"O Rome! my country! city of the soul!
The orphans of the heart must turn to thee,
Lone mother of dead empires." [Footnote 133]
[Footnote 132: Parfum de Rome, p. 7]
[Footnote 133: Childe Harold, canto iv.]
But the orphan who turns to her as Byron did, remains an orphan. Rome is no mother to him, and he finds no father in the patriarch who rules there. To the devout Catholic she is the mother of arts and sciences as truly as the Pope is the father of the Christian family. She is, and has been for eighteen hundred years, the centre of true civilization, because she is the central depository of the faith. From her, as from a fountain, the streams of salvation have flowed through all lands, and, having the promise both of this life and that which is to come, they have indirectly produced a large amount of material well-being, and also an infinity of [{640}] artistic and scientific results. Rome civilizes as Christ civilized, by sowing the seeds of civilization. She does not aim directly at material well-being; she does not any more than he teach astronomy or dynamics; she propounds no system of induction; she invents neither printing-press, steam-engines, nor telegraphs; but she so raises man above the brute, curbs his passions, improves his understanding, instils into him principles of duty, and a sense of responsibility, so hallows his ambition and kindles his desire for the good of his kind and the progress of humanity, that under her influence he acquires insensibly an aptitude even for the successful pursuit of physical science, such as no other teacher could impart. He looks abroad into the spacious field of nature, and finds in every star and in every drop of dew an unfathomable depth of creative design. His heart quickens the energies of his brain, and he says, smiling, "My Father made them all; he made them that I may, to the best of my feeble powers, investigate and classify them, and that he may be glorified in science as in religion." He rises to higher studies than those of physical science; he looks within, and analyzes his complex nature. He sees that human minds in the aggregate are capable of indefinite development as time goes on, and he concludes that, as the works of nature can be investigated to the glory of the Creator, so may the mind of man be developed to the glory of its Redeemer--be trained in philosophy, and exercised also in the application of science to the wants and usages of social life. Thus, to his apprehension, the links are clear which connect Rome--the centre of civilization--with matters which appear at first sight absolutely distinct from religion, with sewing-machines and electric cables, with Huyghens's undulatory theory of light, and Guthrie's researches into the relative sizes of drops and of bubbles.
But here, perhaps, we shall be met by an objection. "Science," it will be said, "surely not merely appears, but is independent of religion, as the experience of ancient and modern times will show. Still more is independent of Papal Rome, which has always been on the alert to check its progress, condemned Bishop Virgil for teaching the existence of the antipodes, and Galileo for maintaining the heliocentric system. Egypt under the Ptolemies, Etruria and Mexico, Aristotle, Lord Bacon, and Sir Isaac Newton, alike scatter your assertion to the winds; and if any doubt on the subject could linger in the mind of any one, the late encyclical would the sufficient to disabuse him of his fond delusion."
To this we reply: We will not allow that even in ancient times attainments in physical science were made irrespectively of religion. Without religion, man lives in a savage state akin to brutes. Natural religion, on which revealed religion is founded, exalts him in a degree, and qualifies him for intellectual pursuits. Yet, even with its assistance, so corrupt is his nature, that philosophy and science can obtain no permanent command over his passions, and his highest degrees of refinement are always succeeded by periods of degradation, and no steady advance is made. As natural religion placed the heathen in a condition somewhat favorable to the pursuit of science, so revealed religion, or, in other words, Roman Catholicism, did the like more completely, in consequence of its divine origin and perfect adaptation to the needs of mankind. It brought society step by step out of a state of semi-barbarism, and overcame the resistance offered to its social improvements by the Roman people and Emperors, by Huns and Vandals, by Islamism, Iconoclasts, and Feudalism. It covered Europe with seats of learning, and kindled the student's lamp in the monastic recesses of deep valleys and vast forests. It created a body of theological science, and of philosophical in connection with it, [{641}] which the more profound even of infidel thinkers admit to have been among the most marvellous products of the human mind; and this scientific system--over and above its higher purposes--was the very best intellectual training possible under the circumstances of the period. Then, as time went on, religion accepted gratefully and employed in its own service the art of printing, and prepared the human mind for those most energetic thoughts and often misdirected efforts which have been made, from the fifteenth century downward, for the discovery of physical truth. It is therefore manifest to all whose thoughts reach below the surface of things, that the services which Lord Bacon rendered to philosophy and Newton to Science, were indirectly due to the Catholic Church.
Rome, the central civilizer of society, exerts an influence far beyond her visible domain. The earth is hers, and the fulness thereof. Whatsoever things are true and holy in faith and morals among her truants, whatever portions of her divine creed they carry away with them to build up their sects, whatever books or texts of the mutilated scriptures they retain, whatever graces shine forth in them, and in part redeem their delinquency, are all to be ascribed to her as the primary channel of communication between earth and heaven, and all belong to her as their chartered proprietress, although they have been wrested from her hands. "There is nothing right, useful, pleasing (jucundum) in human society, which the Roman pontiffs have not brought into it, or have not refined and fostered (expoliverint et foverint) when introduced." [Footnote 134] Heresy is always blended with truth, and the truth is always Rome's, while the heresy is theirs who have corrupted it. Whatever is good and true in Protestantism is of Rome; and as Protestants would have no Bible but for the councils which settled its canon, and the despised monks who transcribed it age after age, so Protestant churches would never have been founded if the great old church had not overspread Europe. Nay, the Novum Organon and Principia would in all probability never have seen the light. Christianity, on the whole, keeps science alive; and but for the popes, Christianity would soon vanish from the face of the earth. As far as Bacon and Newton are indebted to Christianity for their philosophy, just in so far are they indebted to Rome as its fountain-head. Whatever stress is to be laid on the fact of their being Christians, glorifies Rome indirectly as the source of civilization. It is her very greatness and her perfect system of doctrine which brings her into collision with every form of spiritual rebellion; but those who fly off from her authority are still her children, in so far as they continue members at all of the family of God. The prodigal son, amid all his degradation and wanderings, is yearned over by his father, and belongs to his father's house in a certain sense.
[Footnote 134: Pope Pius IX. Letter to M. Mahon de Monaghan.]
As to Rome being the enemy of physical science, it is not difficult to see the causes which have led to so extreme a misconception. She has ever protested, and that most energetically, against the prevalent tendency to give physics a supremacy over theology, where the two seem to clash; and she has also steadfastly resisted the pretension so constantly made by physical science to thrust into a corner some higher branches of human philosophy. Her conduct in the latter case has been simply in accordance with what is now a growing conviction in the philosophical world; while in the former case she has done nothing more than uphold as infallibly certain the doctrinal deposit committed to her charge. But with these most reasonable qualifications, she has ever been active in stimulating the keenest physical researches. Well may the present pope say that "it is impudently bruited abroad that the Catholic [{642}] religion and the Roman pontificate are adverse to civilization and progress, and therefore to the happiness which may thence be expected." [Footnote 135] To harp upon Virgil and Galileo, proves how few and slender are the arguments which our accusers can adduce in support of their charge. If we defer to facts, and regard the entire history of Christendom, we can certainly name ten persons distinguished for physical discoveries in our own communion, for every one whom Protestantism can boast. In no Catholic country is such science discouraged, but its professors are, on the contrary, everywhere rewarded and honored. Nowhere among us has any recent science, such as geology, been prohibited, or even combated, except by individuals. Its conclusions, when really established, have been admitted by all learned Catholics notwithstanding they appeared at first sight to run counter to the words of inspiration. Cardinal Wiseman's "Lectures on Science and Revealed Religion" abundantly illustrate what is here stated; and his whole life was a refutation of the calumny with which his creed is so often assailed. New arts, which are each the visible expression of a corresponding science, have been welcomed abroad as readily as in England; and Belgium could be traversed by steam long before the Great Western line between London and Bristol was completed. If it so happened that the greatest English astronomer, naturalist, or mathematician, were a Catholic, his co-religionists would be the most forward of all Englishmen to extol his genius. His scientific pursuits would never make him an object of suspicion with us, provided his loyalty to the church were complete; nor would his zeal be damped by any ecclesiastical authority, so, long as his conclusions involved nothing adverse to religion. The Catholic, it is true, can never make the claims of science paramount to those of faith, but the restraint thus imposed on him is of the most salutary kind, and will be no real check on his liberty of thought; for science and revelation, though it may for a while be difficult to harmonize some of their statements, must ever be found to agree strictly on closer examination.
[Footnote 135: Pius IX. Letter to M. Mahon de Monaghan.]