History Of The Warfare Of Science With Theology In Christendom
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So, too, we have ancient mystical theories of number which the theological spirit had made Christian, usurping an enormous place in medieval science. The sacred power of the number three was seen in the Trinity; in the three main divisions of the universe--the empyrean, the heavens, and the earth; in the three angelic hierarchies; in the three choirs of seraphim, cherubim, and thrones; in the three of dominions, virtues, and powers; in the three of principalities, archangels, and angels; in the three orders in the Church--bishops, priests, and deacons; in the three classes--the baptized, the communicants, and the monks; in the three degrees of attainment--light, purity, and knowledge; in the three theological virtues--faith, hope, and charity--and in much else. All this was brought into a theologico-scientific relation, then and afterward, with the three dimensions of space; with the three divisions of time--past, present, and future; with the three realms of the visible world--sky, earth, and sea; with the three constituents of man--body, soul, and spirit; with the threefold enemies of man--the world, the flesh, and the devil; with the three kingdoms in nature--mineral, vegetable, and animal; with "the three colours"--red, yellow, and blue; with "the three eyes of the honey-bee"--and with a multitude of other analogues equally precious. The sacred power of the number seven was seen in the seven golden candlesticks and the seven churches in the Apocalypse; in the seven cardinal virtues and the seven deadly sins; in the seven liberal arts and the seven devilish arts, and, above all, in the seven sacraments. And as this proved in astrology that there could be only seven planets, so it proved in alchemy that there must be exactly seven metals. The twelve apostles were connected with the twelve signs in the zodiac, and with much in physical science. The seventy-two disciples, the seventy-two interpreters of the Old Testament, the seventy-two mystical names of God, were connected with the alleged fact in anatomy that there were seventy-two joints in the human frame.
Then, also, there were revived such theologic and metaphysical substitutes for scientific thought as the declaration that the perfect line is a circle, and hence that the planets must move in absolute circles--a statement which led astronomy astray even when the great truths of the Copernican theory were well in sight; also, the declaration that nature abhors a vacuum--a statement which led physics astray until Torricelli made his experiments; also, the declaration that we see the lightning before we hear the thunder because "sight is nobler than hearing."
In chemistry we have the same theologic tendency to magic, and, as a result, a muddle of science and theology, which from one point of view seems blasphemous and from another idiotic, but which none the less sterilized physical investigation for ages. That debased Platonism which had been such an important factor in the evolution of Christian theology from the earliest days of the Church continued its work. As everything in inorganic nature was supposed to have spiritual significance, the doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation were turned into an argument in behalf of the philosopher's stone; arguments for the scheme of redemption and for transubstantiation suggested others of similar construction to prove the transmutation of metals; the doctrine of the resurrection of the human body was by similar mystic jugglery connected with the processes of distillation and sublimation. Even after the Middle Ages were past, strong men seemed unable to break away from such reasoning as this--among them such leaders as Basil Valentine in the fifteenth century, Agricola in the sixteenth, and Van Helmont in the seventeenth.
The greatest theologians contributed to the welter of unreason from which this pseudo-science was developed. One question largely discussed was, whether at the Redemption it was necessary for God to take the human form. Thomas Aquinas answered that it was necessary, but William Occam and Duns Scotus answered that it was not; that God might have taken the form of a stone, or of a log, or of a beast. The possibilities opened to wild substitutes for science by this sort of reasoning were infinite. Men have often asked how it was that the Arabians accomplished so much in scientific discovery as compared with Christian investigators; but the answer is easy: the Arabians were comparatively free from these theologic allurements which in Christian Europe flickered in the air on all sides, luring men into paths which led no-whither.
Strong investigators, like Arnold of Villanova, Raymond Lully, Basil Valentine, Paracelsus, and their compeers, were thus drawn far out of the only paths which led to fruitful truths. In a work generally ascribed to the first of these, the student is told that in mixing his chemicals he must repeat the psalm Exsurge Domine, and that on certain chemical vessels must be placed the last words of Jesus on the cross. Vincent of Beauvais insisted that, as the Bible declares that Noah, when five hundred years old, had children born to him, he must have possessed alchemical means of preserving life; and much later Dickinson insisted that the patriarchs generally must have owed their long lives to such means. It was loudly declared that the reality of the philosopher's stone was proved by the words of St. John in the Revelation. "To him that overcometh I will give a white stone." The reasonableness of seeking to develop gold out of the baser metals was for many generations based upon the doctrine of the resurrection of the physical body, which, though explicitly denied by St. Paul, had become a part of the creed of the Church. Martin Luther was especially drawn to believe in the alchemistic doctrine of transmutation by this analogy. The Bible was everywhere used, both among Protestants and Catholics, in support of these mystic adulterations of science, and one writer, as late as 1751, based his alchemistic arguments on more than a hundred passages of Scripture. As an example of this sort of reasoning, we have a proof that the elect will preserve the philosopher's stone until the last judgment, drawn from a passage in St. Paul's Epistle to the Corinthians, "We have this treasure in earthen vessels."
The greatest thinkers devoted themselves to adding new ingredients to this strange mixture of scientific and theologic thought. The Catholic philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, the Protestant mysticism of Jacob Boehme, and the alchemistic reveries of Basil Valentine were all cast into this seething mass.
And when alchemy in its old form had been discredited, we find scriptural arguments no less perverse, and even comical, used on the other side. As an example of this, just before the great discoveries by Stahl, we find the valuable scientific efforts of Becher opposed with the following syllogism: "King Solomon, according to the Scriptures, possessed the united wisdom of heaven and earth; but King Solomon knew nothing about alchemy [or chemistry in the form it then took], and sent his vessels to Ophir to seek gold, and levied taxes upon his subjects; ergo alchemy [or chemistry] has no reality or truth." And we find that Becher is absolutely turned away from his labours, and obliged to devote himself to proving that Solomon used more money than he possibly could have obtained from Ophir or his subjects, and therefore that he must have possessed a knowledge of chemical methods and the philosopher's stone as the result of them.[277]
[277] For an extract from Agrippa's Occulta Philosophia, giving examples of the way in which mystical names were obtained from the Bible, see Rydberg, Magic of the Middle Ages, pp. 143 et seq. For the germs of many mystic beliefs regarding number and the like, which were incorporated into mediaeval theology, see Zeller, Plato and the Older Academy, English translation, pp. 254 and 572, and elsewhere. As to the connection of spiritual things with inorganic nature in relation to chemistry, see Eicken, p. 634. On the injury to science wrought by Platonism acting through mediaeval theology, see Hoefer, Histoire de la Chimie, vol. i, p. 90. As to the influence of mysticism upon strong men in science, see Hoefer; also Kopp, Geschichte der Alchemie, vol. i, p. 211. For a very curious Catholic treatise on sacred numbers, see the Abbe Auber, Symbolisme Religieux, Paris, 1870; also Detzel, Christliche Ikonographie, pp. 44 et seq.; and for an equally important Protestant work, see Samuell, Seven the Sacred number, London 1887. It is interesting to note that the latter writer, having been forced to give up the seven planets, consoles himself with the statement that "the earth is the seventh planet, counting from Neptune and calling the asteroids one"
(see p. 426). For the electrum magicum, the seven metals composing it, and its wonderful qualities, see extracts from Paracelsus's writings in Hartmann's Life of Paracelsus, London, 1887, pp. 168 et seq. As to the more rapid transition of light than sound, the following expresses the scholastic method well: "What is the cause why we see sooner the lightning than we heare the thunder clappe? That is because our sight is both nobler and sooner perceptive of its object than our eare; as being the more active part, and priore to our hearing: besides, the visible species are more subtile and less corporeal than the audible species."-- Person's Varieties, Meteors, p. 82. For Basil Valentine's view, see Hoefer, vol. i, pp. 453-465; Schmieder, Geschichte der Alchemie, pp. 197-209; Allgemeine deutsche Biographies, article Basilius. For the discussions referred to on possibilities of God assuming forms of stone, or log, or beast, see Lippert, Christenthum, Volksglaube, und Volksbrauch, pp. 372, 373, where citations are given, etc. For the syllogism regarding Solomon, see Figuier, L'Alchimie et les Alchimistes, pp. 106, 107. For careful appreciation of Becher's position in the history of chemistry, see Kopp, Ansichten uber die Aufgabe der Chemie, etc., von Geber bis Stahl, Braunschweig, 1875, pp. 201 et seq. For the text proving the existence of the philosopher's stone from the book of Revelation, see Figuier, p. 22.
Of the general reasoning enforced by theology regarding physical science, every age has shown examples; yet out of them all I will select but two, and these are given because they show how this mixture of theological with scientific ideas took hold upon the strongest supporters of better reasoning even after the power of medieval theology seemed broken.
The first of these examples is Melanchthon. He was the scholar of the Reformation, and justly won the title "Preceptor of Germany." His mind was singularly open, his sympathies broad, and his usual freedom from bigotry drew down upon him that wrath of Protestant heresy-hunters which embittered the last years of his life and tortured him upon his deathbed. During his career at the University of Wittenberg he gave a course of lectures on physics, and in these he dwelt upon scriptural texts as affording scientific proofs, accepted the interference of the devil in physical phenomena as in other things, and applied the medieval method throughout his whole work.[278]
[278] For Melanchthon's ideas on physics, see his Initia Doctrinae Physicae, Wittenberg, 1557, especially pp. 243 and 274; also in vol. xiii of Bretschneider's edition of the collected works, and especially pp. 339-343.
Yet far more remarkable was the example, a century later, of the man who more than any other led the world out of the path opened by Aquinas, and into that through which modern thought has advanced to its greatest conquests. Strange as it may at first seem, Francis Bacon, whose keenness of sight revealed the delusions of the old path and the promises of the new, and whose boldness did so much to turn the world from the old path into the new, presents in his own writings one of the most striking examples of the evil he did so much to destroy.
The Novum Organon, considering the time when it came from his pen, is doubtless one of the greatest exhibitions of genius in the history of human thought. It showed the modern world the way out of the scholastic method and reverence for dogma into the experimental method and reverence for fact. In it occur many passages which show that the great philosopher was fully alive to the danger both to religion and to science arising from their mixture. He declares that the "corruption of philosophy from superstition and theology introduced the greatest amount of evil both into whole systems of philosophy and into their parts." He denounces those who "have endeavoured to found a natural philosophy on the books of Genesis and Job and other sacred Scriptures, so `seeking the dead among the living.'" He speaks of the result as "an unwholesome mixture of things human and divine; not merely fantastic philosophy, but heretical religion."
He refers to the opposition of the fathers to the doctrine of the rotundity of the earth, and says that, "thanks to some of them, you may find the approach to any kind of philosophy, however improved, entirely closed up." He charges that some of these divines are "afraid lest perhaps a deeper inquiry into nature should, penetrate beyond the allowed limits of sobriety"; and finally speaks of theologians as sometimes craftily conjecturing that, if science be little understood, "each single thing can be referred more easily to the hand and rod of God," and says, "This is nothing more or less than wishing to please God by a lie."
No man who has reflected much upon the annals of his race can, without a feeling of awe, come into the presence of such clearness of insight and boldness of utterance, and the first thought of the reader is that, of all men, Francis Bacon is the most free from the unfortunate bias he condemns; that he, certainly, can not be deluded into the old path. But as we go on through his main work we are surprised to find that the strong arm of Aquinas has been stretched over the intervening ages, and has laid hold upon this master-thinker of the seventeenth century; for only a few chapters beyond those containing the citations already made we find Bacon alluding to the recent voyage of Columbus, and speaking of the prophecy of Daniel regarding the latter days, that "many shall run to and fro, and knowledge be increased," as clearly signifying "that...the circumnavigation of the world and the increase of science should happen in the same age."[279]
[279] See the Novum Organon, translated by the Rev. G. W. Kitchin, Oxford, 1855, chaps. lxv and lxxxix.
In his great work on the Advancement of Learning the firm grasp which the methods he condemned held upon him is shown yet more clearly. In the first book of it he asserts that "that excellent book of Job, if it be revolved with diligence, will be found pregnant and swelling with natural philosophy," and he endeavours to show that in it the "roundness of the earth," the "fixing of the stars, ever standing at equal distances," the "depression of the southern pole," the "matter of generation," and "matter of minerals" are "with great elegancy noted." But, curiously enough, he uses to support some of these truths the very texts which the fathers of the Church used to destroy them, and those for which he finds Scripture warrant most clearly are such as science has since disproved. So, too, he says that Solomon was enabled in his Proverbs, "by donation of God, to compile a natural history of all verdure."[280]
[280] See Bacon, Advancement of Learning, edited by W. Aldis Wright, London, 1873, pp. 47, 48. Certainly no more striking examples of the strength of the evil which he had all along been denouncing could be exhibited that these in his own writings. Nothing better illustrates the sway of the mediaeval theology, or better explains his blindness to the discoveries of Copernicus and to the experiments of Gilbert. For a very contemptuous statement of Lord Bacon's claim to his position as a philosopher, see Lange, Geschichte des Materialismus, Leipsic, 1872, vol.i, p. 219. For a more just statement, see Brewster, Life of Sir Isaac Newton, London, 1874, vol. ii, p. 298.
Such was the struggle of the physical sciences in general. Let us now look briefly at one special example out of many, which reveals, as well as any, one of the main theories which prompted theological interference with them.
It will doubtless seem amazing to many that for ages the weight of theological thought in Christendom was thrown against the idea of the suffocating properties of certain gases, and especially of carbonic acid. Although in antiquity we see men forming a right theory of gases in mines, we find that, early in the history of the Church, St. Clement of Alexandria put forth the theory that these gases are manifestations of diabolic action, and that, throughout Christendom, suffocation in caverns, wells, and cellars was attributed to the direct action of evil spirits. Evidences of this view abound through the medieval period, and during the Reformation period a great authority, Agricola, one of the most earnest and truthful of investigators, still adhered to the belief that these gases in mines were manifestations of devils, and he specified two classes--one of malignant imps, who blow out the miners' lamps, and the other of friendly imps, who simply tease the workmen in various ways. He went so far as to say that one of these spirits in the Saxon mine of Annaberg destroyed twelve workmen at
once by the power of his breath.
At the end of the sixteenth century we find a writer on mineralogy complaining that the mines in France and Germany had been in large part abandoned on account of the "evil spirits of metals which had taken possession of them."
Even as late as the seventeenth century, Van Helmont, after he had broken away from alchemy and opened one of the great paths to chemistry--even after he had announced to the world the existence of various gases and the mode of their generation--was not strong enough to free himself from theologic bias; he still inclined to believe that the gases he had discovered, were in some sense living spirits, beneficent or diabolical.
But at various. periods glimpses of the truth had been gained. The ancient view had not been entirely forgotten; and as far back as the first part of the thirteenth century Albert the Great suggested a natural cause in the possibility of exhalations from minerals causing a "corruption of the air"; but he, as we have seen, was driven or dragged off into, theological studies, and the world relapsed into the theological view.
Toward the end of the fifteenth century there had come a great genius laden with important truths in chemistry, but for whom the world was not ready--Basil Valentine. His discoveries anticipated much that has brought fame and fortune to chemists since, yet so fearful of danger was he that his work was carefully concealed. Not until after his death was his treatise on alchemy found, and even then it was for a long time not known where and when he lived. The papal bull, Spondent pariter, and the various prohibitions it bred, forcing other alchemists to conceal their laboratories, led him to let himself be known during his life at Erfurt simply as an apothecary, and to wait until after his death to make a revelation of truth which during his lifetime might have cost him dear. Among the legacies of this greatest of the alchemists was the doctrine that the air which asphyxiates workers in mines is similar to that which is produced by fermentation of malt, and a recommendation that, in order to drive away the evil and to prevent serious accidents, fires be lighted and jets of steam used to ventilate the mines--stress being especially laid upon the idea that the danger in the mines is produced by "exhalations of metals."