With regard to this matter, as with regard to opposition in general to science, President Jordan has once more set forth the realities of the situation so as to make it clear that, even when it was the dogmatic spirit that was behind the refusal to accept certain scientific truths, not only was there the best of intentions in this in all cases, but in nearly all, the results were such as to benefit mankind, and even to help rather than hinder science. He says:
"The desire of dogmatism to control action is in its essence the desire to save men from their own folly. The great historic churches have existed 'for the benefit of the weak and the poor.' By their observances they have stimulated the spirit of devotion. By their commands they have protected men from unwise action. By their condemnations they have saved men from the grasp of vice and crime."
The ultra-conservatism which is the real factor at fault in these cases exists in all men beyond middle life. It is a wise provision of nature very probably to prevent the young and headstrong from running away with the race. We would be plunged into all sorts of curious experimental conditions only for the fact that those beyond middle life act as a brake on the initiative of their juniors. While it does some harm, there is no doubt of its supremely beneficial effects in the long run. [{396}] For one announced great discovery that proves its actual right to the title, there are at least a hundred that are proclaimed with loud blare of trumpet, yet prove nonentities. This sometimes becomes a very troublesome brake on progress, however. Some three hundred years ago, Harvey said with regard to his epoch-making discovery of the circulation of the blood, that he did not expect any of his contemporaries who was over forty years of age to accept it. His premonition in this matter was fully confirmed by the event. Darwin, I believe, once remarked that he did not think that men of his own age in his own generation would accept his theory, and most of them did not.
The opposition which, as a consequence of this natural conservatism, is so constantly ready to manifest itself, is as human as the envy which, much as we may bewail the fact, accompanies all individual success. A history of this phase of scientific progress is of itself very interesting and of great psychological importance. A short sketch of it will serve the purpose of placing the opposition of churchmen to science in the category where it belongs, and will make this subject appear in its true light of a very natural and universal psychic manifestation, not a religious or supposed theological phenomenon.
As a matter of fact, it is comparatively easy to show that there are many more incidents of opposition to the progress of science on the part of scientists because of their conservatism, than on the part of ecclesiastics because of religion or theology. There has scarcely ever been a really important advance made in science, a really new discovery announced, which has not met with such bitter opposition on the part of the men who were most prominent in the science concerned at the time, as to make things very uncomfortable for the discoverer, and on many occasions this opposition has taken on the character of real persecution. It will be at once said that this is very different from the formal condemnation by organized bodies of truths in science, with all that this implies of ostracization and of discouragement on the part of scientific workers. The history of science is full of stories showing that formal scientific bodies refused to consider seriously what were [{397}] really great discoveries, or that scientific editors not only rejected papers representing valuable original research, but even did not hesitate to discredit their authors in such a way as to make it extremely difficult for them to pursue their studies in science successfully, and still more to prevent them from securing such positions as would enable them to carry on their scientific investigations under favorable circumstances. In a word, persecution was carried out just as far as possible, and the result was quite as much discouragement as if the opposition were more formal. It is not hard to show, on the other hand, that while formal opposition by Church authorities was very rare, rejection by medical and scientific societies and by the scientific authorities for the moment of new discoveries was so common, as to be almost the rule in the history of progress in science.
This is so different from what is ordinarily supposed to be the calm course of scientific evolution, that it will need a series of illustrative cases to support it. In recent years, however, the cultivation of the history of science has been more ardent than in the past, and the result has been that many more know of this curious anomaly and paradox in scientific history than was the case a few years ago, and it is comparatively easy to obtain the material to demonstrate it. One of the most striking instances is that of Harvey.
Harvey discovered the circulation of the blood, at a time and under circumstances that would surely lead us to expect its immediate acceptance and the hailing of him as a great original thinker in science. He first expounded it to his class, very probably in 1616, which will be remembered as the year of Shakespeare's death. The glory of the great Elizabethan era in England was not yet passed. Men's minds had been opened to great advances in every department of thought during the preceding century, by the Renaissance movement and the New Learning in England. Probably no greater group of original thinkers has ever existed than were alive in England during the preceding twenty-five years. Four years after Harvey had sufficiently elaborated his ideas on the circulation to present them to his class, and the very year after he wrote his treatise on the [{398}] subject, though he dared not publish it as yet, Lord Bacon published his Novum Organum, in which he advocated the use in science of the very principles of induction on which Harvey's great discovery was founded.
What happened is interesting for our purpose. Harvey was so well acquainted with the intolerant temper of men as regards new discoveries, that he hesitated to publish his book on the subject until men had been prepared for it, by his ideas gradually filtering out among the medical profession through the members of his class. He waited nearly fifteen years after his first formal lesson on the subject, before he dared to commit it to print. Shakespeare had made Brutus say to Portia:
"You are my true and honorable wife,
As dear to me as are the ruddy drops
That visit my sad heart;"
but men were not yet ready to accept the great principle of the blood movement. There seems to be good authority for saying that Harvey had more than suspected his great truth for twenty-five years before he dared print it. He realized that it would surely meet with opposition and would make serious unpleasantness between him and his friends. He was not deceived in anticipation. Many of his friends fell away from him, and according to tradition, he lost more than half of his consulting practice, because physicians could not and would not believe that a man who evolved such a strange idea as the constant movement of the blood all over the body, from heart to surface and back, could possibly be in his right mind, and, above all, be a suitable person to consult with in difficult cases.