effects on Christianity of the greatest amount of anti-theocratic change which can possibly be anticipated,” the author considers that a Catholic may be fairly entitled to express the following conviction: “By the continuance, then, of this evolutionary process, there is plainly to be discerned in the distant future a triumph of the church compared with which that of mediæval Christendom was but a transient adumbration—a triumph brought about by moral means alone, by the slow process of exhortation, example, and individual conviction, after every error has been freely propagated, every denial freely made, and every rival system provided with a free field for its display—a triumph infinitely more glorious than any brought about by the sword, and fulfilling at last the old pre-Christian prophecies of the kingdom of God upon earth.”[103]
One-half of the volume is taken up with the consideration of political evolution and the three political ideals. Nevertheless, the author considers that the questions respecting science and philosophy are much the most important. For, although he concludes from his course of reasoning that political changes will be harmless to the church, and even give her increased strength, coherence, and efficiency, so that a Catholic may reasonably expect for her all that triumph which he thinks her Author has foretold, in spite of such changes; yet, in arguing with an unbeliever, such a ground of confidence cannot be assumed. If the claims of the church to authority, and the dogmatic truth of her doctrine, can be successfully assailed by science and
philosophy, then scientific and philosophical evolution must be fatal to Christianity, and political changes will facilitate and hasten the catastrophe, though they are powerless to produce it by their own solitary, unaided force. Here we arrive at that part of the subject which is to us the most interesting, and which the author has treated in the most satisfactory manner. On this field Dr. Mivart is at home; for it is his own peculiar ground, where he has already labored with eminent success, and where we confidently hope he will hereafter gather a still greater and richer harvest.
We anticipate a great revolution in the attitude of what is in common parlance rather incorrectly called “science”—i.e., the complex of various branches of physics—toward the Catholic Church. A hostile attitude is wholly unnatural. Second-class scientists, sciolists in knowledge, men of an imperfect and one-sided culture, are intellectually swamped in the morass of facts, theories, and hypotheses in which they pass their lives. The imperfect beginnings of natural sciences present phases of apparent contradiction to revealed truths. Imperfect theological systems, and opinions which rest on merely human authority, but are erroneously supposed to be revealed doctrines, frequently clash with science, or with scientific hypotheses which are more or less probable or plausible. But there is in genuine natural science, in the methods by which it proceeds, in the spirit which actuates its great masters, something eminently favorable to genuine sacred science and akin to it. The wild, anti-Christian hypotheses which are put forth under the name of science are not unfrequently crushed by the masters in science, even
though they are not themselves Christians. Inductive science is modest, calm, impartial, slow, and just, in its procedure. It is like the law in its accepting and examining evidence on all sides of every question. The masters in science who are unbelievers are so in spite of, and not because of, their scientific spirit and method. If they are actively hostile to Christianity, it is because of some false philosophy which is accidentally connected with their science, or by reason of their ignorance of real Christianity. No false system can stand the application of the genuine principles and method of scientific inquiry. It is precisely by that method and those principles that the truth of the Catholic Church is established, corroborated, and confirmed. An amiable friend, a Unitarian minister, once remarked to us that men’s minds were going back, by a circuitous route, to the Catholic Church. This is what Dr. Mivart endeavors to show. Having tried all false routes and traced up all errors to their ending in No-Land, men work back across lots and through thickets to the old travelled road which they abandoned through caprice.
In respect to physical science, Dr. Mivart’s principal line of argument goes to show that it has nothing to do directly with theology, because it is conversant exclusively with “phenomenal conceptions.” Facts as to the coexistences and sequences of phenomena do not furnish the philosophy by which they are to be explained. This philosophy, and the theology which rests on it as its natural basis, have their own distinct sphere. It is only where theology affirms something as a revealed truth respecting facts of this kind—e.g., that the sun revolves around the earth, that creation
began four thousand years before Christ, and was completed in six literal days—that it comes upon the common ground where it can clash with physical science. In regard to Catholic doctrine, he shows that such affirmations are but few, and that none have ever been made into dogmas by the authority of the church which have been afterwards proved by scientific evidence to be false. The complete revolution in cosmology effected by the demonstration of the Copernican system is referred to as an instance of apparent conflict between science and dogma which turned out to be no conflict at all. So, also, the apparent conflict between evolutionary biology and Christian dogma, which the author has more fully discussed in other works, is succinctly treated. The antagonism between physics and theology, though of long standing, is accidental, and “physical science should be considered, alike by the philosophic Christian and anti-Christian, as neutral and indifferent.” The only influence, therefore, which physical science can have on Christianity is through the philosophy which is connected with it. It is philosophy which affords the real battle-ground for the final and decisive conflict between the Christian and anti-Christian forces. Notwithstanding the narrow-minded, ignorant, and absurd contempt for philosophy which many modern scientists express, and which has been quite common for some time past, the author thinks that the scientists themselves, even by their destructive efforts, are aiding powerfully in bringing about a great philosophic reaction. The author most justly observes that fundamental questions of philosophy underlie all physical science, and that, for this reason,
the great development and wide popularity of physical science must drive many minds into philosophy. Reviving paganism, which is only a return to the old Aryan predilection for pantheistic naturalism, and is theoretically based on ancient philosophical ideas revived in new dresses by modern sophists, can only come into that internecine conflict with Christianity, after which it pants, on the ground of philosophy. Both sides must therefore give themselves to philosophical study and discussion, and they have already begun to do so. The supreme question, therefore, in respect to the movement of contemporary evolution, is the philosophical direction it is likely to take.
We arrive, then, at the last topic but one considered by Dr. Mivart—viz., Philosophic Evolution, and the process by which he endeavors to “form a final judgment as to the result of the great conflict between reviving paganism and the Christian church.”
In Dr. Mivart’s opinion—one in which we need not say we most heartily concur—what is needed is a return, “not to a philosophy, but to the philosophy. For if metaphysics are possible, there is not, and never was or will be, more than one philosophy which, properly understood, unites all speculative truths and eliminates all errors: the philosophy of the philosopher—Aristotle.”[104] Moreover, he declares his conviction that evolution will infallibly bring about this return. In his view, scholastic philosophy simply went out of fashion in the same way that mediæval architecture came to be despised as barbarous, and will again resume its sway just as the architectural glories of northern