History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science

by John William Draper

"IN the course of my long life," said the Khalif Ali, "I have often observed that men are more like the times they live in than they are like their fathers." This profoundly philosophical remark of the son-in-law of Mohammed is strictly true; for, though the personal, the bodily lineaments of a man may indicate his parentage, the constitution of his mind, and therefore the direction of his thoughts, is determined by the environment in which he lives.

When Amrou, the lieutenant of the Khalif Omar, conquered Egypt, and annexed it to the Saracenic Empire, he found in Alexandria a Greek grammarian, John surnamed Philoponus, or the Labor-lover. Presuming on the friendship which had arisen between them, the Greek solicited as a gift the remnant of the great library—a remnant which war and time and bigotry had spared. Amrou, therefore, sent to the khalif to ascertain his pleasure. "If," replied the khalif, "the books agree with the Koran, the Word of God, they are useless, and need not be preserved; if they disagree with it, they are pernicious. Let them be destroyed." Accordingly, they were distributed among the baths of Alexandria, and it is said that six months were barely sufficient to consume them.

Although the fact has been denied, there can be little doubt that Omar gave this order. The khalif was an illiterate man; his environment was an environment of fanaticism and ignorance. Omar's act was an illustration of Ali's remark.

THE ALEXANDRIAN LIBRARY BURNT. But it must not be supposed that the books which John the Labor-lover coveted were those which constituted the great library of the Ptolemies, and that of Eumenes, King of Pergamus. Nearly a thousand years had elapsed since Philadelphus began his collection. Julius Caesar had burnt more than half; the Patriarchs of Alexandria had not only permitted but superintended the dispersion of almost all the rest. Orosius expressly states that he saw the empty cases or shelves of the library twenty years after Theophilus, the uncle of St. Cyril, had procured from the Emperor Theodosius a rescript for its destruction. Even had this once noble collection never endured such acts of violence, the mere wear and tear, and perhaps, I may add, the pilfering of a thousand years, would have diminished it sadly. Though John, as the surname he received indicates, might rejoice in a superfluity of occupation, we may be certain that the care of a library of half a million books would transcend even his well-tried powers; and the cost of preserving and supporting it, that had demanded the ample resources of the Ptolemies and the Caesars, was beyond the means of a grammarian. Nor is the time required for its combustion or destruction any indication of the extent of the collection. Of all articles of fuel, parchment is, perhaps, the most wretched. Paper and papyrus do excellently well as kindling-materials, but we may be sure that the bath-men of Alexandria did not resort to parchment so long as they could find any thing else, and of parchment a very large portion of these books was composed.

There can, then, be no more doubt that Omar did order the destruction of this library, under an impression of its uselessness or its irreligious tendency, than that the Crusaders burnt the library of Tripoli, fancifully said to have consisted of three million volumes. The first apartment entered being found to contain nothing but the Koran, all the other books were supposed to be the works of the Arabian impostor, and were consequently committed to the flames. In both cases the story contains some truth and much exaggeration. Bigotry, however, has often distinguished itself by such exploits. The Spaniards burnt in Mexico vast piles of American picture-writings, an irretrievable loss; and Cardinal Ximenes delivered to the flames, in the squares of Granada, eighty thousand Arabic manuscripts, many of them translations of classical authors.

We have seen how engineering talent, stimulated by Alexander's Persian campaign, led to a wonderful development of pure science under the Ptolemies; a similar effect may be noted as the result of the Saracenic military operations.

The friendship contracted by Amrou, the conqueror of Egypt, with John the Grammarian, indicates how much the Arabian mind was predisposed to liberal ideas. Its step from the idolatry of the Caaba to the monotheism of Mohammed prepared it to expatiate in the wide and pleasing fields of literature and philosophy. There were two influences to which it was continually exposed. They conspired in determining its path. These were—1. That of the Nestorians in Syria; 2. That of the Jews in Egypt.

INFLUENCE OF THE NESTORIANS AND JEWS. In the last chapter I have briefly related the persecution of Nestor and his disciples. They bore testimony to the oneness of God, through many sufferings and martyrdoms. They utterly repudiated an Olympus filled with gods and goddesses. "Away from us a queen of heaven!"

Such being their special views, the Nestorians found no difficulty in affiliating with their Saracen conquerors, by whom they were treated not only with the highest respect, but intrusted with some of the most important offices of the state. Mohammed, in the strongest manner, prohibited his followers from committing any injuries against them. Jesuiabbas, their pontiff, concluded treaties both with the Prophet and with Omar, and subsequently the Khalif Haroun-al-Raschid placed all his public schools under the superintendence of John Masue, a Nestorian.

To the influence of the Nestorians that of the Jews was added. When Christianity displayed a tendency to unite itself with paganism, the conversion of the Jews was arrested; it totally ceased when Trinitarian ideas were introduced. The cities of Syria and Egypt were full of Jews. In Alexandria alone, at the time of its capture by Amrou, there were forty thousand who paid tribute. Centuries of misfortune and persecution had served only to confirm them in their monotheism, and to strengthen that implacable hatred of idolatry which they had cherished ever since the Babylonian captivity. Associated with the Nestorians, they translated into Syriac many Greek and Latin philosophical works, which were retranslated into Arabic. While the Nestorian was occupied with the education of the children of the great Mohammedan families, the Jew found his way into them in the character of a physician.