History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom

by Andrew Dickson White

Dr. Schund insisted that "every idea of the Holy Scriptures, from the first to the last page, stands in diametrical opposition to the Darwinian theory"; and, "if Darwin be right in his view of the development of man out of a brutal condition, then the Bible teaching in regard to man is utterly annihilated." Rougemont in Switzerland called for a crusade against the obnoxious doctrine. Luthardt, Professor of Theology at Leipsic, declared: "The idea of creation belongs to religion and not to natural science; the whole superstructure of personal religion is built upon the doctrine of creation"; and he showed the evolution theory to be in direct contradiction to Holy Writ.

But in 1863 came an event which brought serious confusion to the theological camp: Sir Charles Lyell, the most eminent of living geologists, a man of deeply Christian feeling and of exceedingly cautious temper, who had opposed the evolution theory of Lamarck and declared his adherence to the idea of successive creations, then published his work on the Antiquity of Man, and in this and other utterances showed himself a complete though unwilling convert to the fundamental ideas of Darwin. The blow was serious in many ways, and especially so in two—first, as withdrawing all foundation in fact from the scriptural chronology, and secondly, as discrediting the creation theory. The blow was not unexpected; in various review articles against the Darwinian theory there had been appeals to Lyell, at times almost piteous, "not to flinch from the truths he had formerly proclaimed." But Lyell, like the honest man he was, yielded unreservedly to the mass of new proofs arrayed on the side of evolution against that of creation.

At the same time came Huxley's Man's Place in Nature, giving new and most cogent arguments in favour of evolution by natural selection.

In 1871 was published Darwin's Descent of Man. Its doctrine had been anticipated by critics of his previous books, but it made, none the less, a great stir; again the opposing army trooped forth, though evidently with much less heart than before. A few were very violent. The Dublin University Magazine, after the traditional Hibernian fashion, charged Mr. Darwin with seeking "to displace God by the unerring action of vagary," and with being "resolved to hunt God out of the world." But most notable from the side of the older Church was the elaborate answer to Darwin's book by the eminent French Catholic physician, Dr. Constantin James. In his work, On Darwinism, or the Man-Ape, published at Paris in 1877, Dr. James not only refuted Darwin scientifically but poured contempt on his book, calling it "a fairy tale," and insisted that a work "so fantastic and so burlesque" was, doubtless, only a huge joke, like Erasmus's Praise of Folly, or Montesquieu's Persian Letters. The princes of the Church were delighted. The Cardinal Archbishop of Paris assured the author that the book had become his "spiritual reading," and begged him to send a copy to the Pope himself. His Holiness, Pope Pius IX, acknowledged the gift in a remarkable letter. He thanked his dear son, the writer, for the book in which he "refutes so well the aberrations of Darwinism." "A system," His Holiness adds, "which is repugnant at once to history, to the tradition of all peoples, to exact science, to observed facts, and even to Reason herself, would seem to need no refutation, did not alienation from God and the leaning toward materialism, due to depravity, eagerly seek a support in all this tissue of fables.... And, in fact, pride, after rejecting the Creator of all things and proclaiming man independent, wishing him to be his own king, his own priest, and his own God—pride goes so far as to degrade man himself to the level of the unreasoning brutes, perhaps even of lifeless matter, thus unconsciously confirming the Divine declaration, WHEN PRIDE COMETH, THEN COMETH SHAME. But the corruption of this age, the machinations of the perverse, the danger of the simple, demand that such fancies, altogether absurd though they are, should—since they borrow the mask of science—be refuted by true science." Wherefore the Pope thanked Dr. James for his book, "so opportune and so perfectly appropriate to the exigencies of our time," and bestowed on him the apostolic benediction. Nor was this brief all. With it there came a second, creating the author an officer of the Papal Order of St. Sylvester. The cardinal archbishop assured the delighted physician that such a double honour of brief and brevet was perhaps unprecedented, and suggested only that in a new edition of his book he should "insist a little more on the relation existing between the narratives of Genesis and the discoveries of modern science, in such fashion as to convince the most incredulous of their perfect agreement." The prelate urged also a more dignified title. The proofs of this new edition were accordingly all submitted to His Eminence, and in 1882 it appeared as Moses and Darwin: the Man of Genesis compared with the Man-Ape, or Religious Education opposed to Atheistic. No wonder the cardinal embraced the author, thanking him in the name of science and religion. "We have at last," he declared, "a handbook which we can safely put into the hands of youth."

Scarcely less vigorous were the champions of English Protestant orthodoxy. In an address at Liverpool, Mr. Gladstone remarked: "Upon the grounds of what is termed evolution God is relieved of the labour of creation; in the name of unchangeable laws he is discharged from governing the world"; and, when Herbert Spencer called his attention to the fact that Newton with the doctrine of gravitation and with the science of physical astronomy is open to the same charge, Mr. Gladstone retreated in the Contemporary Review under one of his characteristic clouds of words. The Rev. Dr. Coles, in the British and Foreign Evangelical Review, declared that the God of evolution is not the Christian's God. Burgon, Dean of Chichester, in a sermon preached before the University of Oxford, pathetically warned the students that "those who refuse to accept the history of the creation of our first parents according to its obvious literal intention, and are for substituting the modern dream of evolution in its place, cause the entire scheme of man's salvation to collapse." Dr. Pusey also came into the fray with most earnest appeals against the new doctrine, and the Rev. Gavin Carlyle was perfervid on the same side. The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge published a book by the Rev. Mr. Birks, in which the evolution doctrine was declared to be "flatly opposed to the fundamental doctrine of creation." Even the London Times admitted a review stigmatizing Darwin's Descent of Man as an "utterly unsupported hypothesis," full of "unsubstantiated premises, cursory investigations, and disintegrating speculations," and Darwin himself as "reckless and unscientific."(24)

(24) For the French theological opposition to the Darwinian theory, see
Pozzy, La Terre at le Recit Biblique de la Creation, 1874, especially
pp. 353, 363; also Felix Ducane, Etudes sur la Transformisme, 1876,
especially pp. 107 to 119. As to Fabre d'Envieu, see especially
his Proposition xliii. For the Abbe Desogres, "former Professor of
Philosophy and Theology," see his Erreurs Modernes, Paris, 1878, pp. 677
and 595 to 598. For Monseigneur Segur, see his La Foi devant la Science
Moderne, sixth ed., Paris, 1874, pp. 23, 34, etc. For Herbert Spencer's
reply to Mr. Gladstone, see his study of Sociology; for the passage in
the Dublin Review, see the issue for July, 1871. For the Review in the
London Times, see Nature for April 20, 1871. For Gavin Carlyle, see The
Battle of Unbelief, 1870, pp. 86 and 171. For the attacks by Michelis
and Hagermann, see Natur und Offenbarung, Munster, 1861 to 1869. For
Schund, see his Darwin's Hypothese und ihr Verhaaltniss zu Religion
und Moral, Stuttgart, 1869. For Luthardt, see Fundamental Truths of
Christianity, translated by Sophia Taylor, second ed., Edinburgh, 1869.
For Rougemont, see his L'Homme et le Singe, Neuchatel, 1863 (also
in German trans.). For Constantin James, see his Mes Entretiens avec
l'Empereur Don Pedro sur la Darwinisme, Paris, 1888, where the papal
briefs are printed in full. For the English attacks on Darwin's Descent
of Man, see the Edinburgh Review July, 1871 and elsewhere; the Dublin
Review, July, 1871; the British and Foreign Evangelical Review, April,
1886. See also The Scripture Doctrine of Creation, by the Rev. T.
R. Birks, London, 1873, published by the S. P. C. K. For Dr. Pusey's
attack, see his Unscience, not Science, adverse to Faith, 1878; also
Darwin's Life and Letters, vol. ii, pp. 411, 412.

But it was noted that this second series of attacks, on the Descent of Man, differed in one remarkable respect—so far as England was concerned—from those which had been made over ten years before on the Origin of Species. While everything was done to discredit Darwin, to pour contempt upon him, and even, of all things in the world, to make him—the gentlest of mankind, only occupied with the scientific side of the problem—"a persecutor of Christianity," while his followers were represented more and more as charlatans or dupes, there began to be in the most influential quarters careful avoidance of the old argument that evolution—even by natural selection—contradicts Scripture.

It began to be felt that this was dangerous ground. The defection of Lyell had, perhaps, more than anything else, started the question among theologians who had preserved some equanimity, "WHAT IF, AFTER ALL, THE DARWINIAN THEORY SHOULD PROVE TO BE TRUE?" Recollections of the position in which the Roman Church found itself after the establishment of the doctrines of Copernicus and Galileo naturally came into the minds of the more thoughtful. In Germany this consideration does not seem to have occurred at quite so early a day. One eminent Lutheran clergyman at Magdeburg called on his hearers to choose between Darwin and religion; Delitszch, in his new commentary on Genesis, attempted to bring science back to recognise human sin as an important factor in creation; Prof. Heinrich Ewald, while carefully avoiding any sharp conflict between the scriptural doctrine and evolution, comforted himself by covering Darwin and his followers with contempt; Christlieb, in his address before the Evangelical Alliance at New York in 1873, simply took the view that the tendencies of the Darwinian theory were "toward infidelity," but declined to make any serious battle on biblical grounds; the Jesuit, Father Pesch, in Holland, drew up in Latin, after the old scholastic manner, a sort of general indictment of evolution, of which one may say that it was interesting—as interesting as the display of a troop in chain armour and with cross-bows on a nineteenth-century battlefield.

From America there came new echoes. Among the myriad attacks on the Darwinian theory by Protestants and Catholics two should be especially mentioned. The first of these was by Dr. Noah Porter, President of Yale College, an excellent scholar, an interesting writer, a noble man, broadly tolerant, combining in his thinking a curious mixture of radicalism and conservatism. While giving great latitude to the evolutionary teaching in the university under his care, he felt it his duty upon one occasion to avow his disbelief in it; but he was too wise a man to suggest any necessary antagonism between it and the Scriptures. He confined himself mainly to pointing out the tendency of the evolution doctrine in this form toward agnosticism and pantheism.

To those who knew and loved him, and had noted the genial way in which by wise neglect he had allowed scientific studies to flourish at Yale, there was an amusing side to all this. Within a stone's throw of his college rooms was the Museum of Paleontology, in which Prof. Marsh had laid side by side, among other evidences of the new truth, that wonderful series of specimens showing the evolution of the horse from the earliest form of the animal, "not larger than a fox, with five toes," through the whole series up to his present form and size—that series which Huxley declared an absolute proof of the existence of natural selection as an agent in evolution. In spite of the veneration and love which all Yale men felt for President Porter, it was hardly to be expected that these particular arguments of his would have much permanent effect upon them when there was constantly before their eyes so convincing a refutation.