contributing to science and a scientist contributing to religion. The one-sided man is always an imperfect man; and an imperfect man as a teacher of perfection is a dangerous teacher for young generations.
Two Slavs, Nicolaus Copernicus, from Thorn, and Ruggiero Boscovich, from Ragusa, both Roman Catholic priests, were at the same time both ardent scientists. Copernicus postulated the heliocentric planetary system instead of the geocentric. This happened soon after Columbus made a great revolution in geographical science by discovering America. Some people thought the end of the Church had come after Copernicus' discovery that the sun and not the earth is the centre of the world. But Copernicus not only did not think so, but continued quietly in his vocation as a priest and dedicated his famous work to Pope Paul III.
Ruggiero Boscovich was not such a great discoverer as Copernicus; still he was one of the most distinguished scientific and philosophic minds in the eighteenth century. In his "Theoria philosophiæ naturalis," he tried to prove that bodies are composed not of a continuous material substance but rather of innumerable point-like structures or particles which are without any extension or divisibility. These elements are endowed with a repulsive force which can, under special circumstances (of distance), become attractive. Boscovich's philosophical system can be called a dynamistic atomismus.
Men with much smaller scientific successes sometimes consider it their duty to separate themselves from the Christian Church. But great men like Copernicus and Boscovich possessed in a high degree the noble catholicity which should always exist between religion and science. For every great revolution in science meant also a great revolution in religion. A scientific revolution could never shake the realities of religion, but only the illusions of religion.
This was likewise the great result of the religious revolutions among the Slavs: not to shake the realities but the illusions of religion. Pride, superstitions and hatred have produced all the revolutions in the Church, the revolutions which meant for the Church real ventilation or punishment. These revolutions gave light and air to the Roman Church. Either the official books admit it, or they do not. No matter; the living Church admits it. She has built monuments to the prophets whom she killed or persecuted. No one is without a glorious monument—neither Huss nor Savonarola, neither Bruno nor Hieronymus of Prague, neither Trubar nor Strossmayer. The living Church always admired men of suffering and not men of pleasure. It was not the self-sufficient prelates who promoted the Christian cause, with their books and notes and discussions, but the sufferers, hungry and thirsty for the Kingdom of God. Christ was victorious over Nero in the Coliseum, but oftentimes afterwards Nero was victorious over Christ in the Church. But Nero must go, and Christ come. We have all pledged our word in our childhood to act so that Nero's spirit may decrease and Christ's spirit increase in the world. We cannot otherwise keep our pledge unless we adhere to the noble catholicity of the Christian Church, which is the very kernel of vulgar and verbal catholicity. But we cannot grasp all the Christian centuries and generations behind us and bind our own life with what is noble and catholic in all of them unless we are men of suffering, intuition and action. And we can be all three.