When Macaulay remarked that the Catholic Church owed its success in a great measure to the far-reaching policy of its organization, he uttered a truth of vast pregnancy; for the evidences of this far-sightedness abound on every side, and we find its latest attestation in the attitude the church holds to the questions which agitate the scientific world to-day. Had she, at any period of her existence, so far departed from a well-defined and consistent policy as to formulate theories touching the nature and course of physical phenomena, she might stand to-day condemned and branded in the light of recent scientific discoveries; but apart from the opinions of individual writers, lay and ecclesiastical, to whom she accorded full license to hold what they pleased in such matters, provided they did not contradict revealed truth, and who accordingly often touched on the border-land of the ridiculous and extravagant, not one authoritative expression of hers can be found at variance with a single scientific truth even of yesterday’s discovery. Of course she condemns materialism, because it runs counter to the belief in the immortality of the soul, which is a truth as readily demonstrable as the most undoubted fact in science; and she disbelieves in the eternity of matter, because such a monstrosity involves a violation of reason; but neither materialism nor the belief that
matter is eternal is science, nor do any but the blatant fuglemen of scientism hold to them. What we insist upon is that no expression recorded in any council or authoritatively uttered by the Holy See can be adduced which is in conflict with any truth of physical science now established. This may sound strange to those whose prejudices against the church have been fanned and fostered by the terrible things told concerning Copernicus, Galileo, and Giordano Bruno; but it is as true as it stands printed, and it is a disgrace to the intelligence of the day that writers are tolerated who still retail trash in opposition to overwhelming historical evidence.
As in the past, the church to-day benignantly encourages all who devote themselves to the prosecution of the natural sciences, and welcomes their discoveries with delight. She wishes merely that scientific investigators confine themselves to their legitimate labors, and do not wildly rush to impious conclusions from insufficient data. She is ever willing to accept whatever conclusions premises really justify, and no more. Surely this attitude of the church towards science is eminently rational, and no right-thinking man can condemn it. Yet it is not alone such men as Spencer, Huxley, Tyndall, St. Hilaire, and Figuier who charge the church with being steadily reactionary and actively antagonistic to science, but the whole sectarian world has taken up the cry. We are sorry to number
among these the author of the volume which affords subject-matter for this article, and which contains much that is novel, ingenious, and true, as we hope to be able to show when considering the chapter on the “Faiths of Science.”
But we will first learn from Mr. Bixby what manner of religion it is to which science is not opposed, so that we may ascertain the scope and purpose of his work. “In its most general significance,” he says, “it is the expression of man’s spiritual nature awakening to spiritual things” (italics by the author). After developing this definition at some length, he considers it more restrictedly as embracing the following elements:
“1. Belief in a soul within man.
“2. Belief in a sovereign soul without.
“3. Belief in actual or possible relations between them.”
This, then, is religion according to Mr. Bixby, and it is to the rather easy task of reconciling a few modern scientific theories to this attenuated abstraction of religious sentiment, this evanescent aroma of an emotion, that he addresses himself. The statement of those three fully sufficient conditions of religion clearly involves pantheism; and not one of the wildest scientific conjectures of the day is there which may not be made to harmonize with pantheism. The task, therefore, of reducing science and religion to a harmonious plane is quite supererogatory, since on a bare statement of religion it is reconcilable with anything. Pantheism, as taught by its most eminent exponents in Germany—Hegel, Schelling, and Fichte—consists in a sovereign soul without the τὸ non ἐγώ, from which the soul of man, the τὸ ἐγώ, is an emanation—i.e., a fragmentary expression
of its consciousness. Beyond this these distinguished philosophers admit and recognize nothing. Do we not clearly find the same thing in the religion of Mr. Bixby?—viz., 1, soul within man; 2, sovereign soul without man; 3, actual or possible relations between the two. Now, taking the term soul as univocal in the first and second statements, is it not evident that the latter contains the former, and are we not landed high and dry on the absolute pantheism of Schelling? Or rather, going back to the parent source of pantheism, does not Mr. Bixby’s definition of religion strongly recall these words of the Vedas: “Thus the man who in his own soul recognizes the soul supreme present throughout all creation obtains the happiest lot of all—to be absorbed into Brahma”?