Among the chemists we name Lavoisier. A martyr to his science, he died under the guillotine of the Revolution in 1794; he had remained true to his Christian faith. The Swede, J. Berzelius (died 1848), openly professed his belief in God. Thénard (died 1859), the discoverer of boron, of a blue dye named after him, and of many other chemicals, was a staunch Catholic. The pastor of St. Sulpice could testify at his funeral as follows: “He attended church every Sunday, eyes and heart fixed on his prayer-book, and on solemn Feast days he received Holy Communion.... With Baron Thénard one of the greatest benefactors of my poor people is gone” (Kneller).
Dumas (died 1884), who is esteemed by his pupil Pasteur as the peer of Lavoisier, was also a practical Catholic, as was his compatriot Chevreul (died 1889). This great man had the rare good fortune to be present at his own centenary in 1886. At this great celebration he received an address by the Berlin Academy, stating that his name had a prominent place on the list of the great scientists who had carried the scientific repute of France to all quarters of the globe. When, in view of the mundane character of the celebration, the liberal press endeavoured to rank him among the representatives of [pg 218] unbelieving science, and this question being discussed in public, Chevreul felt himself constrained to proclaim his religious persuasion openly in a letter to Count de Montravel, in which he said: “I am simply a scientist, but those who know me, know also that I was born a Catholic, that I lead a Catholic life, and that I want to die a Catholic” (Civilta Cattolica, 1891, 292).
Two Germans may conclude the list of chemists, Schoenbein (died 1868) and J. Liebig (died 1873).
In his diary, “Menschen und Dinge,” 1885 (page 29), Schoenbeinwrites: “There are still people who fancy in their limited mind that, the deeper the human intellect penetrates the secrets of nature, the more extensive its knowledge, the wider its conception of the exterior world, the more it must forget the cause of all things. Many have gone even so far as to assert that natural science must lead to the denial of God. This view is without all foundation. He, who contemplates with open eyes, daily and hourly, the doings and workings of nature, will not only believe, but will actually perceive, and be firmly convinced, that there is not the smallest place in space where the divine does not reveal itself in the most magnificent and admirable way.” And in a similar strain Liebig writes: “Indeed, the greatness and infinite wisdom of the Creator of the world can be realized only by him who endeavours to understand His ideas as laid down in that immense book,—nature, in comparison to which everything that men otherwise know and tell of Him, appears like empty talk” (Die Chemie in ihrer Anwendung).
Now let us turn to the geographers. We merely mention Ritter (died 1859), the man who raised geography to the dignity of a science; he was a faithful Protestant, while biassed against the Catholic Church. In spite of this, a Catholic historian, J. Janssen, has sketched his life, in which we read: “Firm in his belief in the living God, and in the Incarnate Son of God, His Redeemer, he furnishes a clear and convincing proof that this faith, far from being a contradiction to natural science ... alone enables man to acquire an extensive and deep knowledge of nature.” We give only passing notice to the founder of scientific crystallography, R. Hauy (died 1822), who was a dutiful Catholic priest. The geologists now will get a hearing.
Among them we meet, in the first place, the noted geologist and zoölogist, Cuvier (died 1832), a faithful Protestant: also the foremost French geologist of his time, L. De Beaumont (died 1874), “a Christian [pg 219]in all things and a steadfast Christian ... which he remained through his whole life;” so Dumas testifies of him in his obituary (Comptes Rendus, 1874). Then there is J. Barrande, the untiring explorer of the antediluvian strata of Bohemia. He came in 1830 to Bohemia with the banished royal family, as Chambord's teacher, and died 1883 at Frohsdorf near Vienna. He was a pious Catholic. The volumes of his works are nearly all dated on Catholic feasts. The recently deceased French geologist, A. De Lapparent, was a practical Catholic, and such were the two Belgian geologists, J. d'Omalius (died 1875), and A. Dumont (died 1857), to both of whom Belgium owes its geological exploration. The English geologists, Buckland (died 1856), Hitchcock(died 1864), and A. Sedgwick (died 1872), were ministers of the English Church. J. Dwight Dana (died 1895), the foremost geologist of North America, begins his celebrated text-book of geology with a homage to his Creator, and concludes it by paying tribute to Holy Writ. W. Dawson (died 1899) the worthy geological explorer of his native land, Canada, published several apologetic dissertations on the Bible and Nature. A kindred sentiment animated the German scientists, Bischof (died 1870), Quenstedt (died 1898), the geologist of Suabia Pfaff (died 1886), Schafhæutl (died 1890), and the equally pious as learned Swiss geologist O. Heer (died 1883). They all have much to say about the greatness of their Creator, but not a word of any insolvable contradictions between the Bible and geologic research.
As a last division of an imposing phalanx, there are now the biologists and physiologists. Modern biology, as the science of life, has in the eyes of many accomplished the bold deed of demonstrating the superfluity of a soul distinct from matter. Claim is made that it has sufficiently explained the sensitive and mental life by the sole agency of physical and chemical forces, and thus to have removed the boundary between live and dead matter. It is said, further, that biology in conjunction with zoölogy and botany has furnished proof that the wonderful organic forms of life may be explained by purely natural causes, without having to assume as an ultimate cause the act of a higher intelligence; that a never ceasing evolution is the sole ultimate cause,—creation is made superfluous by evolution. Biology is thus claimed to have refuted the old dualism of soul and matter, of world and God, and to have awarded the palm to monism.
Are the eminent representatives of this science really the materialists and monists they would have to be, if all this were true? The foremost physiologist of the nineteenth century was J. Müller (died 1858), buried in the Catholic cemetery at [pg 220] Berlin. He was a decided opponent of materialism; he not only contended for the existence of a spiritual soul, but also for an immaterial vital force in plants. Th. Schwann (died 1882) is the founder of the cellular theory. In the year 1839 he accepted a call to take the chair of anatomy at the Catholic University of Louvain. One of the most prominent physiologists of the nineteenth century was A. Volkmann (died 1877). He was a stout champion of the spirituality and immortality of the soul, of purposive cause in animated beings, and an opponent of Darwin's theory. G. J. Mendel (died 1884) became by his work on Experimenting with Hybrid Plants the pioneer of the modern theory of hereditary transmission, adopted by modern biology; and scientists like H. de Vries, Correns, Tschermak, and Bateson followed his lead. “His important laws of hereditary transmission are the best so far offered by the research in this field” (Muckermann, Grundriss der Biologie). He was a Catholic priest, and the abbot of the Augustinian Monastery at Old-Brünn. Karl von Vierordt (died 1884) is well known by his “Manual of Physiology,” still in demand as a reference book in the libraries of universities. In 1865 he delivered a speech at the Tübingen University on the unity of science, concluding with this appeal to the students: “Until your religious notions become clear by a mature insight, trust in the well-meant assurance that the belief in the divinity of the religion of Jesus has not been put falsely into your heart. True piety is equally remote from narrow pietism as from freethinking indifference; it leaves to reason its full rights, but it also assures to us the faculty to be aware, in joyful confidence in Almighty Providence, of an immaterial and for us eternal destiny.” Ch. Ehrenberg (died 1876) is the explorer of the world of little things: of infusoria and protozoa. He did not countenance Haeckel's materialism nor Darwin's denial of teleology: to him they were fantastic theories and romances. A friend of his, and of the same mind, was K. von Martius, who admired God's wisdom in the wonders of the world of vegetation. Long before his death he ordered his burial dress to be made of white cloth embroidered with a green cross,—“a cross because I am a Christian, and green in honour of botany.” [pg 221] Another renowned name may be mentioned, that of the Austrian anatomist J. Hyrtl (died 1894).
In the years when materialism was flourishing, Hyrtl was painfully grieved to see science fall into disrepute through the fault of individuals. He gave vent to his indignation on the occasion of the fifth centenary of the Vienna University (1864), when, having been elected Rector, and being considered the greatest celebrity at that college, he delivered his inaugural speech on the materialistic tendency of our times. Summing up he said: “I am at a loss how to explain what scientific grounds there are to defend and fortify a revival of the old materialistic views of an Epicurus and a Lucretius, and to endeavour to insure to it a permanent rule.... Its success is due to the boldness of its assertion and to the prevailing spirit of the time, which popularizes teachings of this sort the more willingly, the more danger they seem to entail for the existing order of things.” It was the same protest made some years later by another famous scientist against “the dangerous opinion that there were dogmas of natural science in inimical opposition to the highest ideals of the human mind.” He stated that “it would be a desirable reward for the efforts of our foremost naturalists to erect with the aid of anthropology a barrier to this error which is so demoralizing for the people” (J. Ranke, Der Mensch, 1894).
Hyrtl's speech at once aroused a storm of indignation in the liberal press of Vienna, and the great scientist, until then honoured and extolled, became the object of denunciation and sneer. Thus was the freedom of science understood in those circles.