History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom

by Andrew Dickson White

And when alchemy in its old form had been discredited, we find scriptural arguments no less perverse, and even comical, used on the other side. As an example of this, just before the great discoveries by Stahl, we find the valuable scientific efforts of Becher opposed with the following syllogism: "King Solomon, according to the Scriptures, possessed the united wisdom of heaven and earth; but King Solomon knew nothing about alchemy (or chemistry in the form it then took), and sent his vessels to Ophir to seek gold, and levied taxes upon his subjects; ergo alchemy (or chemistry) has no reality or truth." And we find that Becher is absolutely turned away from his labours, and obliged to devote himself to proving that Solomon used more money than he possibly could have obtained from Ophir or his subjects, and therefore that he must have possessed a knowledge of chemical methods and the philosopher's stone as the result of them.(277)

(277) For an extract from Agrippa's Occulta Philosophia, giving examples
of the way in which mystical names were obtained from the Bible, see
Rydberg, Magic of the Middle Ages, pp. 143 et seq. For the germs of many
mystic beliefs regarding number and the like, which were incorporated
into mediaeval theology, see Zeller, Plato and the Older Academy,
English translation, pp. 254 and 572, and elsewhere. As to the
connection of spiritual things with inorganic nature in relation to
chemistry, see Eicken, p. 634. On the injury to science wrought by
Platonism acting through mediaeval theology, see Hoefer, Histoire de la
Chimie, vol. i, p. 90. As to the influence of mysticism upon strong men
in science, see Hoefer; also Kopp, Geschichte der Alchemie, vol. i, p.
211. For a very curious Catholic treatise on sacred numbers, see the
Abbe Auber, Symbolisme Religieux, Paris, 1870; also Detzel, Christliche
Ikonographie, pp. 44 et seq.; and for an equally important Protestant
work, see Samuell, Seven the Sacred number, London 1887. It is
interesting to note that the latter writer, having been forced to give
up the seven planets, consoles himself with the statement that "the
earth is the seventh planet, counting from Neptune and calling the
asteroids one" (see p. 426). For the electrum magicum, the seven
metals composing it, and its wonderful qualities, see extracts from
Paracelsus's writings in Hartmann's Life of Paracelsus, London, 1887,
pp. 168 et seq. As to the more rapid transition of light than sound, the
following expresses the scholastic method well: "What is the cause why
we see sooner the lightning than we heare the thunder clappe? That is
because our sight is both nobler and sooner perceptive of its object
than our eare; as being the more active part, and priore to our hearing:
besides, the visible species are more subtile and less corporeal than
the audible species."—Person's Varieties, Meteors, p. 82. For Basil
Valentine's view, see Hoefer, vol. i, pp. 453-465; Schmieder, Geschichte
der Alchemie, pp. 197-209; Allgemeine deutsche Biographies, article
Basilius. For the discussions referred to on possibilities of God
assuming forms of stone, or log, or beast, see Lippert, Christenthum,
Volksglaube, und Volksbrauch, pp. 372, 373, where citations are given,
etc. For the syllogism regarding Solomon, see Figuier, L'Alchimie et les
Alchimistes, pp. 106, 107. For careful appreciation of Becher's position
in the history of chemistry, see Kopp, Ansichten uber die Aufgabe der
Chemie, etc., von Geber bis Stahl, Braunschweig, 1875, pp. 201 et seq.
For the text proving the existence of the philosopher's stone from the
book of Revelation, see Figuier, p. 22.

Of the general reasoning enforced by theology regarding physical science, every age has shown examples; yet out of them all I will select but two, and these are given because they show how this mixture of theological with scientific ideas took hold upon the strongest supporters of better reasoning even after the power of medieval theology seemed broken.

The first of these examples is Melanchthon. He was the scholar of the Reformation, and justly won the title "Preceptor of Germany." His mind was singularly open, his sympathies broad, and his usual freedom from bigotry drew down upon him that wrath of Protestant heresy-hunters which embittered the last years of his life and tortured him upon his deathbed. During his career at the University of Wittenberg he gave a course of lectures on physics, and in these he dwelt upon scriptural texts as affording scientific proofs, accepted the interference of the devil in physical phenomena as in other things, and applied the medieval method throughout his whole work.(278)

(278) For Melanchthon's ideas on physics, see his Initia Doctrinae
Physicae, Wittenberg, 1557, especially pp. 243 and 274; also in vol.
xiii of Bretschneider's edition of the collected works, and especially
pp. 339-343.

Yet far more remarkable was the example, a century later, of the man who more than any other led the world out of the path opened by Aquinas, and into that through which modern thought has advanced to its greatest conquests. Strange as it may at first seem, Francis Bacon, whose keenness of sight revealed the delusions of the old path and the promises of the new, and whose boldness did so much to turn the world from the old path into the new, presents in his own writings one of the most striking examples of the evil he did so much to destroy.

The Novum Organon, considering the time when it came from his pen, is doubtless one of the greatest exhibitions of genius in the history of human thought. It showed the modern world the way out of the scholastic method and reverence for dogma into the experimental method and reverence for fact. In it occur many passages which show that the great philosopher was fully alive to the danger both to religion and to science arising from their mixture. He declares that the "corruption of philosophy from superstition and theology introduced the greatest amount of evil both into whole systems of philosophy and into their parts." He denounces those who "have endeavoured to found a natural philosophy on the books of Genesis and Job and other sacred Scriptures, so 'seeking the dead among the living.'" He speaks of the result as "an unwholesome mixture of things human and divine; not merely fantastic philosophy, but heretical religion."

He refers to the opposition of the fathers to the doctrine of the rotundity of the earth, and says that, "thanks to some of them, you may find the approach to any kind of philosophy, however improved, entirely closed up." He charges that some of these divines are "afraid lest perhaps a deeper inquiry into nature should, penetrate beyond the allowed limits of sobriety"; and finally speaks of theologians as sometimes craftily conjecturing that, if science be little understood, "each single thing can be referred more easily to the hand and rod of God," and says, "THIS IS NOTHING MORE OR LESS THAN WISHING TO PLEASE GOD BY A LIE."

No man who has reflected much upon the annals of his race can, without a feeling of awe, come into the presence of such clearness of insight and boldness of utterance, and the first thought of the reader is that, of all men, Francis Bacon is the most free from the unfortunate bias he condemns; that he, certainly, can not be deluded into the old path. But as we go on through his main work we are surprised to find that the strong arm of Aquinas has been stretched over the intervening ages, and has laid hold upon this master-thinker of the seventeenth century; for only a few chapters beyond those containing the citations already made we find Bacon alluding to the recent voyage of Columbus, and speaking of the prophecy of Daniel regarding the latter days, that "many shall run to and fro, and knowledge be increased," as clearly signifying "that... the circumnavigation of the world and the increase of science should happen in the same age."(279)

(279) See the Novum Organon, translated by the Rev. G. W. Kitchin,
Oxford, 1855, chaps. lxv and lxxxix.