History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom

by Andrew Dickson White

(418) For the danger of "the little system of the history of the world,"
see Sayce, as above. On Dugald Stewart's contention, see Max Muller,
Lectures on Language, pp. 167, 168. For Sir William Jones, see his
Works, London, 1807, vol. i, p. 199. For Schlegel, see Max Muller, as
above. For an enormous list of great theologians, from the fathers down,
who dwelt on the divine inspiration and wonderful gifts of Adam on this
subject, see Canon Farrar, Language and Languages. The citation from
Clement of Alexandria is Strom.. i, p. 335. See also Chrysostom, Hom.
XIV in Genesin; also Eusebius, Praep. Evang. XI, p. 6. For the two
quotations given above from Shuckford, see The Creation and Fall of Man,
London, 1763, preface, p. lxxxiii; also his Sacred and Profane History
of the World, 1753; revised edition by Wheeler, London, 1858. For the
argument regarding the difficulty of bringing the fishes to be named
into the Garden of Eden, see Massey, Origin and Progress of Letters,
London, 1763, pp. 14-19.

It had continued, then, the universal belief in the Church that the names of all created things, except possibly fishes, were given by Adam and in Hebrew; but all this theory was whelmed in ruin when it was found that there were other and indeed earlier names for the same animals than those in the Hebrew language; and especially was this enforced on thinking men when the Egyptian discoveries began to reveal the pictures of animals with their names in hieroglyphics at a period earlier than that agreed on by all the sacred chronologists as the date of the Creation.

Still another part of the sacred theory now received its death-blow. Closely allied with the question of the origin of language was that of the origin of letters. The earlier writers had held that letters were also a divine gift to Adam; but as we go on in the eighteenth century we find theological opinion inclining to the belief that this gift was reserved for Moses. This, as we have seen, was the view of St. John Chrysostom; and an eminent English divine early in the eighteenth century, John Johnson, Vicar of Kent, echoed it in the declaration concerning the alphabet, that "Moses first learned it from God by means of the lettering on the tables of the law." But here a difficulty arose—the biblical statement that God commanded Moses to "write in a book" his decree concerning Amalek before he went up into Sinai. With this the good vicar grapples manfully. He supposes that God had previously concealed the tables of stone in Mount Horeb, and that Moses, "when he kept Jethro's sheep thereabout, had free access to these tables, and perused them at discretion, though he was not permitted to carry them down with him." Our reconciler then asks for what other reason could God have kept Moses up in the mountain forty days at a time, except to teach him to write; and says, "It seems highly probable that the angel gave him the alphabet of the Hebrew, or in some other way unknown to us became his guide."

But this theory of letters was soon to be doomed like the other parts of the sacred theory. Studies in Comparative Philology, based upon researches in India, began to be reenforced by facts regarding the inscriptions in Egypt, the cuneiform inscriptions of Assyria, the legends of Chaldea, and the folklore of China—where it was found in the sacred books that the animals were named by Fohi, and with such wisdom and insight that every name disclosed the nature of the corresponding animal.

But, although the old theory was doomed, heroic efforts were still made to support it. In 1788 James Beattie, in all the glory of his Oxford doctorate and royal pension, made a vigorous onslaught, declaring the new system of philology to be "degrading to our nature," and that the theory of the natural development of language is simply due to the beauty of Lucretius' poetry. But his main weapon was ridicule, and in this he showed himself a master. He tells the world, "The following paraphrase has nothing of the elegance of Horace or Lucretius, but seems to have all the elegance that so ridiculous a doctrine deserves":

"When men out of the earth of old A dumb and beastly vermin crawled; For acorns, first, and holes of shelter, They tooth and nail, and helter skelter, Fought fist to fist; then with a club Each learned his brother brute to drub; Till, more experienced grown, these cattle Forged fit accoutrements for battle. At last (Lucretius says and Creech) They set their wits to work on SPEECH: And that their thoughts might all have marks To make them known, these learned clerks Left off the trade of cracking crowns, And manufactured verbs and nouns."

But a far more powerful theologian entered the field in England to save the sacred theory of language—Dr. Adam Clarke. He was no less severe against Philology than against Geology. In 1804, as President of the Manchester Philological Society, he delivered an address in which he declared that, while men of all sects were eligible to membership, "he who rejects the establishment of what we believe to be a divine revelation, he who would disturb the peace of the quiet, and by doubtful disputations unhinge the minds of the simple and unreflecting, and endeavour to turn the unwary out of the way of peace and rational subordination, can have no seat among the members of this institution." The first sentence in this declaration gives food for reflection, for it is the same confusion of two ideas which has been at the root of so much interference of theology with science for the last two thousand years. Adam Clarke speaks of those "who reject the establishment of what, WE BELIEVE, to be a divine revelation." Thus comes in that customary begging of the question—the substitution, as the real significance of Scripture, of "WHAT WE BELIEVE" for what IS.

The intended result, too, of this ecclesiastical sentence was simple enough. It was, that great men like Sir William Jones, Colebrooke, and their compeers, must not be heard in the Manchester Philological Society in discussion with Dr. Adam Clarke on questions regarding Sanskrit and other matters regarding which they knew all that was then known, and Dr. Clarke knew nothing.

But even Clarke was forced to yield to the scientific current. Thirty years later, in his Commentary on the Old Testament, he pitched the claims of the sacred theory on a much lower key. He says: "Mankind was of one language, in all likelihood the Hebrew.... The proper names and other significations given in the Scripture seem incontestable evidence that the Hebrew language was the original language of the earth,—the language in which God spoke to man, and in which he gave the revelation of his will to Moses and the prophets." Here are signs that this great champion is growing weaker in the faith: in the citations made it will be observed he no longer says "IS," but "SEEMS"; and finally we have him saying, "What the first language was is almost useless to inquire, as it is impossible to arrive at any satisfactory information on this point."

In France, during the first half of the nineteenth century, yet more heavy artillery was wheeled into place, in order to make a last desperate defence of the sacred theory. The leaders in this effort were the three great Ultramontanes, De Maistre, De Bonald, and Lamennais. Condillac's contention that "languages were gradually and insensibly acquired, and that every man had his share of the general result," they attacked with reasoning based upon premises drawn from the book of Genesis. De Maistre especially excelled in ridiculing the philosophic or scientific theory. Lamennais, who afterward became so vexatious a thorn in the side of the Church, insisted, at this earlier period, that "man can no more think without words than see without light." And then, by that sort of mystical play upon words so well known in the higher ranges of theologic reasoning, he clinches his argument by saying, "The Word is truly and in every sense 'the light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.'"