition. One thing the state must absolutely demand of the teacher, that he have appreciation for the foundations of the Christian state; he who has no understanding for the historical forms of the life of a nation, who even regards them with hostility, should remain away from this vocation.

In the United States the Jesuit Order has five free universities, founded and directed by the Order. Their professors are not all Catholics; there are professors of other creeds, even Jews. All work in harmony to the common end of the university.

Men who sincerely and conscientiously strive for the interests of science will everywhere show not only consideration, but even understanding and respect, for what is true in the ideas of others. “I gaze,” so writes Prof. Smolka, “upon the likenesses of my venerable Protestant masters, under whom I studied at Göttingen. Thirty-seven years have passed since I went to them, in full confidence to find in their school the leaders who would be free from the influence of the Catholic view of the world. To their profound knowledge I owe, first of all, the emancipation from the prejudices I was raised in, from the views of an atmosphere devoted to Indifferentism in which I had passed my youth. Prof. Waitz opened my eyes to the grandeur of the Catholic Church in the course of the centuries, in the repeated prostration of the Papacy and its ever-following rise to unsuspected heights, a fact unparalleled in the history of human institutions. Prof. Lotze rebuked me at the very beginning of my studies at Göttingen for a slighting remark about scholastic philosophy: later he imbued me with profound respect for it and for the wealth of problems it embraces. These scientists, Protestants without exception and in exclusively Protestant surroundings, inoculated me with sincere love for scientific truth, regardless of the consequences it would lead to. They also introduced the youthful mind to the tried methods of scientific research, indicating the boundaries where the domain of research ends and the right of dogma, or arbitrary rule of subjective imagination, begins.”

Restriction of Right.

We need no further proof that the state is justified in restricting the freedom of teaching, whenever demanded by the business of the state as described above. Restriction of this kind can be considered unjustified only by a state theory of liberalism, which holds that the object of the state consists in merely protecting individual liberty, no matter if this liberty should lead to the gravest injuries so long as it does not affect the freedom of others; a theory which changes the state community from an integral organism into a conglomeration of autonomous individuals. Lasalle scornfully termed this theory the “nightwatchman idea” of the state. The state has the right and the duty to exert a necessary influence upon the pursuit of science, especially at the universities. Against it the pleading of autonomy of the college and its teacher will not hold. They have a certain autonomy, that was even greater in former times. An important part of it is the right to propose appointments for vacant chairs. It must be admitted that this method of appointment is proper; it vouches for the scientific fitness of the appointee, and will prove a protection against the exercise of undue political influence and ministerial absolutism, provided that this method is impartially exercised. But an autonomy that disputes the right of the state to protect its interests, where free science conflicts with it, that would demand, as has been asserted, that “no infringement of the freedom in teaching must be deduced from the official position as teacher,”—such autonomy would be a palpable misconception of the dependency of the college-teacher and of the social service of science. The rules that apply to other, non-judicial, officers should apply to teachers appointed by the state, and offences in their office, or conduct injurious to the purpose and the dignity of their office, should be treated similarly as in the case of other public servants. Nor should members of the legislature be forbidden to defend the rightful interests of their constituents in regard to schools. They are elected by the people for this purpose, and the people have a claim on the schools, which are supported [pg 361] by their taxes and to which some of their greatest interests are attached.

It has been demanded to concede to college-teachers the independence and immunity of judges. This, however, would be overlooking the vast difference between professors and judges. The judge has to render legal decisions in concrete cases, according to existing laws; in order to lessen the danger of his being guided by outside considerations he is given a large measure of independence. But what questions has the college-professor to decide? Mathematical or physical questions? There his incorruptibility is not in such danger that he must be made independent of government. Religious and moral questions, questions of views of the world? These he is not compelled to decide. Neither state nor people have appointed him to question, time and again, the fundamental foundations of human life, and to render decisions which nobody requested.

It is not clear why science, pleading its independence, should oppose justified restrictions. As a matter of fact this independence does not exist anywhere. Numerous are the considerations, often unwarranted, it is actually tied to, yea, often tied to by its own hands. He who is familiar with scientific doings, especially academic doings, knows numbers of such ties—there is the professional opinion in scientific circles; woe unto him who in his scientific works dares to confess a supernatural view of the world!—ties of the predominance of certain leaders or schools, without or against whose favor it is difficult to attain recognition, approval, or position; the ties of parties and cliques in an academic career; the tie, too, of that insinuating power of the state that confers much-desired decorations and titles.

“Where is this freedom of science?” asks a modern academic teacher. “Some will say science and its teaching are free in our country. True, it is so written on paper. But those charged with keeping this principle inviolate are human. For instance the monists have the chief voice in appointments to zoölogical chairs. They will propose only scientists who are not opponents to the monistic faith. Far be it from me to assume any mala fides. They simply believe that only their faith is the proper one to promote science. But I ask again, where is the freedom of science?” (Dahl).

H. St. Chamberlain tells of an amusing incident in his life: “Many years ago, when I desired to devote myself to an academic career, a chemist said to me: ‘My dear fellow, since you belong to the profession, I tell you as a friend that it is not enough for you to be proficient: you should try, first of all, to marry the daughter of one of the professors, [pg 362]of a privy counsellor if possible.’ ‘This advice comes too late,’I replied, ‘I am already married.’ My well-wisher was visibly shocked. ‘What a pity! Too bad! You don't realize what an influence this has here upon one's career.’ What trouble I had to obtain even the venia docendi! and then I stuck fast and could not budge despite all achievements until I undertook to marry the daughter of one of the ‘head-wirepullers’; then things were fixed within three months. I may have looked at him in a peculiar way, for his wife was a veritable Xanthippe, and, he added with a laugh: ‘You know I am all day at the laboratory, from morning until late at night.’ ” There is nothing new under the sun. In the year of grace, 1720, Johann Jacob Moser started his lectures in Tuebingen, but could get no audience. “No wonder, even a cleverer man than I would not have fared better at that time, when everything depended on nepotism.” The young man had crossed Chancellor Pfaff by rejecting a marriage arrangement (Horn).

One will find these things very human. Moreover, it would be unwarranted to assume that they happen always and everywhere. But they prove that the pursuit of science rests also on general human grounds, and does not always remain aloft, in the ethereal heights of pure truth.

The Freedom of Teaching in History.

When we said that it is the duty of the state to protect the common benefits of life against injury by freedom in teaching, and to stand guard over its Christian past, we stated nothing but what has been the conviction of the Christian nations and their rulers up into the nineteenth century. Absolute freedom in teaching cannot plead the support of history, it is only of yesterday. History shows it to be the natural child, not of the first awakening of the consciousness of freedom, but of the de-Christianizing of the modern state. Its official entry coincides with the increasing de-christianizing of public life during the nineteenth century, after the modern state adopted more and more the principles of liberal thought. A naturalistic view of the world, without faith, was struggling for supremacy; science had to proclaim it as higher enlightenment, and vehemently urged freedom in its behalf. The state receded step by step, confused by the commanding note in the new demands, by high-sounding words about the rights of science; it allowed itself to be talked into the belief that it must become the leader in the new course, and it took the banner that was forced into its hands. It has always been so; claims [pg 363] presented with impudence will intimidate, and assume in the eyes of many the appearance of right.

In so far as it signifies the removal of the religious-moral bars in teaching, the freedom in teaching developed first in Protestant Germany, together with the increasing change of universities into state institutions. Reformation and the ensuing Enlightenment had gradually prepared the way for it. Neither the rationalism nor the pietism of the eighteenth century could have an understanding for the tenets of the faith. In addition there was the confusion engendered by the multiplication of Protestant denominations, none supported by an overtowering spiritual authority; it led more and more to the parting between science and religious confession; political reasons, too, made it desirable to disregard confessions. Thus the severance of science from religion increased and the “freedom of teaching” in this sense was finally adopted also by Catholic states as an achievement.

The enlightenment that had developed outside of the universities made its entry into the halls of universities chiefly under the Prussian Minister von Zedlitz, a champion of enlightenment and a friend of the philosophers Wolff and Kant. That the universities at that time were controlled by free-thinkers is illustrated by a saying of Frederick II. On January 4, 1774, von Zedlitz asked of the king whether Steinhauss, M.D., should be denied the appointment for professor extraordinary at Frankfort-on-the-Oder, for the reason that he was a Catholic. The king decreed in his own handwriting that “This does not matter if he is clever; besides, doctors know too much to have belief” (Bornhak).

In the year of the Revolution, 1848, freedom of teaching became a political catch-word. “The terms freedom of teaching and freedom of learning, that became popular in 1848, when any phrase compounded with freedom could not be often enough repeated, have been ever since reminiscent of barricades, and men who have witnessed those times become nervous at their mere sound” (Billroth).

What was understood by freedom in teaching at the turning point of the eighteenth century is shown by the demand of Thomasius for “freedom of doctrines that are not against God and the state.” The first move was to break away from human authorities, Aristotle and others. Thus the Kiel University, by its regulation of January 27, 1707, ordered that “no faculty should enslave itself to certain principles or opinions, in so far as they are dependent on a human authority”(Horn).

In Göttingen and Halle freedom of teaching also became the maxim, and “Libertas sentiendi,” as Münchhausen declared, “was open to every one and not restrained by statute, except that there should be taught nothing ungodly and Unchristian.” In those days this restriction was looked upon as a matter of course. It is known that Kantwas disciplined by Minister Woellner in 1794, because of his treatise on religion; at Koenigsberg this reproof was accepted with good grace, and both the philosophical and the theological faculties pledged themselves not to lecture on Kant's religious philosophy. As recently as the [pg 364]middle of the nineteenth century a restriction in this sense was ordered by the Prussian Minister Eichhorn, and the restriction was observed. The Materialist Moleschott was cautioned in 1845 by the Senate of Heidelberg University, and in reply he resigned his post; in the following year at Tübingen Büchner's venia legendi was cancelled, because, as he himself stated, “it was feared I would poison with my teaching the minds of my young students” (Horn).

In 1842, Bruno Bauer, the radical Bible-critic, was removed by the Prussian faculties from the academic chair because of his writings. D. Strauss lectured on philosophy at Tübingen, but was forced to resign when the first volume of his “Life of Jesus” appeared in 1835. Later on, when called by the authorities of Zurich to the chair for Church history and dogmatics, an emphatic protest of the people made the appointment impossible.

While showing a regrettable indifference for attacks against religion, the modern states, inoculated with the principles of Liberalism, have not entirely forgotten their traditions. Many sections in their penal codes still protect religion, not only against defamation, but, as is the case in Austria, also against public anti-Christian propaganda, and the “religious-moral education” in public schools is made compulsory by law. Of course there is a contradiction, between the conviction of the state that the principles of morals and religion must be preserved, and the grant of full freedom to an anti-religious misuse of science, whose effect upon the masses is unavoidable. It is a contradiction to tear down the dam at the river and then erect emergency levees against the onrushing flood. The amazing presumption, that holds inviolate and sacred everything that poses under the name of science, is the fault of it all.

Freedom of Teaching and Party Rule.

In some countries the complaint is heard that a certain faction has obtained control of the universities, and so exercises its control that those who are not of its bent of mind are excluded from both teaching and taking part in the administration of its affairs, despite the fact that freedom in teaching and learning has been guaranteed by the state. It is the faction that professes free-thought and cultivates the freedom of science in this sense. This condition forces students faithful [pg 365] to their religion to study in a strange atmosphere, and they are looked upon as strangers. The parties so accused seek to disclaim these charges as unjust; for they feel that, if justified, it would disclose an unlawful condition of things. Nevertheless the facts are so notorious, that all protestations will be without avail.

These facts must be painful to the sense of justice, order, and good-fellowship; and to this sense it is not pleasing to deal further with matters which have often been the cause for indignant resentment, and to go into concrete details. We shall but briefly recall to mind how persistently candidates for academic positions are pushed aside when they are known to be of staunch Catholic mind. This is borne out by their trifling percentage among the large number of college-teachers; by the high pressure that is often needed to lift the embargo for a Catholic; by assaults which not seldom resulted in physical violence. This small number is glaringly emphasized by the considerable, even disquieting, number of college lecturers of Jewish extraction. Furthermore, there is the improper usage that the theological faculty is passed over at the annual election of the rector, and likewise, that teachers even of lay-faculties are excluded from academic offices when they profess themselves openly as Catholics.

Catholic students have seen themselves treated as strangers at more than one university; they were not given the usual privileges, and were accorded rights only in the proportion that their number had to be reckoned with. Their corporate bodies were ignored, self-evident rights either denied or grossly violated.

As to the small number of religious-minded lecturers at colleges it is not to be denied that the number of those who combine fervent religious persuasion with high scientific efficacy is not considerable these days. Their long suppression furnishes a reason for it, but not the only one. A modern university professor rightly states: “While there never has been a want of courageous, determined confessors of the Catholic faith who have occupied a prominent, even leading, position in the progress of science, in the perfection of methods and means of scientific research, they were and still are the exception. They were men of self-reliance and independent judgment, who were able to exempt themselves from an humble submission to the powerful view of the world, which emanates from the hatred of Christianity and prevails in educated circles. The issue is still the same secular contrast between the two views of the world, which St. Augustine illustrated with unsurpassed mastery as long as fifteen hundred years ago. But the view of the world which has been in the ascendant in scientific circles long since, has certainly nothing in common with scientific research.”

Our task, however, is not to examine the facts, but to prove that such conditions are unlawful, no matter where and [pg 366] when found. We do not wish to discuss further the fact that a university polity, exclusively in the spirit of a liberalism that gradually goes over into radicalism, would constitute a grave danger for Christian traditions. Indifference to the Christian and every other religion, or to an extent direct rejection, must make it appear more and more inferior and obsolete in the eyes of educated circles; this view will then easily find its way to the people. Nor do we intend to enlarge upon a second point, viz., the interest of science itself. The kernel of liberal research in the province of the spiritual is a frivolous agnosticism, with a rigid bondage to its naturalistic postulates, with which we have become sufficiently acquainted. Principles of this kind are poison for true science. For this reason alone it is necessary that a Christian philosophy be placed by the side of a philosophy in fear of metaphysics, one that never extends beyond puzzles and problems; that a history guided by Christian principles be placed alongside of one inspired by anti-ecclesiastical sentiment; in general that a spirit of veracity assert itself, which would give an example, from the home of highest culture, not of vain arrogance, but of that mental firmness which, conscious of the limits of human knowledge, is also ready to believe. How can our universities remain the seats of sterling mental life, if the highest power of truth that has ever been, the Christian religion, is ignored there, and even maligned; and if in its stead is cultivated a philosophical-religious research which leads only to the negation of everything that hitherto was our ideal, and which gives birth to a mental anarchy, which, before the forum of history, makes it a principle of pauperization.

One point to be particularly emphasized is the violation of rights and the oppression of mental liberty, resulting from a party-rule in the realm of higher education. Under a government of law every one, assuming he possesses the necessary qualification, has an equal right to teach: this is elemental to freedom of teaching. The state with its institutions exists for the benefit of all classes, not for one certain class that has formed the notion that it is the sole bearer of science. Enemies of the state should be excluded from teaching, but not [pg 367] good citizens. Nor can it be demanded, as a necessary preliminary for academic teaching, that one must subscribe to the catch-phrases of any particular party, and so discard one's religious belief. And there is the violation of the rights of faithful Christian people. Since their money in the form of taxes maintains to a large extent the schools and their teachers, they surely can demand a conscientious administration of their interests, and a representation of the Christian view of the world, in a way becoming its past and its dignity; Christian people can demand that their sons receive an education in consonance with their Christian convictions, and that the universities will train officials, physicians, and teachers, in whom they may have confidence. If there are no other but state universities in a country, and these are monopolized by a free-thought party, then a condition of mental bondage will arise for those of a different mind. They are compelled either to have their sons forego the learned profession, or else expose them to an atmosphere wherein they see danger of a religious and moral nature, in ideas, association, and example. No right is left to them, but the right to pay taxes toward the budget of education, and then to look on how an irreligious party is striving to turn the higher schools into training camps of obligatory liberalism, and to monopolize the entire mental life for this purpose. Now and then there is great indignation against state monopolies; it is said, shall the state determine what kind of cigars I should smoke, and what I am to pay for them! Now, then, where is freedom if the majority of the Christian population is to be forced into taking mental nourishment it does not desire and rejects, and pay for it besides? If we recall to mind the past, which gave birth to the most venerable universities of the present, a sorrowful feeling comes over us. We see how far our colleges have deviated from their original purpose, how our governments have lost their old traditions. Promotion of the Christian religion and of the fear of God, was the lofty aim which their founders had in mind.

In bestowing the charter upon Vienna University, Duke Albrechtstated that he beheld in the university an institution “whereby the glory of the Creator in heaven and His true faith on earth would be [pg 368]furthered, knowledge would be increased, the state benefited, and the light of justice and truth brightened.” And when, in 1366, he donated property to the university, he declared the object of the donation to be “that the university may increase the prosperity of the entire Church.”

When Leopold I, on April 26, 1677, signed the charter of Innsbruck University he declared that he founded this university pre-eminently for the protection and prosperity of the Catholic Religion, as a means for its preservation, and also that many of those who had lost the faith might be led back to religion, for the honour and the glory of the Tyrol.

In the charter of Tübingen University, Eberhard of Württemberg states: “I believe I can do no better work, none more helpful to gain salvation, none more pleasing to the eternal God, than to provide with special diligence and emulation for the instruction of good and zealous young men in the fine arts and sciences, to enable them to recognize God, to know, to honour, and to serve Him alone.” “In those days there was no hesitation to assign to science the loftiest vocation and to declare ... that, coming from God, science should also lead back to Him as its origin.... The school was charged to work for the spread and the defence of the true belief. Christian truth was once queen at these universities; now, she has only too often become a stranger, to be denounced at times if she attempts to knock at the portals of her old home” (Probst).

Free Universities.

Another manner, to provide proper freedom of teaching, is open to the modern state by incorporating free universities. Unlike the state institutions, they are not directly controlled by the state, but are independent of it in their internal affairs; they are founded and managed by private persons or societies. Universities of this kind are found in Belgium and in England, to some extent in France, but their home is chiefly in the United States. At the head of the free university of the United States is the president, with a governing body and a board of trustees elected from members of the university; they appoint teachers, prescribe schedules of study and examinations, and conduct its business. True, the state cannot relinquish its right to oppose a system of teaching dangerous to the common weal; it will also provide that those to be licensed to practice the professions possess the necessary education and training; but the state refrains from further interference in the management of free universities.

It is no doubt difficult to establish by private means universities [pg 369] equally efficient with those of the state; in the countries of Middle Europe this undertaking is perhaps more difficult than elsewhere, but the possibility is there, and it is even realized in some places. This, however, is not a question to occupy us here; we merely wish to declare, if similar foundations are about to be undertaken, and the necessary conditions are present, then the state must not prevent them, it must grant freedom in teaching.

True, the state is obliged to assist its subjects in acquiring material and spiritual goods, but only in so far as private means are insufficient thereto: the state must only act in a supplemental way. If it does that which its citizens themselves are able to do, then the state is needlessly abridging their free right. This includes the establishment of schools and the teaching in them. Presuming fitness, everybody has a natural right to teach others; hence, also, to found schools, whether by himself or jointly with others. Furthermore, instruction is a part of education, even at the university; it could hardly be said of the graduate of the preparatory school that his education is completed. Education, however, is a matter for the parents. Their rights would be infringed upon, if needlessly forced by the state to intrust their sons exclusively to the state colleges and to their method of teaching. How could the state's exclusive right to teach be proved? Does the pursuit of science belong to its domain? No one will care to claim this. If science were to be allotted to the jurisdiction of any one body, the Church would be the first to enter into consideration, because of her international and spiritual character. Or is this right to be conceded to the state because it is to be the bearer of culture? The state is to promote culture, but not to prescribe a certain brand of it. The argument that private universities cannot be founded and conducted in the proper way is certainly not borne out by the facts.

Even if the state, owing to its superior facilities, could provide better universities than private effort, it would not be entitled to the monopoly; the fact of being able to do something better does not secure the sole privilege of doing it. Moreover, in order to attract students, free universities will have to [pg 370] emulate state universities. The right of the state to found universities will of course not be disputed; but this right must not deteriorate into a disguised monopoly, that would grant privileges to its own universities, and deny them to free universities in order to put them out of existence. At any rate, the state will always retain considerable influence over the studies at free universities. It may require certain standards in candidates for political and professional positions, for judges and lawyers, teachers at state schools, physicians; it may insist upon state examinations, or it may make its stipulations for recognizing the examinations and academic degrees of the free schools.

By free schools of higher learning, a greater degree of freedom in teaching and in learning would be assured, or, speaking generally, a greater freedom in the intellectual life. If these higher institutions of learning are exclusively in the hands of the state, it cannot fail that the higher intellectual life will be dangerously dependent upon the state, or fall into the control of a dominating clique. As an example might be cited the restrictions placed upon jurisprudence by Prussia in the eighteenth century; the long-continued control of Hegelian philosophy; the Université Impériale of Napoleon; the predominance of anti-Catholic thought in our own schools. Universities, founded upon a positive, Christian basis, would surely be a comfort for thousands.

No need to say that such foundations may also be undertaken by the Church. This right cannot be denied to the Church, just as little as to any other corporation. Nay, much less! Because of its intellectual and international character science is most closely related to the Church. The latter, furthermore, has an eminent, historical right; no one has done more for the foundation and promotion of the European universities than the Church.

A remarkable and at the same time characteristic attitude towards free, particularly Catholic, universities is assumed by Liberalism. The stereotyped objection to Catholic universities is known; it can be reduced to this formula: At a Catholic university there can be no freedom in research nor freedom in teaching; but without them there can be no science; consequently, a Catholic university is a contradiction. It is [pg 371]the same old song: there is but one science, there is but one freedom—the free-thought that rejects belief. If it is really so obvious that a Catholic university is a contradiction to science, hence incapable to foster it, why the excitement? Either such universities are incompetent, or they are not. Let the experiment go on; the result will tell. If the result is certain, as is claimed, very well, one may serenely await it. Liberalism shows itself again here in the shape of that nasty hybrid of freedom and intolerance for which it is known. It is the head of Janus with its two faces: the one showing the bright mien of freedom, the other the sinister scowl of an intolerant tyrant. They shout for freedom, freedom they demand; Church and Revelation are put under the ban, because they restrain freedom. The state is denounced as soon as it wants to interfere. But if others attempt research free and independently, though not just so as Liberalism would like, then tyranny immediately takes the place of liberty, the herald of freedom resorts to oppression, and those who just now proclaimed the independence of universities from the state, who protested against the interference of the state in science, turn about and loudly call for the help of the state, avowing that science can thrive only under state control.

The Church and the Universities.

In discussing the position of the social authorities toward freedom of teaching, we have chiefly considered the state. Of the Church we shall say but a brief word. It will suffice to recall what has been said previously; what has been stated about the relation of the Church to freedom of research, applies in many respects equally to freedom of teaching. Little will have to be added. The Church, and the Church alone, has received from her divine Founder the command to preserve the doctrine of revelation and to proclaim it to mankind. “Going, therefore, teach ye all nations”—this is the commission of the Lord.

For this reason the teaching of the revealed truth, Theology, is the privilege of the Church. But the rest of the sciences will not be exempt from the obligation to listen to the admonition of the God-appointed authority, in all cases where religious grounds are invaded. To the Church is intrusted the religious-moral guidance of her faithful; she cannot remain indifferent, when in the public teaching of science a system is followed detrimental to the Christian principles of the faithful. And whoever has entered the Church by baptism, remains subject to her authority in all matters within her sphere.

The state must acknowledge these rights of the Church, or else forfeit its claim to be a Christian state; these rights, belonging to the essence of the Christian religion, are guaranteed by God, and are independent of human sanction. Hence, in case of clashes in this respect, the state must listen to the grievances of the Church; this will chiefly concern Theology, rarely other sciences. Thus it would be partially correct to say that the theological faculties are subject to the Church, but those of the rest of the sciences to the power of the state. But only partially; spiritual interests cannot be marked out by faculties. Interests of faith may be also violated in other faculties: then cases may arise which lose their purely worldly character, and extend into the religious sphere of the Church. If a professor should lecture on a matter touching closely upon interests of faith, for instance, Catholic Canon law or philosophy, and should show bias against Church and Christianity, deny its authority, distort and attack its tenets—then this would constitute an evident wrong to the Church and a flagrant violation of the interests which to guard it is her duty, especially in a country overwhelmingly Catholic. In that case the Church would be entitled to make expostulation.

In rejecting the protests of the Church in such cases, as being the interference of a foreign power, the state would thereby prove that it misunderstands both, the religious vocation of the Church and the proper relation between state and Church. For the faithful, whom the state calls its subject, are also the subjects of the Church, they are the lambs and sheep the Church is to feed, in obedience to divine command. Church and state having in common the same subjects, and being closely connected for so long a time that it has become historical, it would be unnatural if they were to treat each other as strangers, such as might be expected in a heathen country, Japan, for instance. The nature of the case and the weal of the people demand harmonious action in such matters. It cannot be denied, moreover, that the Church commonly meets the state government to the extreme limit of her ability. About the divine rights of the Church opinions differ, but those able to fully appreciate the precious benefits of religion and morality [pg 373] will regard it as one of the greatest boons to humanity, that there exists within its fold an organization which protects with fearless, awe-inspiring majesty these benefits against all attacks, even against the state and its all-devouring policy of utility, and in this way defends the mental dignity of the human individual against oppression by the reckless reality of external life.

Just to show how an avowed free-thinker appreciates the significance of a commanding spiritual force as against the state we will quote the French positivist A. Comte, who declares: “The absorption of the spiritual by the worldly power is a return to barbarity; the separation of the two powers, however, is the principle for mental uplift and moral dignity.” “True,” says he, “men struggle in blind aversion against spiritual power of any kind; yet it will even then prevail, though in a mistaken way. Professors, authors, and newspaper writers will then pose as the speculative leaders of mankind, although they lack all mental and moral qualification for it” (Cours de philosophie positive).

Short-sighted perception may upbraid the Catholic Church; but a far-sighted judgment will have to concede that mankind owes gratitude to the Church and the Papacy. A noted Protestant writer remarks: “But for the Papacy the Middle Ages would have fallen a prey to barbarity. Even in our day the liberty of nations would be threatened with greatest danger if there were no Papacy. It is the most effective counterpoise to an omnipotent power of the state. If it did not exist, it would have to be invented” (Hübler).

[pg 375]

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Fifth Section. Theology.

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Chapter I. Theology And Science.

Now one other, the concluding point. So far our discussion has dealt almost exclusively with the profane sciences, and while there were often under discussion general principles, applying also to theology, we did not refer to the latter expressly for the reason that it occupies a special position in regard to our question. Theology is the science of the faith, its subjects are truths established by divine or inspired authority; hence, in teaching, authority plays a larger part in this than in any other science. For this reason much fault is found with theology, and many consider that it forfeits thereby its claim to rank as a science. They say it lacks all liberty, the results are prescribed; it lacks possibility of progress; nothing but rigid dogmas, rejecting all development and improvement; its vocation is exhausted by the incessant transmitting of the immutable; hence it lacks all the essential conditions of a true science, it has no claim to a place at the university; if it nevertheless has established itself at the university, as is the case in some countries, it must be considered as an alien body, a remnant of an obsolete time.

A keen eye cannot fail to detect in these words the prompting voice of that view of the world which rejects everything supernatural, and declares that Christian dogmatics and morals, and ideas of sin, redemption, humility of faith, cross, and self-denial, do no longer correspond to modern man. At bottom is the struggle between the two views of the world—one the philosophy of modern, sovereign man, the other the contemplation of the world in the light of Christianity: a process of repulsion, psychologically easily understood, by which the one seeks to expel [pg 378] the other from the position which it desires to occupy. A closer examination of the matter will show this.

Theology as a Science.

Is theology a science in the proper sense? May it rightly claim a place among the branches of human science? This shall be the first question to be answered. Theology, meaning the doctrine of God, is the science of the Revelation, or of the faith; of the Revelation which began in the Old Testament and reached its perfection in Christ, the Son of God, in whom appeared the fulness of God, the image of the glory of God, the perfection of all religion; the Revelation intrusted to the Church to be preserved infallibly, so that by these truths, and means of salvation, the Church might guide and enrich the life of believing mankind. Hence, in the broad sense in which it is understood now, theology is the science that gathers the revealed truths from their sources, endeavours to grasp and to defend them, and to deduce new truths from them; which also studies these truths and the means given for salvation, in their development and effect in the Christian life.

Thus it includes a wide range of subordinate branches, connected by a common object. The biblical sciences have for their subject Holy Writ; the sciences of introduction to the Bible deal with its external history, with historical criticism playing an important part; exegesis is occupied with the scientific interpretation of the text and uncovers the treasures of truth in Holy Writ, assisted in this task by hermeneutics and a number of philosophical-historical auxiliary sciences. Ecclesiastical history and its branches of patrology, history of dogma, ecclesiastical archæology, and art, and other auxiliary sciences, describe the doctrine of Revelation in its historical course through the centuries, and its development in the bosom of the Church. Dogmatics (with apologetics) and morals have the task to explain and defend the doctrine of faith and morals, as drawn from the Scriptures and from tradition, to deduce new truths from them and to unite them all in a system. Finally, Canon law, and even to a greater degree the departments of [pg 379] pastoral theology, homiletics, liturgy, show how the treasures of Revelation and Redemption find their realization in the practical life of the Church and of the Christian people.

Hence there cannot be any doubt but that theology is a science in the proper sense, unless a wrong definition of science is presumed. Of course, if we should identify science in general with empirical science, and scientific methods with the methods of natural sciences and mathematics, and refuse to recognize any results as scientific except those gained by observation and mathematical calculation, then, of course, theology would not be a science, nor would many other branches of knowledge come under this head; the fault, however, would lie with a narrow conception, that limits itself to the portion of human knowledge within its vision, ignoring everything that exists beyond its horizon.

What are we to understand by science? It is the systematic concentration of the knowledge and the research of things according to their causes; hence of our cognition of a subject that can be proved by careful demonstration to be certain or at least probable. This we find to be the case in theology. It is the sum total, systematically arranged, of knowledge and researches concerning the tenets of faith, considered in the abstract, in their history, and in their effects on the life of the Church. Applying the method of natural thought, theology first studies the presumptions and foundations of faith, examines the sources of revelation by the philosophical and historical-critical method, proves the doctrines of faith by these sources, endeavours to grasp these truths intellectually, by the methods of analytical and synthetical thinking, and to make clear their connection. We have here the same methods as applied in other sciences: ascertaining the facts, definition of terms, deduction, induction. In respect to the history of the Church and to Canon law their similarity with analogous profane sciences is at once obvious.

There is one difference: in the theological sciences there is active, not only rational research, but also the belief in revealed truths. In some departments, like that of ecclesiastical history, this difference is less pronounced, they proceed by the [pg 380] method of critically establishing and connecting the facts; but they, too, are guided by the conviction that there is in the life of the Church not only natural causation, but also supernatural principle. Dogmatics takes faith to a greater degree as its point of support, in order to connect natural reason with the convictions of faith, and how richly natural reason may unfold itself is shown in the works of St. Augustine and St. Thomas, on the great mysteries of the faith. As regards faith itself, we must keep in mind that it has a scientific foundation: the credibility of revelation is proven, it is a reasoning faith. It may be likened to history. The historian, on the testimony of his sources, believes in the actuality of human events, having convinced himself of the credibility of his sources; this belief becomes then his starting point for further researches of a pragmatical nature: he penetrates more deeply into the facts, and connects them according to their causal relations. The difference is this: the historian rests upon human authority, the theologian upon divine.

Yet the objection is raised: theology is faith, or at least rests on faith. Faith, however, has nothing to do with science; faith is sentiment, whereas science is knowledge. That this view of faith is wrong, and the result of subjective agnosticism that denies to man any positive understanding of supernatural truths, we have shown repeatedly. Certainly, if faith were nothing but sentiment, no science could be built upon it; you cannot build stone houses upon water. But the Catholic faith is not simply sentiment, it is a conviction of reason, based upon God's testimony that the revealed doctrines are true. In the same way that the historian—to use the comparison once more—believes positively in his historical facts, on the strength of the authority of a Livy or Tacitus, or accepts as proved some events of ancient times, relying upon the testimony of Babylonian tablets of clay or upon the pyramids, and makes these events his starting point for further researches, without having to fear objections to his work on the ground that knowledge and belief are incompatible; just so the theologian believes in his religious truths because they are vouched for by God's testimony. This proves that the foundation for his further thought is not formed [pg 381] by uncontrollable, irrational sentiment, but by a conviction of reason.

Hence, if by knowledge is meant nothing but a conviction of reason—and in this sense faith and knowledge are usually contrasted by modern philosophical writers—then faith is knowledge in the proper sense and a contradiction does not exist. If, however, knowledge is taken to be the understanding gained by personal insight without reliance on external testimony, then, of course, there is a distinction, and theology would not be a science, in so far as it believes; just as little as history would be a science, in so far as it believes its sources. But theology is a science, in so far as it makes use of experience and reason, examines its sources, draws from them the facts of faith, and makes them the starting point for its investigations.

Theology also has mysteries among its subjects, namely, truths whose actuality is cognizable, but whose contents, while not indeed inconsistent, yet remain obscure and incomprehensible to us. But even this does not impair its scientific character. Other sciences share with it this lot of human limitation. Instances are plentiful in natural science where the existence of natural forces of one kind or another is proven; of which it is able to form some idea, but cannot fathom; they remain a puzzle to science, sometimes presenting the greatest difficulties. For instance, ether, gravitation, electricity, the nature of motion, and so on. The noted physicist J. J. Thomson says: “Gravitation is the secret of secrets. But the very same holds good of all molecular forces, of magnetism, electricity, etc. There are in animated nature even more things we cannot understand. We could say that of the processes of living organisms we understand practically nothing. Our knowledge of indigestion, of propagation, of instinct, is so small that we can almost say it is limited to the enumeration of them. What we do know and understand is not one thousandth part of what would be necessary for a knowledge in any degree complete. ‘If we raise an arm,’ says Pasteur, ‘or put our teeth in action, we do something that no one can explain.’ ”

Theology and Progress.

With a very superficial conception of theology we might easily arrive at the opinion that it lacks a characteristic of science, which, in our time especially, is insisted upon, namely, progress. For it must adhere to dogmas and not go beyond them. Hence, seemingly, there is nothing to do for theology [pg 382] but to transmit unchangeable truths, perhaps in different aspects, but nevertheless the same truths.

It must be admitted that one kind of progress is barred in theology, as also in other sciences; to wit, the progress of incessant remodelling and reshaping, the continuous tearing down of the old facts, the eternal search after truth without ever gaining its possession.

This is often the progress demanded. “The new tuition,” it is said, “starts from the premise that the truth is to be searched for”(Paulsen). “Science is not a perfected doctrine, but a research, ever to be revised” (Harnack). It is particularly demanded of theology that it procure a further development of Christianity, and substitute for it thoughts which modern age has adopted and which it calls scientific thinking. “There remains the task,” they say, “of expressing faith and its objects so as to coincide with the conception formed by scientific thinking of the natural and historical reality” (Paulsen). Hence miracles, the divinity of Christ, and mysteries of any kind, must be eliminated; even the notion of a personal God will have to be changed to a pantheistic notion: “After the great revolution in our cosmic theories we can no longer think of God, the eternal holy Will that we revere as First Cause of all things, as the ‘first mover’ throning outside and above the universe, as Aristotle and Thomas did” (Paulsen).

Such a progress is impossible in theology, at least in Catholic theology, and in any other that still aims to be the theology of the Christian, revealed religion. It cannot be expected from theology, nor from any other science, that it will degrade itself to a fashionable science, that takes for its level not truth but the variable imperatives and moods of the times, and, destitute of character, changes with each varying fashion. The science of faith cannot assume this position, so much the less as it must be aware that its truths often clash with the inclinations of the human heart, and that its vocation is to lift up mankind, not to let itself be dragged down. This kind of progress therefore is barred. This, indeed, is not progress, but a hopeless wavering from pillar to post, a building and tearing down, acquiring without permanent possession, searching without finding.

True progress can be shown in theology as in any other science.

The possibility of progress is manifest, particularly, in [pg 383] Church-history, in the biblical and pastoral sciences: they are closely related to the profane-historical, philological, social, and juridical branches of science, hence theology shares in their progress. It would seem that dogmatics would have to forego progress. Its progress certainly cannot consist in changing the revealed doctrines, nor in interpreting differently in the course of times the formulas of creed; here the rule is, veritas Domini manet in aeternum. The development of dogmatic knowledge consists rather in the following: the revealed truths are in the course of the centuries more and more clearly perceived and more sharply circumscribed, more surely demonstrated, more and more extensively appreciated in their connections, relations, and deductions. The sources of Divine Revelation flow the richer the more they are drawn from; their truths are so substantial, so abundant in relation to knowledge and life, that, the more research advances, the less it reaches its limit. “No one gets nearer to the realization of truth than he who perceives that in divine things, no matter how far he progresses, there remains always something more to be examined” (Leo the Great).

Consider the progress in mathematics. No one will say the mathematician is doomed to stagnation because he cannot change the multiplication table or the geometrical propositions. The increasing mathematical literature, with its big volumes, contradicts this notion: but its growth of knowledge is not the zigzag progress of restless to and fro, it is the solid progress from the seed to the plant.

As early as the fifth century St. Vincent of Lerin described the progress in dogmatical knowledge: “Sed forsitan dicet aliquis: Nullusne ergo in Ecclesia Christi profectus habebitur religionis? Habeatur plane et maximus. Nam quis ille est tam invidus hominibus, tam exosus Deo, qui istud prohibere conetur? Sed ita tamen, ut vere profectus sit ille fidei, non permutatio. Siquidem ad profectum pertinet, ut in semetipsum quaeque res amplificetur; ad permutationem vero, ut aliquid ex alio in aliud transvertatur. Crescat igitur oportet et multum vehementerque proficiat tam singulorum quam omnium, tam unius hominis, quam totius Ecclesiae, aetatum ac saeculorum gradibus, intelligentia, scientia, sapientia, sed in suo duntaxat genere, in eodem scilicet dogmate, eodem sensu eademque sententia.... Quodeunque igitur in hac Ecclesiae Dei agricultura fide Patrum satum est, hoc idem filiorem industria decet excolatur et [pg 384]observetur, hoc idem floreat et maturescat, hoc idem proficiat et perficiatur. Fas est etenim, ut prisca illa coelestis philosophiae dogmata processu temporis excurentur, limentur, poliantur, sed nefas est, ut commutentur, nefas, ut detruncentur, ut mutilentur.”

The proof for the actual progress of theology is furnished by its history. It shows how theology has gradually grown from the first seed of the divine Word, placed by the hand of God's Son into the soil of humanity, until it became a great tree, rich in branches and leaves. The holiest men of the Christian centuries, equipped with the choicest mental forces, enlightened by the light of grace, have worked on its growth; toiling and praying, they filled libraries with their books.

It is not our intention to outline here a sketch of this development. A few hints may suffice. Hardly had the faith taken root in the civilized nations of the old times when researches were begun. A long list of Holy Fathers and ecclesiastical authors were the bearers of the first development. Drawing upon Greek philosophy in aid and to deepen their thought in the mental battle against the ancient pagan view of the world, against Judaism and heresy, they elucidated more and more the tenets of faith and morals, and endeavoured to draw ever more fully from their spiritual contents. We encounter among the shining host men like Tertullian, Cyprian, Clement of Alexandria, Origines, Cyril of Jerusalem, Basil, Gregory of Nyssa, and many others, up to the powerful dogmatist of the old time, Augustine, who treated scientifically and often extensively the great dogmas of faith. Truly a voluminous theological literature with a plethora of genius and truth. The great edition of the Greek and Latin Fathers by Migne numbers 382 volumes in quarto, each of 1,500 pages or more in close print. Comparing with these 382 volumes the modest book of the Bible, which had been their foremost source, the progress of these centuries becomes manifest.

Soon the way was broken for systematizing the tenets of the faith, especially by St. John Damascene (eighth century). Scholasticism completed the work: it created a systematical whole and connected theology and philosophy, especially the Aristotelian, into a harmonious union. Its pioneers were St. Anselm and still more Petrus Lombard (died 1160). Then, in the Middle Ages, when universities began to flourish, there followed the great theologians Alexander of Hales, Bonaventure, Albert the Great, Scotus, and chief of all Thomas of Aquin (died 1274), in whom scholasticism reached its perfection, and undeniably one of the greatest minds known in the history of science; distinguished by an astonishing prolificness, still more by a wealth and depth of thought combined with the greatest simplicity and lucidity in presenting truths, he will for ever remain unapproachable. The decline of scholasticism during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was followed by a new bloom, when the life of the Church, rejuvenated by the Council of Trent, gave birth to new forces in [pg 385]theology. The mighty tomes of men like Suarez, Lugo, Gregory of Valencia, Ruiz, Bañez, Billuart, and others joined the volumes of their predecessors and continued their work. At the same time the various departments of the science were branching off more and more, and became independent.

M. Canus created the theory of theological cognition as an introduction to dogmatics, Bellarmin and Th. Stapleton founded the newer controversial theology. Moral Theology became in the sixteenth century a separate science and was developed by men like Lugo, Laymann, Busembaum, Alphons of Liguori. Similarly a new period of research began in the biblical sciences. Not that the first foundations were laid at that time; there had been Origines, who had become the founder of biblical text criticism by his “Hexapla”; the Antioch school of exegetes, Chrysostomus, Hilarius, and especially Jerome. But it was fostered with renewed zeal. The great Antwerp and Paris polyglots furnished aids, men like Maldonatus, Salmeron, Toletus, Cornelius, á Lapide, wrote their exegetic works. To the seventeenth century belongs the creation of the propædeutics, by Richard Simon and Bernard Lami. The monumental work, “Cursus sacrae scripturae” (since 1885), containing so far thirty-six volumes, demonstrates, among other things, that there has been in recent years no standstill in the research in Holy Writ. In the province of ecclesiastical history, too, with its branches and auxiliary sciences, new life was awakened at that time. In the sixteenth century, when the defence of the creed by the witnesses of a former age became urgent, patristics and history of dogma enjoyed their first rise. Petavius was prominently connected with them. How these sciences have been fostered in the nineteenth century is indicated by the names of Mai, De Rossi, Hergenroether, Hefele, Pastor. There remains to be mentioned the gradual establishment of the science of Canon law, of the pastoral-theological departments which have attained an independent position since the close of the eighteenth century, and since then produced a voluminous literature. The fear of a standstill in theological research seems unwarranted in the light of its history. The errors of the present time will prevent a standstill. The more vehement the attacks by natural science and philosophy, by philology and archæology, the more they seek to shake the foundations of the Christian religion, the stronger theology must grow by the combat. The solid progress of our times in knowledge and methodics will not remain without influence; nor can the empirical, the historical-critical method, the theory of evolution, and so on, fail to exert their stimulating influence upon theology.

The progress that Catholic theology has made since the days of the Fathers, the vast amount of mental work it has performed, is perhaps made most clear by a glance at the “Nomenclator literarius theologiae catholicae,” by H. Hurter (2d ed., 3 vols.; the 3d ed. is in 6 vols., 5 being ready). It gives in concise briefness the biographical data and the more important works of Catholic theologians of greater repute. Counting the names there presented, we find not less than 3,900 from 1109 to 1563; about 2,900 from 1564 to 1663; about 3,900 between 1664 and 1763; finally, from 1764 to 1894 about 4,000 theological authors; hence in the period from 1109 to 1894 nearly 14,700 theologians. That [pg 386]these 14,700 scientists—and their number is not exhausted by this figure—should have written their works without offering in them any new knowledge, would surely be a bold assertion! In addition consider the long rows of tomes which some of them wrote. Perhaps it would not be wholly amiss to refer to the restless zeal of many of them, as recorded by their biographers. Baronius (died 1607) could truthfully assert before his death, that for thirty years he had never had sufficient sleep; he usually slept only four or five hours. Pierre Halloix (died 1656) likewise was content with four or five hours of rest. Dionysius Sanmarthanus (died 1725) gave only four hours to sleep and devoted less than half an hour daily to recreation; likewise Fr. Combéfis (died 1679), during the last forty years of his life. A. Fr. Orsi (died 1761) contented himself with three or four hours of sleep; Fr. Clement (died 1793) and H. Oberrauch(died 1808) are said to have slept but two hours daily. J. Caramuel de Lobkowicz (died 1682) persevered for fourteen hours every day at his books; Chr. Lupus (died 1681) even for fifteen hours daily. The theologian Lessius is characterized by “Parcissimus erat temporis, laboris pertinax”; the same holds good of hundreds of others of these men.

A science, enumerating its disciples by so many thousands, with the greatest intellects among its workers, which has commanded so much zeal and work for centuries, should be safe from the reproach of having back of it a history of stagnation.

Theology and Freedom of Science.

To many it seems obvious that theology lacks at least the other predicate of science, freedom; because it is bound to dogmas and ecclesiastical authorities, at least Catholic theology is.

Although this claim is pressed persistently and with confidence, we may dispose of it very briefly. The freedom missed in theology, and demanded in its behalf, is none other than the liberal freedom of science, the nature of which we have had sufficiently long under the searchlight, so that there remains nothing to be added. We have proved sufficiently that this freedom is not a freedom from unnatural fetters, but a dissolute subjectivism, that claims the right not to be bound to any unchangeable, religious truths. We admit that the Catholic theology does not possess THIS freedom. Convinced of the truth of the doctrines established by divine testimony, and by the infallible voice of the Church, theology sees not freedom but a sin against truth in the license to assert the contrary of what it has recognized as the truth.

There is but one freedom which science may claim: it is freedom from hindrance in reaching the truth in its legitimate domain. If this truth is transmitted to science infallibly, by the highest instance of wisdom—and of this every theologian is convinced—how can science be said to be hindered thereby in attaining the truth? Restrained it is, but only by truth: truth, however, can only be a barrier to license, but not to precious freedom. This restraint theology shares with the rest of the sciences. The physicist is tied to the facts brought forth by the experiments of his laboratory; the astronomer is tied to the results reported to him by the instruments of his observatory, the historian is tied to the events disclosed by his sources. Moreover, all sciences are tied to their methods. In this way, and in no other way, the theologian, too, is tied to the facts given him by Revelation, and to his method. Every science has its own method. The astronomer gains his facts by observation and calculation, the mathematician arrives at his facts by calculation and study; the historian, by human testimony; the theologian, however, by divine testimony, at least as to fundamental truths. That they are transmitted to him not by his personal study, but by external testimony, does not matter; the historian too draws from such sources. Nor can theological knowledge be less certain because vouched for by divine authority: it makes it the more certain. Or is there no divine authority, and can there be none? This is exactly the silent presumption, which is the basis of the charge against theology. But where is the proof for it? It can only be demonstrated by denying the existence of a supermundane God; for, if there is an Almighty God, there can be no doubt that He can give a Revelation and demand belief.

Perhaps it may be said further, the theologian is not permitted to doubt his doctrines, hence he is prohibited from examining them; he surely cannot be unprepossessed.

We can refer to what we have previously said. Unprepossession demands but one thing, namely, not to assume something as true and certain that is false or unproved; it demands strong proofs for anything that needs proof. We may safely assert that there is no other science more exacting in this [pg 388] respect than Catholic theology, both of the present and of the past. It has not a single position that is not incessantly tested by attacks as to its tenability. Any one not unacquainted with theology, who knows the works of St. Thomas and of the later theologians, with their exact methods of thinking, who observes the conscientious work in Catholic biblical-exegetic, historical-critical field, must be convinced of the serious atmosphere of truth prevailing here. Unprepossession does not demand to doubt, time and again, that which has been positively proved, to rediscover it by new research. Positive facts are no longer a subject for research; in their case research has fully achieved its end. Methodical doubt, proper in scientific examination, is proper also in regard to religious truths.

Furthermore, the latitude of the theologian is much larger than presumed by those who derive their information solely from modern assertions about dogmatic bondage. One may safely assert that the freedom of movement of the mathematician is more limited by his principles, his train of thought more sharply prescribed, than is the case with the theologian. Of course the theologian is bound by everything he finds infallibly established directly by revelation and by the authority of the Church; or indirectly by the concurring teaching of the Fathers or the theologians; he is bound also by non-infallible decisions, especially those of congregations, though not absolutely and not irrevocably.

But this is only the smaller part of his province. In many departments, like the one of ecclesiastical history, there are almost no restrictions to his research, except those imposed by historical facts. Canon law and similar departments dealing with the laws of the Church, coincide in method and liberty of research with the profane science of law. Of all departments of theology, the dogmatical is the one most affected by the authority of faith. Yet even here a great deal is left to unhampered work. Many a void has to be filled, many a question solved, which the theology of the past has never taken up; even the defined truths still offer a large scope for personal work, in regard to demonstration, or to the philosophic-speculative penetration of the dogmas and their interpretation.

As a fact, the reader of theological literature, both old and new, will, in a multitude of cases, meet with unrestrained individuality.

Ecclesiastical Supervision of Teaching.

The Encyclica against Modernism (September 8, 1907) gave rise to fears that any free movement would henceforth be impossible for Catholic theology. These fears referred chiefly to the disciplinary measures, prescribed by the Encyclical for the purpose of supervising theological teaching in each diocese. Then came the papal Motu Proprio, of September 1, 1910, which, among other things, required the teacher of theology to confirm by oath his confession of the Creed and his intention to repudiate modernistic errors. Since then many a complaint has been heard about espionage and coercion. Similar complaint, about an imminent debasement of the Church, has been raised whenever important measures in the discipline of the Catholic Church were published, and they emanated primarily from the camp of the enemy.

It is not to be denied, however, that such an energetic call for watchfulness and action, issued from the highest ecclesiastical watchtower, like the one referred to, may lead in some cases to anxiety and false suspicions. This is no doubt regrettable; but it is an incident common to human legislation and will surprise no one who has any experience of life. A glance at these decrees will show that they are nothing more than an urgent injunction, and the exercise of that supervision of religious life and teaching which pertains to the authority of the Catholic Church, and which has been practised by her at all times. The language is urgent, it has a severity which is softened in the execution. Its explanation lies in the eminent danger of the modernistic movement to the continuance of Catholic life. Modernism, as described and condemned by the Encyclica, is nothing less than the absolute destruction of the Catholic faith, and of Christianity.

The Protestant theologian, Prof. Tröltsch, wrote after the publication of the Encyclica: “As viewed from the position of [pg 390] curialism and of the strict Catholic dogma, there existed a real danger. Catholicism had gotten into a state of inner fermentation, corresponding to the same condition caused by modern theology within the Protestant churches.”

The danger of Modernism is often enhanced by a deceptive semblance of the right faith, and by the pretence to urge only the righteous interests of modern progress against obsolete forms of thought and life, now and then also by its secret propaganda. Hence this intervention by a firm hand, and this only after having waited a long time. They were measures of prevention, like those taken to stave off a serious danger; the tidal wave receding, their urgency disappears automatically.

The German bishops stated in their pastoral letter of December 10, 1907, that in some Catholic lay-circles there was uneasiness about the Encyclical, fearing that it might endanger scientific endeavour and independence in thought and research, and that the Church intended to prohibit or render impossible co-operation in solving the problems of civilization. “May they all recognize,” they said, “how groundless such fears are! The Church desires to set bars only to one kind of freedom—the freedom to err.” If the rules and precepts of the Church do sound harsh sometimes, it is because the Church adheres unconditionally to the principle: The truth above all. “The Church has at no time opposed the true progress of civilization, but only that which hinders its progress: heedlessness, haste, the mania for innovation, the morbid aversion against the truth that comes from God. But we Catholic Christians can join free and unhampered, with all our strength and talent, in the peaceful strife of noble, intellectual work and genuine mental education.”

The fears of too great a pressure by the ecclesiastical authorities have been given trenchant expression in most recent times by a man who, while standing outside of the Catholic Church, has always shown himself well disposed towards it, namely, the noted pedagogue, Fr. W. Förster of Zurich. Förster has won merit and distinction by his manly and spirited defence of the Christian view in pedagogical science and mental culture. In the book referred to he again describes urgently the worthlessness and fatality of modern individualism, that knows a good deal about freedom but nothing of self-discipline, nor of authority or tradition, and which represents most superficial amateurism in the domain of religion and morals. Then he turns to criticize Church practice; and his criticism becomes a sharp accusation. His main charge is “fatal restraint of the spirit of universality.” “Some groups in the Church,” he asserts, “of mediocre learning, have established a clique rule, under which the others, the more creative and intensive souls, become the victims of intolerance, espionage, and false suspicion”; “universality, which unites the different mental tendencies, [pg 391]has given way to separation”; “everywhere a one-sided denunciatory information of the leading circles by accidentally ruling groups and factions; anxious intolerance for everything unusual, disciplinary austerity and unintelligent pedantry, individualistic and unchristian spirit of distrust and mutual espionage”; “levelling of the mental life”; “one is tired,” we are told, “of the spirit of incessant disciplining”; “of the invariable cold and disdainful forbidding and repression.”In the Middle Ages and earlier times it was different; then “universality was the ruling spirit, the working of the many into a unit full of life; this policy was changed for no other reason than because of the struggle of the Church against Protestantism.” “The greatest harm that Catholicism suffered by the great rupture of the sixteenth century is most likely seen in the tendency of the Church to view thenceforth religious freedom within Catholic Christianity with an anxious, even hostile eye.”

Readers of the literature of the day will recognize here views often met with during the last years, and the same excited note, which is quite in contrast to the even temper that ordinarily characterizes Förster's books. But what the reader will not find stated are the proofs for these enormous accusations.

Undeniably, things have happened in the wide range of ecclesiastical authority that cannot be approved. But where are the facts that would justify charges of such sweeping nature? A Protestant author can hardly be presumed to possess such a direct and positive insight into the ecclesiastical practice of the higher and the highest order, to give convincing strength to his bare assertion. Or is the number of dissatisfied voices that make these charges sufficient proof in itself? If the ecclesiastical authority be allowed, now and then, to emerge from its passiveness to take measures against dangerous doctrinal tendencies, is it not to be expected, as a matter of course, that some minds become disgruntled and complain about oppression and clique rule? Or must that right be denied the Church altogether? Förstersays himself: “The spirit of dignity and responsibility has never ruled all parts of the hierarchy in the same measure as now, and rarely if ever were there found in its leading circles so many men leading an almost holy life as at present.” And yet we are asked to believe that it was reserved exactly for this worthy hierarchy, and for these saintly men, to forget the traditions of the Church in the most irresponsible manner. One will have to say: “If Förster would examine without bias the situation and apply consistently in respect to authority the principles that he himself defends, he would be convinced that the Church could not have acted any differently than it did in regard to the regrettable events of the last years, and that it has ever been the aim of the Church, before the sixteenth century as after, to guard carefully the purity of traditions of faith against any attack” (Prof. G. Reinhold in a review of Förster's book).

The Church has never known a universality that did not oppose doctrinal errors. The Middle Ages did not know it; one need only read the many condemnations from Nicholas I. to Innocent VIII.; nor was such a universality known to the great Councils of ancient [pg 392]Christianity up to the Nicæan, which hurled its anathema against numerous teachings that opposed no dogmas defined at that time; nor did the Holy Fathers know such a universality, nor the Apostles, with their strict admonitions of unity of faith. The reply is made, the “Church must not yield the least of its fundamental truths,” that “its centralizing power ought to remain within the region of the most essential”; whereas she actually exercises it in the domain of the incidental. The ecclesiastical supervision of teaching has never limited itself to the most essential, nor would this practice ever accomplish the object to preserve pure the doctrine of faith. Furthermore, what is the “most essential” what is the “incidental”? Förster's book does not inform us about this most important question. The views against which the Church has made front in the last years, do they relate only to the incidental? Does this apply to the doctrines of a Rosmini and Lamennais, who are referred to in passing? No well-informed theologian will assert this.

We shall hardly be wrong in assuming that the charge of overstraining the ecclesiastical authority is based upon a presumption of a philosophical nature, which is in evidence in several other passages of the book—on the view, namely, that in religion the intellectual moment should recede before the mystical, before anticipation and inner experience. Hence the severe censure of “the narrow autocracy of the intellectual interpretation” against the “preponderance of the intellectual contemplation” in the Church, which is said to have become so prevalent as to exert unavoidably a paralyzing effect upon the entire religious life. Here we have the result of the notion that theory of life, religion, and faith, depend but little on rational knowledge. This notion is also in accord with the argument about the impossibility of an independent scientific ethics. We have discussed this elsewhere. We demonstrated that religion and faith relate to positive truths that can be realized, and that can therefore be accurately defined; they must be so defined. Of course this realization need not be a scientific one, it can be of the natural kind that is not clearly conscious of its reasons. Förster, too, touches upon this important distinction when quoting Saitschick: “The inner perception overtowers feeling and logical reason—here, too, lies the source of a light shining brighter, stronger, and incomparably more true than any light of reason”; and again, when his advice is, to foster to a greater extent the “inner perception.” What is felt here vaguely has long since been expressed much more lucidly in Christian philosophy.

Certainly a view that fails to lay, first of all, absolute stress on the protection of the doctrine of faith cannot understand the Catholic point of view; it will assume only too easily that the supervision relates to incidentals. It will also engender a criticism against which the Church may rightly protest, because it starts from presumptions that do not apply to the Church.

No one will be astonished to find a Protestant author lacking the clarified conception of the supernatural character of the Church that is possessed by the Catholic; to see him view the Church almost invariably in the light of a human organization, similar to the Protestant [pg 393]denominations which he may cite before the court of his individual reason and force to bow under the yoke of his criticism. The Catholic has a better understanding of the words: “I am with you all days, even unto the consummation of the world.” There will be foreign to his mind the idea that the Church has since the days of Reformation, for now nearly four centuries, deviated from the right way, and degenerated more and more to a separatistic and insignificant community; a church able to forget its traditions to the extent of grossly misconceiving its proper sphere of authority, and fettering itself in a narrow spirit to incidentals, could not keep his confidence any longer.

The Oath Against Modernism.

The Motu Proprio of September 1, 1910, decreed that teachers of theology, and also Catholic priests generally, had to bind themselves by oath to reject modernistic heresies, and to accept obediently the ecclesiastical precepts. Dispensed from this pledge were only the professors of theology at state institutions, to spare them difficulties with state authorities.

This anti-modernist oath at once became the signal for a storm of indignation, than which there has been hardly a greater one since the days of the Vatican Council. A cry was raised for freedom of science, for the exclusion of theological faculties, even for another “Kulturkampf.” The General Convention of German college professors, held at Leipzig January 7, 1911, issued a declaration to the effect that “All those who have taken the anti-modernist oath have thereby expressed their renunciation of an independent recognition of truth and of the exercise of their scientific conviction, hence they have forfeited all claim to be considered independent scientists.” Interpellations were made in legislative bodies, it was demanded that the option of taking the oath should be taken away from university professors, because “the dignity of the universities would be lowered if their members had the opportunity to bind themselves by such an oath.”

Even threats were made by statesmen, hinting at reprisals by the state, because its interests were being jeopardized, while, on the other hand, there were those who declared: “If the Catholic Church thinks it necessary for her ecclesiastical and religious interests to put her servants under oath, it is her own business; [pg 394] neither the state nor the Evangelical Church have a right to interfere” (Prime Minister Bethmann-Hollweg, in the Prussian Diet, on March 7, 1911).

The agitation of the minds will soon subside, as on former occasions of this kind; and, with calm restored, people will find, as J. G. Fichte told the impulsive F. Nicolai, one hundred and thirty years ago, that the fact has only just been discovered that the Catholics are Catholic.

Yes, indeed, the Catholics are Catholic, and desire to remain Catholic—this and nothing else is the gist of the anti-modernist oath. It does not oblige to anything else but what was believed and adhered to before. It obliges to accept the doctrines of faith; but they are the old truths of the Catholic Church, propounded and believed at all times, and the necessary inferences from them. Even the proposition that truths of faith can never be contradicted by the results of historical research, or by human science in general, is as old as faith itself. In addition, the oath avows obedient submission to Church precepts; but this has been demanded for centuries by the professio fidei Tridentina, a pledge by oath to which every professor of theology has been before obliged: Apostolicas et ecclesiasticas traditiones reliquasque eiusdem Ecclesiae observationes et constitutiones firmissime admitto et amplector. This was the opinion of all competent judges on this theological question. “We are convinced,” declared correctly a prominent theological institution, “that there is not assumed by this oath any obligation new in subject, and no obligation not already existing. The oath is but the affirmation of a duty already imposed by conscience” (the professors of Theology of Paderborn, December 12, 1910). The Breslau faculty said, in the same sense: “The faculty does not see in the so-called anti-modernist oath any new obligation, nor one exceeding the rule of faith ever adhered to by the faculty.” And this declaration was fully approved of by Rome.

Cardinal Kopp, at the session of the German Upper House on April 7, 1911, commented on these statements as follows: “Against the opinions of these circles (having a different opinion of the oath) I set the testimony and the statement of the most competent people, to wit, the professors of university faculties and also those at episcopal seminaries. Those who have taken the oath, as well as those [pg 395]who have refrained from it by the privilege granted them by the Holy See, they both declare positively that the oath does not contain any new obligations, nor does it impose new duties on them; hence that, on the contrary, they are not impeded in the pursuit of their tasks as teachers and of their scientific work of research. Now, gentlemen, I do not think it would be proper to insinuate that these earnest men, appointed by the Government, or at least in office by its consent, would make this declaration against their conviction and not in full sincerity.”

No wonder, therefore, that of the hundreds of thousands of Catholic priests hardly a handful have refused the oath.

Nor is there anything new in the obligation to swear and subscribe in writing to a confession of creed. Very often in the course of the centuries decrees of creed and symbols had to be subscribed to in writing. In the days of Jansenism, when priests were required to swear to and sign a statement, many Jansenists tried to dodge this oath, and the Jansenist Racine complained that this demand was unheard-of in the Church. Thereupon the learned theologian Tournelyand others cited a number of examples of this kind from the history of the Church.

Therefore the anti-modernist oath has not created anything new. Consequently it has not changed anything in regard to the freedom of theological research. It is the same as before; nor has the oath changed anything in the quality of theological professors, they merely promise to be what they must be anyway; nor can, for instance, the oath induce the Catholic priest, in teaching profane history, to present the history of the Reformation in a different light than before, and thus render him unfit to teach history; the oath has created no new, confessional differences, hence has given no justified cause for excitement—provided one has the needed theological comprehension of the oath. If one has not this insight, and will not trust to information from a competent source, then it will be the act of prudence to leave the test to the future; and we can await this test serenely.

We referred above to the declaration of German college teachers, to the effect that all who have taken the oath have thereby expressed their renunciation of independent cognition of truth. These stereotyped ideas we have so often heard, with the same haziness and inconsistency. “Because they have thereby expressed the renunciation of independent cognition of the truth,” namely, by the acceptance of certain doctrines. But is not every one who clings to his Christian [pg 396]belief bound by this very fact to certain doctrines? Does every one who still prays his Credo express the renunciation of his independence? If the argument quoted is to mean anything at all, it means the full rejection of all Christian duty to believe; indeed, this is the real sense of this “independent recognition of truth,” as we have already seen. But cannot some one, because of his conviction, renounce this independence and believe, and in this conviction accept the doctrines of the Church? If this conviction is his, and he affirms it by oath, how can any one see in this oath a want of freedom, nay, a renunciation of truth? If an atheist solemnly declared his intention to be and to remain an atheist, he would hardly be accused of lack of character by the advocates of modern freedom of thought. The judge, the military officer, the member of a legislature, the professor, who must all take the oath of allegiance,—all of these will have to be protected against the insinuation of disloyalty to truth. If a man affirms by oath his unalterable Catholic faith, he is without any hesitation accused of untruthfulness. The government has been urged to forbid this spontaneous exercise of Catholic sentiment. The inconsistency of modern catch-phrases can hardly be given more drastic expression. In order to guard the freedom of thought the government is to forbid one from pledging himself to his own principles; in order to remain an independent thinker a man must be forced by penal statute to confess unconditionally the brand of free science prescribed by a certain school and by no means have an opinion of his own; in order to be free in his research the teacher in theology must be tied to the catch-phrases of liberal philosophy. This is modern freedom, a hybrid of freedom and bondage, of sophistry and contradiction, of arrogance and barrenness of thought, which will exert its rule over the minds as long as they are guided by half-thinking.

Bonds of Love, not of Servitude.

People to whose mind Catholic thinking is foreign will never be able to appreciate the energetic activity of the Church authority.

On close examination, however, they will not deny that, if the Christian treasure of faith is to be preserved undiminished, if in the hopeless confusion and the unsteady vacillation of opinions in our days there is to be left anywhere a safe place for truth and unity of faith, this cannot be accomplished otherwise than in the shape of a strong authority that has the assurance of the aid of God.

The Catholic theologian may be permitted to point in exemplifying this fact to the recent history of Protestantism and of its theology. Protestantism does not acknowledge a teaching authority: its theology [pg 397]demands complete freedom of research and teaching, making the most extensive use of both. The result is the demoralization of the Christian faith, which is speeding with frightfully accelerated steps to total annihilation. The very danger which Modernism threatened to carry into the Catholic Church has overwhelmed Protestant theology: the metaphysical ideas of a modern philosophy penetrated it without check, and killed its Christian substance. The measures against Modernism were sharply criticized by many Protestants who, at the same time, laid stress upon the fact that nothing of the sort could happen among themselves. Indeed it could not, at least not consistently with Protestant principle. But there is not a single fact in all history which demonstrates more clearly the necessity of the Catholic authority of faith, than just the condition of Protestantism at the present time. On the part of believing Protestants this is admitted, if not expressly, then at least in practice. To stem the destructive work of liberal theology they resort to authority; invoke Evangelical formulas of confession, the traditional doctrine, sometimes even the aid of the state; neological preachers are disciplined by censures, even by dismissal, against the loud protest of the liberals. Such action is easily understandable; one cannot hear without sadness the cry for help of pious Protestantism, a cry that grows more desperate every day; one cannot help regretting its forlorn situation in view of the millions of souls whose salvation is jeopardized, who are in danger of being despoiled of the last remains of their Christian faith. Yet it must be admitted that this cry for authority and obedience signifies the abandoning of the Protestant principle, and the involuntary imitation and therefore acknowledgment of the Catholic principle—for the Catholic an incentive to cleave the more closely to his Church.

Many to whom the Catholic way of thinking is foreign, look upon the duty of obedience which ties the Catholic to his Church as a sort of servitude; to the Catholic it is the tie of love, uniting free people to a sacred authority. Many look upon the Church of Rome as a tyrannical curia, where Umbrian prelates are cracking their whips over millions of servile and ignorant souls; to the Catholic the Church is the divinely appointed institution of truth, that possesses his fullest confidence. He knows that history has given the most magnificent justification to the Catholic principle of authority. Opinions have come and gone, systems were born and have died, thrones of learning rose and fell; only one towering mental structure remained standing upon the rock of God-founded authority in the vast field of ruins with its wrecks of human wisdom. And its ancient Credo, prayed by all nations, is the same Credo once prayed by the martyrs.

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Chapter II. Theology And University.

“He is not for our turn, and he is contrary to our doings”; thus spoke in bygone ages the children of this world. “Let us therefore lie in wait for the just.... He boasteth that he hath the knowledge of God and calleth himself the Son of God” (Wisdom ii, 12 seq.). Centuries later the children of the world treated in the same manner God's Son and His doctrine. And in these days, when the science of the faith is to be driven from the rooms of the school, let us recall that in olden times the children of the world planned similarly.

In the days when the private and public life of Europe's nations was permeated with the Christian faith, and their ideas were still centred in God and eternity, then the science of the faith was held to be the highest among the sciences, not only by rank but in fact.

And when, in the budding desire for knowledge, they erected universities, the first and largest of them, Paris University, was to be the pre-eminent home of theology, and wherever theology joined with the other sciences it received first honours. Thus it was in the days of yore, and for a long time. The secular tendency of modern thought led to the gradual emancipation of science from religion; unavoidably, its aversion for a supernatural view of the world soon turned against, and demanded the removal of, the science representing that view. Reasons for the demand were soon found. Thus the removal of theology from the university has become part and parcel of the system of ideas of the unbelieving modern man; the liberal press exploits the idea whenever occasion offers. Resolutions to this effect are introduced in parliaments and diets, meetings of young students [pg 399] are echoing the ideas heard elsewhere. No wonder that the Portuguese revolution of 1910 had nothing more urgent to do than to close the theological faculty at Portugal's only university.

What are the reasons advanced? Many are advanced; the main reason is usually disguised; we shall treat of it when concluding. In the first place we are again met by the old tune of free science, which has been in our ears so long; the rooms of the colleges, it is said, are destined for a research which seeks truth with an undimmed eye, and not for blindfolded science confined to a prescribed path.

No need to waste words on this. Just one more reference may be permitted us, namely, to the study of law. There is hardly another science with less latitude than the science of law. Its task is not to doubt the justification of state laws, but to look upon constitutions and statutes as established, to explain them, and by doing so to train efficient officials and administrators of the law. When explaining the civil code the teacher of law has small opportunity for pursuing “free search after truth”; neither will his pupil be tested at examinations in the maxims of a free research that accepts no tradition; he will have to prove his knowledge of the matter that had been given to him. Yet no one has ever objected to the teaching of jurisprudence at the university. Therefore the objection cannot be valid that theology is restricted to the established doctrines of its religion and has to transmit them without change to its future servants. It should be borne in mind that our universities are not intended for research only, but also, and chiefly, for training candidates for the professions.

This disposes at the same time of the objection that theology has to serve ecclesiastical purposes outside of and foreign to science. Religious science, like any other science, serves the desire that strives for truth. True, it serves also for the practical training of the clergyman for his vocation. But shall we eliminate from science the interests of practical life? Then medicine and legal science would also have to be excluded, and for these there would be planted only sterile theories, and the universities transformed into a place of abstract intellectualism.

Again it is argued that religion and faith are not really cognition and knowledge, but only the products of sentiment, and hence theology has no claim to a place among the sciences; that religion can only be a subject for psychology which lays bare its roots in the human [pg 400]heart, and a subject for the history of religion, to trace its historical forms and to study its laws of evolution—sciences which belong to the philosophical faculty.

Thus we come back to the principles of an erroneous theory of knowledge. No need to demonstrate again that the Christian belief is built upon the clear perception of reason, and that it is not a sentimental but a rational function.

But has not the Church her theological seminaries? Let theology seek refuge there! We answer the Church herself desires this; she does not like theological faculties, they are in her eyes a danger to the faith.

Now, if the Church would be deprived of her authoritative influence upon the appointment of professors at theological faculties and upon the subject of their teachings, consequently, if there would be jeopardized the purity of belief of the candidates for priesthood, and through them of the people, then, we admit, the Church would rather forego theological faculties at state-universities. This could not be done without considerable injury to the public prestige of the Church, to her contact with worldly sciences and their representatives and disciples, even to the scientific study of theology. In the latter particularly by the loss of the greater resources of the state, and by the absence of inducement to scientific aim, which is more urgent for theologians than for others at college. Neither would the state escape injury, because of the open slight and harm to religion, and of lessening its contact with the most influential body in Christian countries. But if the Church is assured of her proper influence on the faculties, she has no reason for an unfriendly attitude toward them. The object the Church seeks to achieve in her seminaries is the clerical education of her candidates, their ascetic training, the introduction into a life of recollection and prayer, into an order of life befitting priests; this cannot be sufficiently done in the free life at the university.

This is not a bar to scientific instruction by the theological faculty. Seminary and faculty supplement one another. We see very frequently, at Rome and outside of Rome, the theological school separated from the seminary with the approval of the Church. But all these objections do not give the real reason, the roots lie deeper.

When the Divine Founder of our Religion stood before the tribunal of Judea He said: “My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, servants would strive for me.” This was the whole explanation of why He stood there accused. The guardian of the doctrine of her Master may use these words to explain the fact that, in the eyes of many, she stands to-day accused and defamed. The mind of modern man has forsaken the world of the Divine and Eternal; no longer is he a servant of this kingdom. His ideals are not God and Heaven, but he himself and this world; not the service of God, but human rights and human dignity. This view of the world, which cannot grasp the wisdom of Jesus Christ, and which takes offence at the Cross, also takes offence at a science that confesses as the loftiest ideal Jesum Christum, et hunc crucifixum.

The real kernel of the question is: Does the Christian religion in its entirety still serve the purpose of to-day—or does it not? is it to remain with us, the religion wherein our fathers found the gratification of their highest mental aims, the religion that gave Europe its civilization and culture, that created its superior mental life, and still rules it to this hour? Or shall religion be expelled by a return to a heathendom which Christianity had overthrown? “We do not want Him to rule over us”—there is the real reason for the modern antipathy to Catholic theology. Else, whence the excited demand for its removal? Because it is superfluous? Even if this were the fact, there is many a category of officials, the little need of which can be demonstrated without difficulty, yet no one grows excited about it; many expenditures by the state are rather superfluous, yet there is no indignation. No, the matter at issue is not so much the scientific character of theology, nor misgivings about its progress or its freedom; the real question is this:

Do we Desire to Remain Christians?

For if we still recognize the Christian religion as the standard for our thought, if we are persuaded that it must remain the foundation of our life, then there can be no doubt that its facts, its truths, and standards of life require scientific presentation; [pg 402] then it cannot be disputed that this science is entitled to a place alongside of the science of law, of chemistry, or Indology. Indeed, then it must assume the first place in the system of sciences.

Surely a science ranks the higher, the higher its object and its sources, the surer its results, and the greater its significance for the most exalted aim of mankind. The subject of theology is God and His works, the ultimate causes of all things in God's eternal plan of the universe, the “wisdom of God in a mystery, a wisdom which is hidden, which God ordained before the world, unto our glory” (1 Cor. ii. 7). Therefore it is wisdom; for “the science of things divine is science proper” (Augustinus, De Trinit. xii, 14). A science, having as its subject Greek architecture, geography, or physical law, may claim respect, yet it must step back before a science of Religion, that rises to the highest sphere of truth by a power of flight that participates in the omniscience of the Holy Ghost; for such is the faith. For this reason its results, in so far as they rest on faith, are more certain than the results of all other sciences.

Finally, the aims of life which theology serves are not physical health or advantages in the external life, but the knowledge of God, the spread of His kingdom on earth, and the eternal goal of all human life.

So long as the Christian religion is the valued possession of the people of a country, and the roots of their lives rest more in Christianity than in mathematics, astrophysics, or Egyptology, so long is the science of religion entitled to a seat at the hearth of the sciences; and the people, then, have the right to demand that the servants of religion get their education at the place where the other leading professions get their training. If the state considers it its duty to train teachers of history and physics for the benefit of its citizen, then it is still more its duty to help in the education of the servants of religion, who are called upon to care for more important interests of the people and state than all the rest of the professions. Let us consider the task of universities. As established in the countries of central Europe, they are destined to foster science in the widest sense, and to educate the leading professions: to be the hearth for the sum total of mental endeavour, this is their vocation; hence all things that contain truth and have educational value should join hands here. To eliminate the science of the highest sphere of knowledge would be tantamount to a mutilation of the university. Here all boughs and branches of human knowledge should be united into a large organism, of unity and community of work, of giving and taking [pg 403] Theology needs for auxiliaries other sciences, such as profane history and philology, Assyriology and Egyptology, psychology and medicine. In turn it offers indispensable aid to history and other branches of science, it guards the ethical and ideal principles of every science, and crowns them by tendering to them the most exalted thoughts. Here is the place of education for the judge and official, for the physician and teacher; hence it should be the place also for the education of the servant of the chief spiritual power, religion.

The university should unite all active mental powers that lift man above the commonplace. But is there any stronger mental power than religion?

It is the oldest and mightiest factor in mental life; it is as natural to man as the flower is to the field; his mind gravitates to a religious resting place, whence he may view time and eternity, where he may rest. Therefore religion demands a science that inquires into its substance, its justification, its effect on thought and life. Man strives to give to himself an account of everything, but most of all of what is foremost in his mind. A system of sciences without theology would be like an uncompleted tower, like a body without a head.

The history of theology dates back to the very beginning of science and culture. If we trace the oldest philosophy we find as its starting point theological research and knowledge. Orpheus and Hesiod, who sang of the gods, and the sages of the oldest mysteries, were called theologians; Plutarch sees in the theologians of past ages the oldest philosophers, in the philosophers, however, the descendants of the theologians; Platoderives philosophy from the teachers of theology. Even more prominently was religious study and knowledge responsible for Hindoo, Chaldean, and Egyptian philosophy.

Was it reserved for our age to discard all the better traditions of mankind? Shall victory rest with the destructive elements in the mental education of Europe? Against this danger to our ideal goods, theology should stay at the universities, as a bulwark and permanent protest.

Theological Faculty in State and Church.

For this reason the theological faculty has a birth-right at the university, whether state school or free university. Where it is joined to a state university, theology automatically becomes subordinate to the state, in a limited sense. More essential is its dependency upon the Church, because, being the science of the faith, theology is primarily subject to the authority and supervision of the Church. For the Church, and only [pg 404] the Church, is charged by its Divine Founder to teach His religion to all nations. Hence no one can exercise the office of a religious teacher, neither in the public school nor at college, if not authorized to do so by the Church. It is a participation in the ministry of the Church; and the latter alone can designate its organs. Whoever has not been given by the Church such license to teach, or he from whom she takes it away, does not possess it; no other power can grant it, not even the state. Nor can the state restore the license of teaching to a theologian from whom the Church has withdrawn it; this would be an act beyond state jurisdiction, hence invalid.

In granting the license to teach, the Church does so in the self-evident presumption that the one so licensed will teach his students the correct doctrine of the Church, as far as it has been established; and he binds himself to do so by voluntarily taking the office, and more explicitly by the profession of the creed. If he should deviate from the creed later on, it is the obvious right of the Church to cancel his license. In this the Church only draws the logical conclusion from the office of the teacher and from his voluntary obligation. He holds his office as an organ of the Church, destined to lecture on pure doctrine before future priests. Whether or not he has honestly searched for the truth when deviating therefrom, this he may settle with his conscience; but he is incapacitated to act still further as an organ of the Church, and it is only common honesty to resign his office if he cannot fulfil any longer the obligations he assumed. The professor of theology is therefore in the first place a deputy of his Church. Also he is teacher at a state institution and as such a state official; he is appointed by the state to be the teacher of students belonging to a certain denomination, he is paid by the state, and may be removed by the state from his position as official teacher. But withal the right must not be denied to the Church to watch over the correctness of the Christian doctrine, and to make appointment and continuance in the teaching office dependent upon it.

Indeed, this demand was urged by Prof. Paulsen, notwithstanding his entirely different position: he says: “The Catholic-theological faculties are in a certain sense a concession by the Church to the [pg 405]state; of course they are also a service of the state for the Church, and a valuable one, too; but they rest in the first place upon a concession made by the Church to the state, with a view to the historically established fact, and to peace. Naturally, this concession cannot be unconditional. The condition is: the professors appointed by the state must stand upon ecclesiastical ground, they must acknowledge the doctrine of the Church as the standard of their teaching, and they must receive from the Church the missio canonica. The Church cannot accept hostile scientists for teachers. Hence for the appointment an agreement must be reached with ecclesiastical authority. The universities are not merely workshops for research, they are at the same time educational institutions for important public professions; in fact, they were founded for this latter purpose: they are the outcome of the want for scientifically educated clergymen, teachers, physicians, judges, and other professionals. And this purpose necessitates restrictions: the professor of Evangelical theology cannot teach arbitrary opinions any more than his Catholic fellow-professor can; the lawyer is also restricted by presumptions, for instance, that the civil code is not an accumulation of nonsense, but, on the whole, a pretty good order of life. Just as little as we should dispute the lawyer's standing as a scientist on this account, so little shall we be able to deny this standing to the Catholic theologian who stands with honest conviction on the platform of his Church.” “We want the Catholic theological faculties to be preserved; of course, under the presumption of freedom of scientific research within the limits drawn by the creed of the Church.”

In a similar sense the Bavarian minister of education, Dr. V. Wehner, said, on Feb. 11, 1908, in the course of a speech in the Bavarian Diet: “Thus the Catholic professor of theology is bound to the standards of creed and morals as established by the Church. The decision as to whether a Catholic professor of theology teaches the right doctrine of the Church is not for the state to give, but for the Church alone.” “The business of the professors at theological faculties is to transmit the teachings of the Church to future candidates for the priesthood, and this is what they are employed for by the state. That the Church does not tolerate a doctrine to differ from her own is to me quite self-evident.” Hence we may conclude, “The attacks directed here and there in recent times against the continuance of Catholic theological faculties need not worry us in any way. Nor are they likely to meet with response at the places where the decision rests. Times have changed. Even non-Catholic governments are no longer blind to the conviction that an educated clergy must be reckoned among the most eminent factors for conserving the state” (Freiherr von Hertling). Even during the heated debates on the anti-modernist oath in the Prussian Diet and upper house, the importance of the theological faculties was acknowledged by the speakers, none of whom demanded the removal of these faculties, though outspoken in their criticism of the oath. Prime minister Bethmann-Hollweg declared on March 7: “Catholic students will get their training at the Catholic faculties the same as hitherto, even after the anti-modernist oath is introduced. The state never will claim for itself the authority to determine in any way [pg 406]which, and in what, forms doctrines of faith shall be taught to Catholic students. This is no affair of the state. If, and this is my wish, the Catholic faculties will retain that value to teachers, students, and the total organism of the universities, which is the natural condition of their existence, then they will continue to exist for the profit of both, the Catholic population and the state. Should they lose this value, however, an event I do not wish to see, then they will die by themselves. But I do not see that it is demanded by the interest of the state to abolish without awaiting further development these faculties with one stroke, thereby harming our Catholic population, whose wants and needs deserve as much consideration as those of any other part of the population.”

There is no warrant for the view that theology is subject to a foreign power, and therefore it cannot claim a place in a state institution. In its external relations the theological faculty is subject also to the state, serving the public interests so much the better the more continually the priest by his activity influences the life of the people. By the way, why this urgent demand for state control in the pursuit of a science by a party that otherwise is striving zealously to put the university beyond the influence of the state? To be a state institution or not can only be an extrinsic matter to the university itself. Or has the science of medicine not enough intellectual substance and consistency to thrive at a free university? Is science as such a matter of state? Therefore, why find fault with theology because it will not be entirely subordinated to the state? Nor is it proper to call the Church a “foreign” power. It is certainly not a foreign power to theology; neither to the Christian state, that has developed in closest relation to the Church, which owes its civilization and culture to the Church, shares with her its subjects, and is based even to-day upon the doctrines and customs of the Church.

Against Christ there arose the Jewish scribes and denounced His wisdom as error; the scribes have passed away, we know them no longer. To the Neoplatonics Christianity was ignorance, even barbarity; Manicheans and Gnostics praised as the higher wisdom Oriental and Greek philosophy adorned with Christian ideas. They belong to history. When the people of Israel came in touch with the brilliant civilization of Egypt, Assyria, and Greece, they often became ashamed of the religion of their forefathers, and embraced false gods; to-day we look upon their fancy of inferiority as foolishness, and we rank their religion high above the religious notions of the pagan Orient.

Thus has truth pursued its way through the centuries of human history, often unrecognized by the children of men, scolded for being obsolete, nay, more, driven from its home and [pg 407] forced to make room for delusion and error. Delusion fled, and error sank into its grave—but truth remained. Thus the Church has endured, and thus the Church will live on, with her doctrines and science misunderstood and repulsed by the children of a world unable to grasp them; they will pass away and so will their thoughts, yet the Church will remain, and so will her science. “She was great and respected”—this is the familiar quotation from a Protestant historian—“before the Saxon had set foot on Britain, before the Frank had passed the Rhine, when Grecian eloquence still nourished in Antioch, when idols were still worshipped in the temple of Mecca. And she may still exist in undiminished vigor when some traveller from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's” (Lord Macaulay).

Then, perhaps, another observer, leaning against the pillars of history, and looking back upon the culture of this age, will realize that only one power of truth may rightly say: “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away”—Christ and His Church.

Law and Freedom. An Epilogue.

The great Renovator of mankind, in whom the pious Christian sees his God, and in whom the greater part of the modern world, though turned from faith, still sees the ideal of a perfect human being, hence also of true freedom, once spoke the significant words: “Et veritas liberabit vos, and the truth shall make you free” (John viii. 32). As all the words that fell from His lips are the truth for all centuries to come, so are these words pre-eminently true.

There is in our times a strong tension felt between freedom on the one hand, and law and authority on the other; true freedom and true worth it sees too exclusively in the independent assertion of the self-will, and in the unrestrained manifestation of one's strength and energy, while law and authority are looked upon as onerous fetters. Our times do not understand that freedom [pg 408] and human dignity are not opposed to law and obedience, that no other freedom can be intended for man than the voluntary compliance with the law and the standards of order.

All creatures, from the smallest to the largest, are bound by law; none is destined for the eminent isolation of independence. The same law of gravitation that causes the stone to fall, also governs the giants of the skies, and they obey its rule; the same laws that rule the candle-flame, that are at work in the drop of water, also rule the fires of the sun and guide the fates of the ocean. The heart, like all other organs of the human body, is ruled by laws, and medical science, with its institutes and methods, is kept busy to cure the consequences of the disturbance of these laws. Every being has its laws: it must follow them to attain perfection; deviation leads to degeneration.

Thus the decision of the worth and dignity of man does not rest with an unrestrained display of strength, but with order; not with unchecked activity, but with control of his acts and with truth. The floods that break through the dam have force and energy, but being without order they create destruction; the avalanche crashing down the mountain side has force and power, but, free from the law of order, it carries devastation; glowing metal when led into the mould becomes a magnificent bell, while flowing lava brings ruin. Only one dignity and freedom can be destined for man, it consists in voluntarily adhering to warranted laws and authorities.

For him who with conviction and free decision has made the law of thought, faith, and action his own principle, the law has ceased to be a yoke and a burden; it has become his own standard of life, which he loves; it has become the fruit of his conviction, truth has made him free. Ask the virtuoso who obeys the rules of his art whether he considers them fetters; indeed he does not, he has made them his principles. Let us ask of the civilized citizen whether he feels the laws of civilization to be a yoke; he does not, he obeys them of his own free will, they are his own order of life. Unfree, slaves and serfs, will be those only who carry with resentment the burden of the laws they must obey. Unfree feels the savage people fighting against the laws of civilization; unfree the wicked boy to whom [pg 409] discipline is repugnant. It is not the law that makes man unfree, it is his own lawlessness and rebellion.

Nor does submission to the God-given law of the Christian belief make man low or unfree; to those to whom their belief is conviction and life, the suggestion that they are oppressed will sound strange. On the contrary, they feel that this belief fits in harmoniously with the nobler impulses of their thought and will, like the pearl in the shell, like the gem in its setting. Man experiences this when his belief lifts him above the lowlands of his sensual life to mental independence, and frees him from the bondage of his own unruly impulses, that so often seek to control him.

Freiheit sei der Zweck des Zwanges

Wie man eine Rebe bindet,

Dass sie, statt im Staub zu kriechen,

Frei sich in die Lüfte windet.

(Freedom be the aim of restraint, just as the vine is tied to the trellis that it may freely rise in the air, instead of crawling in the dust.) This is the freedom of mind, knowing but one yoke, the truth; the freedom that does not bow to error, nor to high sounding phrases, nor to public opinion, nor to the bondage of political life; neither is true freedom shackled by the fetters of one's own lawless impulses. Et veritas liberabit vos.

[pg 411]

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