As to the first: well informed and candid inquirers into the truth of things are beginning slowly to perceive that the Catholic Church has been misrepresented, as invariably the enemy of science; especially in the critical and much agitated controversy of the geocentric and heliocentric theories of the planetary motions, which has been chosen as the weakest point of attack. Two writers of the highest eminence in science, with no religious bias whatever toward Catholicity, have given remarkable testimony on this subject. Sir David Brewster in his Life of Galileo has adopted a tone of fairness to the Catholic Church, unhappily rare in Protestant treatment of such topics in general. We do not think he has done full justice to Galileo's Roman judges; but, at least, he has given the Roman pontiffs some credit for their patronage of men of science. We recommend the whole life to the notice of our readers, and shall cite the following passage from it. After mentioning the pension granted to Galileo by Pope Urban VIlI., in 1624, Sir David adds: "The pension thus given by Urban was not the remuneration which sovereigns sometimes award to the services of their subjects. Galileo was a foreigner at Rome. The sovereign of the papal state owed him no obligation; and hence we must regard the pension of Galileo as a donation from the Roman pontiff to science itself, and as a declaration to the Christian world that religion was not jealous of philosophy, and that the church of Rome was willing to respect and foster even the genius of its enemies." [Footnote 41]
[Footnote 41: Martyrs of Science, ed. 1846, p. 68.]
The other writer whom we shall cite is a no less celebrated authority in science than the present astronomer royal, who, while condemning the treatment which Galileo received at the hands of the Roman Inquisition, is free to admit that Rome did not always oppose science; and even this qualified admission, from so eminent a person, is worth a good deal to our purpose. His remark is this: "This great step in the explanation of the planetary motions was made by Copernicus, an ecclesiastic in the Romish Church, a canon of Thorn, a city of Prussia. The work in which he published it is dedicated to the pope. At that time it would appear that there was no disinclination in the Romish Church to receive new astronomical theories. But in no long time after, when Galileo, a philosopher of Florence, taught the same theory, he was brought to trial by the Romish Church, then in full power, and was compelled to renounce the theory. How these two different courses of the Romish Church are to be reconciled, I do not know. But the fact is so." [Footnote 42]
[Footnote 42: Airy's Lectures on Astronomy, p. 85.]
We are not concerned at present with Galileo's unhappy story, farther than to remark, that there is as usual much to be said on the side of his Roman judges, which is perhaps nowhere so well said as in the pages of the Dublin Review, No. IX., July 1838. The views there advanced have never been called in question; we may therefore assume that they are substantially unassailable. As to the general question of the assistance which the Catholic Church has lent, directly or indirectly, to science, we should like to know what other church, or body of ecclesiastics, has done anything in this field compared with the labors and the successes of the Society of Jesus alone. The names of Clavius and Kircher, of Boscovich, De Vico, and Pianciani, may stand for a memorial of the prosperous union of science and Catholic revelation. [Footnote 43]
[Footnote 43: F. Christopher Clavius, S. J., an eminent German mathematician and astronomer, was employed by Gregory XIII. in the reformation of the calendar. His Gregorian Calendar, published in 1581, tardily adopted in Protestant countries, and now regulates our system of leap-years. His collected mathematical and scientific works amount to five volumes folio. He was killed in 1612, page 75.
F. Athanasius Kircher, S. J., also a native of Germany, was a diligent cultivator of science. His works, in twenty-two folio and eleven quarto volumes, embrace learned and original treatises on many recondite branches of physical science; on Magnetism, Optics, Acoustics, Geography, etc., etc. He filled the chair of Mathematics in the Jesuit Roman college, and laid the foundation of its extensive and valuable museum. He died in Rome, in 1680, at the age of 79.
F. Roger Joseph Boscovich, S.J., a native of Ragusa, filled the chair of Astronomy in the Jesuit Roman College for thirty years, and was highly distinguished for the depth, originality, and variety of his aquirements in Natural Philosophy. He published several valuable treatises on the philosophy of Newton, on optics, etc. He is best known out of Italy for his ingenious theory of the molecular constitution of matter: a theory which the increasing knowledge of more modern philosophy has only confirmed. After the suppression of his order in 1778, he was welcomed to Paris, and taught philosophy there for a time; he returned to Italy, he died at Milan, in 1787, page 73.
F. De Vico, S.J., was also an eminent astronomer in the Jesuit Roman College. His discovery of several comets introduced him to the circle of men of science. When the Jesuits were driven from Rome in 1848, he was received with open arms in the United States; but, unhappily for science, he died in London a very few years ago, while procuring instruments for his observatory in the far West. He was highly esteemed and beloved by his pupils, of whom there are many in this country.
F. Pianciani, S.J., for many years taught chemistry in the Jesuit Roman College. He is admired for the simplicity of his manners no less than for the valuable contributions he has made to the nature of chemical science. Besides all larger and smaller treatise on it, he has published a work on the cosmogony of Moses; and we believe, is still preparing other treatises for the press.]
As to the second solution of our question—that science and revelation are indifferent, because entirely dissimilar to each other in nature and objects; it appears to us that analogy points quite the other way. For, (1.) they both have a common origin in the will of God; and it is not unreasonable to expect that they shall exhibit some traces of common principles. And this, especially, if we direct our attention to the difficulties which lie in the way of our acceptance of the conclusions proposed to us by either; if they are actually found to resemble each other in many of these, their relation can no longer be considered one of indifference. Nay, on the principles on which Dr. Joseph Butler constructed his immortal work, if revealed truth proceeds from the author of nature, we may expect to find the same difficulties in it as we find in nature. And, conversely, it is no objection to the divine origin of revealed truth, that its reception implies difficulties as great as the acceptance of the facts and laws of nature presupposes us to have overcome. And, (2.) we may argue from the mutual analogy of other sciences to one another; how dissimilar soever they appear to a superficial observer to be, there is a community of principles, and of general laws, which binds them together, and connects them with their common origin in the divine mind. This idea is, as many of our readers are aware, beautifully developed by Mrs. Somerville in her charming work on the Connexion of the Physical Sciences.
From these preliminary remarks, the author's own solution of the question of hostility, or indifference, between science and revelation may be gathered; namely, that though in their nature, objects, and details widely separated, yet they are linked together by a thousand delicate ties, unperceived by a careless observer, but well repaying elaborate study. Science is the true handmaid of Revelation, doing service to the superior nature, but exhibiting tokens of a commission to do so, imparted to her by the divine creator of both. The author has devoted some attention to this interesting subject; and at some future time, if granted health and leisure, he hopes to state and illustrate his views more at large, and in a more permanent form; meanwhile he proposes briefly to sketch some of the conclusions and trains of thought suggested to him by these studies; confining his remarks entirely to those portions of revealed truth which are the exclusive property of the Catholic Church, and which are generally known in the Protestant world as popish doctrines, such as the Blessed Eucharist; the question of Miracles in general; and all that is supernatural and imperceptible to the senses in Catholic belief.
I. A preliminary difficulty lying in the way of belief in the supernatural character of revealed religion, is the flat contradiction which it apparently gives to the evidence of the senses, the manifest discrepancy between what is alleged and proposed to our belief, and what is seen with our eyes, and appreciated by other sensuous organs. [{258}] Modern science, however, is as inexorable in her demands on human credence, in defiance of the senses, as was ever revelation on the assent of faith. The senses have their empire much restricted by the canons of our philosophers. For, (1.) it is fully established that each organ of sense is susceptible of one class of impressions only, which it passes on to the sensorium, or seat of thought. Thus the organ of vision admits and communicates impressions of light alone; that of hearing, impressions of sound, or of the wave of air set in motion by the cause producing sound, and no others. The organs of taste and smell, in like manner, have their own classes of susceptibilities, which, again, are not the same as those belonging to the nerves of touch. For every other class of impressions than its own, each organ of sense is absolutely inert and useless. The eye can take no cognisance of sound, nor the ear of light: if the eye can feel a touch, it is because certain parts of its structure are furnished with branches of the nerves of touch; and so of the rest. Electricity alone seems to have the remarkable power of exciting in all the organs of sense, sensations proper to the nature of each; in the eye, for example, a flash of light; distinct sounds; a phosphoric odor, a peculiar taste, and a pricking feeling, in the same person at the same time. [Footnote 44]