At the present time, community of interests, as well as higher civilization, would utterly forbid the total subjugation of one civilized nation by another, such as occurred in the olden times; hence no nation need fear annihilation from such a source. The danger comes from another point, and consists in the almost certain uprising, at some time in the future, of degenerate individuals in open warfare and rebellion against society.
The question whether the world is growing better or worse is often debated, and can be answered affirmatively on both sides. Better, because superstition, bigotry, and dogmatism have given way, to a great extent, to the tolerance and freedom of higher civilization and purer ethics in normal, healthy man; worse, because crime (and I mean by crime all anti-social acts) has greatly increased on account of the pernicious influence of degeneration.
That superstition, bigotry, and dogmatism are on the wane, and that they will, sooner or later, be entombed in that depository of obsolete savage mental habitudes—absolute and utter oblivion—a glance at the success that science has achieved in the warfare waged against it by the Church, will at once declare. (Throughout this article I use the word Church to express priests of any and every denomination, whether Jew, Gentile, or Pagan, Protestant or Catholic.) A short incursion into this subject, i. e., the Church’s warfare on science, is absolutely necessary. For the triumph of science over its enemies—superstition, bigotry, and dogmatism, coincidently, ignorance and illiterateness—shows that the civilized world, at the present time, is markedly different in some respects from the world of ancient, medieval, and even comparatively recent times; and, in summing up, this changed condition will be a weighty factor in making up an answer to the question which heads this paper.
When Olympus first faded away from the enlightened eyesight of the Greeks, and changed into space besprinkled with stars; when Zeus no longer held his divine court on its mystic summit; when oracles became mute and the fabled wonders of the “Odyssey” either vanished, or resolved themselves into prosaic commonplaces under the investigations of the skeptic or the accidental discoverer, the Church made a most strenuous protest against the destruction of its traditions.
Many of these early seekers after truth were even killed and their goods confiscated. The Church issued its edict against heresy (and any doctrine that taught a belief antagonistic to the accepted tenets of pagan mythology and theogony was heresy), and hurled its anathemas against the heretic. Olympus, in the eyes of the Church, still existed, and Zeus, the man-god, still quaffed the sacred ambrosia in its shady groves. The Sirens still sang their entrancing songs, while Scylla and Charybdis were ever stretching out eager arms toward unwary mariners. Gigantic one-eyed Cyclops, with Polyphemus as their leader, still patrolled the shores of Sicily, and kept their “ever-watchful eyes” turned toward the open sea.
The hardy Greek sailor landed on the Cyclopean island, and discovered that Polyphemus, and Arges, and Brontes, and Steropes, and all the other one-eyed monsters were nothing but sea-wrack, bowlders, and weeds. He sailed farther, past Scylla and Charybdis, and discovered no greater dangers than sharp rocks and whirlpools. Yet farther he sailed out into the unknown sea, and the only Siren’s song he heard was the whistling of the wind through the cordage of his vessel.
In vain the Church thundered against the daring investigator. Neither fire, nor sword, nor imprisonment, nor death itself could check the march of truth. Mythology and pagan theogony had received their death-blows; superstition, bigotry, and dogmatism were elbowed aside and gave place to dawning science. The Church held that that which had been believed by pious men for untold ages must necessarily be true. Science, in the garb of philosophy, with cold, dispassionate criticism, proved that these hitherto accepted truths were arrant fallacies. The poets and writers then took up the subject, and finally the people fell into line, so superstitious, bigoted, dogmatic mythology died, intellectuality took its place, and higher civilization took a step forward.
Thomas H. Huxley writes, in his preface to “Science and Christian Tradition,” as follows: “I have never ‘gone out of my way’ to attack the Bible or anything else; it was the dominant, ecclesiasticism of my early days, which, as I believe, without any warrant from the Bible itself, thrust the book in my way.
“I had set out on a journey, with no other purpose than that of exploring a certain province of natural knowledge; I strayed no hair’s breadth from the course which it was my right and my duty to pursue; and yet I found that, whatever route I took, before long I came to a tall and formidable looking fence. Confident as I might be in the existence of an ancient and indefeasible right of way, before me stood the thorny barrier with its comminatory notice-board—‘No Thoroughfare. By order. Moses.’ There seemed no way over; nor did the prospect of creeping round, as I saw some do attract me… The only alternatives were either to give up my journey—which I was not minded to do—or to break the fence down and go through it.”
Huxley found that this Mosaic fence, as erected by dogmatic theologians and scholasticists, was but a flimsy structure at best, and one that was easily overthrown and destroyed.