Warfare of Science/Theology
by Andrew Dickson White
Hypertext Meanings and Commentaries
from the Encyclopedia of the Self
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[101] For Thoresby, see his Diary, (London, 1830). Halley's
great service is described further on in this chapter. For
Nikon's speech, see Dean Stanley's History of the Eastern Church,
p. 485. For very striking examples of this mediaeval terror in
Germany, see Von Raumer, Geschichte der Hohenstaufen, vol. vi, p.
538. For the Reformation period, see Wolf, Gesch. d. Astronomie;
also Praetorius, Ueber d. Cometstern (Erfurt, 1589), in which the
above sentences of Luther are printed on the title page as
epigraphs. For "Huren-Sternen," see the sermon of Celichius,
described later.

Melanchthon, too, in various letters refers to comets as heralds
of Heaven's wrath, classing them, with evil conjunctions of the
planets and abortive births, among the "signs" referred to in
Scripture. Zwingli, boldest of the greater Reformers in shaking
off traditional beliefs, could not shake off this, and insisted
that the comet of 1531 betokened calamity. Arietus, a leading
Protestant theologian, declared, "The heavens are given us not
merely for our pleasure, but also as a warning of the wrath of
God for the correction of our lives."  Lavater insisted that
comets are signs of death or calamity, and cited proofs from
Scripture.

Catholic and Protestant strove together for the glory of this
doctrine. It was maintained with especial vigour by Fromundus,
the eminent professor and Doctor of Theology at the Catholic
University of Louvain, who so strongly opposed the Copernican
system; at the beginning of the seventeenth century, even so
gifted an astronomer as Kepler yielded somewhat to the belief;
and near the end of that century Voigt declared that the comet of
1618 clearly presaged the downfall of the Turkish Empire, and he
stigmatized as "atheists and Epicureans" all who did not believe
comets to be God's warnings.[102]

[102] For Melanchthon, see Wolf, ubi supra. For Zwingli, see
Wolf, p. 235. For Arietus, see Madler, Geschichte der
Himmelskunde, vol. ii. For Kepler's superstition, see Wolf, p.
281. For Voight, see Himmels-Manaten Reichstage, Hamburg, 1676.
For both Fromundus and Voigt, see also Madler, vol. ii, p. 399,
and Lecky, Rationalism in Europe, vol. i, p.28.

II. THEOLOGICAL EFFORTS TO CRUSH THE SCIENTIFIC VIEW.

Out of this belief was developed a great series of efforts to
maintain the theological view of comets, and to put down forever
the scientific view. These efforts may be divided into two
classes: those directed toward learned men and scholars, through
the universities, and those directed toward the people at large,
through the pulpits. As to the first of these, that learned men
and scholars might be kept in the paths of "sacred science" and
"sound learning," especial pains was taken to keep all knowledge
of the scientific view of comets as far as possible from students
in the universities. Even to the end of the seventeenth century
the oath generally required of professors of astronomy over a
large part of Europe prevented their teaching that comets are
heavenly bodies obedient to law. Efforts just as earnest were
made to fasten into students' minds the theological theory. Two
or three examples out of many may serve as types. First of these
may be named the teaching of Jacob Heerbrand, professor at the
University of Tubingen, who in 1577 illustrated the moral value
of comets by comparing the Almighty sending a comet, to the judge
laying the executioner's sword on the table between himself and
the criminal in a court of justice; and, again, to the father or
schoolmaster displaying the rod before naughty children. A
little later we have another churchman of great importance in
that region, Schickhart, head pastor and superintendent at
Goppingen, preaching and publishing a comet sermon, in which he
denounces those who stare at such warnings of God without heeding
them, and compares them to "calves gaping at a new barn door."
Still later, at the end of the seventeenth century, we find
Conrad Dieterich, director of studies at the University of
Marburg, denouncing all scientific investigation of comets as
impious, and insisting that they are only to be regarded as
"signs and wonders."[103]

[103] For the effect of the anti-Pythagorean oath, see Prowe,
Copernicus; also Madler and Wolf. For Heerbrand, see his Von dem
erschrockenlichen Wunderzeichen, Tubingen, 1577. For Schickart,
see his Predigt vom Wunderzeichen, Stuttgart, 1621. For
Deiterich, see his sermon, described more fully below.

The results of this ecclesiastical pressure upon science in the
universities were painfully shown during generation after
generation, as regards both professors and students; and
examples may be given typical of its effects upon each of these
two classes.

The first of these is the case of Michael Maestlin. He was by
birth a Swabian Protestant, was educated at Tubingen as a pupil
of Apian, and, after a period of travel, was settled as deacon in
the little parish of Backnang, when the comet of 1577 gave him an
occasion to apply his astronomical studies. His minute and
accurate observation of it is to this day one of the wonders of
science. It seems almost impossible that so much could be
accomplished by the naked eye. His observations agreed with
those of Tycho Brahe, and won for Maestlin the professorship of
astronomy in the University of Heidelberg. No man had so clearly
proved the supralunar position of a comet, or shown so
conclusively that its motion was not erratic, but regular. The
young astronomer, though Apian's pupil, was an avowed Copernican
and the destined master and friend of Kepler. Yet, in the
treatise embodying his observations, he felt it necessary to save
his reputation for orthodoxy by calling the comet a "new and
horrible prodigy," and by giving a chapter of "conjectures on the
signification of the present comet," in which he proves from
history that this variety of comet betokens peace, but peace
purchased by a bloody victory. That he really believed in this
theological theory seems impossible; the very fact that his
observations had settled the supralunar character and regular
motion of comets proves this. It was a humiliation only to be
compared to that of Osiander when he wrote his grovelling preface
to the great book of Copernicus. Maestlin had his reward: when,
a few years, later his old teacher, Apian, was driven from his
chair at Tubingen for refusing to sign the Lutheran
Concord-Book, Maestlin was elected to his place.

Not less striking was the effect of this theological pressure
upon the minds of students. Noteworthy as an example of this is
the book of the Leipsic lawyer, Buttner. From no less than
eighty-six biblical texts he proves the Almighty's purpose of
using the heavenly bodies for the instruction of men as to future
events, and then proceeds to frame exhaustive tables, from which,
the time and place of the comet's first appearance being known,
its signification can be deduced. This manual he gave forth as a
triumph of religious science, under the name of the Comet
Hour-Book.[104]

[104] For Maestlin, see his Observatio et Demonstration Cometae,
Tubingen, 1578. For Buttner, see his Cometen Stundbuchlein,
Leipsic, 1605.

The same devotion to the portent theory is found in the
universities of Protestant Holland. Striking is it to see in the
sixteenth century, after Tycho Brahe's discovery, the Dutch
theologian, Gerard Vossius, Professor of Theology and Eloquence
at Leyden, lending his great weight to the superstition. "The
history of all times," he says, "shows comets to be the
messengers of misfortune. It does not follow that they are
endowed with intelligence, but that there is a deity who makes
use of them to call the human race to repentance."  Though
familiar with the works of Tycho Brahe, he finds it "hard to
believe" that all comets are ethereal, and adduces several
historical examples of sublunary ones.

Nor was this attempt to hold back university teaching to the old
view of comets confined to Protestants. The Roman Church was, if
possible, more strenuous in the same effort. A few examples will
serve as types, representing the orthodox teaching at the great
centres of Catholic theology.

One of these is seen in Spain. The eminent jurist Torreblanca
was recognised as a controlling authority in all the universities
of Spain, and from these he swayed in the seventeenth century the
thought of Catholic Europe, especially as to witchcraft and the
occult powers in Nature. He lays down the old cometary
superstition as one of the foundations of orthodox teaching:
Begging the question, after the fashion of his time, he argues
that comets can not be stars, because new stars always betoken
good, while comets betoken evil.

The same teaching was given in the Catholic universities of the
Netherlands. Fromundus, at Louvain, the enemy of Galileo,
steadily continued his crusade against all cometary heresy.[105]

[105] For Vossius, see the De Idololatria (in his Opera, vol. v,
pp. 283-285). For Torreblanc, see his De Magia, Seville, 1618,
and often reprinted. For Fromundus, see his Meteorologica.

But a still more striking case is seen in Italy. The reverend
Father Augustin de Angelis, rector of the Clementine College at
Rome, as late as 1673, after the new cometary theory had been
placed beyond reasonable doubt, and even while Newton was working
out its final demonstration, published a third edition of his
Lectures on Meteorology. It was dedicated to the Cardinal of
Hesse, and bore the express sanction of the Master of the Sacred
Palace at Rome and of the head of the religious order to which De
Angelis belonged. This work deserves careful analysis, not only
as representing the highest and most approved university teaching
of the time at the centre of Roman Catholic Christendom, but
still more because it represents that attempt to make a
compromise between theology and science, or rather the attempt to
confiscate science to the uses of theology, which we so
constantly find whenever the triumph of science in any field has
become inevitable.

As to the scientific element in this compromise, De Angelis
holds, in his general introduction regarding meteorology, that
the main material cause of comets is "exhalation," and says, "If
this exhalation is thick and sticky, it blazes into a comet."
And again he returns to the same view, saying that "one form of
exhalation is dense, hence easily inflammable and long retentive
of fire, from which sort are especially generated comets."  But
it is in his third lecture that he takes up comets specially, and
his discussion of them is extended through the fourth, fifth, and
sixth lectures. Having given in detail the opinions of various
theologians and philosophers, he declares his own in the form of
two conclusions. The first of these is that "comets are not
heavenly bodies, but originate in the earth's atmosphere below
the moon; for everything heavenly is eternal and incorruptible,
but comets have a beginning and ending--ergo, comets can not be
heavenly bodies."  This, we may observe, is levelled at the
observations and reasonings of Tycho Brahe and Kepler, and is a
very good illustration of the scholastic and mediaeval
method--the method which blots out an ascertained fact by means
of a metaphysical formula. His second conclusion is that "comets
are of elemental and sublunary nature; for they are an
exhalation hot and dry, fatty and well condensed, inflammable and
kindled in the uppermost regions of the air."  He then goes on to
answer sundry objections to this mixture of metaphysics and
science, and among other things declares that "the fatty, sticky
material of a comet may be kindled from sparks falling from fiery
heavenly bodies or from a thunderbolt"; and, again, that the
thick, fatty, sticky quality of the comet holds its tail in
shape, and that, so far are comets from having their paths beyond
the, moon's orbit, as Tycho Brahe and Kepler thought, he himself
in 1618 saw "a bearded comet so near the summit of Vesuvius that
it almost seemed to touch it."  As to sorts and qualities of
comets, he accepts Aristotle's view, and divides them into
bearded and tailed.[106] He goes on into long disquisitions upon
their colours, forms, and motions. Under this latter head he
again plunges deep into a sea of metaphysical considerations, and
does not reappear until he brings up his compromise in the
opinion that their movement is as yet uncertain and not
understood, but that, if we must account definitely for it, we
must say that it is effected by angels especially assigned to
this service by Divine Providence. But, while proposing this
compromise between science and theology as to the origin and
movement of comets, he will hear to none as regards their mission
as "signs and wonders" and presages of evil. He draws up a
careful table of these evils, arranging them in the following
order: Drought, wind, earthquake, tempest, famine, pestilence,
war, and, to clinch the matter, declares that the comet
observed by him in 1618 brought not only war, famine,
pestilence, and earthquake, but also a general volcanic eruption,
"which would have destroyed Naples, had not the blood of the
invincible martyr Januarius withstood it."

[106] Barbata et caudata.

It will be observed, even from this sketch, that, while the
learned Father Augustin thus comes infallibly to the mediaeval
conclusion, he does so very largely by scientific and essentially
modern processes, giving unwonted prominence to observation, and
at times twisting scientific observation into the strand with his
metaphysics. The observations and methods of his science are
sometimes shrewd, sometimes comical. Good examples of the latter
sort are such as his observing that the comet stood very near the
summit of Vesuvius, and his reasoning that its tail was kept in
place by its stickiness. But observations and reasonings of this
sort are always the first homage paid by theology to science as
the end of their struggle approaches.[107]

[107] See De Angelis, Lectiones Meteorologicae, Rome, 1669.

Equally striking is an example seen a little later in another
part of Europe; and it is the more noteworthy because Halley and
Newton had already fully established the modern scientific
theory. Just at the close of the seventeenth century the Jesuit
Reinzer, professor at Linz, put forth his Meteorologia
Philosophico-Politica, in which all natural phenomena received
both a physical and a moral interpretation. It was profusely and
elaborately illustrated, and on account of its instructive
contents was in 1712 translated into German for the unlearned
reader. The comet receives, of course, great attention. "It
appears," says Reinzer, "only then in the heavens when the latter
punish the earth, and through it [the comet] not only predict but
bring to pass all sorts of calamity....And, to that end, its
tail serves for a rod, its hair for weapons and arrows, its light
for a threat, and its heat for a sign of anger and vengeance."
Its warnings are threefold: (1) "Comets, generated in the air,
betoken NATURALLY drought, wind, earthquake, famine, and
pestilence."  (2) "Comets can indirectly, in view of their
material, betoken wars, tumults, and the death of princes; for,
being hot and dry, they bring the moistnesses [Feuchtigkeiten]
in the human body to an extraordinary heat and dryness,
increasing the gall; and, since the emotions depend on the
temperament and condition of the body, men are through this
change driven to violent deeds, quarrels, disputes, and finally
to arms: especially is this the result with princes, who are
more delicate and also more arrogant than other men, and whose
moistnesses are more liable to inflammation of this sort,
inasmuch as they live in luxury and seldom restrain themselves
from those things which in such a dry state of the heavens are
especially injurious."  (3) "All comets, whatever prophetic
significance they may have naturally in and of themselves, are
yet principally, according to the Divine pleasure, heralds of the
death of great princes, of war, and of other such great
calamities; and this is known and proved, first of all, from the
words of Christ himself: `Nation shall rise against nation, and
kingdom against kingdom; and great earthquakes shall be in
divers places, and famines, and pestilences; and fearful sights
and great signs shall there be from heaven.'"[108]

[108] See Reinzer, Meteorologica Philosophico-Politica (edition
of Augsburg, 1712), pp. 101-103.

While such pains was taken to keep the more highly educated
classes in the "paths of scriptural science and sound learning;
at the universities, equal efforts were made to preserve the
cometary orthodoxy of the people at large by means of the
pulpits. Out of the mass of sermons for this purpose which were
widely circulated I will select just two as typical, and they are
worthy of careful study as showing some special dangers of
applying theological methods to scientific facts. In the second
half of the sixteenth century the recognised capital of orthodox
Lutheranism was Magdeburg, and in the region tributary to this
metropolis no Church official held a more prominent station than
the "Superintendent," or Lutheran bishop, of the neighbouring
Altmark. It was this dignitary, Andreas Celichius by name, who
at Magdeburg, in 1578, gave to the press his Theological Reminder
of the New Comet. After deprecating as blasphemous the attempt
of Aristotle to explain the phenomenon otherwise than as a
supernatural warning from God to sinful man, he assures his
hearers that "whoever would know the comet's real source and
nature must not merely gape and stare at the scientific theory
that it is an earthy, greasy, tough, and sticky vapour and mist,
rising into the upper air and set ablaze by the celestial heat."
Far more important for them is it to know what this vapour is.
It is really, in the opinion of Celichius, nothing more or less
than  "the thick smoke of human sins, rising every day, every
hour, every moment, full of stench and horror, before the face of
God, and becoming gradually so thick as to form a comet, with
curled and plaited tresses, which at last is kindled by the hot
and fiery anger of the Supreme Heavenly Judge."  He adds that it
is probably only through the prayers and tears of Christ that
this blazing monument of human depravity becomes visible to
mortals. In support of this theory, he urges the "coming up
before God" of the wickedness of Sodom and Gomorrah and of
Nineveh, and especially the words of the prophet regarding
Babylon, "Her stench and rottenness is come up before me."  That
the anger of God can produce the conflagration without any
intervention of Nature is proved from the Psalms, "He sendeth out
his word and melteth them."  From the position of the comet, its
course, and the direction of its tail he augurs especially the
near approach of the judgment day, though it may also betoken, as
usual, famine, pestilence, and war. "Yet even in these days," he
mourns, "there are people reckless and giddy enough to pay no
heed to such celestial warnings, and these even cite in their own
defence the injunction of Jeremiah not to fear signs in the
heavens."  This idea he explodes, and shows that good and
orthodox Christians, while not superstitious like the heathen,
know well "that God is not bound to his creation and the ordinary
course of Nature, but must often, especially in these last dregs
of the world, resort to irregular means to display his anger at
human guilt."[109]

[109] For Celichius, or Celich, see his own treatise, as above.

The other typical case occurred in the following century and in
another part of Germany. Conrad Dieterich was, during the first
half of the seventeenth century, a Lutheran ecclesiastic of the
highest authority. His ability as a theologian had made him
Archdeacon of Marburg, Professor of Philosophy and Director of
Studies at the University of Giessen, and "Superintendent," or
Lutheran bishop, in southwestern Germany. In the year 162O, on
the second Sunday in Advent, in the great Cathedral of Ulm, he
developed the orthodox doctrine of comets in a sermon, taking up
the questions: 1. What are comets? 2. What do they indicate?
3. What have we to do with their significance? This sermon marks
an epoch. Delivered in that stronghold of German Protestantism
and by a prelate of the highest standing, it was immediately
printed, prefaced by three laudatory poems from different men of
note, and sent forth to drive back the scientific, or, as it was
called, the "godless," view of comets. The preface shows that
Dieterich was sincerely alarmed by the tendency to regard comets
as natural appearances. His text was taken from the twenty-fifth
verse of the twenty-first chapter of St. Luke: "And there shall
be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon
the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the
waves roaring."  As to what comets are, he cites a multitude of
philosophers, and, finding that they differ among themselves, he
uses a form of argument not uncommon from that day to this,
declaring that this difference of opinion proves that there is no
solution of the problem save in revelation, and insisting that
comets are "signs especially sent by the Almighty to warn the
earth."  An additional proof of this he finds in the forms of
comets. One, he says, took the form of a trumpet; another, of a
spear; another of a goat; another, of a torch; another, of a
sword; another, of an arrow; another, of a sabre; still another,
of a bare arm. From these forms of comets he infers that we may
divine their purpose. As to their creation, he quotes John of
Damascus and other early Church authorities in behalf of the idea
that each comet is a star newly created at the Divine command,
out of nothing, and that it indicates the wrath of God. As to
their purpose, having quoted largely from the Bible and from
Luther, he winds up by insisting that, as God can make nothing in
vain, comets must have some distinct object; then, from Isaiah
and Joel among the prophets, from Matthew, Mark, and Luke among
the evangelists, from Origen and John Chrysostom among the
fathers, from Luther and Melanchthon among the Reformers, he
draws various texts more or less conclusive to prove that comets
indicate evil and only evil; and he cites Luther's Advent sermon
to the effect that, though comets may arise in the course of
Nature, they are still signs of evil to mankind. In answer to
the theory of sundry naturalists that comets are made up of "a
certain fiery, warm, sulphurous, saltpetery, sticky fog," he
declaims: "Our sins, our sins: they are the fiery heated
vapours, the thick, sticky, sulphurous clouds which rise from the
earth toward heaven before God."  Throughout the sermon Dieterich
pours contempt over all men who simply investigate comets as
natural objects, calls special attention to a comet then in the
heavens resembling a long broom or bundle of rods, and declares
that he and his hearers can only consider it rightly "when we see
standing before us our Lord God in heaven as an angry father with
a rod for his children."  In answer to the question what comets
signify, he commits himself entirely to the idea that they
indicate the wrath of God, and therefore calamities of every
sort. Page after page is filled with the records of evils
following comets. Beginning with the creation of the world, he
insists that the first comet brought on the deluge of Noah, and
cites a mass of authorities, ranging from Moses and Isaiah to
Albert the Great and Melanchthon, in support of the view that
comets precede earthquakes, famines, wars, pestilences, and every
form of evil. He makes some parade of astronomical knowledge as
to the greatness of the sun and moon, but relapses soon into his
old line of argument. Imploring his audience not to be led away
from the well-established belief of Christendom and the
principles of their fathers, he comes back to his old assertion,
insists that "our sins are the inflammable material of which
comets are made," and winds up with a most earnest appeal to the
Almighty to spare his people.[110]

[110] For Deiterich, see Ulmische Cometen-Predigt, von dem
Cometen, so nechst abgewischen 1618 Jahrs im Wintermonat
erstenmahls in Schwaben sehen lassen, . . . gehalten zu Ulm . . .
durch Conrad Dieterich, Ulm, 1620. For a life of the author, see
article Dieterich in the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie. See also
Wolf.

Similar efforts from the pulpit were provoked by the great comet
of 1680. Typical among these was the effort in Switzerland of
Pastor Heinrich Erni, who, from the Cathedral of Zurich, sent a
circular letter to the clergy of that region showing the
connection of the eleventh and twelfth verses of the first
chapter of Jeremiah with the comet, giving notice that at his
suggestion the authorities had proclaimed a solemn fast, and
exhorting the clergy to preach earnestly on the subject of this
warning.

Nor were the interpreters of the comet's message content with
simple prose. At the appearance of the comet of 1618, Grasser
and Gross, pastors and doctors of theology at Basle, put forth a
collection of doggerel rhymes to fasten the orthodox theory into
the minds of school-children and peasants. One of these may be
translated:

"I am a Rod in God's right hand
  threatening the German and foreign land."

Others for a similar purpose taught:

"Eight things there be a Comet brings,
When it on high doth horrid range:
Wind, Famine, Plague, and Death to Kings,
War, Earthquakes, Floods, and Direful Change."

Great ingenuity was shown in meeting the advance of science, in
the universities and schools, with new texts of Scripture; and
Stephen Spleiss, Rector of the Gymnasium at Schaffhausen, got
great credit by teaching that in the vision of Jeremiah the
"almond rod" was a tailed comet, and the "seething pot" a bearded
one.[111]

[111] For Erni, see Wolf, Gesch. d. Astronomie, p. 239. For
Grassner and Gross, see their Christenliches Bedenken . . . von
dem erschrockenlichen Cometen, etc., Zurich, 1664. For Spleiss,
see Beilauftiger Bericht von dem jetzigen Cometsternen, etc.,
schaffhausen, 1664.

It can be easily understood that such authoritative utterances as
that of Dieterich must have produced a great effect throughout
Protestant Christendom; and in due time we see their working in
New England. That same tendency to provincialism, which, save at
rare intervals, has been the bane of Massachusetts thought from
that day to this, appeared; and in 1664 we find Samuel Danforth
arguing from the Bible that "comets are portentous signals of
great and notable changes," and arguing from history that they
"have been many times heralds of wrath to a secure and impenitent
world."  He cites especially the comet of 1652, which appeared
just before Mr. Cotton's sickness and disappeared after his
death. Morton also, in his Memorial recording the death of John
Putnam, alludes to the comet of 1662 as "a very signal testimony
that God had then removed a bright star and a shining light out
of the heaven of his Church here into celestial glory above."
Again he speaks of another comet, insisting that "it was no fiery
meteor caused by exhalation, but it was sent immediately by God
to awaken the secure world," and goes on to show how in that year
"it pleased God to smite the fruits of the earth--namely, the
wheat in special--with blasting and mildew, whereby much of it
was spoiled and became profitable for nothing, and much of it
worth little, being light and empty. This was looked upon by the
judicious and conscientious of the land as a speaking providence
against the unthankfulness of many,... as also against
voluptuousness and abuse of the good creatures of God by
licentiousness in drinking and fashions in apparel, for the
obtaining whereof a great part of the principal grain was
oftentimes unnecessarily expended."

But in 1680 a stronger than either of these seized upon the
doctrine and wielded it with power. Increase Mather, so open
always to ideas from Europe, and always so powerful for good or
evil in the cloonies, preached his sermon on "Heaven's Alarm to
the World,...wherein is shown that fearful sights and signs in
the heavens are the presages of great calamities at hand."  The
texts were taken from the book of Revelation: "And the third
angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning,
as it were a lamp," and "Behold, the third woe cometh quickly."
In this, as in various other sermons, he supports the theological
cometary theory fully. He insists that "we are fallen into the
dregs of time," and that the day of judgment is evidently
approaching. He explains away the words of Jeremiah--"Be not
dismayed at signs in the heavens"--and shows that comets have
been forerunners of nearly every form of evil. Having done full
justice to evils thus presaged in scriptural times, he begins a
similar display in modern history by citing blazing stars which
foretold the invasions of Goths, Huns, Saracens, and Turks, and
warns gainsayers by citing the example of Vespasian, who, after
ridiculing a comet, soon died. The general shape and appearance
of comets, he thinks, betoken their purpose, and he cites
Tertullian to prove them "God's sharp razors on mankind, whereby
he doth poll, and his scythe whereby he doth shear down
multitudes of sinful creatures."  At last, rising to a fearful
height, he declares: "For the Lord hath fired his beacon in the
heavens among the stars of God there; the fearful sight is not
yet out of sight. The warning piece of heaven is going off.
Now, then, if the Lord discharge his murdering pieces from on
high, and men be found in their sins unfit for death, their blood
shall be upon them."  And again, in an agony of supplication, he
cries out: "Do we see the sword blazing over us? Let it put us
upon crying to God, that the judgment be diverted and not return
upon us again so speedily....Doth God threaten our very heavens?
O pray unto him, that he would not take away stars and send
comets to succeed them."[112]

[112] For Danforth, see his Astronomical Descritption of the Late
Comet or Blazing Star, Together with a Brief Theological
Application Thereof, 1664. For Morton, see his Memorial, pp.
251, 252,; also 309, 310. Texts cited by Mather were Rev., viii,
10, and xi, 14.

Two years later, in August, 1682, he followed this with another
sermon on "The Latter Sign," "wherein is showed that the voice of
God in signal providences, especially when repeated and iterated,
ought to be hearkened unto."  Here, too, of course, the comet
comes in for a large share of attention. But his tone is less
sure: even in the midst of all his arguments appears an evident
misgiving. The thoughts of Newton in science and Bayle in
philosophy were evidently tending to accomplish the prophecy of
Seneca. Mather's alarm at this is clear. His natural tendency
is to uphold the idea that a comet is simply a fire-ball flung
from the hand of an avenging God at a guilty world, but he
evidently feels obliged to yield something to the scientific
spirit;  hence, in the Discourse concerning Comets, published in
1683, he declares: "There are those who think that, inasmuch as
comets may be supposed to proceed from natural causes, there is
no speaking voice of Heaven in them beyond what is to be said of
all other works of God. But certain it is that many things which
may happen according to the course of Nature are portentous signs
of Divine anger and prognostics of great evils hastening upon the
world."  He then notices the eclipse of August, 1672, and adds:
"That year the college was eclipsed by the death of the learned
president there, worthy Mr. Chauncey and two colonies--namely,
Massachusetts and Plymouth--by the death of two governors, who
died within a twelvemonth after....Shall, then, such mighty
works of God as comets are be insignificant things?"[113]

[113] Increase Mather's Heaven's Alarm to the World was first
printed at Boston in 1681, but was reprinted in 1682, and was
appended, with the sermon on The Latter Sign, to the Discourse on
Comets (Boston, 1683).

III. THE INVASION OF SCEPTICISM.

Vigorous as Mather's argument is, we see scepticism regarding
"signs" continuing to invade the public mind; and, in spite of
his threatenings, about twenty years after we find a remarkable
evidence of this progress in the fact that this scepticism has
seized upon no less a personage than that colossus of orthodoxy,
his thrice illustrious son, Cotton Mather himself; and him we
find, in 1726, despite the arguments of his father, declaring in
his Manuductio: "Perhaps there may be some need for me to
caution you against being dismayed at the signs of the heavens,
or having any superstitious fancies upon eclipses and the
like....I am willing that you be apprehensive of nothing
portentous in blazing stars. For my part, I know not whether all
our worlds, and even the sun itself, may not fare the better for
them."[114]

[114] For Cotton Mather, see the Manuductio, pp. 54, 55.

Curiously enough, for this scientific scepticism in Cotton Mather
there was a cause identical with that which had developed
superstition in the mind of his father. The same provincial
tendency to receive implicitly any new European fashion in
thinking or speech wrought upon both, plunging one into
superstition and drawing the other out of it.

European thought, which New England followed, had at last broken
away in great measure from the theological view of comets as
signs and wonders. The germ of this emancipating influence was
mainly in the great utterance of Seneca; and we find in nearly
every century some evidence that this germ was still alive. This
life became more and more evident after the Reformation period,
even though theologians in every Church did their best to destroy
it. The first series of attacks on the old theological doctrine
were mainly founded in philosophic reasoning. As early as the
first half of the sixteenth century we hear Julius Caesar
Scaliger protesting against the cometary superstition as
"ridiculous folly."[115]  Of more real importance was the
treatise of Blaise de Vigenere, published at Paris in 1578. In
this little book various statements regarding comets as signs of
wrath or causes of evils are given, and then followed by a very
gentle and quiet discussion, usually tending to develop that
healthful scepticism which is the parent of investigation. A
fair example of his mode of treating the subject is seen in his
dealing with a bit of "sacred science."  This was simply that
"comets menace princes and kings with death because they live
more delicately than other people; and, therefore, the air
thickened and corrupted by a comet would be naturally more
injurious to them than to common folk who live on coarser food."
To this De Vigenere answers that there are very many persons who
live on food as delicate as that enjoyed by princes and kings,
and yet receive no harm from comets. He then goes on to show
that many of the greatest monarchs in history have met death
without any comet to herald it.

[115] For Scaliger, see p. 20 of Dudith's book, cited below.

In the same year thoughtful scepticism of a similar sort found an
advocate in another part of Europe. Thomas Erastus, the learned
and devout professor of medicine at Heidelberg, put forth a
letter dealing in the plainest terms with the superstition. He
argued especially that there could be no natural connection
between the comet and pestilence, since the burning of an
exhalation must tend to purify rather than to infect the air. In
the following year the eloquent Hungarian divine Dudith published
a letter in which the theological theory was handled even more
shrewdly. for he argued that, if comets were caused by the sins
of mortals, they would never be absent from the sky. But these
utterances were for the time brushed aside by the theological
leaders of thought as shallow or impious.

In the seventeenth century able arguments against the
superstition, on general grounds, began to be multiplied. In
Holland, Balthasar Bekker opposed this, as he opposed the
witchcraft delusion, on general philosophic grounds; and
Lubienitzky wrote in a compromising spirit to prove that comets
were as often followed by good as by evil events. In France,
Pierre Petit, formerly geographer of Louis XIII, and an intimate
friend of Descartes, addressed to the young Louis XIV a vehement
protest against the superstition, basing his arguments not on
astronomy, but on common sense. A very effective part of the
little treatise was devoted to answering the authority of the
fathers of the early Church. To do this, he simply reminded his
readers that St. Augustine and St. John Damascenus had also
opposed the doctrine of the antipodes. The book did good service
in France, and was translated in Germany a few years later.[116]

[116] For Blaise de Vigenere, see his Traite des Cometes, Paris,
1578. For Dudith, see his De Cometarum Dignificatione, Basle,
1579, to which the letter of Erastus is appended. Bekker's views
may be found in his Onderzoek van de Betekening der Cometen,
Leeuwarden, 1683. For Lubienitsky's, see his Theatrum Cometicum,
Amsterdam, 1667, in part ii: Historia Cometarum, preface "to the
reader."  For Petit, see his Dissertation sur la Nature des
Cometes, Paris, 1665 (German translation, Dresden and Zittau,
1681).

All these were denounced as infidels and heretics, yet none the
less did they set men at thinking, and prepare the way for a far
greater genius; for toward the end of the same century the
philosophic attack was taken up by Pierre Bayle, and in the whole
series of philosophic champions he is chief. While professor at
the University of Sedan he had observed the alarm caused by the
comet of 1680, and he now brought all his reasoning powers to
bear upon it. Thoughts deep and witty he poured out in volume
after volume. Catholics and Protestants were alike scandalized.
Catholic France spurned him, and Jurieu, the great Reformed
divine, called his cometary views "atheism," and tried hard to
have Protestant Holland condemn him. Though Bayle did not touch
immediately the mass of mankind, he wrought with power upon men
who gave themselves the trouble of thinking. It was indeed
unfortunate for the Church that theologians, instead of taking
the initiative in this matter, left it to Bayle; for, in tearing
down the pretended scriptural doctrine of comets, he tore down
much else: of all men in his time, no one so thoroughly prepared
the way for Voltaire.

Bayle's whole argument is rooted in the prophecy of Seneca. He
declares: "Comets are bodies subject to the ordinary law of
Nature, and not prodigies amenable to no law."  He shows
historically that there is no reason to regard comets as portents
of earthly evils. As to the fact that such evils occur after the
passage of comets across the sky, he compares the person
believing that comets cause these evils to a woman looking out of
a window into a Paris street and believing that the carriages
pass because she looks out. As to the accomplishment of some
predictions, he cites the shrewd saying of Henry IV, to the
effect that "the public will remember one prediction that comes
true better than all the rest that have proved false."  Finally,
he sums up by saying: "The more we study man, the more does it
appear that pride is his ruling passion, and that he affects
grandeur even in his misery. Mean and perishable creature that
he is, he has been able to persuade men that he can not die
without disturbing the whole course of Nature and obliging the
heavens to put themselves to fresh expense. In order to light
his funeral pomp. Foolish and ridiculous vanity! If we had a
just idea of the universe, we should soon comprehend that the
death or birth of a prince is too insignificant a matter to stir
the heavens."[117]

[117] Regarding Bayle, see Madler, Himmelskunde, vol. i, p. 327.
For special points of interest in Bayle's arguments, see his
Pensees Diverses sur les Cometes, Amsterdam, 1749, pp. 79, 102,
134, 206. For the response to Jurieu, see the continuation des
Pensees, Rotterdam, 1705; also Champion, p. 164, Lecky, ubi
supra, and Guillemin, pp. 29, 30.

This great philosophic champion of right reason was followed by a
literary champion hardly less famous; for Fontenelle now gave to
the French theatre his play of The Comet, and a point of capital
importance in France was made by rendering the army of ignorance
ridiculous.[118]

[118] See Fontenelle, cited by Champion, p. 167.

Such was the line of philosophic and literary attack, as
developed from Scaliger to Fontenelle. But beneath and in the
midst of all of it, from first to last, giving firmness,
strength, and new sources of vitality to it, was the steady
development of scientific effort; and to the series of great men
who patiently wrought and thought out the truth by scientific
methods through all these centuries belong the honours of the
victory.

For generations men in various parts of the world had been making
careful observations on these strange bodies. As far back as the
time when Luther and Melanchthon and Zwingli were plunged into
alarm by various comets from 1531 to 1539, Peter Apian kept his
head sufficiently cool to make scientific notes of their paths
through the heavens. A little later, when the great comet of
1556 scared popes, emperors, and reformers alike, such men as
Fabricius at Vienna and Heller at Nuremberg quietly observed its
path. In vain did men like Dieterich and Heerbrand and Celich
from various parts of Germany denounce such observations and
investigations as impious; they were steadily continued, and in
1577 came the first which led to the distinct foundation of the
modern doctrine. In that year appeared a comet which again
plunged Europe into alarm. In every European country this alarm
was strong, but in Germany strongest of all. The churches were
filled with terror-stricken multitudes. Celich preaching at
Magdeburg was echoed by Heerbrand preaching at Tubingen, and both
these from thousands of other pulpits, Catholic and Protestant,
throughout Europe. In the midst of all this din and outcry a few
men quietly but steadily observed the monster; and Tycho Brahe
announced, as the result, that its path lay farther from the
earth than the orbit of the moon. Another great astronomical
genius, Kepler, confirmed this. This distinct beginning of the
new doctrine was bitterly opposed by theologians; they denounced
it as one of the evil results of that scientific meddling with
the designs of Providence against which they had so long
declaimed in pulpits and professors' chairs; they even brought
forward some astronomers ambitious or wrong-headed enough to
testify that Tycho and Kepler were in error.[119]

[119] See Madler, Himmelskunde, vol. i, pp. 181, 197; also Wolf,
Gesch. d. Astronomie, and Janssen, Gesch. d. deutschen Volkes,
vol. v, p. 350. Heerbrand's sermon, cited above, is a good
specimen of the theologic attitude. See Pingre, vol. ii, p. 81.

Nothing could be more natural than such opposition; for this
simple announcement by Tycho Brahe began a new era. It shook the
very foundation of cometary superstition. The Aristotelian view,
developed by the theologians, was that what lies within the
moon's orbit appertains to the earth and is essentially
transitory and evil, while what lies beyond it belongs to the
heavens and is permanent, regular, and pure. Tycho Brahe and
Kepler, therefore, having by means of scientific observation and
thought taken comets out of the category of meteors and
appearances in the neighbourhood of the earth, and placed them
among the heavenly bodies, dealt a blow at the very foundations
of the theological argument, and gave a great impulse to the idea
that comets are themselves heavenly bodies moving regularly and
in obedience to law.

IV. THEOLOGICAL EFFORTS AT COMPROMISE.--THE FINAL
VICTORY OF SCIENCE.

Attempts were now made to compromise. It was declared that,
while some comets were doubtless supralunar, some must be
sublunar. But this admission was no less fatal on another
account. During many centuries the theory favoured by the Church
had been, as we have seen, that the earth was surrounded by
hollow spheres, concentric and transparent, forming a number of
glassy strata incasing one another "like the different coatings
of an onion," and that each of these in its movement about the
earth carries one or more of the heavenly bodies. Some
maintained that these spheres were crystal; but Lactantius, and
with him various fathers of the Church, spoke of the heavenly
vault as made of ice. Now, the admission that comets could move
beyond the moon was fatal to this theory, for it sent them
crashing through these spheres of ice or crystal, and therefore
through the whole sacred fabric of the Ptolemaic theory.[120]

[120] For these features in cometary theory, see Pingre, vol. i,
p. 89; also Humboldt, Cosmos (English translation, London, 1868),
vol. iii, p. 169.

Here we may pause for a moment to note one of the chief
differences between scientific and theological reasoning
considered in themselves. Kepler's main reasoning as to the
existence of a law for cometary movement was right; but his
secondary reasoning, that comets move nearly in straight lines,
was wrong. His right reasoning was developed by Gassendi in
France, by Borelli in Italy, by Hevel and Doerfel in Germany, by
Eysat and Bernouilli in Switzerland, by Percy and--most important
of all, as regards mathematical demonstration--by Newton in
England. The general theory, which was true, they accepted and
developed; the secondary theory, which was found untrue, they
rejected; and, as a result, both of what they thus accepted and
of what they rejected, was evolved the basis of the whole modern
cometary theory.

Very different was this from the theological method. As a rule,
when there arises a thinker as great in theology as Kepler in
science, the whole mass of his conclusions ripens into a dogma.
His disciples labour not to test it, but to establish it; and
while, in the Catholic Church, it becomes a dogma to be believed
or disbelieved under the penalty of damnation, it becomes in the
Protestant Church the basis for one more sect.

Various astronomers laboured to develop the truth discovered by
Tycho and strengthened by Kepler. Cassini seemed likely to win
for Italy the glory of completing the great structure; but he
was sadly fettered by Church influences, and was obliged to leave
most of the work to others. Early among these was Hevel. He
gave reasons for believing that comets move in parabolic curves
toward the sun. Then came a man who developed this truth
further--Samuel Doerfel; and it is a pleasure to note that he was
a clergyman. The comet of 1680, which set Erni in Switzerland,
Mather in New England, and so many others in all parts of the
world at declaiming, set Doerfel at thinking. Undismayed by the
authority of Origen and St. John Chrysostom, the arguments of
Luther, Melanchthon, and Zwingli, the outcries of Celich,
Heerbrand, and Dieterich, he pondered over the problem in his
little Saxon parsonage, until in 1681 he set forth his proofs
that comets are heavenly bodies moving in parabolas of which the
sun is the focus. Bernouilli arrived at the same conclusion;
and, finally, this great series of men and works was closed by
the greatest of all, when Newton, in 1686, having taken the data
furnished by the comet of 1680, demonstrated that comets are
guided in their movements by the same principle that controls the
planets in their orbits. Thus was completed the evolution of
this new truth in science.

Yet we are not to suppose that these two great series of
philosophical and scientific victories cleared the field of all
opponents. Declamation and pretended demonstration of the old
theologic view were still heard; but the day of complete victory
dawned when Halley, after most thorough observation and
calculation, recognised the comet of 1682 as one which had
already appeared at stated periods, and foretold its return in
about seventy-five years; and the battle was fully won when
Clairaut, seconded by Lalande and Mme. Lepaute, predicted
distinctly the time when the comet would arrive at its
perihelion, and this prediction was verified.[121] Then it was
that a Roman heathen philosopher was proved more infallible and
more directly under Divine inspiration than a Roman Christian
pontiff; for the very comet which the traveller finds to-day
depicted on the Bayeux tapestry as portending destruction to
Harold and the Saxons at the Norman invasion of England, and
which was regarded by Pope Calixtus as portending evil to
Christendom, was found six centuries later to be, as Seneca had
prophesied, a heavenly body obeying the great laws of the
universe, and coming at regular periods. Thenceforth the whole
ponderous enginery of this superstition, with its proof-texts
regarding "signs in the heavens," its theological reasoning to
show the moral necessity of cometary warnings, and its
ecclesiastical fulminations against the "atheism, godlessness,
and infidelity" of scientific investigation, was seen by all
thinking men to be as weak against the scientific method as
Indian arrows against needle guns. Copernicus, Galileo,
Cassini, Doerfel, Newton, Halley, and Clairaut had gained the
victory.[122]

[121] See Pingre, vol. i, p. 53; Grant, History of Physical
Astronomy, p. 305, etc., etc. For a curious partial anticipation
by Hooke, in 1664, of the great truth announced by Halley in
1682, see Pepy's Diary for March 1, 1664. For excellent
summaries of the whole work of Halley and Clairaut and their
forerunners and associates, see Pingre, Madler, Wolf, Arago, et
al.

[122] In accordance with Halley's prophecy, the comet of 1682 has
returned in 1759 and 1835. See Madler, Guillemin, Watson, Grant,
Delambre, Proctor, article Astronomy in Encycl. Brit., and
especially for details, Wolf, pp. 407-412 and 701-722. For clear
statement regarding Doerfel, see Wolf, p. 411.

It is instructive to note, even after the main battle was lost, a
renewal of the attempt, always seen under like circumstances, to
effect a compromise, to establish a "safe science" on grounds
pseudo-scientific and pseudo-theologic. Luther, with his strong
common sense, had foreshadowed this; Kepler had expressed a
willingness to accept it. It was insisted that comets might be
heavenly bodies moving in regular orbits, and even obedient to
law, and yet be sent as "signs in the heavens."  Many good men
clung longingly to this phase of the old belief, and in 1770
Semler, professor at Halle, tried to satisfy both sides. He
insisted that, while from a scientific point of view comets could
not exercise any physical influence upon the world, yet from a
religious point of view they could exercise a moral influence as
reminders of the Just Judge of the Universe.

So hard was it for good men to give up the doctrine of "signs in
the heavens," seemingly based upon Scripture and exercising such
a healthful moral tendency! As is always the case after such a
defeat, these votaries of "sacred science" exerted the greatest
ingenuity in devising statements and arguments to avert the new
doctrine. Within our own century the great Catholic champion,
Joseph de Maistre, echoed these in declaring his belief that
comets are special warnings of evil. So, too, in Protestant
England, in 1818, the Gentleman's Magazine stated that under the
malign influence of a recent comet "flies became blind and died
early in the season," and "the wife of a London shoemaker had
four children at a birth."  And even as late as 1829 Mr. Forster,
an English physician, published a work to prove that comets
produce hot summers, cold winters, epidemics, earthquakes, clouds
of midges and locusts, and nearly every calamity conceivable. He
bore especially upon the fact that the comet of 1665 was
coincident with the plague in London, apparently forgetting that
the other great cities of England and the Continent were not thus
visited; and, in a climax, announces the fact that the comet of
1663 "made all the cats in Westphalia sick."

There still lingered one little cloud-patch of superstition,
arising mainly from the supposed fact that comets had really been
followed by a marked rise in temperature. Even this poor basis
for the belief that they might, after all, affect earthly affairs
was swept away, and science won here another victory; for Arago,
by thermometric records carefully kept at Paris from 1735 to
1781, proved that comets had produced no effect upon temperature.
Among multitudes of similar examples he showed that, in some
years when several comets appeared, the temperature was lower
than in other years when few or none appeared. In 1737 there
were two comets, and the weather was cool; in 1785 there was no
comet, and the weather was hot; through the whole fifty years it
was shown that comets were sometimes followed by hot weather,
sometimes by cool, and that no rule was deducible. The victory
of science was complete at every point.[123]

[123] For Forster, see his Illustrations of the Atmospherical
Origin of Epidemic Diseases, Chelmsford, 1829, cited by Arago;
also in Quarterly Review for April, 1835. For the writings of
several on both sides, and especially those who sought to save,
as far as possible, the sacred theory of comets, see Madler, vol.
ii, p. 384 et seq., and Wolf, p. 186.

But in this history there was one little exhibition so curious as
to be worthy of notice, though its permanent effect upon thought
was small. Whiston and Burnet, so devoted to what they
considered sacred science, had determined that in some way comets
must be instruments of Divine wrath. One of them maintained that
the deluge was caused by the tail of a comet striking the earth;
the other put forth the theory that comets are places of
punishment for the damned--in fact, "flying hells."  The theories
of Whiston and Burnet found wide acceptance also in Germany,
mainly through the all-powerful mediation of Gottsched, so long,
from his professor's chair at Leipsic, the dictator of orthodox
thought, who not only wrote a brief tractate of his own upon the
subject, but furnished a voluminous historical introduction to
the more elaborate treatise of Heyn. In this book, which
appeared at Leipsic in 1742, the agency of comets in the
creation, the flood, and the final destruction of the world is
fully proved. Both these theories were, however, soon
discredited.

Perhaps the more interesting of them can best be met by another,
which, if not fully established, appears much better
based--namely, that in 1868 the earth passed directly through the
tail of a comet, with no deluge, no sound of any wailings of the
damned, with but slight appearances here and there, only to be
detected by the keen sight of the meteorological or astronomical
observer.

In our own country superstitious ideas regarding comets continued
to have some little currency; but their life was short. The
tendency shown by Cotton Mather, at the beginning of the
eighteenth century, toward acknowledging the victory of science,
was completed by the utterances of Winthrop, professor at
Harvard, who in 1759 published two lectures on comets, in which
he simply and clearly revealed the truth, never scoffing, but
reasoning quietly and reverently. In one passage he says: "To
be thrown into a panic whenever a comet appears, on account of
the ill effects which some few of them might possibly produce, if
they were not under proper direction, betrays a weakness
unbecoming a reasonable being."

A happy influence in this respect was exercised on both
continents by John Wesley. Tenaciously as he had held to the
supposed scriptural view in so many other matters of science, in
this he allowed his reason to prevail, accepted the
demonstrations of Halley, and gloried in them.[124]

[124] For Heyn, see his Versuch einer Betrachtung uber die
cometun, die Sundfluth und das Vorspeil des jungsten Gerichts,
Leipsic, 1742. A Latin version, of the same year, bears the
title, Specimen Cometologiae Sacre. For the theory that the
earth encountered the tail of a comet, see Guillemin and Watson.
For survival of the old idea in America, see a Sermon of Israel
Loring, of Sudbury, published in 1722.  For Prof. J. Winthrop,
see his Comets. For Wesley, see his Natural Philosophy, London,
1784, vol. iii, p. 303.

The victory was indeed complete. Happily, none of the fears
expressed by Conrad Dieterich and Increase Mather were realized.
No catastrophe has ensued either to religion or to morals. In
the realm of religion the Psalms of David remain no less
beautiful, the great utterances of the Hebrew prophets no less
powerful;  the Sermon on the Mount, "the first commandment, and
the second, which is like unto it," the definition of "pure
religion and undefiled" by St. James, appeal no less to the
deepest things in the human heart. In the realm of morals, too,
serviceable as the idea of firebrands thrown by the right hand of
an avenging God to scare a naughty world might seem, any
competent historian must find that the destruction of the old
theological cometary theory was followed by moral improvement
rather than by deterioration. We have but to compare the general
moral tone of society to-day, wretchedly imperfect as it is, with
that existing in the time when this superstition had its
strongest hold. We have only to compare the court of Henry VIII
with the court of Victoria, the reign of the later Valois and
earlier Bourbon princes with the present French Republic, the
period of the Medici and Sforzas and Borgias with the period of
Leo XIII and Humbert, the monstrous wickedness of the Thirty
Years' War with the ennobling patriotism of the Franco-Prussian
struggle, and the despotism of the miserable German princelings
of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries with the reign of the
Emperor William. The gain is not simply that mankind has arrived
at a clearer conception of law in the universe; not merely that
thinking men see more clearly that we are part of a system not
requiring constant patching and arbitrary interference; but
perhaps best of all is the fact that science has cleared away one
more series of those dogmas which tend to debase rather than to
develop man's whole moral and religious nature. In this
emancipation from terror and fanaticism, as in so many other
results of scientific thinking, we have a proof of the
inspiration of those great words, "THE TRUTH SHALL MAKE YOU
FREE."

CHAPTER V.

FROM GENESIS TO GEOLOGY.

I. GROWTH OF THEOLOGICAL EXPLANATIONS.

Among the philosophers of Greece we find, even at an early
period, germs of geological truth, and, what is of vast
importance, an atmosphere in which such germs could grow. These
germs were transmitted to Roman thought; an atmosphere of
tolerance continued; there was nothing which forbade unfettered
reasoning regarding either the earth's strata or the remains of
former life found in them, and under the Roman Empire a period of
fruitful observation seemed sure to begin.

But, as Christianity took control of the world, there came a
great change. The earliest attitude of the Church toward geology
and its kindred sciences was indifferent, and even contemptuous.
According to the prevailing belief, the earth was a "fallen
world," and was soon to be destroyed. Why, then, should it be
studied? Why, indeed, give a thought to it? The scorn which
Lactantius and St. Augustine had cast upon the study of
astronomy was extended largely to other sciences. [125]

[125] For a compact and admirable statement as to the dawn of
geological conceptions in Greece and Rome, see Mr. Lester Ward's
essay on paleobotany in the Fifth Annual Report of the United
States Geological Survey, for 1883-'84. As to the reasons why
Greek philosophers did comparatively so little for geology, see
D'Archiac, Geologie, p. 18. For the contempt felt by Lactantius
and St. Augustine toward astronomical science, see foregoing
chapters on Astronomy and Geography.

But the germs of scientific knowledge and thought developed in
the ancient world could be entirely smothered neither by
eloquence nor by logic; some little scientific observation must
be allowed, though all close reasoning upon it was fettered by
theology. Thus it was that St. Jerome insisted that the broken
and twisted crust of the earth exhibits the wrath of God against
sin, and Tertullian asserted that fossils resulted from the flood
of Noah.

To keep all such observation and reasoning within orthodox
limits, St. Augustine, about the beginning of the fifth century,
began an effort to develop from these germs a growth in science
which should be sacred and safe. With this intent he prepared
his great commentary on the work of creation, as depicted in
Genesis, besides dwelling upon the subject in other writings.
Once engaged in this work, he gave himself to it more earnestly
than any other of the earlier fathers ever did; but his vast
powers of research and thought were not directed to actual
observation or reasoning upon observation. The keynote of his
whole method is seen in his famous phrase, "Nothing is to be
accepted save on the authority of Scripture, since greater is
that authority than all the powers of the human mind."  All his
thought was given to studying the letter of the sacred text, and
to making it explain natural phenomena by methods purely
theological.[126]

[126] For citations and authorities on these points, see the
chapter on Meteorology.

Among the many questions he then raised and discussed may be
mentioned such as these: "What caused the creation of the stars
on the fourth day?"  "Were beasts of prey and venomous animals
created before, or after, the fall of Adam? If before, how can
their creation be reconciled with God's goodness; if afterward,
how can their creation be reconciled to the letter of God's
Word?"  "Why were only beasts and birds brought before Adam to be
named, and not fishes and marine animals?"  "Why did the Creator
not say, `Be fruitful and multiply,' to plants as well as to
animals?"[127]

[127] See Augustine, De Genesi, ii, 13, 15, et seq.; ix, 12 et
seq. For the reference to St. Jerome, see Shields, Final
Philosophy, p. 119; also Leyell, Introduction to Geology, vol. i,
chap. ii.

Sundry answers to these and similar questions formed the main
contributions of the greatest of the Latin fathers to the
scientific knowledge of the world, after a most thorough study of
the biblical text and a most profound application of theological
reasoning. The results of these contributions were most
important. In this, as in so many other fields, Augustine gave
direction to the main current of thought in western Europe,
Catholic and Protestant, for nearly thirteen centuries.

In the ages that succeeded, the vast majority of prominent
scholars followed him implicitly. Even so strong a man as Pope
Gregory the Great yielded to his influence, and such leaders of
thought as St. Isidore, in the seventh century, and the
Venerable Bede, in the eighth, planting themselves upon
Augustine's premises, only ventured timidly to extend their
conclusions upon lines he had laid down.

In his great work on Etymologies, Isidore took up Augustine's
attempt to bring the creation into satisfactory relations with
the book of Genesis, and, as to fossil remains, he, like
Tertullian, thought that they resulted from the Flood of Noah.
In the following century Bede developed the same orthodox
traditions.[128]

[128]  For Isidore, see the Etymologiae, xi, 4, xiii, 22. For
Bede, see the Hexaemeron, i, ii, in Migne, tome xci.

The best guess, in a geological sense, among the followers of St.
Augustine was made by an Irish monkish scholar, who, in order to
diminish the difficulty arising from the distribution of animals,
especially in view of the fact that the same animals are found in
Ireland as in England, held that various lands now separated were
once connected. But, alas! the exigencies of theology forced him
to place their separation later than the Flood. Happily for him,
such facts were not yet known as that the kangaroo is found only
on an island in the South Pacific, and must therefore, according
to his theory, have migrated thither with all his progeny, and
along a causeway so curiously constructed that none of the beasts
of prey, who were his fellow-voyagers in the ark, could follow
him.

These general lines of thought upon geology and its kindred
science of zoology were followed by St. Thomas Aquinas and by
the whole body of medieval theologians, so far as they gave any
attention to such subjects.

The next development of geology, mainly under Church guidance,
was by means of the scholastic theology. Phrase-making was
substituted for investigation. Without the Church and within it
wonderful contributions were thus made. In the eleventh century
Avicenna accounted for the fossils by suggesting a "stone-making
force";[129] in the thirteenth, Albert the Great attributed them
to a "formative quality;"[130] in the following centuries some
philosophers ventured the idea that they grew from seed; and the
Aristotelian doctrine of spontaneous generation was constantly
used to prove that these stony fossils possessed powers of
reproduction like plants and animals.[131]

[129] Vis lapidifica.

[130] Virtus formativa.

[131] See authorities given in Mr. Ward's assay, as above.

Still, at various times and places, germs implanted by Greek and
Roman thought were warmed into life. The Arabian schools seem to
have been less fettered by the letter of the Koran than the
contemporary Christian scholars by the letter of the Bible; and
to Avicenna belongs the credit of first announcing substantially
the modern geological theory of changes in the earth's
surface.[132]

[132] For Avicenna, see Lyell and D'Archiac.

The direct influence of the Reformation was at first unfavourable
to scientific progress, for nothing could be more at variance
with any scientific theory of the development of the universe
than the ideas of the Protestant leaders. That strict adherence
to the text of Scripture which made Luther and Melanchthon
denounce the idea that the planets revolve about the sun, was
naturally extended to every other scientific statement at
variance with the sacred text. There is much reason to believe
that the fetters upon scientific thought were closer under the
strict interpretation of Scripture by the early Protestants than
they had been under the older Church. The dominant spirit among
the Reformers is shown by the declaration of Peter Martyr to the
effect that, if a wrong opinion should obtain regarding the
creation as described in Genesis, "all the promises of Christ
fall into nothing, and all the life of our religion would be
lost."[133]

[133] See his Commentary on Genesis, cited by Zoeckler,
Geschichte der Beziehungen zwischen Theologie und
Naturwissenschaft, vol. i, p. 690.

In the times immediately succeeding the Reformation matters went
from bad to worse. Under Luther and Melanchthon there was some
little freedom of speculation, but under their successors there
was none; to question any interpretation of Luther came to be
thought almost as wicked as to question the literal
interpretation of the Scriptures themselves. Examples of this
are seen in the struggles between those who held that birds were
created entirely from water and those who held that they were
created out of water and mud. In the city of Lubeck, the ancient
centre of the Hanseatic League, close at the beginning of the
seventeenth century, Pfeiffer, "General Superintendent" or bishop
in those parts, published his Pansophia Mosaica, calculated, as
he believed, to beat back science forever. In a long series of
declamations he insisted that in the strict text of Genesis alone
is safety, that it contains all wisdom and knowledge, human and
divine. This being the case, who could care to waste time on the
study of material things and give thought to the structure of the
world? Above all, who, after such a proclamation by such a ruler
in the Lutheran Israel, would dare to talk of the "days"
mentioned in Genesis as "periods of time"; or of the "firmament"
as not meaning a solid vault over the universe; or of the
"waters above the heavens" as not contained in a vast cistern
supported by the heavenly vault; or of the "windows of heaven" as
a figure of speech?[134]

[134] For Pfeiffer, see Zoeckler, vol. i, pp. 688, 689.

In England the same spirit was shown even as late as the time of
Sir Matthew Hale. We find in his book on the Origination of
Mankind, published in 1685, the strictest devotion to a theory
of creation based upon the mere letter of Scripture, and a
complete inability to draw knowledge regarding the earth's origin
and structure from any other source.

While the Lutheran, Calvinistic, and Anglican Reformers clung to
literal interpretations of the sacred books, and turned their
faces away from scientific investigation, it was among their
contemporaries at the revival of learning that there began to
arise fruitful thought in this field. Then it was, about the
beginning of the sixteenth century, that Leonardo da Vinci, as
great a genius in science as in art, broached the true idea as to
the origin of fossil remains; and his compatriot, Fracastoro,
developed this on the modern lines of thought. Others in other
parts of Europe took up the idea, and, while mixing with it many
crudities, drew from it more and more truth. Toward the end of
the sixteenth century Bernard Palissy, in France, took hold of it
with the same genius which he showed in artistic creation; but,
remarkable as were his assertions of scientific realities, they
could gain little hearing. Theologians, philosophers, and even
some scientific men of value, under the sway of scholastic
phrases, continued to insist upon such explanations as that
fossils were the product of "fatty matter set into a fermentation
by heat"; or of a "lapidific juice";[135] or of a "seminal
air";[136] or of a "tumultuous movement of terrestrial
exhalations"; and there was a prevailing belief that fossil
remains, in general, might be brought under the head of "sports
of Nature," a pious turn being given to this phrase by the
suggestion that these "sports" indicated some inscrutable purpose
of the Almighty.

[135] Succus lapidificus.

[136] Aura seminalis.

This remained a leading orthodox mode of explanation in the
Church, Catholic and Protestant, for centuries.

II. EFFORTS TO SUPPRESS THE SCIENTIFIC VIEW.

But the scientific method could not be entirely hidden; and,
near the beginning of the seventeenth century, De Clave, Bitaud,
and De Villon revived it in France. Straightway the theological
faculty of Paris protested against the scientific doctrine as
unscriptural, destroyed the offending treatises, banished their
authors from Paris, and forbade them to live in towns or enter
places of public resort.[137]

[137] See Morley, Life of Palissy the Potter, vol. ii, p. 315 et
seq.

The champions of science, though depressed for a time, quietly
laboured on, especially in Italy. Half a century later, Steno, a
Dane, and Scilla, an Italian, went still further in the right
direction; and, though they and their disciples took great pains
to throw a tub to the whale, in the shape of sundry vague
concessions to the Genesis legends, they developed geological
truth more and more.

In France, the old theological spirit remained exceedingly
powerful. About the middle of the eighteenth century Buffon made
another attempt to state simple geological truths; but the
theological faculty of the Sorbonne dragged him at once from his
high position, forced him to recant ignominiously, and to print
his recantation. It runs as follows: "I declare that I had no
intention to contradict the text of Scripture; that I believe
most firmly all therein related about the creation, both as to
order of time and matter of fact. I abandon everything in my
book respecting the formation of the earth, and generally all
which may be contrary to the narrative of Moses."  This
humiliating document reminds us painfully of that forced upon
Galileo a hundred years before.

It has been well observed by one of the greatest of modern
authorities that the doctrine which Buffon thus "abandoned" is as
firmly established as that of the earth's rotation upon its
axis.[138] Yet one hundred and fifty years were required to
secure for it even a fair hearing; the prevailing doctrine of
the Church continued to be that "all things were made at the
beginning of the world," and that to say that stones and fossils
were made before or since "the beginning" is contrary to
Scripture. Again we find theological substitutes for scientific
explanation ripening into phrases more and more hollow--making
fossils "sports of Nature," or "mineral concretions," or
"creations of plastic force," or "models" made by the Creator
before he had fully decided upon the best manner of creating
various beings.

[138] See citation and remark in Lyell's Principles of Geology,
chap. iii, p. 57; also Huxley, Essays on Controverted Questions,
p. 62.

Of this period, when theological substitutes for science were
carrying all before them, there still exists a monument
commemorating at the same time a farce and a tragedy. This is
the work of Johann Beringer, professor in the University of
Wurzburg and private physician to the Prince-Bishop--the treatise
bearing the title Lithographiae Wirceburgensis Specimen Primum,
"illustrated with the marvellous likenesses of two hundred
figured or rather insectiform stones."  Beringer, for the greater
glory of God, had previously committed himself so completely to
the theory that fossils are simply "stones of a peculiar sort,
hidden by the Author of Nature for his own pleasure,"[139] that
some of his students determined to give his faith in that pious
doctrine a thorough trial. They therefore prepared a collection
of sham fossils in baked clay, imitating not only plants,
reptiles, and fishes of every sort that their knowledge or
imagination could suggest, but even Hebrew and Syriac
inscriptions, one of them the name of the Almighty; and these
they buried in a place where the professor was wont to search for
specimens. The joy of Beringer on unearthing these proofs of the
immediate agency of the finger of God in creating fossils knew no
bounds. At great cost he prepared this book, whose twenty-two
elaborate plates of facsimiles were forever to settle the
question in favour of theology and against science, and prefixed
to the work an allegorical title page, wherein not only the glory
of his own sovereign, but that of heaven itself, was pictured as
based upon a pyramid of these miraculous fossils. So robust was
his faith that not even a premature exposure of the fraud could
dissuade him from the publication of his book. Dismissing in one
contemptuous chapter this exposure as a slander by his rivals, he
appealed to the learned world. But the shout of laughter that
welcomed the work soon convinced even its author. In vain did he
try to suppress it; and, according to tradition, having wasted
his fortune in vain attempts to buy up all the copies of it, and
being taunted by the rivals whom he had thought to overwhelm, he
died of chagrin. Even death did not end his misfortunes. The
copies of the first edition having been sold by a graceless
descendant to a Leipsic bookseller, a second edition was brought
out under a new title, and this, too, is now much sought as a
precious memorial of human credulity.[140]

[139] See Beringer's Lithographiae, etc., p. 91.

[140] See Carus, Geschichte der Zoologie, Munich, 1872, p. 467,
note, and Reusch, Bibel und Natur, p. 197. A list of authorities
upon this episode, with the text of one of the epigrams
circulated at poor Beringer's expense, is given by Dr. Reuss in
the Serapeum for 1852, p. 203. The book itself (the original
impression) is in the White Library at Cornell University. For
Beringer himself, see especially the encyclopedia of Ersch and
Gruber, and the Allgemeine deutsche Biographie.

But even this discomfiture did not end the idea which had caused
it, for, although some latitude was allowed among the various
theologico-scientific explanations, it was still held meritorious
to believe that all fossils were placed in the strata on one of
the creative days by the hand of the Almighty, and that this was
done for some mysterious purpose, probably for the trial of human
faith.

Strange as it may at first seem, the theological war against a
scientific method in geology was waged more fiercely in
Protestant countries than in Catholic. The older Church had
learned by her costly mistakes, especially in the cases of
Copernicus and Galileo, what dangers to her claim of
infallibility lay in meddling with a growing science. In Italy,
therefore, comparatively little opposition was made, while
England furnished the most bitter opponents to geology so long as
the controversy could be maintained, and the most active
negotiators in patching up a truce on the basis of a sham science
afterward. The Church of England did, indeed, produce some noble
men, like Bishop Clayton and John Mitchell, who stood firmly by
the scientific method; but these appear generally to have been
overwhelmed by a chorus of churchmen and dissenters, whose
mixtures of theology and science, sometimes tragic in their
results and sometimes comic, are among the most instructive
things in modern history.[141]

[141] For a comparison between the conduct of Italian and English
ecclesiastics as regards geology, see Lyell, Principles of
Geology, tenth English edition, vol. i, p. 33. For a
philosophical statement of reasons why the struggle was more
bitter and the attempt at deceptive compromises more absurd in
England than elsewhere, see Maury, L'Ancienne Academie des
Sciences, second edition, p. 152. For very frank confessions of
the reasons why the Catholic Church has become more careful in
her dealings with science, see Roberts, The Pontifical Decrees
against the Earth's Movement, London, 1885, especially pp. 94 and
132, 133, and St. George Mivart's article in the Nineteenth
Century for July 1885. The first of these gentlemen, it must not
be forgotten, is a Roman Catholic clergyman and the second an
eminent layman of the same Church, and both admit that it was the
Pope, speaking ex cathedra, who erred in the Galileo case; but
their explanation is that God allowed the Pope and Church to fall
into this grievous error, which has cost so dear, in order to
show once and for all that the Church has no right to decide
questions in Science.

We have already noted that there are generally three periods or
phases in a theological attack upon any science. The first of
these is marked by the general use of scriptural texts and
statements against the new scientific doctrine; the third by
attempts at compromise by means of far-fetched reconciliations of
textual statements with ascertained fact; but the second or
intermediate period between these two is frequently marked by the
pitting against science of some great doctrine in theology. We
saw this in astronomy, when Bellarmin and his followers insisted
that the scientific doctrine of the earth revolving about the sun
is contrary to the theological doctrine of the incarnation. So
now against geology it was urged that the scientific doctrine
that fossils represent animals which died before Adam contradicts
the theological doctrine of Adam's fall and the statement that
"death entered the world by sin."

In this second stage of the theological struggle with geology,
England was especially fruitful in champions of orthodoxy, first
among whom may be named Thomas Burnet. In the last quarter of
the seventeenth century, just at the time when Newton's great
discovery was given to the world, Burnet issued his Sacred Theory
of the Earth. His position was commanding; he was a royal
chaplain and a cabinet officer. Planting himself upon the famous
text in the second epistle of Peter,[142] he declares that the
flood had destroyed the old and created a new world. The
Newtonian theory he refuses to accept. In his theory of the
deluge he lays less stress upon the "opening of the windows of
heaven" than upon the "breaking up of the fountains of the great
deep."  On this latter point he comes forth with great strength.
His theory is that the earth is hollow, and filled with fluid
like an egg. Mixing together sundry texts from Genesis and from
the second epistle of Peter, the theological doctrine of the
"Fall," an astronomical theory regarding the ecliptic, and
various notions adapted from Descartes, he insisted that, before
sin brought on the Deluge, the earth was of perfect mathematical
form, smooth and beautiful, "like an egg," with neither seas nor
islands nor valleys nor rocks, "with not a wrinkle, scar, or
fracture," and that all creation was equally perfect.

[142] See II Peter iii, 6.

In the second book of his great work Burnet went still further.
As in his first book he had mixed his texts of Genesis and St.
Peter with Descartes, he now mixed the account of the Garden of
Eden in Genesis with heathen legends of the golden age, and
concluded that before the flood there was over the whole earth
perpetual spring, disturbed by no rain more severe than the
falling of the dew.

In addition to his other grounds for denying the earlier
existence of the sea, he assigned the reason that, if there had
been a sea before the Deluge, sinners would have learned to build
ships, and so, when the Deluge set in, could have saved
themselves.

The work was written with much power, and attracted universal
attention. It was translated into various languages, and called
forth a multitude of supporters and opponents in all parts of
Europe. Strong men rose against it, especially in England, and
among them a few dignitaries of the Church; but the Church
generally hailed the work with joy. Addison praised it in a
Latin ode, and for nearly a century it exercised a strong
influence upon European feeling, and aided to plant more deeply
than ever the theological opinion that the earth as now existing
is merely a ruin; whereas, before sin brought on the Flood, it
was beautiful in its "egg-shaped form," and free from every
imperfection.

A few years later came another writer of the highest
standing--William Whiston, professor at Cambridge, who in 1696
published his New Theory of the Earth. Unlike Burnet, he
endeavoured to avail himself of the Newtonian idea, and brought
in, to aid the geological catastrophe caused by human sin, a
comet, which broke open "the fountains of the great deep."

But, far more important than either of these champions, there
arose in the eighteenth century, to aid in the subjection of
science to theology, three men of extraordinary power--John
Wesley, Adam Clarke, and Richard Watson. All three were men of
striking intellectual gifts, lofty character, and noble purpose,
and the first-named one of the greatest men in English history;
yet we find them in geology hopelessly fettered by the mere
letter of Scripture, and by a temporary phase in theology. As in
regard to witchcraft and the doctrine of comets, so in regard to
geology, this theological view drew Wesley into enormous
error.[143] The great doctrine which Wesley, Watson, Clarke, and
their compeers, following St. Augustine, Bede, Peter Lombard,
and a long line of the greatest minds in the universal Church,
thought it especially necessary to uphold against geologists was,
that death entered the world by sin--by the first transgression
of Adam and Eve. The extent to which the supposed necessity of
upholding this doctrine carried Wesley seems now almost beyond
belief. Basing his theology on the declaration that the Almighty
after creation found the earth and all created things "very
good," he declares, in his sermon on the Cause and Cure of
Earthquakes, that no one who believes the Scriptures can deny
that "sin is the moral cause of earthquakes, whatever their
natural cause may be."  Again, he declares that earthquakes are
the "effect of that curse which was brought upon the earth by the
original transgression."  Bringing into connection with Genesis
the declaration of St. Paul that "the whole creation groaneth
and travaileth together in pain until now," he finds additional
scriptural proof that the earthquakes were the result of Adam's
fall. He declares, in his sermon on God's Approbation of His
Works, that "before the sin of Adam there were no agitations
within the bowels of the earth, no violent convulsions, no
concussions of the earth, no earthquakes, but all was unmoved as
the pillars of heaven. There were then no such things as
eruptions of fires; no volcanoes or burning mountains."  Of
course, a science which showed that earthquakes had been in
operation for ages before the appearance of man on the planet,
and which showed, also, that those very earthquakes which he
considered as curses resultant upon the Fall were really
blessings, producing the fissures in which we find today those
mineral veins so essential to modern civilization, was entirely
beyond his comprehension. He insists that earthquakes are "God's
strange works of judgment, the proper effect and punishment of
sin."

[143] For his statement that "the giving up of witchcraft is in
effect the giving up of the Bible," see Welsey's Journal, 1766-
'68.

So, too, as to death and pain. In his sermon on the Fall of Man
he took the ground that death and pain entered the world by
Adam's transgression, insisting that the carnage now going on
among animals is the result of Adam's sin. Speaking of the
birds, beasts, and insects, he says that, before sin entered the
world by Adam's fall, "none of these attempted to devour or in
any way hurt one another"; that "the spider was then as harmless
as the fly and did not then lie in wait for blood."  Here, again,
Wesley arrayed his early followers against geology, which
reveals, in the fossil remains of carnivorous animals, pain and
death countless ages before the appearance of man. The
half-digested fragments of weaker animals within the fossilized
bodies of the stronger have destroyed all Wesley's arguments in
behalf of his great theory.[144]

[144] See Wesley's sermon on God's Approbation of His Works,
parts xi and xii.

Dr. Adam Clarke held similar views. He insisted that thorns and
thistles were given as a curse to human labour, on account of
Adam's sin, and appeared upon the earth for the first time after
Adam's fall. So, too, Richard Watson, the most prolific writer
of the great evangelical reform period, and the author of the
Institutes, the standard theological treatise on the evangelical
side, says, in a chapter treating of the Fall, and especially of
the serpent which tempted Eve: "We have no reason at all to
believe that the animal had a serpentine form in any mode or
degree until his transformation. That he was then degraded to a
reptile, to go upon his belly, imports, on the contrary, an
entire alteration and loss of the original form."  All that
admirable adjustment of the serpent to its environment which
delights naturalists was to the Wesleyan divine simply an evil
result of the sin of Adam and Eve. Yet here again geology was
obliged to confront theology in revealing the PYTHON in the
Eocene, ages before man appeared.[145]

[145] See Westminster Review, October, 1870, article on John
Wesley's Cosmogony, with citations from Wesley's Sermons,
Watson's Institutes of Theology, Adam Clarke's Commentary on the
Holy Scriptures, etc.

The immediate results of such teaching by such men was to throw
many who would otherwise have resorted to observation and
investigation back upon scholastic methods. Again reappears the
old system of solving the riddle by phrases. In 1733, Dr.
Theodore Arnold urged the theory of "models," and insisted that
fossils result from "infinitesimal particles brought together in
the creation to form the outline of all the creatures and objects
upon and within the earth"; and Arnold's work gained wide
acceptance.[146]

[146] See citation in Mr. Ward's article, as above, p. 390.

Such was the influence of this succession of great men that
toward the close of the last century the English opponents of
geology on biblical grounds seemed likely to sweep all before
them. Cramping our whole inheritance of sacred literature within
the rules of a historical compend, they showed the terrible
dangers arising from the revelations of geology, which make the
earth older than the six thousand years required by Archbishop
Usher's interpretation of the Old Testament. Nor was this
feeling confined to ecclesiastics. Williams, a thoughtful
layman, declared that such researches led to infidelity and
atheism, and are "nothing less than to depose the Almighty
Creator of the universe from his office."  The poet Cowper, one
of the mildest of men, was also roused by these dangers, and in
his most elaborate poem wrote:

                "Some drill and bore
The solid earth, and from the strata there
Extract a register, by which we learn
That He who made it, and revealed its date
To Moses, was mistaken in its age!"

John Howard summoned England to oppose "those scientific systems
which are calculated to tear up in the public mind every
remaining attachment to Christianity."

With this special attack upon geological science by means of the
dogma of Adam's fall, the more general attack by the literal
interpretation of the text was continued. The legendary husks
and rinds of our sacred books were insisted upon as equally
precious and nutritious with the great moral and religious truths
which they envelop. Especially precious were the six days--each
"the evening and the morning"--and the exact statements as to the
time when each part of creation came into being. To save these,
the struggle became more and more desperate.

Difficult as it is to realize it now, within the memory of many
now living the battle was still raging most fiercely in England,
and both kinds of artillery usually brought against a new science
were in full play, and filling the civilized world with their
roar.

About half a century since, the Rev. J. Mellor Brown, the Rev.
Henry Cole, and others were hurling at all geologists alike, and
especially at such Christian scholars as Dr. Buckland and Dean
Conybeare and Pye Smith and Prof. Sedgwick, the epithets of
"infidel," "impugner of the sacred record," and "assailant of the
volume of God."[147]

[147] For these citations, see Lyell, Principles of Geology,
introduction.

The favourite weapon of the orthodox party was the charge that
the geologists were "attacking the truth of God."  They declared
geology "not a subject of lawful inquiry," denouncing it as "a
dark art," as "dangerous and disreputable," as "a forbidden
province," as "infernal artillery," and as "an awful evasion of
the testimony of revelation."[148]

[148] See Pye Smith, D. D., Geology and Scripture, pp. 156, 157,
168, 169.

This attempt to scare men from the science having failed, various
other means were taken. To say nothing about England, it is
humiliating to human nature to remember the annoyances, and even
trials, to which the pettiest and narrowest of men subjected such
Christian scholars in our own country as Benjamin Silliman and
Edward Hitchcock and Louis Agassiz.

But it is a duty and a pleasure to state here that one great
Christian scholar did honour to religion and to himself by
quietly accepting the claims of science and making the best of
them, despite all these clamours. This man was Nicholas Wiseman,
better known afterward as Cardinal Wiseman. The conduct of this
pillar of the Roman Catholic Church contrasts admirably with that
of timid Protestants, who were filling England with shrieks and
denunciations.[149]

[149] Wiseman, Twelve Lectures on the Connection between Science
and Revealed Religion, first American edition, New York, 1837.
As to the comparative severity of the struggle regarding
astronomy, geology, etc., in the Catholic and Protestant
countries, see Lecky's England in the Eighteenth Century, chap.
ix, p. 525.

And here let it be noted that one of the most interesting
skirmishes in this war occurred in New England. Prof. Stuart,
of Andover, justly honoured as a Hebrew scholar, declared that to
speak of six periods of time for the creation was flying in the
face of Scripture; that Genesis expressly speaks of six days,
each made up of "the evening and the morning," and not six
periods of time.

To him replied a professor in Yale College, James Kingsley. In
an article admirable for keen wit and kindly temper, he showed
that Genesis speaks just as clearly of a solid firmament as of
six ordinary days, and that, if Prof. Stuart had surmounted one
difficulty and accepted the Copernican theory, he might as well
get over another and accept the revelations of geology. The
encounter was quick and decisive, and the victory was with
science and the broader scholarship of Yale.[150]

[150] See Silliman's Journal, vol. xxx, p. 114.

Perhaps the most singular attempt against geology was made by a
fine survival of the eighteenth century Don--Dean Cockburn, of
York--to SCOLD its champions off the field. Having no adequate
knowledge of the new science, he opened a battery of abuse,
giving it to the world at large from the pulpit and through the
press, and even through private letters. From his pulpit in York
Minster he denounced Mary Somerville by name for those studies in
physical geography which have made her name honoured throughout
the world.

But the special object of his antipathy was the British
Association for the Advancement of Science. He issued a pamphlet
against it which went through five editions in two years, sent
solemn warnings to its president, and in various ways made life a
burden to Sedgwick, Buckland, and other eminent investigators who
ventured to state geological facts as they found them.

These weapons were soon seen to be ineffective; they were like
Chinese gongs and dragon lanterns against rifled cannon; the
work of science went steadily on.[151]

[151] Prof. Goldwin Smith informs me that the papers of Sir
Robert Peel, yet unpublished, contain very curious specimens of
the epistles of Dean Cockburn. See also Personal Recollections
of Mary Somerville, Boston, 1874, pp. 139 and 375. Compare with
any statement of his religious views that Dean Cockburn was able
to make, the following from Mrs. Somerville: "Nothing has
afforded me so convincing a proof of the Deity as these purely
mental conceptions of numerical and methematical science which
have been, by slow degrees, vouchesafed to man--and are still
granted in these latter times by the differential calculus, now
supeseded by the higher algebra--all of which must have existed
in that sublimely omniscient mind from eternity. See also The
Life and Letters of Adam Sedgwick, Cambridge, 1890, vol. ii, pp.
76 and following.

III. THE FIRST GREAT EFFORT AT COMPROMISE, BASED ON
THE FLOOD OF NOAH.

Long before the end of the struggle already described, even at a
very early period, the futility of the usual scholastic weapons
had been seen by the more keen-sighted champions of orthodoxy;
and, as the difficulties of the ordinary attack upon science
became more and more evident, many of these champions endeavoured
to patch up a truce. So began the third stage in the war--the
period of attempts at compromise.

The position which the compromise party took was that the fossils
were produced by the Deluge of Noah.

This position was strong, for it was apparently based upon
Scripture. Moreover, it had high ecclesiastical sanction, some
of the fathers having held that fossil remains, even on the
highest mountains, represented animals destroyed at the Deluge.
Tertullian was especially firm on this point, and St. Augustine
thought that a fossil tooth discovered in North Africa must have
belonged to one of the giants mentioned in Scripture.[152]

[152] For Tertullian, see his De Pallio, c. ii (Migne, Patr.
Lat., vol. ii, p. 1033). For Augustine's view, see Cuvier,
Recherches sur les Ossements fossiles, fourth edition, vol. ii,
p. 143.

In the sixteenth century especially, weight began to be attached
to this idea by those who felt the worthlessness of various
scholastic explanations. Strong men in both the Catholic and the
Protestant camps accepted it; but the man who did most to give
it an impulse into modern theology was Martin Luther. He easily
saw that scholastic phrase-making could not meet the difficulties
raised by fossils, and he naturally urged the doctrine of their
origin at Noah's Flood.[153]

[153] For Luther's opinion, see his Commentary on Genesis.

With such support, it soon became the dominant theory in
Christendom: nothing seemed able to stand against it; but
before the end of the same sixteenth century it met some serious
obstacles. Bernard Palissy, one of the most keen-sighted of
scientific thinkers in France, as well as one of the most devoted
of Christians, showed that it was utterly untenable.
Conscientious investigators in other parts of Europe, and
especially in Italy, showed the same thing; all in vain.[154]
In vain did good men protest against the injury sure to be
brought upon religion by tying it to a scientific theory sure to
be exploded; the doctrine that fossils are the remains of animals
drowned at the Flood continued to be upheld by the great majority
of theological leaders for nearly three centuries as "sound
doctrine," and as a blessed means of reconciling science with
Scripture. To sustain this scriptural view, efforts energetic
and persistent were put forth both by Catholics and Protestants.

[154] For a very full statement of the honourable record of Italy
in this respect, and for the enlightened views of some Italian
churchmen, see Stoppani, Il Dogma a le Scienze Positive, Milan,
1886, pp. 203 et seq.

In France, the learned Benedictine, Calmet, in his great works on
the Bible, accepted it as late as the beginning of the eighteenth
century, believing the mastodon's bones exhibited by Mazurier to
be those of King Teutobocus, and holding them valuable testimony
to the existence of the giants mentioned in Scripture and of the
early inhabitants of the earth overwhelmed by the Flood.[155]

[155] For the steady adherance to this sacred theory, see Audiat,
Vie de Palissy, p. 412, and Cantu, Histoire Universelle, vol. xv,
p. 492. For Calmet, see his Dissertation sur les Geants, cited
in Berger de Xivery, Traditions Teratologiques, p. 191.

But the greatest champion appeared in England. We have already
seen how, near the close of the seventeenth century, Thomas
Burnet prepared the way in his Sacred Theory of the Earth by
rejecting the discoveries of Newton, and showing how sin led to
the breaking up of the "foundations of the great deep," and we
have also seen how Whiston, in his New Theory of the Earth,
while yielding a little and accepting the discoveries of Newton,
brought in a comet to aid in producing the Deluge; but far more
important than these in permanent influence was John Woodward,
professor at Gresham College, a leader in scientific thought at
the University of Cambridge, and, as a patient collector of
fossils and an earnest investigator of their meaning, deserving
of the highest respect. In 1695 he published his Natural History
of the Earth, and rendered one great service to science, for he
yielded another point, and thus destroyed the foundations for the
old theory of fossils. He showed that they were not "sports of
Nature," or "models inserted by the Creator in the strata for
some inscrutable purpose," but that they were really remains of
living beings, as Xenophanes had asserted two thousand years
before him. So far, he rendered a great service both to science
and religion; but, this done, the text of the Old Testament
narrative and the famous passage in St. Peter's Epistle were too
strong for him, and he, too, insisted that the fossils were
produced by the Deluge. Aided by his great authority, the
assault on the true scientific position was vigorous: Mazurier
exhibited certain fossil remains of a mammoth discovered in
France as bones of the giants mentioned in Scripture; Father
Torrubia did the same thing in Spain; Increase Mather sent to
England similar remains discovered in America, with a like
statement.

For the edification of the faithful, such "bones of the giants
mentioned in Scripture" were hung up in public places. Jurieu
saw some of them thus suspended in one of the churches of
Valence; and Henrion, apparently under the stimulus thus given,
drew up tables showing the size of our antediluvian ancestors,
giving the height of Adam as 123 feet 9 inches and that of Eve as
118 feet 9 inches and 9 lines.[156]

[156] See Cuvier, Recherches sur les Ossements fossiles, fourth
edition, vol. ii, p. 56; also Geoffrey St.-Hilaire, cited by
Berger de Xivery, Traditions Teratologiques, p. 190.

But the most brilliant service rendered to the theological theory
came from another quarter for, in 1726, Scheuchzer, having
discovered a large fossil lizard, exhibited it to the world as
the "human witness of the Deluge":[157] this great discovery was
hailed everywhere with joy, for it seemed to prove not only that
human beings were drowned at the Deluge, but that "there were
giants in those days."  Cheered by the applause thus gained, he
determined to make the theological position impregnable. Mixing
together various texts of Scripture with notions derived from the
philosophy of Descartes and the speculations of Whiston, he
developed the theory that "the fountains of the great deep" were
broken up by the direct physical action of the hand of God,
which, being literally applied to the axis of the earth, suddenly
stopped the earth's rotation, broke up "the fountains of the
great deep," spilled the water therein contained, and produced
the Deluge. But his service to sacred science did not end here,
for he prepared an edition of the Bible, in which magnificent
engravings in great number illustrated his view and enforced it
upon all readers. Of these engravings no less than thirty-four
were devoted to the Deluge alone.[158]

[157] Homo diluvii testis.

[158] See Zoeckler, vol. ii, p. 172; also Scheuchzer, Physica
Sacra, Augustae Vindel et Ulmae, 1732. For the ancient belief
regarding giants, see Leopoldi, Saggio. For accounts of the
views of Mazaurier and Scheuchzer, see Cuvier; also Buchner, Man
in Past, Present, and Future, English translation, pp. 235, 236.
For Increase Mather's views, see Philosophical Transactions, vol.
xxiv, p. 85. As to similar fossils sent from New York to the
Royal Society as remains of giants, see Weld, History of the
Royal Society, vol. i, p. 421. For Father Torrubia and his
Gigantologia Espanola, see D'Archiac, Introduction a l'Etude de
la Paleontologie Stratigraphique, Paris, 1864, p. 201. For
admirable summaries, see Lyell, Principles of Geology, London,
1867; D'Archiac, Geologie et Paleontologie, Paris, 1866; Pictet,
Traite de Paleontologie, Paris, 1853; Vezian, Prodrome de la
Geologie, Paris, 1863; Haeckel, History of Creation, English
translation, New York, 1876, chap. iii; and for recent progress,
Prof. O. S. Marsh's Address on the History and Methods of
Paleontology.

In the midst all this came an episode very comical but very
instructive; for it shows that the attempt to shape the
deductions of science to meet the exigencies of dogma may mislead
heterodoxy as absurdly as orthodoxy.

About the year 1760 news of the discovery of marine fossils in
various elevated districts of Europe reached Voltaire. He, too,
had a theologic system to support, though his system was opposed
to that of the sacred books of the Hebrews; and, fearing that
these new discoveries might be used to support the Mosaic
accounts of the Deluge, all his wisdom and wit were compacted
into arguments to prove that the fossil fishes were remains of
fishes intended for food, but spoiled and thrown away by
travellers; that the fossil shells were accidentally dropped by
crusaders and pilgrims returning from the Holy Land; and that
the fossil bones found between Paris and Etampes were parts of a
skeleton belonging to the cabinet of some ancient philosopher.
Through chapter after chapter, Voltaire, obeying the supposed
necessities of his theology, fought desperately the growing
results of the geologic investigations of his time.[159]

[159] See Voltaire, Dissertation sur les Changements arrives dans
notre Globe; also Voltaire, Les Singularities de la Nature, chap.
xii; also Jevons, Principles of Science, vol. ii, p. 328.

But far more prejudicial to Christianity was the continued effort
on the other side to show that the fossils were caused by the
Deluge of Noah.

No supposition was too violent to support this theory, which was
considered vital to the Bible. By taking the mere husks and
rinds of biblical truth for truth itself, by taking sacred poetry
as prose, and by giving a literal interpretation of it, the
followers of Burnet, Whiston, and Woodward built up systems which
bear to real geology much the same relation that the Christian
Topography of Cosmas bears to real geography. In vain were
exhibited the absolute geological, zoological, astronomical
proofs that no universal deluge, or deluge covering any large
part of the earth, had taken place within the last six thousand
or sixty thousand years; in vain did so enlightened a churchman
as Bishop Clayton declare that the Deluge could not have extended
beyond that district where Noah lived before the Flood; in vain
did others, like Bishop Croft and Bishop Stillingfleet, and the
nonconformist Matthew Poole, show that the Deluge might not have
been and probably was not universal; in vain was it shown that,
even if there had been a universal deluge, the fossils were not
produced by it: the only answers were the citation of the text,
"And all the high mountains which were under the whole heaven
were covered," and, to clinch the matter, Worthington and men
like him insisted that any argument to show that fossils were not
remains of animals drowned at the Deluge of Noah was
"infidelity."  In England, France, and Germany, belief that the
fossils were produced by the Deluge of Noah was widely insisted
upon as part of that faith essential to salvation.[160]

[160] For a candid summary of the proofs from geology, astronomy,
and zoology, that the Noachian Deluge was not universally or
widely extended, see McClintock and Strong, Cyclopedia of
Biblical Theology and Ecclesiastical Literature, article Deluge.
For general history, see Lyell, D'Archiac, and Vezian. For
special cases showing the bitterness of the conflict, see the
Rev. Mr. Davis's Life of Rev. Dr. Pye Smith, passim. For a late
account, see Prof. Huxley on The Lights of the Church and the
Light of Science, in the Nineteenth Century for July, 1890.

But the steady work of science went on: not all the force of the
Church--not even the splendid engravings in Scheuchzer's
Bible--could stop it, and the foundations of this theological
theory began to crumble away. The process was, indeed, slow; it
required a hundred and twenty years for the searchers of God's
truth, as revealed in Nature--such men as Hooke, Linnaeus,
Whitehurst, Daubenton, Cuvier, and William Smith--to push their
works under this fabric of error, and, by statements which could
not be resisted, to undermine it. As we arrive at the beginning
of the nineteenth century, science is becoming irresistible in
this field. Blumenbach, Von Buch, and Schlotheim led the way,
but most important on the Continent was the work of Cuvier. In
the early years of the present century his researches among
fossils began to throw new light into the whole subject of
geology. He was, indeed, very conservative, and even more wary
and diplomatic; seeming, like Voltaire, to feel that "among
wolves one must howl a little."  It was a time of reaction.
Napoleon had made peace with the Church, and to disturb that
peace was akin to treason. By large but vague concessions Cuvier
kept the theologians satisfied, while he undermined their
strongest fortress. The danger was instinctively felt by some of
the champions of the Church, and typical among these was
Chateaubriand, who in his best-known work, once so great, now so
little--the Genius of Christianity--grappled with the questions
of creation by insisting upon a sort of general deception "in the
beginning," under which everything was created by a sudden fiat,
but with appearances of pre-existence. His words are as follows:
"It was part of the perfection and harmony of the nature which
was displayed before men's eyes that the deserted nests of last
year's birds should be seen on the trees, and that the seashore
should be covered with shells which had been the abode of fish,
and yet the world was quite new, and nests and shells had never
been inhabited."[161] But the real victory was with Brongniart,
who, about 1820, gave forth his work on fossil plants, and thus
built a barrier against which the enemies of science raged in
vain.[162]

[161] Genie du Christianisme, chap.v, pp. 1-14, cited by Reusch,
vol. i, p. 250.

[162] For admirable sketches of Brongniart and other
paleobotanists, see Ward, as above.

Still the struggle was not ended, and, a few years later, a
forlorn hope was led in England by Granville Penn.

His fundamental thesis was that "our globe has undergone only two
revolutions, the Creation and the Deluge, and both by the
immediate fiat of the Almighty"; he insisted that the Creation
took place in exactly six days of ordinary time, each made up of
"the evening and the morning"; and he ended with a piece of that
peculiar presumption so familiar to the world, by calling on
Cuvier and all other geologists to "ask for the old paths and
walk therein until they shall simplify their system and reduce
their numerous revolutions to the two events or epochs only--the
six days of Creation and the Deluge."[163] The geologists showed
no disposition to yield to this peremptory summons; on the
contrary, the President of the British Geological Society, and
even so eminent a churchman and geologist as Dean Buckland, soon
acknowledged that facts obliged them to give up the theory that
the fossils of the coal measures were deposited at the Deluge of
Noah, and to deny that the Deluge was universal.

[163] See the Works of Granville Penn, vol. ii, p. 273.

The defection of Buckland was especially felt by the orthodox
party. His ability, honesty, and loyalty to his profession, as
well as his position as Canon of Christ Church and Professor of
Geology at Oxford, gave him great authority, which he exerted to
the utmost in soothing his brother ecclesiastics. In his
inaugural lecture he had laboured to show that geology confirmed
the accounts of Creation and the Flood as given in Genesis, and
in 1823, after his cave explorations had revealed overwhelming
evidences of the vast antiquity of the earth, he had still clung
to the Flood theory in his Reliquiae Diluvianae.

This had not, indeed, fully satisfied the anti-scientific party,
but as a rule their attacks upon him took the form not so much of
abuse as of humorous disparagement. An epigram by Shuttleworth,
afterward Bishop of Chichester, in imitation of Pope's famous
lines upon Newton, ran as follows:

"Some doubts were once expressed about the Flood:
Buckland arose, and all was clear as mud."

On his leaving Oxford for a journey to southern Europe, Dean
Gaisford was heard to exclaim: "Well, Buckland is gone to Italy;
so, thank God, we shall have no more of this geology!"

Still there was some comfort as long as Buckland held to the
Deluge theory; but, on his surrender, the combat deepened:
instead of epigrams and caricatures came bitter attacks, and from
the pulpit and press came showers of missiles. The worst of
these were hurled at Lyell. As we have seen, he had published in
1830 his Principles of Geology. Nothing could have been more
cautious. It simply gave an account of the main discoveries up
to that time, drawing the necessary inferences with plain yet
convincing logic, and it remains to this day one of those works
in which the Anglo-Saxon race may most justly take pride,--one of
the land-marks in the advance of human thought.

But its tendency was inevitably at variance with the Chaldean and
other ancient myths and legends regarding the Creation and Deluge
which the Hebrews had received from the older civilizations among
their neighbours, and had incorporated into the sacred books
which they transmitted to the modern world; it was therefore
extensively "refuted."

Theologians and men of science influenced by them insisted that
his minimizing of geological changes, and his laying stress on
the gradual action of natural causes still in force, endangered
the sacred record of Creation and left no place for miraculous
intervention; and when it was found that he had entirely cast
aside their cherished idea that the great geological changes of
the earth's surface and the multitude of fossil remains were due
to the Deluge of Noah, and had shown that a far longer time was
demanded for Creation than any which could possibly be deduced
from the Old Testament genealogies and chronicles, orthodox
indignation burst forth violently; eminent dignitaries of the
Church attacked him without mercy and for a time he was under
social ostracism.

As this availed little, an effort was made on the scientific side
to crush him beneath the weighty authority of Cuvier; but the
futility of this effort was evident when it was found that
thinking men would no longer listen to Cuvier and persisted in
listening to Lyell. The great orthodox text-book, Cuvier's
Theory of the Earth, became at once so discredited in the
estimation of men of science that no new edition of it was called
for, while Lyell's work speedily ran through twelve editions and
remained a firm basis of modern thought.[164]

[164] For Buckland and the various forms of attack upon him, see
Gordon, Life of Buckland, especially pp. 10, 26, 136. For the
attack on Lyell and his book, see Huxley, The Lights of the
Church and the Light of Science.

As typical of his more moderate opponents we may take Fairholme,
who in 1837 published his Mosaic Deluge, and argued that no
early convulsions of the earth, such as those supposed by
geologists, could have taken place, because there could have been
no deluge "before moral guilt could possibly have been
incurred"--that is to say, before the creation of mankind. In
touching terms he bewailed the defection of the President of the
Geological Society and Dean Buckland--protesting against
geologists who "persist in closing their eyes upon the solemn
declarations of the Almighty"

Still the geologists continued to seek truth: the germs planted
especially by William Smith, "the Father of English Geology" were
developed by a noble succession of investigators, and the victory
was sure. Meanwhile those theologians who felt that denunciation
of science as "godless" could accomplish little, laboured upon
schemes for reconciling geology with Genesis. Some of these show
amazing ingenuity, but an eminent religious authority, going over
them with great thoroughness, has well characterized them as
"daring and fanciful."  Such attempts have been variously
classified, but the fact regarding them all is that each mixes up
more or less of science with more or less of Scripture, and
produces a result more or less absurd. Though a few men here and
there have continued these exercises, the capitulation of the
party which set the literal account of the Deluge of Noah against
the facts revealed by geology was at last clearly made.[165]

[165] For Fairholme, see his Mosaic Deluge, London, 1837, p. 358.
For a very just characterization of various schemes of
"reconciliation," see Shields, The Final Philosophy, p. 340.

One of the first evidences of the completeness of this surrender
has been so well related by the eminent physiologist, Dr. W. B.
Carpenter, that it may best be given in his own words: "You are
familiar with a book of considerable value, Dr. W. Smith's
Dictionary of the Bible. I happened to know the influences
under which that dictionary was framed. The idea of the
publisher and of the editor was to give as much scholarship and
such results of modern criticism as should be compatible with a
very judicious conservatism. There was to be no objection to
geology, but the universality of the Deluge was to be strictly
maintained. The editor committed the article Deluge to a man of
very considerable ability, but when the article came to him he
found that it was so excessively heretical that he could not
venture to put it in. There was not time for a second article
under that head, and if you look in that dictionary you will find
under the word Deluge a reference to Flood. Before Flood came, a
second article had been commissioned from a source that was
believed safely conservative; but when the article came in it was
found to be worse than the first. A third article was then
commissioned, and care was taken to secure its `safety.' If you
look for the word Flood in the dictionary, you will find a
reference to Noah. Under that name you will find an article
written by a distinguished professor of Cambridge, of which I
remember that Bishop Colenso said to me at the time, `In a very
guarded way the writer concedes the whole thing.'  You will see
by this under what trammels scientific thought has laboured in
this department of inquiry."[166]

[166] See Official Report of the National Conference of Unitarian
and other Christian Churches held at Saratoga, 1882, p. 97.

A similar surrender was seen when from a new edition of Horne's
Introduction to the Scriptures, the standard textbook of
orthodoxy, its accustomed use of fossils to prove the
universality of the Deluge was quietly dropped.[167]

[167] This was about 1856; see Tylor, Early History of Mankind,
p. 329.

A like capitulation in the United States was foreshadowed in
1841, when an eminent Professor of Biblical Literature and
interpretation in the most important theological seminary of the
Protestant Episcopal Church, Dr. Samuel Turner, showed his
Christian faith and courage by virtually accepting the new view;
and the old contention was utterly cast away by the thinking men
of another great religious body when, at a later period, two
divines among the most eminent for piety and learning in the
Methodist Episcopal Church inserted in the Biblical Cyclopaedia,
published under their supervision, a candid summary of the proofs
from geology, astronomy, and zoology that the Deluge of Noah was
not universal, or even widely extended, and this without protest
from any man of note in any branch of the American Church.[168]

[168] For Dr. Turner, see his Companion to the Book of Genesis,
London and New York, 1841, pp. 216-219. For McClintock and
Strong, see their Cyclopaedia of Biblical Knowledge, etc.,
article Deluge. For similar surrenders of the Deluge in various
other religious encyclopedias and commentaries, see Huxley,
Essays on controverted questions, chap. xiii.

The time when the struggle was relinquished by enlightened
theologians of the Roman Catholic Church may be fixed at about
1862, when Reusch, Professor of Theology at Bonn, in his work on
The Bible and Nature, cast off the old diluvial theory and all
its supporters, accepting the conclusions of science.[169]

[169] See Reusch, Bibel und Natur, chap. xxi.

But, though the sacred theory with the Deluge of Noah as a
universal solvent for geological difficulties was evidently
dying, there still remained in various quarters a touching
fidelity to it. In Roman Catholic countries the old theory was
widely though quietly cherished, and taught from the religious
press, the pulpit, and the theological professor's chair. Pope
Pius IX was doubtless in sympathy with this feeling when, about
1850, he forbade the scientific congress of Italy to meet at
Bologna.[170]

[170] See Whiteside, Italy in the Nineteenth Century, vol. iii,
chap. xiv.

In 1856 Father Debreyne congratulated the theologians of France
on their admirable attitude: "Instinctively," he says, "they
still insist upon deriving the fossils from Noah's Flood."[171]
In 1875 the Abbe Choyer published at Paris and Angers a text-book
widely approved by Church authorities, in which he took similar
ground; and in 1877 the Jesuit father Bosizio published at
Mayence a treatise on Geology and the Deluge, endeavouring to
hold the world to the old solution of the problem, allowing,
indeed, that the "days" of Creation were long periods, but making
atonement for this concession by sneers at Darwin.[172]

[171] See Zoeckler, vol. ii, p. 472.

[172] See Zoeckler, vol. ii, p. 478, and Bosizio, Geologie und
die Sundfluth, Mayence, 1877, preface, p. xiv.

In the Russo-Greek Church, in 1869, Archbishop Macarius, of
Lithuania, urged the necessity of believing that Creation in six
days of ordinary time and the Deluge of Noah are the only causes
of all that geology seeks to explain; and, as late as 1876,
another eminent theologian of the same Church went even farther,
and refused to allow the faithful to believe that any change had
taken place since "the beginning" mentioned in Genesis, when the
strata of the earth were laid, tilted, and twisted, and the
fossils scattered among them by the hand of the Almighty during
six ordinary days.[173]

[173] See Zoeckler, vol. ii, p. 472, 571, and elsewhere; also
citations in Reusch and Shields.

In the Lutheran branch of the Protestant Church we also find
echoes of the old belief. Keil, eminent in scriptural
interpretation at the University of Dorpat, gave forth in 1860 a
treatise insisting that geology is rendered futile and its
explanations vain by two great facts: the Curse which drove Adam
and Eve out of Eden, and the Flood that destroyed all living
things save Noah, his family, and the animals in the ark. In
1867, Phillippi, and in 1869, Dieterich, both theologians of
eminence, took virtually the same ground in Germany, the latter
attempting to beat back the scientific hosts with a phrase
apparently pithy, but really hollow--the declaration that "modern
geology observes what is, but has no right to judge concerning
the beginning of things."  As late as 1876, Zugler took a similar
view, and a multitude of lesser lights, through pulpit and press,
brought these antiscientific doctrines to bear upon the people at
large--the only effect being to arouse grave doubts regarding
Christianity among thoughtful men, and especially among young
men, who naturally distrusted a cause using such weapons.

For just at this time the traditional view of the Deluge received
its death-blow, and in a manner entirely unexpected. By the
investigations of George Smith among the Assyrian tablets of the
British Museum, in 1872, and by his discoveries just afterward in
Assyria, it was put beyond a reasonable doubt that a great mass
of accounts in Genesis are simply adaptations of earlier and
especially of Chaldean myths and legends. While this proved to
be the fact as regards the accounts of Creation and the fall of
man, it was seen to be most strikingly so as regards the Deluge.
The eleventh of the twelve tablets, on which the most important
of these inscriptions was found, was almost wholly preserved, and
it revealed in this legend, dating from a time far earlier than
that of Moses, such features peculiar to the childhood of the
world as the building of the great ship or ark to escape the
flood, the careful caulking of its seams, the saving of a man
beloved of Heaven, his selecting and taking with him into the
vessel animals of all sorts in couples, the impressive final
closing of the door, the sending forth different birds as the
flood abated, the offering of sacrifices when the flood had
subsided, the joy of the Divine Being who had caused the flood as
the odour of the sacrifice reached his nostrils; while throughout
all was shown that partiality for the Chaldean sacred number
seven which appears so constantly in the Genesis legends and
throughout the Hebrew sacred books.

Other devoted scholars followed in the paths thus opened--Sayce
in England, Lenormant in France, Schrader in Germany--with the
result that the Hebrew account of the Deluge, to which for ages
theologians had obliged all geological research to conform, was
quietly relegated, even by most eminent Christian scholars, to
the realm of myth and legend.[174]

[174] For George Smith, see his Chaldean Account of Genesis, New
York, 1876, especially pp. 36, 263, 286; also his special work on
the subject. See also Lenormant, Les Origins de l'Histoire,
Paris, 1880, chap. viii. For Schrader, see his The Cuneiform
Inscriptions and the Old Testament, Whitehouse's translation,
London, 1885, vol. i, pp. 47-49 and 58-60, and elsewhere.

Sundry feeble attempts to break the force of this discovery, and
an evidently widespread fear to have it known, have certainly
impaired not a little the legitimate influence of the Christian
clergy.

And yet this adoption of Chaldean myths into the Hebrew
Scriptures furnishes one of the strongest arguments for the value
of our Bible as a record of the upward growth of man; for, while
the Chaldean legend primarily ascribes the Deluge to the mere
arbitrary caprice of one among many gods (Bel), the Hebrew
development of the legend ascribes it to the justice, the
righteousness, of the Supreme God; thus showing the evolution of
a higher and nobler sentiment which demanded a moral cause
adequate to justify such a catastrophe.

Unfortunately, thus far, save in a few of the broader and nobler
minds among the clergy, the policy of ignoring such new
revelations has prevailed, and the results of this policy, both
in Roman Catholic and in Protestant countries, are not far to
seek. What the condition of thought is among the middle classes
of France and Italy needs not to be stated here. In Germany, as
a typical fact, it may be mentioned that there was in the year
1881 church accommodation in the city of Berlin for but two per
cent of the population, and that even this accommodation was more
than was needed. This fact is not due to the want of a deep
religious spirit among the North Germans: no one who has lived
among them can doubt the existence of such a spirit; but it is
due mainly to the fact that, while the simple results of
scientific investigation have filtered down among the people at
large, the dominant party in the Lutheran Church has steadily
refused to recognise this fact, and has persisted in imposing on
Scripture the fetters of literal and dogmatic interpretation
which Germany has largely outgrown. A similar danger threatens
every other country in which the clergy pursue a similar policy.
No thinking man, whatever may be his religious views, can fail to
regret this. A thoughtful, reverent, enlightened clergy is a
great blessing to any country, and anything which undermines
their legitimate work of leading men out of the worship of
material things to the consideration of that which is highest is
a vast misfortune.[175]

[175] For the foregoing statements regarding Germany the writer
relies on his personal observation as a student at the University
of Berlin in 1856, as a traveller at various periods afterward,
and as Minister of the United States in 1879, 1880, and 1881.

IV. FINAL EFFORTS AT COMPROMISE.--THE VICTORY OF
SCIENCE COMPLETE.

Before concluding, it may be instructive to note a few especially
desperate attempts at truces or compromises, such as always
appear when the victory of any science has become absolutely
sure. Typical among the earliest of these may be mentioned the
effort of Carl von Raumer in 1819. With much pretension to
scientific knowledge, but with aspirations bounded by the limits
of Prussian orthodoxy, he made a laboured attempt to produce a
statement which, by its vagueness, haziness, and "depth," should
obscure the real questions at issue. This statement appeared in
the shape of an argument, used by Bertrand and others in the
previous century, to prove that fossil remains of plants in the
coal measures had never existed as living plants, but had been
simply a "result of the development of imperfect plant embryos";
and the same misty theory was suggested to explain the existence
of fossil animals without supposing the epochs and changes
required by geological science.

In 1837 Wagner sought to uphold this explanation; but it was so
clearly a mere hollow phrase, unable to bear the weight of the
facts to be accounted for, that it was soon given up.

Similar attempts were made throughout Europe, the most noteworthy
appearing in England. In 1853 was issued an anonymous work
having as its title A Brief and Complete Refutation of the
Anti-Scriptural Theory of Geologists: the author having revived
an old idea, and put a spark of life into it--this idea being
that "all the organisms found in the depths of the earth were
made on the first of the six creative days, as models for the
plants and animals to be created on the third, fifth, and sixth
days."[176]

[176] See Zoeckler, vol. ii, p. 475.

But while these attempts to preserve the old theory as to fossil
remains of lower animals were thus pressed, there appeared upon
the geological field a new scientific column far more terrible to
the old doctrines than any which had been seen previously.

For, just at the close of the first quarter of the nineteenth
century, geologists began to examine the caves and beds of drift
in various parts of the world; and within a few years from that
time a series of discoveries began in France, in Belgium, in
England, in Brazil, in Sicily, in India, in Egypt, and in
America, which established the fact that a period of time much
greater than any which had before been thought of had elapsed
since the first human occupation of the earth. The chronologies
of Archbishop Usher, Petavius, Bossuet, and the other great
authorities on which theology had securely leaned, were found
worthless. It was clearly seen that, no matter how well based
upon the Old Testament genealogies and lives of the patriarchs,
all these systems must go for nothing. The most conservative
geologists were gradually obliged to admit that man had been upon
the earth not merely six thousand, or sixty thousand, or one
hundred and sixty thousand years. And when, in 1863, Sir Charles
Lyell, in his book on The Antiquity of Man, retracted solemnly
his earlier view--yielding with a reluctance almost pathetic, but
with a thoroughness absolutely convincing--the last stronghold of
orthodoxy in this field fell.[177]

[177] See Prof. Marsh's address as President of the Society for
the Advancement of Science, in 1879; and for a development of the
matter, see the chapters on The Antiquity of Man and Egyptology
and the Fall of Man and Anthropology, in this work.

The supporters of a theory based upon the letter of Scripture,
who had so long taken the offensive, were now obliged to fight
upon the defensive and at fearful odds. Various lines of defence
were taken; but perhaps the most pathetic effort was that made
in the year 1857, in England, by Gosse. As a naturalist he had
rendered great services to zoological science, but he now
concentrated his energies upon one last effort to save the
literal interpretation of Genesis and the theological structure
built upon it. In his work entitled Omphalos he developed the
theory previously urged by Granville Penn, and asserted a new
principle called "prochronism."  In accordance with this, all
things were created by the Almighty hand literally within the six
days, each made up of "the evening and the morning," and each
great branch of creation was brought into existence in an
instant. Accepting a declaration of Dr. Ure, that "neither
reason nor revelation will justify us in extending the origin of
the material system beyond six thousand years from our own days,"
Gosse held that all the evidences of convulsive changes and long
epochs in strata, rocks, minerals, and fossils are simply
"APPEARANCES"--only that and nothing more. Among these mere
"appearances," all created simultaneously, were the glacial
furrows and scratches on rocks, the marks of retreat on rocky
masses, as at Niagara, the tilted and twisted strata, the piles
of lava from extinct volcanoes, the fossils of every sort in
every part of the earth, the foot-tracks of birds and reptiles,
the half-digested remains of weaker animals found in the
fossilized bodies of the stronger, the marks of hyenas' teeth on
fossilized bones found in various caves, and even the skeleton of
the Siberian mammoth at St. Petersburg with lumps of flesh
bearing the marks of wolves' teeth--all these, with all gaps and
imperfections, he urged mankind to believe came into being in an
instant. The preface of the work is especially touching, and it
ends with the prayer that science and Scripture may be reconciled
by his theory, and "that the God of truth will deign so to use
it, and if he do, to him be all the glory."[177]  At the close of
the whole book Gosse declared: "The field is left clear and
undisputed for the one witness on the opposite side, whose
testimony is as follows: `In six days Jehovah made heaven and
earth, the sea, and all that in them is.'"  This quotation he
placed in capital letters, as the final refutation of all that
the science of geology had built.

[177] See Gosse, Omphalos, London, 1857, p. 5, and passim; and
for a passage giving the keynote of the whole, with a most
farcical note on coprolites, see pp. 353, 354.

In other parts of Europe desperate attempts were made even later
to save the letter of our sacred books by the revival of a theory
in some respects more striking. To shape this theory to recent
needs, vague reminiscences of a text in Job regarding fire
beneath the earth, and vague conceptions of speculations made by
Humboldt and Laplace, were mingled with Jewish tradition. Out of
the mixture thus obtained Schubert developed the idea that the
Satanic "principalities and powers" formerly inhabiting our
universe plunged it into the chaos from which it was newly
created by a process accurately described in Genesis. Rougemont
made the earth one of the "morning stars" of Job, reduced to
chaos by Lucifer and his followers, and thence developed in
accordance with the nebular hypothesis. Kurtz evolved from this
theory an opinion that the geological disturbances were caused by
the opposition of the devil to the rescue of our universe from
chaos by the Almighty. Delitzsch put a similar idea into a more
scholastic jargon; but most desperate of all were the statements
of Dr. Anton Westermeyer, of Munich, in The Old Testament
vindicated from Modern Infidel Objections. The following
passage will serve to show his ideas: "By the fructifying
brooding of the Divine Spirit on the waters of the deep, creative
forces began to stir; the devils who inhabited the primeval
darkness and considered it their own abode saw that they were to
be driven from their possessions, or at least that their place of
habitation was to be contracted, and they therefore tried to
frustrate God's plan of creation and exert all that remained to
them of might and power to hinder or at least to mar the new
creation."  So came into being "the horrible and destructive
monsters, these caricatures and distortions of creation," of
which we have fossil remains. Dr. Westermeyer goes on to insist
that "whole generations called into existence by God succumbed to
the corruption of the devil, and for that reason had to be
destroyed"; and that "in the work of the six days God caused the
devil to feel his power in all earnest, and made Satan's
enterprise appear miserable and vain."[178]

[178] See Shields's Final Philosophy, pp. 340 et seq., and
Reusch's Nature and the Bible (English translation, 1886), vol.
i, pp. 318-320.

Such was the last important assault upon the strongholds of
geological science in Germany; and, in view of this and others
of the same kind, it is little to be wondered at that when, in
1870, Johann Silberschlag made an attempt to again base geology
upon the Deluge of Noah, he found such difficulties that, in a
touching passage, he expressed a desire to get back to the theory
that fossils were "sports of Nature."[179]

[179] See Reusch, vol. i, p. 264.

But the most noted among efforts to keep geology well within the
letter of Scripture is of still more recent date. In the year
1885 Mr. Gladstone found time, amid all his labours and cares as
the greatest parliamentary leader in England, to take the field
in the struggle for the letter of Genesis against geology.

On the face of it his effort seemed Quixotic, for he confessed at
the outset that in science he was "utterly destitute of that kind
of knowledge which carries authority," and his argument soon
showed that this confession was entirely true.

But he had some other qualities of which much might be expected:
great skill in phrase-making, great shrewdness in adapting the
meanings of single words to conflicting necessities in
discussion, wonderful power in erecting showy structures of
argument upon the smallest basis of fact, and a facility almost
preternatural in "explaining away" troublesome realities. So
striking was his power in this last respect, that a humorous
London chronicler once advised a bigamist, as his only hope, to
induce Mr. Gladstone to explain away one of his wives.

At the basis of this theologico-geological structure Mr.
Gladstone placed what he found in the text of Genesis: "A grand
fourfold division" of animated Nature "set forth in an orderly
succession of times."  And he arranged this order and succession
of creation as follows: "First, the water population; secondly,
the air population; thirdly, the land population of animals;
fourthly, the land population consummated in man."

His next step was to slide in upon this basis the apparently
harmless proposition that this division and sequence "is
understood to have been so affirmed in our time by natural
science that it may be taken as a demonstrated conclusion and
established fact."

Finally, upon these foundations he proceeded to build an argument
out of the coincidences thus secured between the record in the
Hebrew sacred books and the truths revealed by science as regards
this order and sequence, and he easily arrived at the desired
conclusion with which he crowned the whole structure, namely, as
regards the writer of Genesis, that "his knowledge was
divine."[180]

[180] See Mr. Gladstone's Dawn of Creation and Worship, a reply
to Dr. Reville, in the Nineteenth Century for November, 1885.

Such was the skeleton of the structure; it was abundantly
decorated with the rhetoric in which Mr. Gladstone is so skilful
an artificer, and it towered above "the average man" as a
structure beautiful and invincible--like some Chinese fortress in
the nineteenth century, faced with porcelain and defended with
crossbows.

Its strength was soon seen to be unreal. In an essay admirable
in its temper, overwhelming in its facts, and absolutely
convincing in its argument, Prof. Huxley, late President of the
Royal Society, and doubtless the most eminent contemporary
authority on the scientific questions concerned, took up the
matter.

Mr. Gladstone's first proposition, that the sacred writings give
us a great "fourfold division" created "in an orderly succession
of times," Prof. Huxley did not presume to gainsay.

As to Mr. Gladstone's second proposition, that "this great
fourfold division... created in an orderly succession of
times...has been so affirmed in our own time by natural science
that it may be taken as a demonstrated conclusion and established
fact," Prof. Huxley showed that, as a matter of fact, no such
"fourfold division" and "orderly succession" exist; that, so far
from establishing Mr. Gladstone's assumption that the population
of water, air, and land followed each other in the order given,
"all the evidence we possess goes to prove that they did not";
that the distribution of fossils through the various strata
proves that some land animals originated before sea animals; that
there has been a mixing of sea, land, and air "population"
utterly destructive to the "great fourfold division" and to the
creation "in an orderly succession of times"; that, so far is the
view presented in the sacred text, as stated by Mr. Gladstone,
from having been "so affirmed in our own time by natural science,
that it may be taken as a demonstrated conclusion and established
fact" that Mr. Gladstone's assertion is "directly contradictory
to facts known to every one who is acquainted with the elements
of natural science"; that Mr. Gladstone's only geological
authority, Cuvier, had died more than fifty years before, when
geological science was in its infancy [and he might have added,
when it was necessary to make every possible concession to the
Church]; and, finally, he challenged Mr. Gladstone to produce any
contemporary authority in geological science who would support
his so-called scriptural view. And when, in a rejoinder, Mr.
Gladstone attempted to support his view on the authority of Prof.
Dana, Prof. Huxley had no difficulty in showing from Prof.
Dana's works that Mr. Gladstone's inference was utterly
unfounded. But, while the fabric reared by Mr. Gladstone had
been thus undermined by Huxley on the scientific side, another
opponent began an attack from the biblical side. The Rev. Canon
Driver, professor at Mr. Gladstone's own University of Oxford,
took up the question in the light of scriptural interpretation.
In  regard to the comparative table drawn up by Sir J. W. Dawson,
showing the supposed correspondence between the scriptural and
the geological order of creation, Canon Driver said: "The two
series are evidently at variance. The geological record contains
no evidence of clearly defined periods corresponding to the
`days' of Genesis. In Genesis, vegetation is complete two days
before animal life appears. Geology shows that they appear
simultaneously--even if animal life does not appear first. In
Genesis, birds appear together with aquatic creatures, and
precede all land animals; according to the evidence of geology,
birds are unknown till a period much later than that at which
aquatic creatures (including fishes and amphibia) abound, and
they are preceded by numerous species of land animals--in
particular, by insects and other `creeping things.'"  Of the
Mosaic account of the existence of vegetation before the creation
of the sun, Canon Driver said, "No reconciliation of this
representation with the data of science has yet been found"; and
again: "From all that has been said, however reluctant we may be
to make the admission, only one conclusion seems possible. Read
without prejudice or bias, the narrative of Genesis i, creates an
impression at variance with the facts revealed by science."  The
eminent professor ends by saying that the efforts at
reconciliation are "different modes of obliterating the
characteristic features of Genesis, and of reading into it a view
which it does not express."

Thus fell Mr. Gladstone's fabric of coincidences between the
"great fourfold division" in Genesis and the facts ascertained by
geology. Prof. Huxley had shattered the scientific parts of the
structure, Prof. Driver had removed its biblical foundations,
and the last great fortress of the opponents of unfettered
scientific investigation was in ruins.

In opposition to all such attempts we may put a noble utterance
by a clergyman who has probably done more to save what is
essential in Christianity among English-speaking people than any
other ecclesiastic of his time. The late Dean of Westminster,
Dr. Arthur Stanley, was widely known and beloved on both
continents. In his memorial sermon after the funeral of Sir
Charles Lyell he said: "It is now clear to diligent students of
the Bible that the first and second chapters of Genesis contain
two narratives of the creation side by side, differing from each
other in almost every particular of time and place and order. It
is well known that, when the science of geology first arose, it
was involved in endless schemes of attempted reconciliation with
the letter of Scripture. There were, there are perhaps still,
two modes of reconciliation of Scripture and science, which have
been each in their day attempted, AND EACH HAS TOTALLY AND
DESERVEDLY FAILED. One is the endeavour to wrest the words of the
Bible from their natural meaning and FORCE IT TO SPEAK THE
LANGUAGE OF SCIENCE."  And again, speaking of the earliest known
example, which was the interpolation of the word "not" in
Leviticus xi, 6, he continues: "This is the earliest instance of
THE FALSIFICATION OF SCRIPTURE TO MEET THE DEMANDS OF SCIENCE;
and it has been followed in later times by the various efforts
which have been made to twist the earlier chapters of the book of
Genesis into APPARENT agreement with the last results of
geology--representing days not to be days, morning and evening
not to be morning and evening, the Deluge not to be the Deluge,
and the ark not to be the ark."

After a statement like this we may fitly ask, Which is the more
likely to strengthen Christianity for its work in the twentieth
century which we are now about to enter--a large, manly, honest,
fearless utterance like this of Arthur Stanley, or hair-splitting
sophistries, bearing in their every line the germs of failure,
like those attempted by Mr. Gladstone?

The world is finding that the scientific revelation of creation
is ever more and more in accordance with worthy conceptions of
that great Power working in and through the universe. More and
more it is seen that inspiration has never ceased, and that its
prophets and priests are not those who work to fit the letter of
its older literature to the needs of dogmas and sects, but those,
above all others, who patiently, fearlessly, and reverently
devote themselves to the search for truth as truth, in the faith
that there is a Power in the universe wise enough to make
truth-seeking safe and good enough to make truth-telling
useful.[181]

[181] For the Huxley-Gladstone controversy, see The Nineteenth
Century for 1885-'86. For Canon Driver, see his article, The
Cosmogony of Genesis, in The Expositor for January, 1886.

CHAPTER VI.

THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN EGYPTOLOGY, AND  ASSYRIOLOGY.

I. THE SACRED CHRONOLOGY.

In the great ranges of investigation which bear most directly
upon the origin of man, there are two in which Science within the
last few years has gained final victories. The significance of
these in changing, and ultimately in reversing, one of the
greatest currents of theological thought, can hardly be
overestimated; not even the tide set in motion by Cusa,
Copernicus, and Galileo was more powerful to bring in a new epoch
of belief.

The first of these conquests relates to the antiquity of man on
the earth.

The fathers of the early Christian Church, receiving all parts of
our sacred books as equally inspired, laid little, if any, less
stress on the myths, legends, genealogies, and tribal, family,
and personal traditions contained in the Old and the New
Testaments, than upon the most powerful appeals, the most
instructive apologues, and the most lofty poems of prophets,
psalmists, and apostles. As to the age of our planet and the
life of man upon it, they found in the Bible a carefully recorded
series of periods, extending from Adam to the building of the
Temple at Jerusalem, the length of each period being explicitly
given.

Thus they had a biblical chronology--full, consecutive, and
definite--extending from the first man created to an event of
known date well within ascertained profane history; as a result,
the early Christian commentators arrived at conclusions varying
somewhat, but in the main agreeing. Some, like Origen, Eusebius,
Lactantius, Clement of Alexandria, and the great fathers
generally of the first three centuries, dwelling especially upon
the Septuagint version of the Scriptures, thought that man's
creation took place about six thousand years before the Christian
era. Strong confirmation of this view was found in a simple
piece of purely theological reasoning: for, just as the seven
candlesticks of the Apocalypse were long held to prove the
existence of seven heavenly bodies revolving about the earth, so
it was felt that the six days of creation prefigured six thousand
years during which the earth in its first form was to endure;
and that, as the first Adam came on the sixth day, Christ, the
second Adam, had come at the sixth millennial period.
Theophilus, Bishop of Antioch, in the second century clinched
this argument with the text, "One day is with the Lord as a
thousand years."

On the other hand, Eusebius and St. Jerome, dwelling more
especially upon the Hebrew text, which we are brought up to
revere, thought that man's origin took place at a somewhat
shorter period before the Christian era; and St. Jerome's
overwhelming authority made this the dominant view throughout
western Europe during fifteen centuries.

The simplicity of these great fathers as regards chronology is
especially reflected from the tables of Eusebius. In these,
Moses, Joshua, and Bacchus,--Deborah, Orpheus, and the
Amazons,--Abimelech, the Sphinx, and Oedipus, appear together as
personages equally real, and their positions in chronology
equally ascertained.

At times great bitterness was aroused between those holding the
longer and those holding the shorter chronology, but after all
the difference between them, as we now see, was trivial; and it
may be broadly stated that in the early Church, "always,
everywhere, and by all," it was held as certain, upon the
absolute warrant of Scripture, that man was created from four to
six thousand years before the Christian era.

To doubt this, and even much less than this, was to risk
damnation. St. Augustine insisted that belief in the antipodes
and in the longer duration of the earth than six thousand years
were deadly heresies, equally hostile to Scripture. Philastrius,
the friend of St. Ambrose and St. Augustine, whose fearful
catalogue of heresies served as a guide to intolerance throughout
the Middle Ages, condemned with the same holy horror those who
expressed doubt as to the orthodox number of years since the
beginning of the world, and those who doubted an earthquake to be
the literal voice of an angry God, or who questioned the
plurality of the heavens, or who gainsaid the statement that God
brings out the stars from his treasures and hangs them up in the
solid firmament above the earth every night.

About the beginning of the seventh century Isidore of Seville,
the great theologian of his time, took up the subject. He
accepted the dominant view not only of Hebrew but of all other
chronologies, without anything like real criticism. The
childlike faith of his system may be imagined from his summaries
which follow. He tells us:

"Joseph lived one hundred and five years. Greece began to
cultivate grain."

"The Jews were in slavery in Egypt one hundred and forty-four
years. Atlas discovered astrology."

"Joshua ruled for twenty-seven years. Ericthonius yoked horses
together."

"Othniel, forty years. Cadmus introduced letters into Greece."

"Deborah, forty years. Apollo discovered the art of medicine and
invented the cithara."

"Gideon, forty years. Mercury invented the lyre and gave it to
Orpheus."

Reasoning in this general way, Isidore kept well under the longer
date; and, the great theological authority of southern Europe
having thus spoken, the question was virtually at rest throughout
Christendom for nearly a hundred years.

Early in the eighth century the Venerable Bede took up the
problem. Dwelling especially upon the received Hebrew text of
the Old Testament, he soon entangled himself in very serious
difficulties; but, in spite of the great fathers of the first
three centuries, he reduced the antiquity of man on the earth by
nearly a thousand years, and, in spite of mutterings against him
as coming dangerously near a limit which made the theological
argument from the six days of creation to the six ages of the
world look doubtful, his authority had great weight, and did much
to fix western Europe in its allegiance to the general system
laid down by Eusebius and Jerome.

In the twelfth century this belief was re-enforced by a tide of
thought from a very different quarter. Rabbi Moses Maimonides
and other Jewish scholars, by careful study of the Hebrew text,
arrived at conclusions diminishing the antiquity of man still
further, and thus gave strength throughout the Middle Ages to the
shorter chronology: it was incorporated into the sacred science
of Christianity; and Vincent of Beauvais, in his great Speculum
Historiale, forming part of that still more enormous work
intended to sum up all the knowledge possessed by the ages of
faith, placed the creation of man at about four thousand years
before our era.[182]

[182] For a table summing up the periods, from Adam to the
building of the Temple, explicitly given in the Scriptures, see
the admirable paper on The Pope and the Bible, in The
Contemporary Review for April, 1893. For the date of man's
creation as given by leading chronologists in various branches of
the Church, see L'Art de Verifier les Dates, Paris, 1819, vol. i,
pp. 27 et seq. In this edition there are sundry typographical
errors; compare with Wallace, True Age of the World, London,
1844. As to preference for the longer computation by the fathers
of the Church, see Clinton, Fasti Hellenici, vol. ii, p. 291.
For the sacred significance of the six days of creation in
ascertaining the antiquity of man, see especially Eichen,
Geschichte der mittelalterlichen Weltanschauung; also Wallace,
True Age of the World, pp. 2,3. For the views of St. Augustine,
see Topinard, Anthropologie, citing the De Civ. Dei., lib. xvi,
c. viii, c. x. For the views of Philastrius, see the De
Hoeresibus, c. 102, 112, et passim, in Migne, tome xii. For
Eusebius's simple credulity, see the tables in Palmer's Egyptian
Chronicles, vol. ii, pp. 828, 829. For Bede, see Usher's
Chronologia Sacra, cited in Wallace, True Age of the World, p.
35. For Isidore of Seville, see the Etymologia, lib. v, c. 39;
also lib. iii, in Migne, tome lxxxii.

At the Reformation this view was not disturbed. The same manner
of accepting the sacred text which led Luther, Melanchthon, and
the great Protestant leaders generally, to oppose the Copernican
theory, fixed them firmly in this biblical chronology; the
keynote was sounded for them by Luther when he said, "We know, on
the authority of Moses, that longer ago than six thousand years
the world did not exist."  Melanchthon, more exact, fixed the
creation of man at 3963 B.C.

But the great Christian scholars continued the old endeavour to
make the time of man's origin more precise: there seems to have
been a sort of fascination in the subject which developed a long
array of chronologists, all weighing the minutest indications in
our sacred books, until the Protestant divine De Vignolles, who
had given forty years to the study of biblical chronology,
declared in 1738 that he had gathered no less than two hundred
computations based upon Scripture, and no two alike.

As to the Roman Church, about 1580 there was published, by
authority of Pope Gregory XIII, the Roman Martyrology, and this,
both as originally published and as revised in 1640 under Pope
Urban VIII, declared that the creation of man took place 5199
years before Christ.

But of all who gave themselves up to these chronological studies,
the man who exerted the most powerful influence upon the dominant
nations of Christendom was Archbishop Usher. In 1650 he
published his Annals of the Ancient and New Testaments, and it at
once became the greatest authority for all English-speaking
peoples. Usher was a man of deep and wide theological learning,
powerful in controversy; and his careful conclusion, after years
of the most profound study of the Hebrew Scriptures, was that man
was created 4004 years before the Christian era. His verdict was
widely received as final; his dates were inserted in the margins
of the authorized version of the English Bible, and were soon
practically regarded as equally inspired with the sacred text
itself: to question them seriously was to risk preferment in the
Church and reputation in the world at large.

The same adhesion to the Hebrew Scriptures which had influenced
Usher brought leading men of the older Church to the same view:
men who would have burned each other at the stake for their
differences on other points, agreed on this: Melanchthon and
Tostatus, Lightfoot and Jansen, Salmeron and Scaliger, Petavius
and Kepler, inquisitors and reformers, Jesuits and Jansenists,
priests and rabbis, stood together in the belief that the
creation of man was proved by Scripture to have taken place
between 3900 and 4004 years before Christ.

In spite of the severe pressure of this line of authorities,
extending from St. Jerome and Eusebius to Usher and Petavius, in
favour of this scriptural chronology, even devoted Christian
scholars had sometimes felt obliged to revolt. The first great
source of difficulty was increased knowledge regarding the
Egyptian monuments. As far back as the last years of the
sixteenth century Joseph Scaliger had done what he could to lay
the foundations of a more scientific treatment of chronology,
insisting especially that the historical indications in Persia,
in Babylon, and above all in Egypt, should be brought to bear on
the question. More than that, he had the boldness to urge that
the chronological indications of the Hebrew Scriptures should be
fully and critically discussed in the light of Egyptian and other
records, without any undue bias from theological considerations.
His idea may well be called inspired; yet it had little effect
as regards a true view of the antiquity of man, even upon
himself, for the theological bias prevailed above all his
reasonings, even in his own mind. Well does a brilliant modern
writer declare that, "among the multitude of strong men in modern
times abdicating their reason at the command of their prejudices,
Joseph Scaliger is perhaps the most striking example."
Early in the following century Sir Walter Raleigh, in his History
of the World (1603-1616), pointed out the danger of adhering to
the old system. He, too, foresaw one of the results of modern
investigation, stating it in these words, which have the ring of
prophetic inspiration: "For in Abraham's time all the then known
parts of the world were developed....Egypt had many magnificent
cities,...and these not built with sticks, but of hewn
stone,...which magnificence needed a parent of more antiquity
than these other men have supposed."  In view of these
considerations Raleigh followed the chronology of the Septuagint
version, which enabled him to give to the human race a few more
years than were usually allowed.

About the middle of the seventeenth century Isaac Vossius, one of
the most eminent scholars of Christendom, attempted to bring the
prevailing belief into closer accordance with ascertained facts,
but, save by a chosen few, his efforts were rejected. In some
parts of Europe a man holding new views on chronology was by no
means safe from bodily harm. As an example of the extreme
pressure exerted by the old theological system at times upon
honest scholars, we may take the case of La Peyrere, who about
the middle of the seventeenth century put forth his book on the
Pre-Adamites--an attempt to reconcile sundry well-known
difficulties in Scripture by claiming that man existed on earth
before the time of Adam. He was taken in hand at once; great
theologians rushed forward to attack him from all parts of
Europe; within fifty years thirty-six different refutations of
his arguments had appeared; the Parliament of Paris burned the
book, and the Grand Vicar of the archdiocese of Mechlin threw him
into prison and kept him there until he was forced, not only to
retract his statements, but to abjure his Protestantism.

In England, opposition to the growing truth was hardly less
earnest. Especially strong was Pearson, afterward Master of
Trinity and Bishop of Chester. In his treatise on the Creed,
published in 1659, which has remained a theologic classic, he
condemned those who held the earth to be more than fifty-six
hundred years old, insisted that the first man was created just
six days later, declared that the Egyptian records were forged,
and called all Christians to turn from them to "the infallible
annals of the Spirit of God."

But, in spite of warnings like these, we see the new idea
cropping out in various parts of Europe. In 1672, Sir John
Marsham published a work in which he showed himself bold and
honest. After describing the heathen sources of Oriental
history, he turns to the Christian writers, and, having used the
history of Egypt to show that the great Church authorities were
not exact, he ends one important argument with the following
words: "Thus the most interesting antiquities of Egypt have been
involved in the deepest obscurity by the very interpreters of her
chronology, who have jumbled everything up (qui omnia susque
deque permiscuerunt), so as to make them match with their own
reckonings of Hebrew chronology. Truly a very bad example, and
quite unworthy of religious writers."

This sturdy protest of Sir John against the dominant system and
against the "jumbling" by which Eusebius had endeavoured to cut
down ancient chronology within safe and sound orthodox limits,
had little effect. Though eminent chronologists of the
eighteenth century, like Jackson, Hales, and Drummond, gave forth
multitudes of ponderous volumes pleading for a period somewhat
longer than that generally allowed, and insisting that the
received Hebrew text was grossly vitiated as regards chronology,
even this poor favour was refused them; the mass of believers
found it more comfortable to hold fast the faith committed to
them by Usher, and it remained settled that man was created about
four thousand years before our era.

To those who wished even greater precision, Dr. John Lightfoot,
Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, the great
rabbinical scholar of his time, gave his famous demonstration
from our sacred books that "heaven and earth, centre and
circumference, were created together, in the same instant, and
clouds full of water," and that "this work took place and man was
created by the Trinity on the twenty-third of October, 4004 B.C.,
at nine o'clock in the morning."

This tide of theological reasoning rolled on through the
eighteenth century, swollen by the biblical researches of leading
commentators, Catholic and Protestant, until it came in much
majesty and force into our own nineteenth century. At the very
beginning of the century it gained new strength from various
great men in the Church, among whom may be especially named Dr.
Adam Clarke, who declared that, "to preclude the possibility of a
mistake, the unerring Spirit of God directed Moses in the
selection of his facts and the ascertaining of his dates."

All opposition to the received view seemed broken down, and as
late as 1835--indeed, as late as 1850--came an announcement in
the work of one of the most eminent Egyptologists, Sir J. G.
Wilkinson, to the effect that he had modified the results he had
obtained from Egyptian monuments, in order that his chronology
might not interfere with the received date of the Deluge of
Noah.[183]

[183] For Lightfoot, see his Prolegomena relating to the age of
the world at the birth of Christ; see also in the edition of his
works, London, 1822, vol. 4, pp. 64, 112. For Scaliger, see in
the De Emendatione Temporum, 1583; also Mark Pattison, Essays,
Oxford, 1889, vol. i, pp. 162 et seq. For Raleigh's misgivings,
see his History of the World, London, 1614, p. 227, book ii of
part i, section 7 of chapter i; also Clinton's Fasti Hellenici,
vol. ii, p. 293. For Usher, see his Annales Vet. et Nov. Test.,
London, 1650. For Pearson, see his Exposition of the Creed,
sixth edition, London, 1692, pp. 59 et seq. For Marsham, see his
Chronicus Canon Aegypticus, Ebraicus, Graecus, et Disquisitiones,
London, 1672. For La Peyrere, see especially Quatrefarges, in
Revue de Deux Mondes for 1861; also other chapters in this work.
For Jackson, Hales, and others, see Wallace's True Age of the
World. For Wilkinson, see various editions of his work on Egypt.
For Vignolles, see Leblois, vol. iii, p. 617. As to the
declaration in favor of the recent origin of man, sanctioned by
Popes Gregory XIII and Urban VIII, see Strachius, cited in
Wallace, p. 97. For the general agreement of Church authorities,
as stated, see L'Art de Verifier les Dates, as above. As to
difficulties of scriptural chronology, see Ewald, History of
Israel, English translation, London, 1883, pp. 204 et seq.

II. THE NEW CHRONOLOGY.

But all investigators were not so docile as Wilkinson, and there
soon came a new train of scientific thought which rapidly
undermined all this theological chronology. Not to speak of
other noted men, we have early in the present century Young,
Champollion, and Rosellini, beginning a new epoch in the study of
the Egyptian monuments. Nothing could be more cautious than
their procedure, but the evidence was soon overwhelming in favour
of a vastly longer existence of man in the Nile Valley than could
be made to agree with even the longest duration then allowed by
theologians. For, in spite of all the suppleness of men like
Wilkinson, it became evident that, whatever system of scriptural
chronology was adopted, Egypt was the seat of a flourishing
civilization at a period before the "Flood of Noah," and that no
such flood had ever interrupted it. This was bad, but worse
remained behind: it was soon clear that the civilization of
Egypt began earlier than the time assigned for the creation of
man, even according to the most liberal of the sacred
chronologists.

As time went on, this became more and more evident. The long
duration assigned to human civilization in the fragments of
Manetho, the Egyptian scribe at Thebes in the third century B.C.,
was discovered to be more accordant with truth than the
chronologies of the great theologians; and, as the present
century has gone on, scientific results have been reached
absolutely fatal to the chronological view based by the universal
Church upon Scripture for nearly two thousand years.

As is well known, the first of the Egyptian kings of whom mention
is made upon the monuments of the Nile Valley is Mena, or Menes.
Manetho had given a statement, according to which Mena must have
lived nearly six thousand years before the Christian era. This
was looked upon for a long time as utterly inadmissible, as it
was so clearly at variance with the chronology of our own sacred
books; but, as time went on, large fragments of the original
work of Manetho were more carefully studied and distinguished
from corrupt transcriptions, the lists of kings at Karnak,
Sacquarah, and the two temples at Abydos were brought to light,
and the lists of court architects were discovered. Among all
these monuments the scholar who visits Egypt is most impressed by
the sculptured tablets giving the lists of kings. Each shows the
monarch of the period doing homage to the long line of his
ancestors. Each of these sculptured monarchs has near him a
tablet bearing his name. That great care was always taken to
keep these imposing records correct is certain; the loyalty of
subjects, the devotion of priests, and the family pride of kings
were all combined in this; and how effective this care was, is
seen in the fact that kings now known to be usurpers are
carefully omitted. The lists of court architects, extending over
the period from Seti to Darius, throw a flood of light over the
other records.

Comparing, then, all these sources, and applying an average from
the lengths of the long series of well-known reigns to the reigns
preceding, the most careful and cautious scholars have satisfied
themselves that the original fragments of Manetho represent the
work of a man honest and well informed, and, after making all
allowances for discrepancies and the overlapping of reigns, it
has become clear that the period known as the reign of Mena must
be fixed at more than three thousand years B.C. In this the
great Egyptologists of our time concur. Mariette, the eminent
French authority, puts the date at 5004 B.C.; Brugsch, the
leading German authority, puts it at about 4500 B.C.; and
Meyer, the latest and most cautious of the historians of
antiquity, declares 3180 B.C. the latest possible date that can
be assigned it. With these dates the foremost English
authorities, Sayce and Flinders Petrie, substantially agree.
This view is also confirmed on astronomical grounds by Mr.
Lockyer, the Astronomer Royal. We have it, then, as the result
of a century of work by the most acute and trained Egyptologists,
and with the inscriptions upon the temples and papyri before
them, both of which are now read with as much facility as many
medieval manuscripts, that the reign of Mena must be placed more
than five thousand years ago.

But the significance of this conclusion can not be fully
understood until we bring into connection with it some other
facts revealed by the Egyptian monuments.

The first of these is that which struck Sir Walter Raleigh, that,
even in the time of the first dynasties in the Nile Valley, a
high civilization had already been developed. Take, first, man
himself: we find sculptured upon the early monuments types of
the various races--Egyptians, Israelites, negroes, and
Libyans--as clearly distinguishable in these paintings and
sculptures of from four to six thousand years ago as the same
types are at the present day. No one can look at these
sculptures upon the Egyptian monuments, or even the drawings of
them, as given by Lepsius or Prisse d' Avennes, without being
convinced that they indicate, even at that remote period, a
difference of races so marked that long previous ages must have
been required to produce it.

The social condition of Egypt revealed in these early monuments
of art forces us to the same conclusion. Those earliest
monuments show that a very complex society had even then been
developed. We not only have a separation between the priestly
and military orders, but agriculturists, manufacturers, and
traders, with a whole series of subdivisions in each of these
classes. The early tombs show us sculptured and painted
representations of a daily life which even then had been
developed into a vast wealth and variety of grades, forms, and
usages.

Take, next, the political and military condition. One fact out
of many reveals a policy which must have been the result of long
experience. Just as now, at the end of the nineteenth century,
the British Government, having found that they can not rely upon
the native Egyptians for the protection of the country, are
drilling the negroes from the interior of Africa as soldiers, so
the celebrated inscription of Prince Una, as far back as the
sixth dynasty, speaks of the Maksi or negroes levied and drilled
by tens of thousands for the Egyptian army.

Take, next, engineering. Here we find very early operations in
the way of canals, dikes, and great public edifices, so bold in
conception and thorough in execution as to fill our greatest
engineers of these days with astonishment. The quarrying,
conveyance, cutting, jointing, and polishing of the enormous
blocks in the interior of the Great Pyramid alone are the marvel
of the foremost stone-workers of our century.

As regards architecture, we find not only the pyramids, which
date from the very earliest period of Egyptian history, and which
are to this hour the wonder of the world for size, for boldness,
for exactness, and for skilful contrivance, but also the temples,
with long ranges of colossal columns wrought in polished granite,
with wonderful beauty of ornamentation, with architraves and
roofs vast in size and exquisite in adjustment, which by their
proportions tax the imagination, and lead the beholder to ask
whether all this can be real.

As to sculpture, we have not only the great Sphinx of Gizeh, so
marvellous in its boldness and dignity, dating from the very
first period of Egyptian history, but we have ranges of sphinxes,
heroic statues, and bas-reliefs, showing that even in the early
ages this branch of art had reached an amazing development.

As regards the perfection of these, Lubke, the most eminent
German authority on plastic art, referring to the early works in
the tombs about Memphis, declares that, "as monuments of the
period of the fourth dynasty, they are an evidence of the high
perfection to which the sculpture of the Egyptians had attained."
Brugsch declares that "every artistic production of those early
days, whether picture, writing, or sculpture, bears the stamp of
the highest perfection in art."  Maspero, the most eminent French
authority in this field, while expressing his belief that the
Sphinx was sculptured even before the time of Mena, declares that
"the art which conceived and carved this prodigious statue was a
finished art--an art which had attained self-mastery and was sure
of its effects"; while, among the more eminent English
authorities, Sayce tells us that "art is at its best in the age
of the pyramid-builders," and Sir James Fergusson declares, "We
are startled to find Egyptian art nearly as perfect in the oldest
periods as in any of the later."

The evidence as to the high development of Egyptian sculpture in
the earlier dynasties becomes every day more overwhelming. What
exquisite genius the early Egyptian sculptors showed in their
lesser statues is known to all who have seen those most precious
specimens in the museum at Cairo, which were wrought before the
conventional type was adopted in obedience to religious
considerations.

In decorative and especially in ceramic art, as early as the
fourth and fifth dynasties, we have vases, cups, and other
vessels showing exquisite beauty of outline and a general sense
of form almost if not quite equal to Etruscan and Grecian work of
the best periods.

Take, next, astronomy. Going back to the very earliest period of
Egyptian civilization, we find that the four sides of the Great
Pyramid are adjusted to the cardinal points with the utmost
precision. "The day of the equinox can be taken by observing the
sun set across the face of the pyramid, and the neighbouring
Arabs adjust their astronomical dates by its shadow."  Yet this
is but one out of many facts which prove that the Egyptians, at
the earliest period of which their monuments exist, had arrived
at knowledge and skill only acquired by long ages of observation
and thought. Mr. Lockyer, Astronomer Royal of Great Britain, has
recently convinced himself, after careful examination of various
ruined temples at Thebes and elsewhere, that they were placed
with reference to observations of stars. To state his conclusion
in his own words: "There seems a very high probability that
three thousand, and possibly four thousand, years before Christ
the Egyptians had among them men with some knowledge of
astronomy, and that six thousand years ago the course of the sun
through the year was practically very well known, and methods had
been invented by means of which in time it might be better known;
and that, not very long after that, they not only considered
questions relating to the sun, but began to take up other
questions relating to the position and movement of the stars."

The same view of the antiquity of man in the Nile valley is
confirmed by philologists. To use the words of Max Duncker:
"The oldest monuments of Egypt--and they are the oldest monuments
in the world--exhibit the Egyptian in possession of the art of
writing."  It is found also, by the inscriptions of the early
dynasties, that the Egyptian language had even at that early time
been developed in all essential particulars to the highest point
it ever attained. What long periods it must have required for
such a development every scholar in philology can imagine.

As regards medical science, we have the Berlin papyrus, which,
although of a later period, refers with careful specification to
a medical literature of the first dynasty.

As regards archaeology, the earliest known inscriptions point to
still earlier events and buildings, indicating a long sequence in
previous history.

As to all that pertains to the history of civilization, no man of
fair and open mind can go into the museums of Cairo or the Louvre
or the British Museum and look at the monuments of those earlier
dynasties without seeing in them the results of a development in
art, science, laws, customs, and language, which must have
required a vast period before the time of Mena. And this
conclusion is forced upon us all the more invincibly when we
consider the slow growth of ideas in the earlier stages of
civilization as compared with the later--a slowness of growth
which has kept the natives of many parts of the world in that
earliest civilization to this hour. To this we must add the fact
that Egyptian civilization was especially immobile: its
development into castes is but one among many evidences that it
was the very opposite of a civilization developed rapidly.

As to the length of the period before the time of Mena, there is,
of course, nothing exact. Manetho gives lists of great
personages before that first dynasty, and these extend over
twenty-four thousand years. Bunsen, one of the most learned of
Christian scholars, declares that not less than ten thousand
years were necessary for the development of civilization up to
the point where we find it in Mena's time. No one can claim
precision for either of these statements, but they are valuable
as showing the impression of vast antiquity made upon the most
competent judges by the careful study of those remains: no
unbiased judge can doubt that an immensely long period of years
must have been required for the development of civilization up to
the state in which we there find it.

The investigations in the bed of the Nile confirm these views.
That some unwarranted conclusions have at times been announced is
true; but the fact remains that again and again rude pottery and
other evidences of early stages of civilization have been found
in borings at places so distant from each other, and at depths so
great, that for such a range of concurring facts, considered in
connection with the rate of earthy deposit by the Nile, there is
no adequate explanation save the existence of man in that valley
thousands on thousands of years before the longest time admitted
by our sacred chronologists.

Nor have these investigations been of a careless character.
Between the years 1851 and 1854, Mr. Horner, an extremely
cautious English geologist, sank ninety-six shafts in four rows
at intervals of eight English miles, at right angles to the Nile,
in the neighbourhood of Memphis. In these pottery was brought up
from various depths, and beneath the statue of Rameses II at
Memphis from a depth of thirty-nine feet. At the rate of the
Nile deposit a careful estimate has declared this to indicate a
period of over eleven thousand years. So eminent a German
authority, in geography as Peschel characterizes objections to
such deductions as groundless. However this may be, the general
results of these investigations, taken in connection with the
other results of research, are convincing.

And, finally, as if to make assurance doubly sure, a series of
archaeologists of the highest standing, French, German, English,
and American, have within the past twenty years discovered relics
of a savage period, of vastly earlier date than the time of Mena,
prevailing throughout Egypt. These relics have been discovered
in various parts of the country, from Cairo to Luxor, in great
numbers. They are the same sort of prehistoric implements which
prove to us the early existence of man in so many other parts of
the world at a geological period so remote that the figures given
by our sacred chronologists are but trivial. The last and most
convincing of these discoveries, that of flint implements in the
drift, far down below the tombs of early kings at Thebes, and
upon high terraces far above the present bed of the Nile, will be
referred to later.

But it is not in Egypt alone that proofs are found of the utter
inadequacy of the entire chronological system derived from our
sacred books. These results of research in Egypt are strikingly
confirmed by research in Assyria and Babylonia. Prof. Sayce
exhibits various proofs of this. To use his own words regarding
one of these proofs: "On the shelves of the British Museum you
may see huge sun-dried bricks, on which are stamped the names and
titles of kings who erected or repaired the temples where they
have been found....They must...have reigned before the time
when, according to the margins of our Bibles, the Flood of Noah
was covering the earth and reducing such bricks as these to their
primeval slime."

This conclusion was soon placed beyond a doubt. The lists of
king's and collateral inscriptions recovered from the temples of
the great valley between the Tigris and Euphrates, and the
records of astronomical observations in that region, showed that
there, too, a powerful civilization had grown up at a period far
earlier than could be made consistent with our sacred chronology.
The science of Assyriology was thus combined with Egyptology to
furnish one more convincing proof that, precious as are the moral
and religious truths in our sacred books and the historical
indications which they give us, these truths and indications are
necessarily inclosed in a setting of myth and legend.[184]

[184] As to Manetho, see, for a very full account of his
relations to other chronologists, Palmer, Egyptian Chronicles,
vol. i, chap. ii. For a more recent and readable account, see
Brugsch, Egypt under the Pharaohs, English edition, London, 1879,
chap. iv. For lists of kings at Abydos and elsewhere, also the
lists of architects, see Brugsch, Palmer, Mariette, and others;
also illustrations in Lepsius. For proofs that the dynasties
given were consecutive and not contemporeaneous, as was once so
fondly argued by those who tried to save Archbishop Usher's
chronology, see Mariette; also Sayce's Herodotus, appendix, p.
316. For the various race types given on early monuments, see
the coloured engravings in Lepsius, Denkmaler; also Prisse
d'Avennes, and the frontpiece in the English edition of Brugsch;
see also statement regarding the same subject in Tylor,
Anthropology, chap. i. For the fulness of development of
Egyptian civilization in the earliest dynasties, see Rawlinson's
Egypt, London, 1881, chap. xiii; also Brugsch and other works
cited. For the perfection of Egyptian engineering, I rely not
merely upon my own observation, but on what is far more
important, the testimony of my friend the Hon. J. G. Batterson,
probably the largest and most experienced worker in granite in
the United States, who acknowledges, from personal observation,
that the early Egyptian work is, in boldness and perfection, far
beyond anything known since, and a source of perpetual wonder to
him. As to the perfection of Egyptian architecture, see very
striking statements in Fergusson, History of Architecture, book
i, chap. i. As to the pyramids, showing a very high grade of
culture already reached under the earliest dynasties, see Lubke,
Gesch. der Arch., book i. For Sayce's views, see his Herodotus,
appendix, p. 348. As to sculpture, see for representations
photographs published by the Boulak Museum, and such works as the
Description de l'Egypte, Lepsius's Denkmaler, and Prisse
d'Avennes; see also a most small work, easy of access, Maspero,
Archeology, translated by Miss A. B. Edwards, New York and
London, 1887, chaps. i and ii. See especially in Prisse, vol.
ii, the statue of Chafre the Scribe, and the group of "Tea" and
his wife. As to the artistic value of the Sphinx, see Maspero,
as above, pp. 202, 203. See also similar ideas in Lubke's
History of Sculpture, vol. i, p. 24.  As to astronomical
knowledge evidenced by the Great Pyramid, see Tylor, as above, p.
21; also Lockyer, On Some Points in the Early History of
Astronomy, in Nature for 1891, and especially in the issues of
June 4th and July 2d; also his Dawn of Astronomy, passim. For a
recent and conservative statement as to the date of Mena, see
Flinders Petrie, History of Egypt, London, 1894, chap. ii. For
delineations of vases, etc., showing Grecian proportion and
beauty of form under  the fourth and fifth dynasties, see Prisse,
vol. ii, Art Industriel. As to the philological question,
and the development of language in Egypt, with the hieroglyphic
sytem of writing, see Rawlinson's Egypt, London, 1881, chap. xii;
also Lenormanr; also Max Duncker, Geschichte des Alterthums,
Abbott's translation, 1877. As to the medical papyrus of Berlin,
see Brugsch, vol. i, p. 58, but especially the Papyrus Ebers. As
to the corruption of later copies of Manetho and fidelity of
originals as attested by the monuments, see Brugsch, chap. iv.
On the accuracy of the present Egyptian chronology as regards
long periods, see ibid, vol. i, p. 32. As to the pottery found
deep in the Nile and the value of Horner's discovery, see
Peschel, Races of Man, New York, 1876, pp. 42-44. For succinct
statement, see also Laing, Problems of the Future, p. 94. For
confirmatory proofs from Assyriology, see Sayce, Lectures on the
Religion of the Babylonians (Hibbert Lectures for 1887), London,
1887, introductory chapter, and especially pp. 21-25. See also
Laing, Human Origins, chap. ii, for an excellent summary. For an
account of flint implements recently found in gravel terraces
fifteen hundred feet above the present level of the Nile, and
showing evidences of an age vastly greater even than those dug
out of the gravel at Thebes, see article by Flinders Petrie in
London Times of April 18th, 1895.

CHAPTER VII.

THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN AND PREHISTORIC ARCHAEOLOGY

I. THE THUNDER-STONES.

While the view of chronology based upon the literal acceptance of
Scripture texts was thus shaken by researches in Egypt, another
line of observation and thought was slowly developed, even more
fatal to the theological view.

From a very early period there had been dug from the earth, in
various parts of the world, strangely shaped masses of stone,
some rudely chipped, some polished: in ancient times the larger
of these were very often considered as thunderbolts, the smaller
as arrows, and all of them as weapons which had been hurled by
the gods and other supernatural personages. Hence a sort of
sacredness attached to them. In Chaldea, they were built into
the wall of temples; in Egypt, they were strung about the necks
of the dead. In India, fine specimens are to this day seen upon
altars, receiving prayers and sacrifices.

Naturally these beliefs were brought into the Christian mythology
and adapted to it. During the Middle Ages many of these
well-wrought stones were venerated as weapons, which during the
"war in heaven" had been used in driving forth Satan and his
hosts; hence in the eleventh century an Emperor of the East sent
to the Emperor of the West a "heaven axe"; and in the twelfth
century a Bishop of Rennes asserted the value of thunder-stones
as a divinely- appointed means of securing success in battle,
safety on the sea, security against thunder, and immunity from
unpleasant dreams. Even as late as the seventeenth century a
French ambassador brought a stone hatchet, which still exists in
the museum at Nancy, as a present to the Prince-Bishop of Verdun,
and claimed for it health-giving virtues.

In the last years of the sixteenth century Michael Mercati tried
to prove that the "thunder-stones" were weapons or implements of
early races of men; but from some cause his book was not
published until the following century, when other thinkers had
begun to take up the same idea, and then it had to contend with a
theory far more accordant with theologic modes of reasoning in
science. This was the theory of the learned Tollius, who in 1649
told the world that these chipped or smoothed stones were
"generated in the sky by a fulgurous exhalation conglobed in a
cloud by the circumposed humour."

But about the beginning of the eighteenth century a fact of great
importance was quietly established. In the year 1715 a large
pointed weapon of black flint was found in contact with the bones
of an elephant, in a gravel bed near Gray's Inn Lane, in London.
The world in general paid no heed to this: if the attention of
theologians was called to it, they dismissed it summarily with a
reference to the Deluge of Noah; but the specimen was labelled,
the circumstances regarding it were recorded, and both specimen
and record carefully preserved.

In 1723 Jussieu addressed the French Academy on The Origin and
Uses of Thunder-stones. He showed that recent travellers from
various parts of the world had brought a number of weapons and
other implements of stone to France, and that they were
essentially similar to what in Europe had been known as
"thunder-stones."  A year later this fact was clinched into the
scientific mind of France by the Jesuit Lafitau, who published a
work showing the similarity between the customs of aborigines
then existing in other lands and those of the early inhabitants
of Europe. So began, in these works of Jussieu and Lafitau, the
science of Comparative Ethnography.

But it was at their own risk and peril that thinkers drew from
these discoveries any conclusions as to the antiquity of man.
Montesquieu, having ventured to hint, in an early edition of his
Persian Letters, that the world might be much older than had
been generally supposed, was soon made to feel danger both to his
book and to himself, so that in succeeding editions he suppressed
the passage.

In 1730 Mahudel presented a paper to the French Academy of
Inscriptions on the so-called "thunder-stones," and also
presented a series of plates which showed that these were stone
implements, which must have been used at an early period in human
history.

In 1778 Buffon, in his Epoques de la Nature, intimated his
belief that "thunder-stones" were made by early races of men;
but he did not press this view, and the reason for his reserve
was obvious enough: he had already one quarrel with the
theologians on his hands, which had cost him dear--public
retraction and humiliation. His declaration, therefore,
attracted little notice.

In the year 1800 another fact came into the minds of thinking men
in England. In that year John Frere presented to the London
Society of Antiquaries sundry flint implements found in the clay
beds near Hoxne: that they were of human make was certain, and,
in view of the undisturbed depths in which they were found, the
theory was suggested that the men who made them must have lived
at a very ancient geological epoch; yet even this discovery and
theory passed like a troublesome dream, and soon seemed to be
forgotten.

About twenty years later Dr. Buckland published a discussion of
the subject, in the light of various discoveries in the drift and
in caves. It received wide attention, but theology was soothed
by his temporary concession that these striking relics of human
handiwork, associated with the remains of various extinct
animals, were proofs of the Deluge of Noah.

In 1823 Boue, of the Vienna Academy of Sciences, showed to Cuvier
sundry human bones found deep in the alluvial deposits of the
upper Rhine, and suggested that they were of an early geological
period; this Cuvier virtually, if not explicitly, denied. Great
as he was in his own field, he was not a great geologist; he, in
fact, led geology astray for many years. Moreover, he lived in a
time of reaction; it was the period of the restored Bourbons, of
the Voltairean King Louis XVIII, governing to please orthodoxy.
Boue's discovery was, therefore, at first opposed, then enveloped
in studied silence.

Cuvier evidently thought, as Voltaire had felt under similar
circumstances, that "among wolves one must howl a little"; and
his leading disciple, Elie de Beaumont, who succeeded, him in the
sway over geological science in France, was even more opposed to
the new view than his great master had been. Boue's discoveries
were, therefore, apparently laid to rest forever.[185]

[185] For the general history of early views regarding stone
implements, see the first chapters in Cartailhac, La France
Prehistorique; also Jolie, L'Homme avant les Metaux; also Lyell,
Lubbock, and Evans. For lightning-stones in China and elsewhere,
see citation from a Chinese encyclopedia of 1662, in Tylor, Early
History of Mankind, p. 209. On the universality of this belief,
on the surviving use of stone implements even into civilized
times, and on their manufacture to-day, see ibid., chapter viii.
For the treatment of Boue's discovery, see especially Morillet,
Le Prehistorique, Paris, 1885, p. 11. For the suppression of the
passage in Montesquieu's Persian Letters, see Letter 113, cited
in Schlosser's History of the Eighteenth Century (English
translation), vol. i, p. 135.

In 1825 Kent's Cavern, near Torquay, was explored by the Rev.
Mr. McEnery, a Roman Catholic clergyman, who seems to have been
completely overawed by orthodox opinion in England and elsewhere;
for, though he found human bones and implements mingled with
remains of extinct animals, he kept his notes in manuscript, and
they were only brought to light more than thirty years later by
Mr. Vivian.

The coming of Charles X, the last of the French Bourbons, to the
throne, made the orthodox pressure even greater. It was the
culmination of the reactionary period--the time in France when a
clerical committee, sitting at the Tuileries, took such measures
as were necessary to hold in check all science that was not
perfectly "safe"; the time in Austria when Kaiser Franz made his
famous declaration to sundry professors, that what he wanted of
them was simply to train obedient subjects, and that those who
did not make this their purpose would be dismissed; the time in
Germany when Nicholas of Russia and the princelings and ministers
under his control, from the King of Prussia downward, put forth
all their might in behalf of "scriptural science"; the time in
Italy when a scientific investigator, arriving at any conclusion
distrusted by the Church, was sure of losing his place and in
danger of losing his liberty; the time in England when what
little science was taught was held in due submission to
Archdeacon Paley; the time in the United States when the first
thing essential in science was, that it be adjusted to the ideas
of revival exhorters.

Yet men devoted to scientific truth laboured on; and in 1828
Tournal, of Narbonne, discovered in the cavern of Bize specimens
of human industry, with a fragment of a human skeleton, among
bones of extinct animals. In the following year Christol
published accounts of his excavations in the caverns of Gard; he
had found in position, and under conditions which forbade the
idea of after-disturbance, human remains mixed with bones of the
extinct hyena of the early Quaternary period. Little general
notice was taken of this, for the reactionary orthodox atmosphere
involved such discoveries in darkness.

But in the French Revolution of 1830 the old politico-theological
system collapsed: Charles X and his advisers fled for their
lives; the other continental monarchs got glimpses of new light;
the priesthood in charge of education were put on their good
behaviour for a time, and a better era began.

Under the constitutional monarchy of the house of Orleans in
France and Belgium less attention was therefore paid by
Government to the saving of souls; and we have in rapid
succession new discoveries of remains of human industry, and even
of human skeletons so mingled with bones of extinct animals as to
give additional proofs that the origin of man was at a period
vastly earlier than any which theologians had dreamed of.

A few years later the reactionary clerical influence against
science in this field rallied again. Schmerling in 1833 had
explored a multitude of caverns in Belgium, especially at Engis
and Engihoul, and had found human skulls and bones closely
associated with bones of extinct animals, such as the cave bear,
hyena, elephant, and rhinoceros, while mingled with these were
evidences of human workmanship in the shape of chipped flint
implements; discoveries of a similar sort had been made by De
Serres in France and by Lund in Brazil; but, at least as far as
continental Europe was concerned, these discoveries were received
with much coolness both by Catholic leaders of opinion in France
and Belgium and by Protestant leaders in England and Holland.
Schmerling himself appears to have been overawed, and gave forth
a sort of apologetic theory, half scientific, half theologic,
vainly hoping to satisfy the clerical side.

Nor was it much better in England. Sir Charles Lyell, so devoted
a servant of prehistoric research thirty years later, was still
holding out against it on the scientific side; and, as to the
theological side, it was the period when that great churchman,
Dean Cockburn, was insulting geologists from the pulpit of York
Minster, and the Rev. Mellor Brown denouncing geology as "a
black art," "a forbidden province" and when, in America, Prof.
Moses Stuart and others like him were belittling the work of
Benjamin Silliman and Edward Hitchcock.

In 1840 Godwin Austin presented to the Royal Geological Society
an account of his discoveries in Kent's Cavern, near Torquay, and
especially of human bones and implements mingled with bones of
the elephant, rhinoceros, cave bear, hyena, and other extinct
animals; yet this memoir, like that of McEnery fifteen years
before, found an atmosphere so unfavourable that it was not
published.

II. THE FLINT WEAPONS AND IMPLEMENTS.

At the middle of the nineteenth century came the beginning of a
new epoch in science--an epoch when all these earlier discoveries
were to be interpreted by means of investigations in a different
field: for, in 1847, a man previously unknown to the world at
large, Boucher de Perthes, published at Paris the first volume of
his work on Celtic and Antediluvian Antiquities, and in this he
showed engravings of typical flint implements and weapons, of
which he had discovered thousands upon thousands in the high
drift beds near Abbeville, in northern France.

The significance of this discovery was great indeed--far greater
than Boucher himself at first supposed. The very title of his
book showed that he at first regarded these implements and
weapons as having belonged to men overwhelmed at the Deluge of
Noah; but it was soon seen that they were something very
different from proofs of the literal exactness of Genesis: for
they were found in terraces at great heights above the river
Somme, and, under any possible theory having regard to fact, must
have been deposited there at a time when the river system of
northern France was vastly different from anything known within
the historic period. The whole discovery indicated a series of
great geological changes since the time when these implements
were made, requiring cycles of time compared to which the space
allowed by the orthodox chronologists was as nothing.

His work was the result of over ten years of research and
thought. Year after year a force of men under his direction had
dug into these high-terraced gravel deposits of the river Somme,
and in his book he now gave, in the first full form, the results
of his labour. So far as France was concerned, he was met at
first by what he calls "a conspiracy of silence," and then by a
contemptuous opposition among orthodox scientists, at the head of
whom stood Elie de Beaumont.

This heavy, sluggish opposition seemed immovable: nothing that
Boucher could do or say appeared to lighten the pressure of the
orthodox theological opinion behind it; not even his belief that
these fossils were remains of men drowned at the Deluge of Noah,
and that they were proofs of the literal exactness of Genesis
seemed to help the matter. His opponents felt instinctively that
such discoveries boded danger to the accepted view, and they were
right: Boucher himself soon saw the folly of trying to account
for them by the orthodox theory.

And it must be confessed that not a little force was added to the
opposition by certain characteristics of Boucher de Perthes
himself. Gifted, far-sighted, and vigorous as he was, he was his
own worst enemy. Carried away by his own discoveries, he jumped
to the most astounding conclusions. The engravings in the later
volume of his great work, showing what he thought to be human
features and inscriptions upon some of the flint implements, are
worthy of a comic almanac; and at the National Museum of
Archaeology at St. Germain, beneath the shelves bearing the
remains which he discovered, which mark the beginning of a new
epoch in science, are drawers containing specimens hardly worthy
of a penny museum, but from which he drew the most unwarranted
inferences as to the language, religion, and usages of
prehistoric man.

Boucher triumphed none the less. Among his bitter opponents at
first was Dr. Rigollot, who in 1855, searching earnestly for
materials to refute the innovator, dug into the deposits of St.
Acheul--and was converted: for he found implements similar to
those of Abbeville, making still more certain the existence of
man during the Drift period. So, too, Gaudry a year later made
similar discoveries.

But most important was the evidence of the truth which now came
from other parts of France and from other countries. The French
leaders in geological science had been held back not only by awe
of Cuvier but by recollections of Scheuchzer. Ridicule has
always been a serious weapon in France, and the ridicule which
finally overtook the supporters of the attempt of Scheuchzer,
Mazurier, and others, to square geology with Genesis, was still
remembered. From the great body of French geologists, therefore,
Boucher secured at first no aid. His support came from the other
side of the Channel. The most eminent English geologists, such
as Falconer, Prestwich, and Lyell, visited the beds at Abbeville
and St. Acheul, convinced themselves that the discoveries of
Boucher, Rigollot, and their colleagues were real, and then
quietly but firmly told England the truth.

And now there appeared a most effective ally in France. The
arguments used against Boucher de Perthes and some of the other
early investigators of bone caves had been that the implements
found might have been washed about and turned over by great
floods, and therefore that they might be of a recent period; but
in 1861 Edward Lartet published an account of his own excavations
at the Grotto of Aurignac, and the proof that man had existed in
the time of the Quaternary animals was complete. This grotto had
been carefully sealed in prehistoric times by a stone at its
entrance; no interference from disturbing currents of water had
been possible; and Lartet found, in place, bones of eight out of
nine of the main species of animals which characterize the
Quaternary period in Europe; and upon them marks of cutting
implements, and in the midst of them coals and ashes.

Close upon these came the excavations at Eyzies by Lartet and his
English colleague, Christy. In both these men there was a
carefulness in making researches and a sobriety in stating
results which converted many of those who had been repelled by
the enthusiasm of Boucher de Perthes. The two colleagues found
in the stony deposits made by the water dropping from the roof of
the cave at Eyzies the bones of numerous animals extinct or
departed to arctic regions--one of these a vertebra of a reindeer
with a flint lance-head still fast in it, and with these were
found evidences of fire.

Discoveries like these were thoroughly convincing; yet there
still remained here and there gainsayers in the supposed interest
of Scripture, and these, in spite of the convincing array of
facts, insisted that in some way, by some combination of
circumstances, these bones of extinct animals of vastly remote
periods might have been brought into connection with all these
human bones and implements of human make in all these different
places, refusing to admit that these ancient relics of men and
animals were of the same period. Such gainsayers virtually
adopted the reasoning of quaint old Persons, who, having
maintained that God created the world "about five thousand sixe
hundred and odde yeares agoe," added, "And if they aske what God
was doing before this short number of yeares, we answere with St.
Augustine replying to such curious questioners, that He was
framing Hell for them."  But a new class of discoveries came to
silence this opposition. At La Madeleine in France, at the
Kessler cave in Switzerland, and at various other places, were
found rude but striking carvings and engravings on bone and stone
representing sundry specimens of those long-vanished species;
and these specimens, or casts of them, were soon to be seen in
all the principal museums. They showed the hairy mammoth, the
cave bear, and various other animals of the Quaternary period,
carved rudely but vigorously by contemporary men; and, to
complete the significance of these discoveries, travellers
returning from the icy regions of North America brought similar
carvings of animals now existing in those regions, made by the
Eskimos during their long arctic winters to-day.[186]

[186] For the explorations in Belgium, see Dupont, Le Temps
Prehistorique en Belgique. For the discoveries by McEnery and
Godwin Austin, see Lubbock, Prehistoric Times, London, 1869,
chap. x; also Cartailhac, Joly, and others above cited. For
Boucher de Perthes, see his Antiquites Celtiques et
Antediluviennes, Paris, 1847-'64, vol. iii, pp. 526 et seq. For
sundry extravagances of Boucher de Perthes, see Reinach,
Description raisonne du Musee de St.-Germain-en-Laye, Paris,
1889, vol. i, pp. 16 et seq. For the mixture of sound and absurd
results in Boucher's work, see Cartailhac as above, p. 19.
Boucher had published in 1838 a work entitled De la Creation, but
it seems to have dropped dead from the press. For the attempts
of Scheuchzer to reconcile geology and Genesis by means of the
Homo diluvii testis, and similar "diluvian fossils," see the
chapter on Geology in this series. The original specimens of
these prehistoric engravings upon bone and stone may best be seen
at the Archaeological Museum of St.-Germain and the British
Museum. For engravings of some of the most recent, see
especially Dawkin's Early Man in Britain, chap. vii, and the
Description du Musee de St.-Germain. As to the Kessler etchings
and their antiquity, see D. G. Brinton, in Science, August 12,
1892. For comparison of this prehistoric work with that produced
to-day by the Eskimos and others, see Lubbock, Prehistoric Times,
chapters x and xiv. For very striking exhibitions of this same
artistic gift in a higher field to-day by descendants of the
barbarian tribes of northern America, see the very remarkable
illustrations in Rink, Danish Greenland, London, 1877, especially
those in chap. xiv.

As a result of these discoveries and others like them, showing
that man was not only contemporary with long-extinct animals of
past geological epochs, but that he had already developed into a
stage of culture above pure savagery, the tide of thought began
to turn. Especially was this seen in 1863, when Lyell published
the first edition of his Geological Evidence of the Antiquity of
Man; and the fact that he had so long opposed the new ideas gave
force to the clear and conclusive argument which led him to
renounce his early scientific beliefs.

Research among the evidences of man's existence in the early
Quaternary, and possibly in the Tertiary period, was now pressed
forward along the whole line. In 1864 Gabriel Mortillet founded
his review devoted to this subject; and in 1865 the first of a
series of scientific congresses devoted to such researches was
held in Italy. These investigations went on vigorously in all
parts of France and spread rapidly to other countries. The
explorations which Dupont began in 1864, in the caves of Belgium,
gave to the museum at Brussels eighty thousand flint implements,
forty thousand bones of animals of the Quaternary period, and a
number of human skulls and bones found mingled with these
remains. From Germany, Italy, Spain, America, India, and Egypt
similar results were reported.

Especially noteworthy were the further explorations of the caves
and drift throughout the British Islands. The discovery by
Colonel Wood, In 1861, of flint tools in the same strata with
bones of the earlier forms of the rhinoceros, was but typical of
many. A thorough examination of the caverns of Brixham and
Torquay, by Pengelly and others, made it still more evident that
man had existed in the early Quaternary period. The existence of
a period before the Glacial epoch or between different glacial
epochs in England, when the Englishman was a savage, using rude
stone tools, was then fully ascertained, and, what was more
significant, there were clearly shown a gradation and evolution
even in the history of that period. It was found that this
ancient Stone epoch showed progress and development. In the
upper layers of the caves, with remains of the reindeer, who,
although he has migrated from these regions, still exists in more
northern climates, were found stone implements revealing some
little advance in civilization; next below these, sealed up in
the stalagmite, came, as a rule, another layer, in which the
remains of reindeer were rare and those of the mammoth more
frequent, the implements found in this stratum being less
skilfully made than those in the upper and more recent layers;
and, finally, in the lowest levels, near the floors of these
ancient caverns, with remains of the cave bear and others of the
most ancient extinct animals, were found stone implements
evidently of a yet ruder and earlier stage of human progress. No
fairly unprejudiced man can visit the cave and museum at Torquay
without being convinced that there were a gradation and an
evolution in these beginnings of human civilization. The
evidence is complete; the masses of breccia taken from the cave,
with the various soils, implements, and bones carefully kept in
place, put this progress beyond a doubt.

All this indicated a great antiquity for the human race, but in
it lay the germs of still another great truth, even more
important and more serious in its consequences to the older
theologic view, which will be discussed in the following chapter.

But new evidences came in, showing a yet greater antiquity of
man. Remains of animals were found in connection with human
remains, which showed not only that man was living in times more
remote than the earlier of the new investigators had dared dream,
but that some of these early periods of his existence must have
been of immense length, embracing climatic changes betokening
different geological periods; for with remains of fire and human
implements and human bones were found not only bones of the hairy
mammoth and cave bear, woolly rhinoceros, and reindeer, which
could only have been deposited there in a time of arctic cold,
but bones of the hyena, hippopotamus, sabre-toothed tiger, and
the like, which could only have been deposited when there was in
these regions a torrid climate. The conjunction of these remains
clearly showed that man had lived in England early enough and
long enough to pass through times when there was arctic cold and
times when there was torrid heat; times when great glaciers
stretched far down into England and indeed into the continent,
and times when England had a land connection with the European
continent, and the European continent with Africa, allowing
tropical animals to migrate freely from Africa to the middle
regions of England.

The question of the origin of man at a period vastly earlier than
the sacred chronologists permitted was thus absolutely settled,
but among the questions regarding the existence of man at a
period yet more remote, the Drift period, there was one which for
a time seemed to give the champions of science some difficulty.
The orthodox leaders in the time of Boucher de Perthes, and for a
considerable time afterward, had a weapon of which they made
vigorous use: the statement that no human bones had yet been
discovered in the drift. The supporters of science naturally
answered that few if any other bones as small as those of man had
been found, and that this fact was an additional proof of the
great length of the period since man had lived with the extinct
animals; for, since specimens of human workmanship proved man's
existence as fully as remains of his bones could do, the absence
or even rarity of human and other small bones simply indicated
the long periods of time required for dissolving them away.

Yet Boucher, inspired by the genius he had already shown, and
filled with the spirit of prophecy, declared that human bones
would yet be found in the midst of the flint implements, and in
1863 he claimed that this prophecy had been fulfilled by the
discovery at Moulin Quignon of a portion of a human jaw deep in
the early Quaternary deposits. But his triumph was short-lived:
the opposition ridiculed his discovery; they showed that he had
offered a premium to his workmen for the discovery of human
remains, and they naturally drew the inference that some tricky
labourer had deceived him. The result of this was that the men
of science felt obliged to acknowledge that the Moulin Quignon
discovery was not proven.

But ere long human bones were found in the deposits of the early
Quaternary period, or indeed of an earlier period, in various
other parts of the world, and the question regarding the Moulin
Quignon relic was of little importance.

We have seen that researches regarding the existence of
prehistoric man in England and on the Continent were at first
mainly made in the caverns; but the existence of man in the
earliest Quaternary period was confirmed on both sides of the
English Channel, in a way even more striking, by the close
examination of the drift and early gravel deposits. The results
arrived at by Boucher de Perthes were amply confirmed in England.
Rude stone implements were found in terraces a hundred feet and
more above the levels at which various rivers of Great Britain
now flow, and under circumstances which show that, at the time
when they were deposited, the rivers of Great Britain in many
cases were entirely different from those of the present period,
and formed parts of the river system of the European continent.
Researches in the high terraces above the Thames and the Ouse, as
well as at other points in Great Britain, placed beyond a doubt
the fact that man existed on the British Islands at a time when
they were connected by solid land with the Continent, and made it
clear that, within the period of the existence of man in northern
Europe, a large portion of the British Islands had been sunk to
depths between fifteen hundred and twenty-five hundred feet
beneath the Northern Ocean,--had risen again from the water,--had
formed part of the continent of Europe, and had been in unbroken
connection with Africa, so that elephants, bears, tigers, lions,
the rhinoceros and hippopotamus, of species now mainly extinct,
had left their bones in the same deposits with human implements
as far north as Yorkshire. Moreover, connected with this fact
came in the new conviction, forced upon geologists by the more
careful examination of the earth and its changes, that such
elevations and depressions of Great Britain and other parts of
the world were not necessarily the results of sudden cataclysms,
but generally of slow processes extending through vast cycles of
years--processes such as are now known to be going on in various
parts of the world. Thus it was that the six or seven thousand
years allowed by the most liberal theologians of former times
were seen more and more clearly to be but a mere nothing in the
long succession of ages since the appearance of man.

Confirmation of these results was received from various other
parts of the world. In Africa came the discovery of flint
implements deep in the hard gravel of the Nile Valley at Luxor
and on the high hills behind Esneh. In America the discoveries
at Trenton, N.J., and at various places in Delaware, Ohio,
Minnesota, and elsewhere, along the southern edge of the drift of
the Glacial epochs, clinched the new scientific truth yet more
firmly; and the statement made by an eminent American authority
is, that "man was on this continent when the climate and ice of
Greenland extended to the mouth of New York harbour."  The
discoveries of prehistoric remains on the Pacific coast, and
especially in British Columbia, finished completely the last
chance at a reasonable contention by the adherents of the older
view. As to these investigations on the Pacific slope of the
United States, the discoveries of Whitney and others in
California had been so made and announced that the judgment of
scientific men regarding them was suspended until the visit of
perhaps the greatest living authority in his department, Alfred
Russel Wallace, in 1887. He confirmed the view of Prof. Whitney
and others with the statement that "both the actual remains and
works of man found deep under the lava-flows of Pliocene age show
that he existed in the New World at least as early as in the
Old."  To this may be added the discoveries in British Columbia,
which prove that, since man existed in these regions, "valleys
have been filled up by drift from the waste of mountains to a
depth in some cases of fifteen hundred feet; this covered by a
succession of tuffs, ashes, and lava-streams from volcanoes long
since extinct, and finally cut down by the present rivers through
beds of solid basalt, and through this accumulation of lavas and
gravels."  The immense antiquity of the human remains in the
gravels of the Pacific coast is summed up by a most eminent
English authority and declared to be proved, "first, by the
present river systems being of subsequent date, sometimes cutting
through them and their superincumbent lava-cap to a depth of two
thousand feet; secondly, by the great denudation that has taken
place since they were deposited, for they sometimes lie on the
summits of mountains six thousand feet high; thirdly, by the
fact that the Sierra Nevada has been partly elevated since their
formation."[187]

[187] For the general subject of investigations in British
prehistoric remains, see especially Boyd Dawkins, Early Man in
Britain and his Place in the Tertiary Period, London, 1880. For
Boucher de Perthes's account of his discovery of the human jaw at
Moulin Quignon, see his Antiquites Celtiques et Antediluviennes,
vol. iii, p. 542 et seq., Appendix. For an excellent account of
special investigations in the high terraces above the Thames, see
J. Allen Brown, F. G. S., Palaeolithic Man in Northwest
Middlesex, London, 1887. For discoveries in America, and the
citations regarding them, see Wright, the Ice Age in North
America, New York, 1889, chap. xxi. Very remarkable examples of
these specimens from the drift at Trenton may be seen in Prof.
Abbott's collections at the University of Pennsylvania. For an
admirable statement, see Prof. Henry W. Haynes, in Wright, as
above. For proofs of the vast antiquity of man upon the Pacific
coast, cited in the text, see Skertchley, F. G. S., in the
Journal of the Anthropological Institute for 1887, p. 336; see
also Wallace, Darwinism, London, 1890, chap. xv; and for a
striking summary of the evidence that man lived before the last
submergence of Britain, see Brown, Palaeolithic Man in Northwest
Middlesex, as above cited. For proofs that man existed in a
period when the streams were flowing hundreds of feet above their
present level, see ibid., p. 33. As to the evidence of the
action of the sea and of glacial action in the Welsh bone caves
after the remains of extinct animals and weapons of human
workmanship had been deposited, see ibid., p. 198. For a good
statement of the slowness of the submergance and emergence of
Great Britain, with an illustration from the rising of the shore
of Finland, see ibid., pp. 47, 48. As to the flint implements of
Palaeolithic man in the high terraced gravels throughout the
Thames Valley, associated with bones of the mammoth, woolly
rhinoceros, etc., see Brown, p. 31. For still more conclusive
proofs that man inhabited North Wales before the last submergence
of the greater part of the British Islands to a depth of twelve
hundred to fourteen hundred feet, see ibid., pp. 199, 200. For
maps showing the connection of the British river system with that
of the Continent, see Boyd Dawkins, Early Man in Britain, London,
1880, pp. 18, 41, 73; also Lyell, Antiquity of Man, chap. xiv.
As to the long continuance of the early Stone period, see James
Geikie, The Great Ice Age, New York, 1888, p. 402. As to the
impossibility of the animals of the arctic and torrid regions
living together or visiting the same place at different times in
the same year, see Geikie, as above, pp. 421 et seq.; and for a
conclusive argument that the animals of the period assigned lived
in England not since, but before, the Glacial period, or in the
intergalcial period, see ibid., p. 459. For a very candid
statement by perhaps the foremost leader of the theological rear-
guard, admitting the insuperable difficulties presented by the
Old Testament chronology as regards the Creation and the Deluge,
see the Duke of Argyll's Primeval Man, pp. 90-100, and especially
pp. 93, 124. For a succinct statement on the general subject,
see Laing, Problems of the Future, London, 1889, chapters v and
vi. For discoveries of prehistoric implements in India, see
notes by Bruce Foote, F. G. S., in the British Journal of the
Anthropological Institute for 1886 and 1887. For similar
discoveries in South Africa, see Gooch, in Journal of the
Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, vol. xi,
pp. 124 et seq. For proofs of the existance of Palaeolithic man
in Egypt, see Mook, Haynes, Pitt-Rivers, Flinders-Petrie, and
others, cited at length in the next chapter. For the
corroborative and concurrent testimony of ethnology, philology,
and history to the vast antiquity of man, see Tylor,
Anthropology, chap. i.

As an important supplement to these discoveries of ancient
implements came sundry comparisons made by eminent physiologists
between human skulls and bones found in different places and
under circumstances showing vast antiquity.

Human bones had been found under such circumstances as early as
1835 at Cannstadt near Stuttgart, and in 1856 in the Neanderthal
near Dusseldorf; but in more recent searches they had been
discovered in a multitude of places, especially in Germany,
France, Belgium, England, the Caucasus, Africa, and North and
South America. Comparison of these bones showed that even in
that remote Quaternary period there were great differences of
race, and here again came in an argument for the yet earlier
existence of man on the earth; for long previous periods must
have been required to develop such racial differences.
Considerations of this kind gave a new impulse to the belief that
man's existence might even date back into the Tertiary period.
The evidence for this earlier origin of man was ably summed up,
not only by its brilliant advocate, Mortillet, but by a former
opponent, one of the most conservative of modern anthropologists,
Quatrefages;  and the conclusion arrived at by both was, that man
did really exist in the Tertiary period. The acceptance of this
conclusion was also seen in the more recent work of Alfred Russel
Wallace, who, though very cautious and conservative, placed the
origin of man not only in the Tertiary period, but in an earlier
stage of it than most had dared assign--even in the Miocene.

The first thing raising a strong presumption, if not giving
proof, that man existed in the Tertiary, was the fact that from
all explored parts of the world came in more and more evidence
that in the earlier Quaternary man existed in different, strongly
marked races and in great numbers. From all regions which
geologists had explored, even from those the most distant and
different from each other, came this same evidence--from northern
Europe to southern Africa; from France to China; from New
Jersey to British Columbia; from British Columbia to Peru. The
development of man in such numbers and in so many different
regions, with such differences of race and at so early a period,
must have required a long previous time.

This argument was strengthened by discoveries of bones bearing
marks apparently made by cutting instruments, in the Tertiary
formations of France and Italy, and by the discoveries of what
were claimed to be flint implements by the Abbe Bourgeois in
France, and of implements and human bones by Prof. Capellini in
Italy.

On the other hand, some of the more cautious men of science are
still content to say that the existence of man in the Tertiary
period is not yet proven. As to his existence throughout the
Quaternary epoch, no new proofs are needed; even so determined a
supporter of the theological side as the Duke of Argyll has been
forced to yield to the evidence.

Of attempts to make an exact chronological statement throwing
light on the length of the various prehistoric periods, the most
notable have been those by M. Morlot, on the accumulated strata
of the Lake of Geneva; by Gillieron, on the silt of Lake
Neufchatel; by Horner, in the delta deposits of Egypt; and by
Riddle, in the delta of the Mississippi. But while these have
failed to give anything like an exact result, all these
investigations together point to the central truth, so amply
established, of the vast antiquity of man, and the utter
inadequacy of the chronology given in our sacred books. The
period of man's past life upon our planet, which has been fixed
by the universal Church, "always, everywhere, and by all," is
thus perfectly proved to be insignificant compared with those
vast geological epochs during which man is now known to have
existed.[188]

[188] As to the evidence of man in the Tertiary period, see works
already cited, especially Quatrefages, Cartailhac, and Mortillet.
For an admirable summary, see Laing, Human Origins, chap. viii.
See also, for a summing up of the evidence in favour of man in
the Tertiary period, Quatrefages, History Generale des Races
Humaines, in the Bibliotheque Ethnologique, Paris, 1887, chap.
iv. As to the earlier view, see Vogt, Lectures on Man, London,
1864, lecture xi. For a thorough and convincing refutation of
Sir J. W. Dawson's attempt to make the old and new Stone periods
coincide, see H. W. Haynes, in chap. vi of the History of
America, edited by Justin Winsor. For development of various
important points in the relation of anthropology to the human
occupancy of our planet, see Topinard, Anthropology, London,
1890, chap. ix.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE "FALL OF MAN" AND ANTHROPOLOGY

In the previous chapters we have seen how science, especially
within the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, has thoroughly
changed the intelligent thought of the world in regard to the
antiquity of man upon our planet; and how the fabric built upon
the chronological indications in our sacred books--first, by the
early fathers of the Church, afterward by the medieval doctors,
and finally by the reformers and modern orthodox
chronologists--has virtually disappeared before an entirely
different view forced upon us, especially by Egyptian and
Assyrian studies, as well as by geology and archeology.

In this chapter I purpose to present some outlines of the work of
Anthropology, especially as assisted by Ethnology, in showing
what the evolution of human civilization has been.

Here, too, the change from the old theological view based upon
the letter of our sacred books to the modern scientific view
based upon evidence absolutely irrefragable is complete. Here,
too, we are at the beginning of a vast change in the basis and
modes of thought upon man--a change even more striking than that
accomplished by Copernicus and Galileo, when they substituted for
a universe in which sun and planets revolved about the earth a
universe in which the earth is but the merest grain or atom
revolving with other worlds, larger and smaller, about the sun;
and all these forming but one among innumerable systems.

Ever since the beginning of man's effective thinking upon the
great problems around him, two antagonistic views have existed
regarding the life of the human race upon earth. The first of
these is the belief that man was created "in the beginning" a
perfect being, endowed with the highest moral and intellectual
powers, but that there came a "fall," and, as its result, the
entrance into the world of evil, toil, sorrow, and death.

Nothing could be more natural than such an explanation of the
existence of evil, in times when men saw everywhere miracle and
nowhere law. It is, under such circumstances, by far the most
easy of explanations, for it is in accordance with the
appearances of things: men adopted it just as naturally as they
adopted the theory that the Almighty hangs up the stars as lights
in the solid firmament above the earth, or hides the sun behind a
mountain at night, or wheels the planets around the earth, or
flings comets as "signs and wonders" to scare a wicked world, or
allows evil spirits to control thunder, lightning, and storm, and
to cause diseases of body and mind, or opens the "windows of
heaven" to let down "the waters that be above the heavens," and
thus to give rain upon the earth.

A belief, then, in a primeval period of innocence and
perfection--moral, intellectual, and physical--from which men for
some fault fell, is perfectly in accordance with what we should
expect.

Among the earliest known records of our race we find this view
taking shape in the Chaldean legends of war between the gods, and
of a fall of man; both of which seemed necessary to explain the
existence of evil.

In Greek mythology perhaps the best-known statement was made by
Hesiod: to him it was revealed, regarding the men of the most
ancient times, that they were at first "a golden race," that "as
gods they were wont to live, with a life void of care, without
labour and trouble; nor was wretched old age at all impending;
but ever did they delight themselves out of the reach of all
ills, and they died as if overcome by sleep; all blessings were
theirs: of its own will the fruitful field would bear them
fruit, much and ample, and they gladly used to reap the labours
of their hands in quietness along with many good things, being
rich in flocks and true to the blessed gods."  But there came a
"fall," caused by human curiosity. Pandora, the first woman
created, received a vase which, by divine command, was to remain
closed; but she was tempted to open it, and troubles, sorrow, and
disease escaped into the world, hope alone remaining.

So, too, in Roman mythological poetry the well-known picture by
Ovid is but one among the many exhibitions of this same belief in
a primeval golden age--a Saturnian cycle; one of the constantly
recurring attempts, so universal and so natural in the early
history of man, to account for the existence of evil, care, and
toil on earth by explanatory myths and legends.

This view, growing out of the myths, legends, and theologies of
earlier peoples, we also find embodied in the sacred tradition of
the Jews, and especially in one of the documents which form the
impressive poem beginning the books attributed to Moses. As to
the Christian Church, no word of its Blessed Founder indicates
that it was committed by him to this theory, or that he even
thought it worthy of his attention. How, like so many other
dogmas never dreamed of by Jesus of Nazareth and those who knew
him best, it was developed, it does not lie within the province
of this chapter to point out; nor is it worth our while to dwell
upon its evolution in the early Church, in the Middle Ages, at
the Reformation, and in various branches of the Protestant
Church: suffice it that, though among English-speaking nations
by far the most important influence in its favour has come from
Milton's inspiration rather than from that of older sacred books,
no doctrine has been more universally accepted, "always,
everywhere, and by all," from the earliest fathers of the Church
down to the present hour.

On the other hand appeared at an early period the opposite
view--that mankind, instead of having fallen from a high
intellectual, moral, and religious condition, has slowly risen
from low and brutal beginnings. In Greece, among the
philosophers contemporary with Socrates, we find Critias
depicting a rise of man, from a time when he was beastlike and
lawless, through a period when laws were developed, to a time
when morality received enforcement from religion; but among all
the statements of this theory the most noteworthy is that given
by Lucretius in his great poem on The Nature of Things. Despite
its errors, it remains among the most remarkable examples of
prophetic insight in the history of our race. The inspiration of
Lucretius gave him almost miraculous glimpses of truth; his view
of the development of civilization from the rudest beginnings to
the height of its achievements is a wonderful growth, rooted in
observation and thought, branching forth into a multitude of
striking facts and fancies; and among these is the statement
regarding the sequence of inventions:

"Man's earliest arms were fingers, teeth, and nails,
And stones and fragments from the branching woods;
Then copper next; and last, as latest traced,
The tyrant, iron."

Thus did the poet prophesy one of the most fruitful achievements
of modern science: the discovery of that series of epochs which
has been so carefully studied in our century.

Very striking, also, is the statement of Horace, though his idea
is evidently derived from Lucretius. He dwells upon man's first
condition on earth as low and bestial, and pictures him lurking
in caves, progressing from the use of his fists and nails, first
to clubs, then to arms which he had learned to forge, and,
finally, to the invention of the names of things, to literature,
and to laws.[189]

[189] For the passage in Hesiod, as given, see the Works and
Days, lines 109-120, in Banks's translation. As to Horace, see
the Satires, i, 3, 99. As to the relation of the poetic account
of the Fall in Genesis to Chaldean myths, see Smith, Chaldean
Account of Genesis, pp. 13, 17. For a very instructive separation
of the Jehovistic and Elohistic parts of Genesis, with the
account of the "Fall" as given in the former, see Lenormant, La
Genese, Paris, 1883, pp. 166-168; also Bacon, Genesis of Genesis.
Of the lines of Lucretius--

"Arma antiqua, manus, ungues, dentesque fuerunt,
Et lapides, et item sylvarum fragmina rami,
Posterius ferri vis est, aerisque reperta,
Sed prior aeris erat, quam ferri cognitus usus"---

the translation is that of Good. For a more exact prose
translation, see Munro's Lucretius, fourth edition, which is much
more careful, at least in the proof-reading, than the first
edition. As regards Lucretius's propheitc insight into some of
the greatest conclusiuons of modern science, see Munro's
translation and notes, fourth edition, book v, notes ii, p. 335.
On the relation of several passages in Horace to the ideas of
Lucretius, see Munro as above. For the passage from Luther, see
the Table Talk, Hazlitt's translation, p. 242.

During the mediaeval ages of faith this view was almost entirely
obscured, and at the Reformation it seemed likely to remain so.
Typical of the simplicity of belief in "the Fall" cherished among
the Reformers is Luther's declaration regarding Adam and Eve. He
tells us, "they entered into the garden about noon, and having a
desire to eat, she took the apple; then came the fall--according
to our account at about two o'clock."  But in the revival of
learning the old eclipsed truth reappeared, and in the first part
of the seventeenth century we find that, among the crimes for
which Vanini was sentenced at Toulouse to have his tongue torn
out and to be burned alive, was his belief that there is a
gradation extending upward from the lowest to the highest form of
created beings.

Yet, in the same century, the writings of Bodin, Bacon,
Descartes, and Pascal were evidently undermining the old idea of
"the Fall."  Bodin especially, brilliant as were his services to
orthodoxy, argued lucidly against the doctrine of general human
deterioration.

Early in the eighteenth century Vico presented the philosophy of
history as an upward movement of man out of animalism and
barbarism. This idea took firm hold upon human thought, and in
the following centuries such men as Lessing and Turgot gave new
force to it.

The investigations of the last forty years have shown that
Lucretius and Horace were inspired prophets: what they saw by
the exercise of reason illumined by poetic genius, has been now
thoroughly based upon facts carefully ascertained and
arranged--until Thomsen and Nilsson, the northern archaeologists,
have brought these prophecies to evident fulfilment, by
presenting a scientific classification dividing the age of
prehistoric man in various parts of the world between an old
stone period, a new stone period, a period of beaten copper, a
period of bronze, and a period of iron, and arraying vast masses
of facts from all parts of the world, fitting thoroughly into
each other, strengthening each other, and showing beyond a doubt
that, instead of a FALL, there has been a RISE of man, from the
earliest indications in the Quaternary, or even, possibly, in the
Tertiary period.[190]

[190] For Vanini, see Topinard, Elements of Anthropologie, p. 52.
For a brief and careful summary of the agency of Eccard in
Germany, Goguet in France, Hoare in England, and others in
various parts of Europe, as regards this development of the
scientific view during the eighteenth century, see Mortillet, Le
Prehistorique, Paris, 1885, chap. i. For the agency of Bodin,
Bacon, Descartes, and Pascal, see Flint, Philosophy of History,
introduction, pp. 28 et seq. For a shorter summary, see Lubbock,
Prehistoric Man. For the statements by the northern
archaeologists, see Nilsson, Worsaae, and the other main works
cited in this article. For a generous statement regarding the
great services of the Danish archaeologists in this field, see
Quatrefages, introduction to Cartailhac, Les Ages Prehistoriques
de l'Espagne et du Portugal.

The first blow at the fully developed doctrine of "the Fall"
came, as we have seen, from geology. According to that doctrine,
as held quite generally from its beginnings among the fathers and
doctors of the primitive Church down to its culmination in the
minds of great Protestants like John Wesley, the statement in our
sacred books that "death entered the world by sin" was taken as a
historic fact, necessitating the conclusion that, before the
serpent persuaded Eve to eat of the forbidden fruit, death on our
planet was unknown. Naturally, when geology revealed, in the
strata of a period long before the coming of man on earth, a vast
multitude of carnivorous tribes fitted to destroy their
fellow-creatures on land and sea, and within the fossilized
skeletons of many of these the partially digested remains of
animals, this doctrine was too heavy to be carried, and it was
quietly dropped.

But about the middle of the nineteenth century the doctrine of
the rise of man as opposed to the doctrine of his "fall" received
a great accession of strength from a source most unexpected. As
we saw in the last chapter, the facts proving the great antiquity
of man foreshadowed a new and even more remarkable idea regarding
him. We saw, it is true, that the opponents of Boucher de
Perthes, while they could not deny his discovery of human
implements in the drift, were successful in securing a verdict of
"Not prove " as regarded his discovery of human bones; but their
triumph was short-lived. Many previous discoveries, little
thought of up to that time, began to be studied, and others were
added which resulted not merely in confirming the truth regarding
the antiquity of man, but in establishing another doctrine which
the opponents of science regarded with vastly greater
dislike--the doctrine that man has not fallen from an original
high estate in which he was created about six thousand years ago,
but that, from a period vastly earlier than any warranted by the
sacred chronologists, he has been, in spite of lapses and
deteriorations, rising.

A brief review of this new growth of truth may be useful. As
early as 1835 Prof. Jaeger had brought out from a quantity of
Quaternary remains dug up long before at Cannstadt, near
Stuttgart, a portion of a human skull, apparently of very low
type. A battle raged about it for a time, but this finally
subsided, owing to uncertainties arising from the circumstances
of the discovery.

In 1856, in the Neanderthal, near Dusseldorf, among Quaternary
remains gathered on the floor of a grotto, another skull was
found bearing the same evidence of a low human type. As in the
case of the Cannstadt skull, this again was fiercely debated, and
finally the questions regarding it were allowed to remain in
suspense. But new discoveries were made: at Eguisheim, at Brux,
at Spy, and elsewhere, human skulls were found of a similarly low
type; and, while each of the earlier discoveries was open to
debate, and either, had no other been discovered, might have been
considered an abnormal specimen, the combination of all these
showed conclusively that not only had a race of men existed at
that remote period, but that it was of a type as low as the
lowest, perhaps below the lowest, now known.

Research was now redoubled, and, as a result, human skulls and
complete skeletons of various types began to be discovered in the
ancient deposits of many other parts of the world, and especially
in France, Belgium, Germany, the Caucasus, Africa, and North and
South America.

But soon began to emerge from all these discoveries a fact of
enormous importance. The skulls and bones found at Cro Magnon,
Solutre, Furfooz, Grenelle, and elsewhere, were compared, and it
was thus made certain that various races had already appeared and
lived in various grades of civilization, even in those
exceedingly remote epochs; that even then there were various
strata of humanity ranging from races of a very low to those of a
very high type; and that upon any theory--certainly upon the
theory of the origin of mankind from a single pair--two things
were evident: first, that long, slow processes during vast
periods of time must have been required for the differentiation
of these races, and for the evolution of man up to the point
where the better specimens show him, certainly in the early
Quaternary and perhaps in the Tertiary period; and, secondly,
that there had been from the first appearance of man, of which we
have any traces, an UPWARD tendency.[191]

[191] For Wesley's statement of the amazing consequences of the
entrance of death into the world by sin, see citations in his
sermon on The Fall of Man in the chapter on Geology. For Boucher
de Perthes, see his Life by Ledieu, especially chapters v and
xix; also letters in the appendix; also Les Antiquities Celtiques
et Antediluviennes, as cited in previous chapters of this work.
For an account of the Neanderthal man and other remains
mentioned, see Quatrefages, Human Species, chap. xxvi; also
Mortillet, Le Prehistorique, Paris, 1885, pp. 232 et seq.; also
other writers cited in this chapter. For the other discoveries
mentioned, see the same sources. For an engraving of the skull
and the restored human face of the Neanderthal man, see Reinach,
Antiquities Nationales, etc., vol. i, p. 138. For the vast
regions over which that early race spread, see Quatrefages as
above, p. 307. See also the same author, Histoire Generale des
Races Humaines, in the Bibliotheque Ethnologique, Paris, 1887, p.
4. In the vast mass of literature bearing on this subject, see
Quatrefages, Dupont, Reinach, Joly, Mortillet, Tylor, and
Lubbock, in works cited through these chapters.

This second conclusion, the upward tendency of man from low
beginnings, was made more and more clear by bringing into
relations with these remains of human bodies and of extinct
animals the remains of human handiwork. As stated in the last
chapter, the river drift and bone caves in Great Britain, France,
and other parts of the world, revealed a progression, even in the
various divisions of the earliest Stone period; for, beginning
at the very lowest strata of these remains, on the floors of the
caverns, associated mainly with the bones of extinct animals,
such as the cave bear, the hairy elephant, and the like, were the
rudest implements then, in strata above these, sealed in the
stalagmite of the cavern floors, lying with the bones of animals
extinct but more recent, stone implements were found, still rude,
but, as a rule, of an improved type; and, finally, in a still
higher stratum, associated with bones of animals like the
reindeer and bison, which, though not extinct, have departed to
other climates, were rude stone implements, on the whole of a
still better workmanship. Such was the foreshadowing, even at
that early rude Stone period, of the proofs that the tendency of
man has been from his earliest epoch and in all parts of the
world, as a rule, upward.

But this rule was to be much further exemplified. About 1850,
while the French and English geologists were working more
especially among the relics of the drift and cave periods, noted
archaeologists of the North--Forchammer, Steenstrup, and
Worsaae--were devoting themselves to the investigation of certain
remains upon the Danish Peninsula. These remains were of two
kinds: first, there were vast shell-heaps or accumulations of
shells and other refuse cast aside by rude tribes which at some
unknown age in the past lived on the shores of the Baltic,
principally on shellfish. That these shell-heaps were very
ancient was evident: the shells of oysters and the like found in
them were far larger than any now found on those coasts; their
size, so far from being like that of the corresponding varieties
which now exist in the brackish waters of the Baltic, was in
every case like that of those varieties which only thrive in the
waters of the open salt sea. Here was a clear indication that at
the time when man formed these shell-heaps those coasts were in
far more direct communication with the salt sea than at present,
and that sufficient time must have elapsed since that period to
have wrought enormous changes in sea and land throughout those
regions.

Scattered through these heaps were found indications of a grade
of civilization when man still used implements of stone, but
implements and weapons which, though still rude, showed a
progress from those of the drift and early cave period, some of
them being of polished stone.

With these were other evidences that civilization had progressed.
With implements rude enough to have survived from early periods,
other implements never known in the drift and bone caves began to
appear, and, though there were few if any bones of other domestic
animals, the remains of dogs were found; everything showed that
there had been a progress in civilization between the former
Stone epoch and this.

The second series of discoveries in Scandinavia was made in the
peat-beds: these were generally formed in hollows or bowls
varying in depth from ten to thirty feet, and a section of them,
like a section of the deposits in the bone caverns, showed a
gradual evolution of human culture. The lower strata in these
great bowls were found to be made up chiefly of mosses and
various plants matted together with the trunks of fallen trees,
sometimes of very large diameter; and the botanical examination
of the lowest layer of these trees and plants in the various
bowls revealed a most important fact: for this layer, the first
in point of time, was always of the Scotch fir--which now grows
nowhere in the Danish islands, and can not be made to grow
anywhere in them--and of plants which are now extinct in these
regions, but have retreated within the arctic circle. Coming up
from the bottom of these great bowls there was found above the
first layer a second, in which were matted together masses of oak
trees of different varieties; these, too, were relics of a
bygone epoch, since the oak has almost entirely disappeared from
Denmark. Above these came a third stratum made up of fallen
beech trees; and the beech is now, and has been since the
beginning of recorded history, the most common tree of the Danish
Peninsula.

Now came a second fact of the utmost importance as connected with
the first. Scattered, as a rule, through the lower of these
deposits, that of the extinct fir trees and plants, were found
implements and weapons of smooth stone; in the layer of oak
trees were found implements of bronze; and among the layer of
beeches were found implements and weapons of iron.

The general result of these investigations in these two sources,
the shell mounds and the peat deposits, was the same: the first
civilization evidenced in them was marked by the use of stone
implements more or less smooth, showing a progress from the
earlier rude Stone period made known by the bone caves; then
came a later progress to a higher civilization, marked by the use
of bronze implements; and, finally, a still higher development
when iron began to be used.

The labours of the Danish archaeologists have resulted in the
formation of a great museum at Copenhagen, and on the specimens
they have found, coupled with those of the drift and bone caves,
is based the classification between the main periods or divisions
in the evolution of the human race above referred to.

It was not merely in Scandinavian lands that these results were
reached; substantially the same discoveries were made in Ireland
and France, in Sardinia and Portugal, in Japan and in Brazil, in
Cuba and in the United States; in fact, as a rule, in nearly
every part of the world which was thoroughly examined.[192]

[192] For the general subject, see Mortillet, Le Prehistorique,
p. 498, et passim. For examples of the rude stone implements,
improving as we go from earlier to later layers in the bone
caves, see Boyd Hawkins, Early Man in Britain, chap. vii, p. 186;
also Quatrefages, Human Species, New York, 1879, pp. 305 et seq.
An interesting gleam of light is thrown on the subject in De
Baye, Grottes Prehistoriques de la Marne, pp. 31 et seq.; also
Evans, as cited in the previous chapter. For the more recent
investigations in the Danish shell-heaps, see Boyd Dawkins, Early
Man in Britain, pp. 303, 304. For these evidences of advanced
civilization in the shell-heaps, see Mortillet, p. 498. He, like
Nilsson, says that only the bones of the dog were found; but
compare Dawkins, p. 305. For the very full list of these
discoveries, with their bearing on each other, see Mortillet, p.
499. As to those in Scandanavian countries, see Nilsson, The
Primitive Inhabitants of Scandanavia, third edition, with
Introduction by Lubbock, London, 1868; also the Pre-History of
the North, by Worsaae, English translation, London, 1886. For
shell-mounds and their contents in the Spanish Peninsula, see
Cartailhac's greater work already cited. For summary of such
discoveries throughout the world, see Mortillet, Le
Prehistorique, pp. 497 et seq.

But from another quarter came a yet more striking indication of
this same evolution. As far back as the year 1829 there were
discovered, in the Lake of Zurich, piles and other antiquities
indicating a former existence of human dwellings, standing in the
water at some distance from the shore; but the usual mixture of
thoughtlessness and dread of new ideas seems to have prevailed,
and nothing was done until about 1853, when new discoveries of
the same kind were followed up vigorously, and Rutimeyer, Keller,
Troyon, and others showed not only in the Lake of Zurich, but in
many other lakes in Switzerland, remains of former habitations,
and, in the midst of these, great numbers of relics, exhibiting
the grade of civilization which those lakedwellers had attained.

Here, too, were accumulated proofs of the upward tendency of the
human race. Implements of polished stone, bone, leather, pottery
of various grades, woven cloth, bones of several kinds of
domestic animals, various sorts of grain, bread which had been
preserved by charring, and a multitude of evidences of progress
never found among the earlier, ruder relics of civilization,
showed yet more strongly that man had arrived here at a still
higher stage than his predecessor of the drift, cave, and
shell-heap periods, and had gone on from better to better.

Very striking evidences of this upward tendency were found in
each class of implements. As by comparing the chipped flint
implements of the lower and earlier strata in the cave period
with those of the later and upper strata we saw progress, so, in
each of the periods of polished stone, bronze, and iron, we see,
by similar comparisons, a steady progress from rude to perfected
implements; and especially is this true in the remains of the
various lake-dwellings, for among these can be traced out
constant increase in the variety of animals domesticated, and
gradual improvements in means of subsistence and in ways of
living.

Incidentally, too, a fact, at first sight of small account, but
on reflection exceedingly important, was revealed. The earlier
bronze implements were frequently found to imitate in various
minor respects implements of stone; in other words, forms were
at first given to bronze implements natural in working stone, but
not natural in working bronze. This showed the DIRECTION of the
development--that it was upward from stone to bronze, not
downward from bronze to stone; that it was progress rather than
decline.

These investigations were supplemented by similar researches
elsewhere. In many other parts of the world it was found that
lake-dwellers had existed in different grades of civilization,
but all within a certain range, intermediate between the
cave-dwellers and the historic period. To explain this epoch of
the lake-dwellers, history came in with the account given by
Herodotus of the lake-dwellings on Lake Prasias, which gave
protection from the armies of Persia. Still more important,
Comparative Ethnography showed that to-day, in various parts of
the world, especially in New Guinea and West Africa, races of men
are living in lake-dwellings built upon piles, and with a range
of implements and weapons strikingly like many of those
discovered in these ancient lake deposits of Switzerland.

In Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Ireland, Scotland, and
other countries, remains of a different sort were also found,
throwing light on this progress. The cromlechs, cranogs, mounds,
and the like, though some of them indicate the work of weaker
tribes pressed upon by stronger, show, as a rule, the same upward
tendency.

At a very early period in the history of these discoveries,
various attempts were made--nominally in the interest of
religion, but really in the interest of sundry creeds and
catechisms framed when men knew little or nothing of natural
laws--to break the force of such evidences of the progress and
development of the human race from lower to higher. Out of all
the earlier efforts two may be taken as fairly typical, for they
exhibit the opposition to science as developed under two
different schools of theology, each working in its own way. The
first of these shows great ingenuity and learning, and is
presented by Mr. Southall in his book, published in 1875,
entitled The Recent Origin of the World. In this he grapples
first of all with the difficulties presented by the early date of
Egyptian civilization, and the keynote of his argument is the
statement made by an eminent Egyptologist, at a period before
modern archaeological discoveries were well understood, that
"Egypt laughs the idea of a rude Stone age, a polished Stone age,
a Bronze age, an Iron age, to scorn."

Mr. Southall's method was substantially that of the late
excellent Mr. Gosse in geology. Mr. Gosse, as the readers of
this work may remember, felt obliged, in the supposed interest of
Genesis, to urge that safety to men's souls might be found in
believing that, six thousand years ago, the Almighty, for some
inscrutable purpose, suddenly set Niagara pouring very near the
spot where it is pouring now; laid the various strata, and
sprinkled the fossils through them like plums through a pudding;
scratched the glacial grooves upon the rocks, and did a vast
multitude of things, subtle and cunning, little and great, in all
parts of the world, required to delude geologists of modern times
into the conviction that all these things were the result of a
steady progress through long epochs. On a similar plan, Mr.
Southall proposed, at the very beginning of his book, as a final
solution of the problem, the declaration that Egypt, with its
high civilization in the time of Mena, with its races, classes,
institutions, arrangements, language, monuments--all indicating
an evolution through a vast previous history--was a sudden
creation which came fully made from the hands of the Creator. To
use his own words, "The Egyptians had no Stone age, and were born
civilized."

There is an old story that once on a time a certain jovial King
of France, making a progress through his kingdom, was received at
the gates of a provincial town by the mayor's deputy, who began
his speech on this wise: "May it please your Majesty, there are
just thirteen reasons why His Honour the Mayor can not be present
to welcome you this morning. The first of these reasons is that
he is dead."  On this the king graciously declared that this
first reason was sufficient, and that he would not trouble the
mayor's deputy for the twelve others.

So with Mr. Southall's argument: one simple result of scientific
research out of many is all that it is needful to state, and this
is, that in these later years we have a new and convincing
evidence of the existence of prehistoric man in Egypt in his
earliest, rudest beginnings; the very same evidence which we
find in all other parts of the world which have been carefully
examined. This evidence consists of stone implements and weapons
which have been found in Egypt in such forms, at such points, and
in such positions that when studied in connection with those
found in all other parts of the world, from New Jersey to
California, from France to India, and from England to the Andaman
Islands, they force upon us the conviction that civilization in
Egypt, as in all other parts of the world, was developed by the
same slow process of evolution from the rudest beginnings.

It is true that men learned in Egyptology had discouraged the
idea of an earlier Stone age in Egypt, and that among these were
Lepsius and Brugsch; but these men were not trained in
prehistoric archaeology; their devotion to the study of the
monuments of Egyptian civilization had evidently drawn them away
from sympathy, and indeed from acquaintance, with the work of men
like Boucher de Perthes, Lartet, Nilsson, Troyon, and Dawkins.
But a new era was beginning. In 1867 Worsaae called attention to
the prehistoric implements found on the borders of Egypt; two
years later Arcelin discussed such stone implements found beneath
the soil of Sakkara and Gizeh, the very focus of the earliest
Egyptian civilization; in the same year Hamy and Lenormant found
such implements washed out from the depths higher up the Nile at
Thebes, near the tombs of the kings; and in the following year
they exhibited more flint implements found at various other
places. Coupled with these discoveries was the fact that Horner
and Linant found a copper knife at twenty-four feet, and pottery
at sixty feet, below the surface. In 1872 Dr. Reil, director of
the baths at Helouan, near Cairo, discovered implements of
chipped flint; and in 1877. Dr. Jukes Brown made similar
discoveries in that region. In 1878 Oscar Fraas, summing up the
question, showed that the stone implements were mainly such as
are found in the prehistoric deposits of other countries, and
that, Zittel having found them in the Libyan Desert, far from the
oases, there was reason to suppose that these implements were
used before the region became a desert and before Egypt was
civilized. Two years later Dr. Mook, of Wurzburg, published a
work giving the results of his investigations, with careful
drawings of the rude stone implements discovered by him in the
upper Nile Valley, and it was evident that, while some of these
implements differed slightly from those before known, the great
mass of them were of the character so common in the prehistoric
deposits of other parts of the world.

A yet more important contribution to this mass of facts was made
by Prof. Henry Haynes, of Boston, who in the winter of 1877 and
1878 began a very thorough investigation of the subject, and
discovered, a few miles east of Cairo, many flint implements.
The significance of Haynes's discoveries was twofold: First,
there were, among these, stone axes like those found in the
French drift beds of St. Acheul, showing that the men who made or
taught men how to make these in Egypt were passing through the
same phase of savagery as that of Quaternary France; secondly, he
found a workshop for making these implements, proving that these
flint implements were not brought into Egypt by invaders, but
were made to meet the necessities of the country. From this
first field Prof. Haynes went to Helouan, north of Cairo, and
there found, as Dr. Reil had done, various worked flints, some of
them like those discovered by M. Riviere in the caves of
southern France; thence he went up the Nile to Luxor, the site of
ancient Thebes, began a thorough search in the Tertiary limestone
hills, and found multitudes of chipped stone implements, some of
them, indeed, of original forms, but most of forms common in
other parts of the world under similar circumstances, some of the
chipped stone axes corresponding closely to those found in the
drift beds of northern France.

All this seemed to show conclusively that, long ages before the
earliest period of Egyptian civilization of which the monuments
of the first dynasties give us any trace, mankind in the Nile
Valley was going through the same slow progress from the period
when, standing just above the brutes, he defended himself with
implements of rudely chipped stone.

But in 1881 came discoveries which settled the question entirely.
In that year General Pitt-Rivers, a Fellow of the Royal Society
and President of the Anthropological Institute, and J. F.
Campbell, Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society of England,
found implements not only in alluvial deposits, associated with
the bones of the zebra, hyena, and other animals which have since
retreated farther south, but, at Djebel Assas, near Thebes, they
found implements of chipped flint in the hard, stratified gravel,
from six and a half to ten feet below the surface; relics
evidently, as Mr. Campbell says, "beyond calculation older than
the oldest Egyptian temples and tombs."  They certainly proved
that Egyptian civilization had not issued in its completeness,
and all at once, from the hand of the Creator in the time of
Mena. Nor was this all. Investigators of the highest character
and ability--men like Hull and Flinders Petrie--revealed
geological changes in Egypt requiring enormous periods of time,
and traces of man's handiwork dating from a period when the
waters in the Nile Valley extended hundreds of feet above the
present level. Thus was ended the contention of Mr. Southall.

Still another attack upon the new scientific conclusions came
from France, when in 1883 the Abbe Hamard, Priest of the Oratory,
published his Age of Stone and Primitive Man. He had been
especially vexed at the arrangement of prehistoric implements by
periods at the Paris Exposition of 1878; he bitterly complains
of this as having an anti-Christian tendency, and rails at
science as "the idol of the day."  He attacks Mortillet, one of
the leaders in French archaeology, with a great display of
contempt; speaks of the "venom" in books on prehistoric man
generally; complains that the Church is too mild and gentle with
such monstrous doctrines; bewails the concessions made to science
by some eminent preachers; and foretells his own martyrdom at the
hands of men of science.

Efforts like this accomplished little, and a more legitimate
attempt was made to resist the conclusions of archaeology by
showing that knives of stone were used in obedience to a sacred
ritual in Egypt for embalming, and in Judea for circumcision, and
that these flint knives might have had this later origin. But
the argument against the conclusions drawn from this view was
triple: First, as we have seen, not only stone knives, but axes
and other implements of stone similar to those of a prehistoric
period in western Europe were discovered; secondly, these
implements were discovered in the hard gravel drift of a period
evidently far earlier than that of Mena; and, thirdly, the use of
stone implements in Egyptian and Jewish sacred functions within
the historic period, so far from weakening the force of the
arguments for the long and slow development of Egyptian
civilization from the men who used rude flint implements to the
men who built and adorned the great temples of the early
dynasties, is really an argument in favour of that long
evolution. A study of comparative ethnology has made it clear
that the sacred stone knives and implements of the Egyptian and
Jewish priestly ritual were natural survivals of that previous
period. For sacrificial or ritual purposes, the knife of stone
was considered more sacred than the knife of bronze or iron,
simply because it was ancient; just as to-day, in India, Brahman
priests kindle the sacred fire not with matches or flint and
steel, but by a process found in the earliest, lowest stages of
human culture--by violently boring a pointed stick into another
piece of wood until a spark comes; and just as to-day, in Europe
and America, the architecture of the Middle Ages survives as a
special religious form in the erection of our most recent
churches, and to such an extent that thousands on thousands of us
feel that we can not worship fitly unless in the midst of
windows, decorations, vessels, implements, vestments, and
ornaments, no longer used for other purposes, but which have
survived in sundry branches of the Christian Church, and derived
a special sanctity from the fact that they are of ancient origin.

Taking, then, the whole mass of testimony together, even though a
plausible or very strong argument against single evidences may be
made here and there, the force of its combined mass remains, and
leaves both the vast antiquity of man and the evolution of
civilization from its lowest to its highest forms, as proved by
the prehistoric remains of Egypt and so many other countries in
all parts of the world, beyond a reasonable doubt. Most
important of all, the recent discoveries in Assyria have thrown a
new light upon the evolution of the dogma of "the fall of man."
Reverent scholars like George Smith, Sayce, Delitzsch, Jensen,
Schrader, and their compeers have found in the Ninevite records
the undoubted source of that form of the fall legend which was
adopted by the Hebrews and by them transmitted to
Christianity.[193]

[193] For Mr. Southall's views, see his Recent Origin of Man, p.
20 and elsewhere. For Mr. Gosse'e views, see his Omphalos as
cited in the chapter on Geology in this work. For a summary of
the work of Arcelin, Hamy, Lenormant, Richard, Lubbock, Mook, and
Haynes, see Mortillet, Le Prehistorique, passim. As to Zittel's
discovery, see Oscar Fraas's Aus dem Orient, Stuttgart, 1878. As
to the striking similarties of the stone implements found in
Egypt with those found in the drift and bone caves, see Mook's
monograph, Wurzburg, 1880, cited in the next chapter, especially
Plates IX, XI, XII. For even more striking reproductions of
photographs showing this remarkable similarity between Egyptian
and European chipped stone remains, see H. W. Haynes,
Palaeolithic Implements in Upper Egypt, Boston, 1881. See also
Evans, Ancient Stone Implements, chap. i, pp. 8, 9, 44, 102, 316,
329. As to stone implements used by priests of Jehovah, priests
of Baal, priests of Moloch, priests of Odin, and Egyptian
priests, as religious survivals, see Cartailhac, as above, 6 and
7; also Lartet, in De Luynes, Expedition to the Dead Sea; also
Nilsson, Primitive Inhabitants of Scandanavia, pp. 96, 97; also
Sayce, Herodotus, p. 171, note. For the discoveries by Pitt-
Rivers, see the Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great
Britain and Ireland for 1882, vol. xi, pp. 382 et seq.; and for
Campbell's decision regarding them, see ibid., pp. 396, 397. For
facts summed up in the words, "It is most probable that Egypt at
a remote period passed like many other countries through its
stone period," see Hilton Price, F. S. A., F. G. S., paper in the
Journal of the Archaeological Institute of Great Britain and
Ireland for 1884, p. 56. Specimens of Palaeolithic implements
from Egypt--knives, arrowheads, spearheads, flakes, and the like,
both of peculiar and ordinary forms--may be seen in various
museums, but especially in that of Prof. Haynes, of Boston. Some
interesting light is also thrown into the subject by the
specimens obtained by General Wilson and deposited in the
Smithsonian Institution at Washington. For Abbe Hamard's attack,
see his L'Age de la Pierre et L'Homme Primitif, Paris, 1883--
especially his preface. For the stone weapon found in the high
drift behind Esneh, see Flinders Petrie, History of Egypt, chap.
i. Of these discoveries by Pitt-Rivers and others, Maspero
appears to know nothing.

CHAPTER IX.

THE "FALL OF MAN" AND ETHNOLOGY.

We have seen that, closely connected with the main lines of
investigation in archaeology and anthropology, there were other
researches throwing much light on the entire subject. In a
previous chapter we saw especially that Lafitau and Jussieu were
among the first to collect and compare facts bearing on the
natural history of man, gathered by travellers in various parts
of the earth, thus laying foundations for the science of
comparative ethnology. It was soon seen that ethnology had most
important bearings upon the question of the material,
intellectual, moral, and religious evolution of the human race;
in every civilized nation, therefore, appeared scholars who began
to study the characteristics of various groups of men as
ascertained from travellers, and to compare the results thus
gained with each other and with those obtained by archaeology.

Thus, more and more clear became the evidences that the tendency
of the race has been upward from low beginnings. It was found
that groups of men still existed possessing characteristics of
those in the early periods of development to whom the drift and
caves and shell-heaps and pile-dwellings bear witness; groups of
men using many of the same implements and weapons, building their
houses in the same way, seeking their food by the same means,
enjoying the same amusements, and going through the same general
stages of culture; some being in a condition corresponding to
the earlier, some to the later, of those early periods.

From all sides thus came evidence that we have still upon the
earth examples of all the main stages in the development of human
civilization; that from the period when man appears little above
the brutes, and with little if any religion in any accepted sense
of the word, these examples can be arranged in an ascending
series leading to the highest planes which humanity has reached;
that philosophic observers may among these examples study
existing beliefs, usages, and institutions back through earlier
and earlier forms, until, as a rule, the whole evolution can be
easily divined if not fully seen. Moreover, the basis of the
whole structure became more and more clear: the fact that "the
lines of intelligence have always been what they are, and have
always operated as they do now; that man has progressed from the
simple to the complex, from the particular to the general."

As this evidence from ethnology became more and more strong, its
significance to theology aroused attention, and naturally most
determined efforts were made to break its force. On the
Continent the two great champions of the Church in this field
were De Maistre and De Bonald; but the two attempts which may be
especially recalled as the most influential among
English-speaking peoples were those of Whately, Archbishop of
Dublin, and the Duke of Argyll.

First in the combat against these new deductions of science was
Whately. He was a strong man, whose breadth of thought and
liberality in practice deserve all honour; but these very
qualities drew upon him the distrust of his orthodox brethren;
and, while his writings were powerful in the first half of the
present century to break down many bulwarks of unreason, he seems
to have been constantly in fear of losing touch with the Church,
and therefore to have promptly attacked some scientific
reasonings, which, had he been a layman, not holding a brief for
the Church, he would probably have studied with more care and
less prejudice. He was not slow to see the deeper significance
of archaeology and ethnology in their relations to the
theological conception of "the Fall," and he set the battle in
array against them.

His contention was, to use his own words, that "no community ever
did or ever can emerge unassisted by external helps from a state
of utter barbarism into anything that can be called
civilization"; and that, in short, all imperfectly civilized,
barbarous, and savage races are but fallen descendants of races
more fully civilized. This view was urged with his usual
ingenuity and vigour, but the facts proved too strong for him:
they made it clear, first, that many races were without simple
possessions, instruments, and arts which never, probably, could
have been lost if once acquired--as, for example, pottery, the
bow for shooting, various domesticated animals, spinning, the
simplest principles of agriculture, household economy, and the
like; and, secondly, it was shown as a simple matter of fact
that various savage and barbarous tribes HAD raised themselves by
a development of means which no one from outside could have
taught them; as in the cultivation and improvement of various
indigenous plants, such as the potato and Indian corn among the
Indians of North America; in the domestication of various animals
peculiar to their own regions, such as the llama among the
Indians of south America; in the making of sundry fabrics out of
materials and by processes not found among other nations, such as
the bark cloth of the Polynesians; and in the development of
weapons peculiar to sundry localities, but known in no others,
such as the boomerang in Australia.

Most effective in bringing out the truth were such works as those
of Sir John Lubbock and Tylor; and so conclusive were they that
the arguments of Whately were given up as untenable by the other
of the two great champions above referred to, and an attempt was
made by him to form the diminishing number of thinking men
supporting the old theological view on a new line of defence.

This second champion, the Duke of Argyll, was a man of wide
knowledge and strong powers in debate, whose high moral sense was
amply shown in his adhesion to the side of the American Union in
the struggle against disunion and slavery, despite the
overwhelming majority against him in the high aristocracy to
which he belonged. As an honest man and close thinker, the duke
was obliged to give up completely the theological view of the
antiquity of man. The whole biblical chronology as held by the
universal Church, "always, everywhere, and by all," he
sacrificed, and gave all his powers in this field to support the
theory of "the Fall."  Noblesse oblige: the duke and his
ancestors had been for centuries the chief pillars of the Church
of Scotland, and it was too much to expect that he could break
away from a tenet which forms really its "chief cornerstone."

Acknowledging the insufficiency of Archbishop Whately's argument,
the duke took the ground that the lower, barbarous, savage,
brutal races were the remains of civilized races which, in the
struggle for existence, had been pushed and driven off to remote
and inclement parts of the earth, where the conditions necessary
to a continuance in their early civilization were absent; that,
therefore, the descendants of primeval, civilized men degenerated
and sank in the scale of culture. To use his own words, the
weaker races were "driven by the stronger to the woods and
rocks," so that they became "mere outcasts of the human race."

In answer to this, while it was conceded, first, that there have
been examples of weaker tribes sinking in the scale of culture
after escaping from the stronger into regions unfavourable to
civilization, and, secondly, that many powerful nations have
declined and decayed, it was shown that the men in the most
remote and unfavourable regions have not always been the lowest
in the scale; that men have been frequently found "among the
woods and rocks" in a higher state of civilization than on the
fertile plains, such examples being cited as Mexico, Peru, and
even Scotland; and that, while there were many examples of
special and local decline, overwhelming masses of facts point to
progress as a rule.

The improbability, not to say impossibility, of many of the
conclusions arrived at by the duke appeared more and more
strongly as more became known of the lower tribes of mankind. It
was necessary on his theory to suppose many things which our
knowledge of the human race absolutely forbids us to believe:
for example, it was necessary to suppose that the Australians or
New Zealanders, having once possessed so simple and convenient an
art as that of the potter, had lost every trace of it; and that
the same tribes, having once had so simple a means of saving
labour as the spindle or small stick weighted at one end for
spinning, had given it up and gone back to twisting threads with
the hand. In fact, it was necessary to suppose that one of the
main occupations of man from "the beginning" had been the
forgetting of simple methods, processes, and implements which all
experience in the actual world teaches us are never entirely
forgotten by peoples who have once acquired them.

Some leading arguments of the duke were overthrown by simple
statements of fact. Thus, his instance of the Eskimo as pushed
to the verge of habitable America, and therefore living in the
lowest depths of savagery, which, even if it were true, by no
means proved a general rule, was deprived of its force by the
simple fact that the Eskimos are by no means the lowest race on
the American continent, and that various tribes far more
centrally and advantageously placed, as, for instance, those in
Brazil, are really inferior to them in the scale of culture.
Again, his statement that "in Africa there appear to be no traces
of any time when the natives were not acquainted with the use of
iron," is met by the fact that from the Nile Valley to the Cape
of Good Hope we find, wherever examination has been made, the
same early stone implements which in all other parts of the world
precede the use of iron, some of which would not have been made
had their makers possessed iron. The duke also tried to show
that there were no distinctive epochs of stone, bronze, and iron,
by adducing the fact that some stone implements are found even in
some high civilizations. This is indeed a fact. We find some
few European peasants to-day using stone mallet-heads; but this
proves simply that the old stone mallet-heads have survived as
implements cheap and effective.

The argument from Comparative Ethnology in support of the view
that the tendency of mankind is upward has received strength from
many sources. Comparative Philology shows that in the less
civilized, barbarous, and savage races childish forms of speech
prevail--frequent reduplications and the like, of which we have
survivals in the later and even in the most highly developed
languages. In various languages, too, we find relics of ancient
modes of thought in the simplest words and expressions used for
arithmetical calculations. Words and phrases for this purpose
are frequently found to be derived from the words for hands,
feet, fingers, and toes, just as clearly as in our own language
some of our simplest measures of length are shown by their names
to have been measures of parts of the human body, as the cubit,
the foot, and the like, and therefore to date from a time when
exactness was not required. To add another out of many examples,
it is found to-day that various rude nations go through the
simplest arithmetical processes by means of pebbles. Into our
own language, through the Latin, has come a word showing that our
distant progenitors reckoned in this way: the word CALCULATE
gives us an absolute proof of this. According to the theory of
the Duke of Argyll, men ages ago used pebbles (CALCULI) in
performing the simplest arithmetical calculations because we
to-day "CALCULATE."  No reduction to absurdity could be more
thorough. The simple fact must be that we "calculate" because
our remote ancestors used pebbles in their arithmetic.

Comparative Literature and Folklore also show among peoples of a
low culture to-day childish modes of viewing nature, and childish
ways of expressing the relations of man to nature, such as
clearly survive from a remote ancestry; noteworthy among these
are the beliefs in witches and fairies, and multitudes of popular
and poetic expressions in the most civilized nations.

So,too, Comparative Ethnography, the basis of Ethnology, shows in
contemporary barbarians and savages a childish love of playthings
and games, of which we have many survivals.

All these facts, which were at first unobserved or observed as
matters of no significance, have been brought into connection
with a fact in biology acknowledged alike by all important
schools; by Agassiz on one hand and by Darwin on the
other--namely, as stated by Agassiz, that "the young states of
each species and group resemble older forms of the same group,"
or, as stated by Darwin, that "in two or more groups of animals,
however much they may at first differ from each other in
structure and habits, if they pass through closely similar
embryonic stages, we may feel almost assured that they have
descended from the same parent form, and are therefore closely
related."[194]

[194] For the stone forms given to early bronze axes, etc., see
Nilsson, Primitive Inhabitants of Scandanavia, London, 1868,
Lubbock's Introduction, p. 31; and for plates, see Lubbock's
Prehistoric Man, chap. ii; also Cartailhac, Les Ages
Prehistoriques de l'Espagne et du Portugal, p. 227. Also Keller,
Lake Dwellings; also Troyon, Habitations Lacustres; also Boyd
Dawkins, Early Man in Great Britain, p. 191; also Lubbock, p. 6;
also Lyell, Antiquity of Man,chap. ii. For the cranogs, etc., in
the north of Europe, see Munro, Ancient Scottish Lake Dwellings,
Edinburgh, 1882. For mounds and greater stone constructions in
the extreme south of Europe, see Cartailhac's work on Spain and
Portugal above cited, part iii, chap. iii. For the source of Mr.
Southall's contention, see Brugsch, Egypt of the Pharoahs. For
the two sides of the question whether in the lower grades of
savagery there is really any recognition of a superior power, or
anything which can be called, in any accepted sense, religion,
compare Quatrefages with Lubbock, in works already cited. For a
striking but rather ad captandum effort to show that there is a
moral and religious sense in the very lowest of Australian
tribes, see one of the discourses of Archbishop Vaughn on Science
and Religion, Baltimore, 1879. For one out of multitiudes of
striking and instructive resemblances in ancient stone implements
and those now in use among sundry savage tribes, see comparison
between old Scandanavian arrowheads and those recently brought
from Tierra del Fuego, in Nilsson, as above, especially in Plate
V. For a brief and admirable statement of the arguments on both
sides, see Sir J. Lubbock's Dundee paper, given in the appendix
to the American edition of his Origin of Civilization, etc. For
the general argument referred to between Whately and the Duke of
Argyll on one side, and Lubbock on the other, see Lubbock's
Dundee paper as above cited; Tylor, Early History of Mankind,
especially p. 193; and the Duke of Argyll, Primeval Man, part iv.
For difficulties of savages in arithmetic, see Lubbock, as above,
pp. 459 et seq. For a very temperate and judicial view of the
whole question, see Tylor as above, chaps. vii and xiii. For a
brief summary of the scientific position regarding the stagnation
and deterioration of races, resulting in the statement that such
deterioration "in no way contradicts the theory that civilization
itself is developed from low to high stages," see Tylor,
Anthropology, chap. i. For striking examples of the testimony of
language to upward progress, see Tylor, chap. xii.

CHAPTER X.

THE "FALL OF MAN" AND HISTORY.

The history of art, especially as shown by architecture, in the
noblest monuments of the most enlightened nations of antiquity;
gives abundant proofs of the upward tendency of man from the
rudest and simplest beginnings. Many columns of early Egyptian
temples or tombs are but bundles of Nile reeds slightly
conventionalized in stone; the temples of Greece, including not
only the earliest forms, but the Parthenon itself, while in parts
showing an evolution out of Egyptian and Assyrian architecture,
exhibit frequent reminiscences and even imitations of earlier
constructions in wood; the medieval cathedrals, while evolved
out of Roman and Byzantine structures, constantly show
unmistakable survivals of prehistoric construction. [195]

[195] As to evolution in architecture, and especially of Greek
forms and ornaments out of Egyptian and Assyrian, with survivals
in stone architecture of forms obtained in Egypt when reeds were
used, and in Greece when wood construction prevailed, see
Fergusson's Handbook of Architecture, vol. i, pp. 100, 228, 233,
and elsewhere; also Otfried Muller, Ancient Art and its Remains,
English translation, London, 1852, pp. 219, passim. For a very
brief but thorough statement, see A. Magnard's paper in the
Proceedings of the American Oriental Society, October, 1889,
entitled Reminiscences of Egypt in Doric Architecture. On the
general subject, see Hommel, Babylonien, ch. i, and Meyer,
Alterthum, i, S 199.

So, too, general history has come in, illustrating the unknown
from the known: the development of man in the prehistoric period
from his development within historic times. Nothing is more
evident from history than the fact that weaker bodies of men
driven out by stronger do not necessarily relapse into barbarism,
but frequently rise, even under the most unfavourable
circumstances, to a civilization equal or superior to that from
which they have been banished. Out of very many examples showing
this law of upward development, a few may be taken as typical.
The Slavs, who sank so low under the pressure of stronger races
that they gave the modern world a new word to express the most
hopeless servitude, have developed powerful civilizations
peculiar to themselves; the, barbarian tribes who ages ago took
refuge amid the sand-banks and morasses of Holland, have
developed one of the world's leading centres of civilization;
the wretched peasants who about the fifth century took refuge
from invading hordes among the lagoons and mud banks of Venetia,
developed a power in art, arms, and politics which is among the
wonders of human history; the Puritans, driven from the
civilization of Great Britain to the unfavourable climate, soil,
and circumstances of early New England,--the Huguenots, driven
from France, a country admirably fitted for the highest growth of
civilization, to various countries far less fitted for such
growth,--the Irish peasantry, driven in vast numbers from their
own island to other parts of the world on the whole less fitted
to them--all are proofs that, as a rule, bodies of men once
enlightened, when driven to unfavourable climates and brought
under the most depressing circumstances, not only retain what
enlightenment they have, but go on increasing it. Besides these,
we have such cases as those of criminals banished to various
penal colonies, from whose descendants has been developed a
better morality; and of pirates, like those of the Bounty, whose
descendants, in a remote Pacific island, became sober, steady
citizens. Thousands of examples show the prevalence of this same
rule--that men in masses do not forget the main gains of their
civilization, and that, in spite of deteriorations, their
tendency is upward.

Another class of historic facts also testifies in the most
striking manner to this same upward tendency: the decline and
destruction of various civilizations brilliant but hopelessly
vitiated. These catastrophes are seen more and more to be but
steps in, this development. The crumbling away of the great
ancient civilizations based upon despotism, whether the despotism
of monarch, priest, or mob--the decline and fall of Roman
civilization, for example, which, in his most remarkable
generalization, Guizot has shown to have been necessary to the
development of the richer civilization of modern Europe; the
terrible struggle and loss of the Crusades, which once appeared
to be a mere catastrophe, but are now seen to have brought in,
with the downfall of feudalism, the beginnings of the
centralizing, civilizing monarchical period; the French
Revolution, once thought a mere outburst of diabolic passion, but
now seen to be an unduly delayed transition from the monarchical
to the constitutional epoch: all show that even widespread
deterioration and decline--often, indeed, the greatest political
and moral catastrophes--so far from leading to a fall of mankind,
tend in the long run to raise humanity to higher planes.

Thus, then, Anthropology and its handmaids, Ethnology, Philology,
and History, have wrought out, beyond a doubt, proofs of the
upward evolution of humanity since the appearance of man upon our
planet.

Nor have these researches been confined to progress in man's
material condition. Far more important evidences have been found
of upward evolution in his family, social, moral, intellectual,
and religious relations. The light thrown on this subject by
such men as Lubbock, Tylor, Herbert Spencer, Buckle, Draper, Max
Muller, and a multitude of others, despite mistakes, haltings,
stumblings, and occasional following of delusive paths, is among
the greatest glories of the century now ending. From all these
investigators in their various fields, holding no brief for any
system sacred or secular, but seeking truth as truth, comes the
same general testimony of the evolution of higher out of lower.
The process has been indeed slow and painful, but this does not
prove that it may not become more rapid and less fruitful in
sorrow as humanity goes on.[196]

[196] As to the good effects of migration, see Waitz,
Introduction to Anthropology, London, 1863, p. 345.

While, then, it is not denied that many instances of
retrogression can be found, the consenting voice of unbiased
investigators in all lands has declared more and more that the
beginnings of our race must have been low and brutal, and that
the tendency has been upward. To combat this conclusion by
examples of decline and deterioration here and there has become
impossible: as well try to prove that, because in the
Mississippi there are eddies in which the currents flow
northward, there is no main stream flowing southward; or that,
because trees decay and fall, there is no law of upward growth
from germ to trunk, branches, foliage, and fruit.

A very striking evidence that the theological theory had become
untenable was seen when its main supporter in the scientific
field, Von Martius, in the full ripeness of his powers, publicly
declared his conversion to the scientific view.

Yet, while the tendency of enlightened human thought in recent
times is unmistakable, the struggle against the older view is not
yet ended. The bitterness of the Abbe Hamard in France has been
carried to similar and even greater extremes among sundry
Protestant bodies in Europe and America. The simple truth of
history mates it a necessity, unpleasant though it be, to
chronicle two typical examples in the United States.

In the year 1875 a leader in American industrial enterprise
endowed at the capital of a Southern State a university which
bore his name. It was given into the hands of one of the
religious sects most powerful in that region, and a bishop of
that sect became its president. To its chair of Geology was
called Alexander Winchell, a scholar who had already won eminence
as a teacher and writer in that field, a professor greatly
beloved and respected in the two universities with which he had
been connected, and a member of the sect which the institution of
learning above referred to represented.

But his relations to this Southern institution were destined to
be brief. That his lectures at the Vanderbilt University were
learned, attractive, and stimulating, even his enemies were
forced to admit; but he was soon found to believe that there had
been men earlier than the period as signed to Adam, and even that
all the human race are not descended from Adam. His desire was
to reconcile science and Scripture, and he was now treated by a
Methodist Episcopal Bishop in Tennessee just as, two centuries
before, La Peyrere had been treated, for a similar effort, by a
Roman Catholic vicar-general in Belgium. The publication of a
series of articles on the subject, contributed by the professor
to a Northern religious newspaper at its own request, brought
matters to a climax; for, the articles having fallen under the
notice of a leading Southwestern organ of the denomination
controlling the Vanderbilt University, the result was a most
bitter denunciation of Prof. Winchell and of his views. Shortly
afterward the professor was told by Bishop McTyeire that "our
people are of the opinion that such views are contrary to the
plan of redemption," and was requested by the bishop to quietly
resign his chair. To this the professor made the fitting reply:
"If the board of trustees have the manliness to dismiss me for
cause, and declare the cause, I prefer that they should do it.
No power on earth could persuade me to resign."

"We do not propose," said the bishop, with quite gratuitous
suggestiveness, "to treat you as the Inquisition treated
Galileo."

"But what you propose is the same thing," rejoined Dr. Winchell.
"It is ecclesiastical proscription for an opinion which must be
settled by scientific evidence."

Twenty-four hours later Dr. Winchell was informed that his chair
had been abolished, and its duties, with its salary, added to
those of a colleague; the public were given to understand that
the reasons were purely economic; the banished scholar was
heaped with official compliments, evidently in hope that he would
keep silence.

Such was not Dr. Winchell's view. In a frank letter to the
leading journal of the university town he stated the whole
matter. The intolerance-hating press of the country, religious
and secular, did not hold its peace. In vain the authorities of
the university waited for the storm to blow over. It was
evident, at last, that a defence must be made, and a local organ
of the sect, which under the editorship of a fellow-professor had
always treated Dr. Winchell's views with the luminous inaccuracy
which usually characterizes a professor's ideas of a rival's
teachings, assumed the task. In the articles which followed, the
usual scientific hypotheses as to the creation were declared to
be "absurd," "vague and unintelligible," "preposterous and
gratuitous."  This new champion stated that "the objections drawn
from the fossiliferous strata and the like are met by reference
to the analogy of Adam and Eve, who presented the phenomena of
adults when they were but a day old, and by the Flood of Noah and
other cataclysms, which, with the constant change of Nature, are
sufficient to account for the phenomena in question"!

Under inspiration of this sort the Tennessee Conference of the
religious body in control of the university had already, in
October, 1878, given utterance to its opinion of unsanctified
science as follows: "This is an age in which scientific atheism,
having divested itself of the habiliments that most adorn and
dignify humanity, walks abroad in shameless denudation. The
arrogant and impertinent claims of this `science, falsely so
called,' have been so boisterous and persistent, that the
unthinking mass have been sadly deluded; but our university
alone has had the courage to lay its young but vigorous hand upon
the mane of untamed Speculation and say, `We will have no more of
this.'" It is a consolation to know how the result, thus devoutly
sought, has been achieved; for in the "ode" sung at the laying
of the corner-stone of a new theological building of the same
university, in May, 1880, we read:

"Science and Revelation here
In perfect harmony appear,
Guiding young feet along the road
Through grace and Nature up to God."

It is also pleasing to know that, while an institution calling
itself a university thus violated the fundamental principles on
which any institution worthy of the name must be based, another
institution which has the glory of being the first in the entire
North to begin something like a university organization--the
State University of Michigan--recalled Dr. Winchell at once to
his former professorship, and honoured itself by maintaining him
in that position, where, unhampered, he was thereafter able to
utter his views in the midst of the largest body of students on
the American Continent.

Disgraceful as this history was to the men who drove out Dr.
Winchell, they but succeeded, as various similar bodies of men
making similar efforts have done, in advancing their supposed
victim to higher position and more commanding influence.[197]

[197] For Dr. Winchell's original statements, see Adamites and
Pre-Adamites, Syracuse, N. Y., 1878. For the first important
denunciation of his views, see the St. Louis Christian Advocate,
May 22, 1878. For the conversation with Bishop McTyeire, see Dr.
Winchell's own account in the Nashville American of July 19,
1878. For the further course of the attack in the denominational
organ of Dr. Winchell's oppressors, see the Nashville Christian
Advocate, April 26, 1879. For the oratorical declaration of the
Tennessee Conference upon the matter, see the Nashville American,
October 15, 1878; and for the "ode" regarding the "harmony of
science and revelation" as supported at the university, see the
same journal for May 2, 1880

A few years after this suppression of earnest Christian thought
at an institution of learning in the western part of our Southern
States, there appeared a similar attempt in sundry seaboard
States of the South.

As far back as the year 1857 the Presbyterian Synod of
Mississippi passed the following resolution:

"WHEREAS, We live in an age in which the most insidious attacks
are made on revealed religion through the natural sciences, and
as it behooves the Church at all times to have men capable of
defending the faith once delivered to the saints;

"RESOLVED, That this presbytery recommend the endowment of a
professorship of Natural Science as connected with revealed
religion in one or more of our theological seminaries."

Pursuant to this resolution such a chair was established in the
theological seminary at Columbia, S.C., and James Woodrow was
appointed professor. Dr. Woodrow seems to have been admirably
fitted for the position--a devoted Christian man, accepting the
Presbyterian standards of faith in which he had been brought up,
and at the same time giving every effort to acquaint himself with
the methods and conclusions of science. To great natural
endowments he added constant labours to arrive at the truth in
this field. Visiting Europe, he made the acquaintance of many of
the foremost scientific investigators, became a student in
university lecture rooms and laboratories, an interested hearer
in scientific conventions, and a correspondent of leading men of
science at home and abroad. As a result, he came to the
conclusion that the hypothesis of evolution is the only one which
explains various leading facts in natural science. This he
taught, and he also taught that such a view is not incompatible
with a true view of the sacred Scriptures.

In 1882 and 1883 the board of directors of the theological
seminary, in fear that "scepticism in the world is using alleged
discoveries in science to impugn the Word of God," requested
Prof. Woodrow to state his views in regard to evolution. The
professor complied with this request in a very powerful address,
which was published and widely circulated, to such effect that
the board of directors shortly afterward passed resolutions
declaring the theory of evolution as defined by Prof. Woodrow
not inconsistent with perfect soundness in the faith.

In the year 1884 alarm regarding Dr. Woodrow's teachings began
to show itself in larger proportions, and a minority report was
introduced into the Synod of South Carolina declaring that "the
synod is called upon to decide not upon the question whether the
said views of Dr. Woodrow contradict the Bible in its highest
and absolute sense, but upon the question whether they contradict
the interpretation of the Bible by the Presbyterian Church in the
United States."

Perhaps a more self-condemnatory statement was never presented,
for it clearly recognized, as a basis for intolerance, at least a
possible difference between "the interpretation of the Bible by
the Presbyterian Church" and the teachings of "the Bible in its
highest and absolute sense."

This hostile movement became so strong that, in spite of the
favourable action of the directors of the seminary, and against
the efforts of a broad-minded minority in the representative
bodies having ultimate charge of the institution, the delegates
from the various synods raised a storm of orthodoxy and drove Dr.
Woodrow from his post. Happily, he was at the same time
professor in the University of South Carolina in the same city of
Columbia, and from his chair in that institution he continued to
teach natural science with the approval of the great majority of
thinking men in that region; hence, the only effect of the
attempt to crush him was, that his position was made higher,
respect for him deeper, and his reputation wider.

In spite of attempts by the more orthodox to prevent students of
the theological seminary from attending his lectures at the
university, they persisted in hearing him; indeed, the
reputation of heresy seemed to enhance his influence.

It should be borne in mind that the professor thus treated had
been one of the most respected and beloved university instructors
in the South during more than a quarter of a century, and that he
was turned out of his position with no opportunity for careful
defence, and, indeed, without even the formality of a trial.
Well did an eminent but thoughtful divine of the Southern
Presbyterian Church declare that "the method of procedure to
destroy evolution by the majority in the Church is vicious and
suicidal," and that "logical dynamite has been used to put out a
supposed fire in the upper stories of our house, and all the
family in the house at that."  Wisely, too, did he refer to the
majority as "sowing in the fields of the Church the thorns of its
errors, and cumbering its path with the debris and ruin of its
own folly."

To these recent cases may be added the expulsion of Prof. Toy
from teaching under ecclesiastical control at Louisville, and his
election to a far more influential chair at Harvard University;
the driving out from the American College at Beyrout of the young
professors who accepted evolution as probable, and the rise of
one of them, Mr. Nimr, to a far more commanding position than
that which he left--the control of three leading journals at
Cairo; the driving out of Robertson Smith from his position at
Edinburgh, and his reception into the far more important and
influential professorship at the English University of Cambridge;
and multitudes of similar cases. From the days when Henry
Dunster, the first President of Harvard College, was driven from
his presidency, as Cotton Mather said, for "falling into the
briers of Antipedobaptism" until now, the same spirit is shown in
all such attempts. In each we have generally, on one side, a
body of older theologians, who since their youth have learned
nothing and forgotten nothing, sundry professors who do not wish
to rewrite their lectures, and a mass of unthinking
ecclesiastical persons of little or no importance save in making
up a retrograde majority in an ecclesiastical tribunal; on the
other side we have as generally the thinking, open-minded,
devoted men who have listened to the revelation of their own time
as well as of times past, and who are evidently thinking the
future thought of the world.

Here we have survivals of that same oppression of thought by
theology which has cost the modern world so dear; the system
which forced great numbers of professors, under penalty of
deprivation, to teach that the sun and planets revolve about the
earth; that comets are fire-balls flung by an angry God at a
wicked world; that insanity is diabolic possession; that
anatomical investigation of the human frame is sin against the
Holy Ghost; that chemistry leads to sorcery; that taking
interest for money is forbidden by Scripture; that geology must
conform to ancient Hebrew poetry. From the same source came in
Austria the rule of the "Immaculate Oath," under which university
professors, long before the dogma of the Immaculate Conception
was defined by the Church, were obliged to swear to their belief
in that dogma before they were permitted to teach even arithmetic
or geometry; in England, the denunciation of inoculation against
smallpox; in Scotland, the protests against using chloroform in
childbirth as "vitiating the primal curse against woman"; in
France, the use in clerical schools of a historical text-book
from which Napoleon was left out; and, in America, the use of
Catholic manuals in which the Inquisition is declared to have
been a purely civil tribunal, or Protestant manuals in which the
Puritans are shown to have been all that we could now wish they
had been.

So, too, among multitudes of similar efforts abroad, we have
during centuries the fettering of professors at English and
Scotch universities by test oaths, subscriptions to articles, and
catechisms without number. In our own country we have had in a
vast multitude of denominational colleges, as the first
qualification for a professorship, not ability in the subject to
be taught, but fidelity to the particular shibboleth of the
denomination controlling the college or university.

Happily, in these days such attempts generally defeat themselves.
The supposed victim is generally made a man of mark by
persecution, and advanced to a higher and wider sphere of
usefulness. In withstanding the march of scientific truth, any
Conference, Synod, Board of Commissioners, Board of Trustees, or
Faculty, is but as a nest of field-mice in the path of a steam
plough.

The harm done to religion in these attempts is far greater than
that done to science; for thereby suspicions are widely spread,
especially among open-minded young men, that the accepted
Christian system demands a concealment of truth, with the
persecution of honest investigators, and therefore must be false.
Well was it said in substance by President McCosh, of Princeton,
that no more sure way of making unbelievers in Christianity among
young men could be devised than preaching to them that the
doctrines arrived at by the great scientific thinkers of this
period are opposed to religion.

Yet it is but justice here to say that more and more there is
evolving out of this past history of oppression a better spirit,
which is making itself manifest with power in the leading
religious bodies of the world. In the Church of Rome we have
to-day such utterances as those of St. George Mivart, declaring
that the Church must not attempt to interfere with science; that
the Almighty in the Galileo case gave her a distinct warning that
the priesthood of science must remain with the men of science.
In the Anglican Church and its American daughter we have the acts
and utterances of such men as Archbishop Tait, Bishop Temple,
Dean Stanley, Dean Farrar, and many others, proving that the
deepest religious thought is more and more tending to peace
rather than warfare with science; and in the other churches,
especially in America, while there is yet much to be desired, the
welcome extended in many of them to Alexander Winchell, and the
freedom given to views like his, augur well for a better state of
things in the future.

From the science of Anthropology, when rightly viewed as a whole,
has come the greatest aid to those who work to advance religion
rather than to promote any particular system of theology; for
Anthropology and its subsidiary sciences show more and more that
man, since coming upon the earth, has risen, from the period when
he had little, if any, idea of a great power above him, through
successive stages of fetichism, shamanism, and idolatry, toward
better forms of belief, making him more and more accessible to
nobler forms of religion. The same sciences show, too, within
the historic period, the same tendency, and especially within the
events covered by our sacred books, a progress from fetichism, of
which so many evidences crop out in the early Jewish worship as
shown in the Old Testament Scriptures, through polytheism, when
Jehovah was but "a god above all gods," through the period when
he was "a jealous God," capricious and cruel, until he is
revealed in such inspired utterances as those of the nobler
Psalms, the great passages in Isaiah, the sublime preaching of
Micah, and, above all, through the ideal given to the world by
Jesus of Nazareth.

Well indeed has an eminent divine of the Church of England in our
own time called on Christians to rejoice over this evolution,
"between the God of Samuel, who ordered infants to be
slaughtered, and the God of the Psalmist, whose tender mercies
are over all his works; between the God of the Patriarchs, who
was always repenting, and the God of the Apostles, who is the
same yesterday, to-day, and forever, with whom there is no
variableness nor shadow of turning, between the God of the Old
Testament, who walked in the garden in the cool of the day, and
the God of the New Testament, whom no man hath seen nor can see;
between the God of Leviticus, who was so particular about the
sacrificial furniture and utensils, and the God of the Acts, who
dwelleth not in temples made with hands; between the God who
hardened Pharaoh's heart, and the God who will have all men to be
saved; between the God of Exodus, who is merciful only to those
who love him, and the God of Christ--the heavenly Father--who is
kind unto the unthankful and the evil."

However overwhelming, then, the facts may be which Anthropology,
History, and their kindred sciences may, in the interest of
simple truth, establish against the theological doctrine of "the
Fall"; however completely they may fossilize various dogmas,
catechisms, creeds, confessions, "plans of salvation" and
"schemes of redemption," which have been evolved from the great
minds of the theological period: science, so far from making
inroads on religion, or even upon our Christian development of
it, will strengthen all that is essential in it, giving new and
nobler paths to man's highest aspirations. For the one great,
legitimate, scientific conclusion of anthropology is, that, more
and more, a better civilization of the world, despite all its
survivals of savagery and barbarism, is developing men and women
on whom the declarations of the nobler Psalms, of Isaiah, of
Micah, the Sermon on the Mount, the first great commandment, and
the second, which is like unto it, St. Paul's praise of charity
and St. James's definition of "pure religion and undefiled," can
take stronger hold for the more effective and more rapid
uplifting of our race.[198]

[198] For the resolution of the Presbyterian Synod of Mississippi
in 1857, see Prof. Woodrow's speech before the Synod of South
Carolina, October 27 and 28, 1884, p. 6. As to the action of the
Board of Directors of the Theological Seminary of Columbia, see
ibid. As to the minority report in the Synod of South Carolina,
see ibid., p. 24. For the pithy sentences regarding the conduct
of the majority in the synods toward Dr. Woodrow, see the Rev.
Mr. Flynn's article in the Southern Presbyterian Review for
April, 1885, p. 272, and elsewhere. For the restrictions
regarding the teaching of the Copernican theory and the true
doctrine of comets in German universities, see various histories
of astronomy, especially Madler. For the immaculate oath
(Immaculaten-Eid) as enforced upon the Austrian professors, see
Luftkandl, Die Josephinischen Ideen. For the effort of the
Church in France, after the restoration of the Bourbons, to teach
a history of that country from which the name of Napoleon should
be left out, see Father Loriquet's famous Histoire de France a
l'Usage de la Jeunesse, Lyon, 1820, vol. ii, see especially table
of contents at the end. The book bears on its title-page the
well known initials of the Jesuit motto, A. M. D. G. (Ad Majorem
Dei Gloriam). For examples in England and Scotland, see various
English histories, and especially Buckle's chapters on Scotland.
For a longer collection of examples showing the suppression of
anything like unfettered thought upon scientific subjects in
American universities, see Inaugural Address at the Opening of
Cornell University, by the author of these chapters. For the
citation regarding the evolution of better and nobler ideas of
God, see Church and Creed: Sermons preached in the Chapel of the
Foundling Hospital, London, by A. W. Momerie, M. A., LL. D.,
Professor of Logic and Metaphysics in King's College, London,
1890. For a very vigorous utterance on the other side, see a
recent charge of the Bishop of Gloucester.

CHAPTER XI.

FROM "THE PRINCE OF THE POWER OF THE AIR" TO METEOROLOGY

I. GROWTH OF A THEOLOGICAL THEORY.

The popular beliefs of classic antiquity regarding storms,
thunder, and lightning, took shape in myths representing Vulcan
as forging thunderbolts, Jupiter as flinging them at his enemies,
Aeolus intrusting the winds in a bag to Aeneas, and the like. An
attempt at their further theological development is seen in the
Pythagorean statement that lightnings are intended to terrify the
damned in Tartarus.

But at a very early period we see the beginning of a scientific
view. In Greece, the Ionic philosophers held that such phenomena
are obedient to law. Plato, Aristotle, and many lesser lights,
attempted to account for them on natural grounds; and their
explanations, though crude, were based upon observation and
thought. In Rome, Lucretius, Seneca, Pliny, and others,
inadequate as their statements were, implanted at least the germs
of a science. But, as the Christian Church rose to power, this
evolution was checked; the new leaders of thought found, in the
Scriptures recognized by them as sacred, the basis for a new
view, or rather for a modification of the old view.

This ending of a scientific evolution based upon observation and
reason, and this beginning of a sacred science based upon the
letter of Scripture and on theology, are seen in the utterances
of various fathers in the early Church. As to the general
features of this new development, Tertullian held that sundry
passages of Scripture prove lightning identical with hell-fire;
and this idea was transmitted from generation to generation of
later churchmen, who found an especial support of Tertullian's
view in the sulphurous smell experienced during thunderstorms.
St. Hilary thought the firmament very much lower than the
heavens, and that it was created not only for the support of the
upper waters, but also for the tempering of our atmosphere.[199]
St. Ambrose held that thunder is caused by the winds breaking
through the solid firmament, and cited from the prophet Amos the
sublime passage regarding "Him that establisheth the
thunders."[200]  He shows, indeed, some conception of the true
source of rain; but his whole reasoning is limited by various
scriptural texts. He lays great stress upon the firmament as a
solid outer shell of the universe: the heavens he holds to be
not far outside this outer shell, and argues regarding their
character from St. Paul's Epistle to the Corinthians and from the
one hundred and forty-eighth Psalm. As to "the waters which are
above the firmament," he takes up the objection of those who hold
that, this outside of the universe being spherical, the waters
must slide off it, especially if the firmament revolves; and he
points out that it is by no means certain that the OUTSIDE of the
firmament IS spherical, and insists that, if it does revolve, the
water is just what is needed to lubricate and cool its axis.

[199] For Tertullian, see the Apol. contra gentes, c. 47; also
Augustin de Angelis, Lectiones Meteorologicae, p. 64. For
Hilary, see In Psalm CXXXV. (Migne, Patr. Lat., vol. ix, p. 773).

[200] "Firmans tonitrua" (Amos iv, 13); the phrase does not
appear in our version.

St. Jerome held that God at the Creation, having spread out the
firmament between heaven and earth, and having separated the
upper waters from the lower, caused the upper waters to be frozen
into ice, in order to keep all in place. A proof of this view
Jerome found in the words of Ezekiel regarding "the crystal
stretched above the cherubim."[201]

[201] For Ambrose, see the Hexaemeron, lib. ii, cap. 3,4; lib.
iii, cap. 5 (Migne, Patr. Lat., vol. xiv, pp. 148-150, 153, 165).
The passage as to lubrication of the heavenly axis is as follows:
"Deinde cum ispi dicant volvi orbem coeli stellis ardentibus
refulgentem, nonne divina providentia necessario prospexit, ut
intra orbem coeli, et supra orbem redundaret aqua, quae illa
ferventis axis incendia temperaret?"  For Jerome, see his
Epistola, lxix, cap. 6 (Migne, Patr. Lat., vol. xxii, p.659).

The germinal principle in accordance with which all these
theories were evolved was most clearly proclaimed to the world by
St. Augustine in his famous utterance: "Nothing is to be
accepted save on the authority of Scripture, since greater is
that authority than all the powers of the human mind."[202]  No
treatise was safe thereafter which did not breathe the spirit and
conform to the letter of this maxim. Unfortunately, what was
generally understood by the "authority of Scripture" was the
tyranny of sacred books imperfectly transcribed, viewed through
distorting superstitions, and frequently interpreted by party
spirit.

[202] "Major est quippe Scripturae hujas auctoritas, quam omnis
humani ingenii capacitas."--Augustine, De Genesi ad Lit., lib.
ii, cap. 5 (Migne, Patr. Lat., vol. xxxiv, pp. 266, 267). Or, as
he is cited by Vincent of Beauvais (Spec. Nat., lib. iv, 98):
"Non est aliquid temere diffiniendum, sed quantum Scriptura dicit
accipiendum, cujus major est auctoritas quam omnis humani ingenii
capacitas."

Following this precept of St. Augustine there were developed, in
every field, theological views of science which have never led to
a single truth--which, without exception, have forced mankind
away from the truth, and have caused Christendom to stumble for
centuries into abysses of error and sorrow. In meteorology, as
in every other science with which he dealt, Augustine based
everything upon the letter of the sacred text; and it is
characteristic of the result that this man, so great when
untrammelled, thought it his duty to guard especially the whole
theory of the "waters above the heavens."

In the sixth century this theological reasoning was still further
developed, as we have seen, by Cosmas Indicopleustes. Finding a
sanction for the old Egyptian theory of the universe in the ninth
chapter of Hebrews, he insisted that the earth is a flat
parallelogram, and that from its outer edges rise immense walls
supporting the firmament; then, throwing together the reference
to the firmament in Genesis and the outburst of poetry in the
Psalms regarding the "waters that be above the heavens," he
insisted that over the terrestrial universe are solid arches
bearing a vault supporting a vast cistern "containing the
waters"; finally, taking from Genesis the expression regarding
the "windows of heaven," he insisted that these windows are
opened and closed by the angels whenever the Almighty wishes to
send rain upon the earth or to withhold it.

This was accepted by the universal Church as a vast contribution
to thought; for several centuries it was the orthodox doctrine,
and various leaders in theology devoted themselves to developing
and supplementing it.

About the beginning of the seventh century, Isidore, Bishop of
Seville, was the ablest prelate in Christendom, and was showing
those great qualities which led to his enrolment among the saints
of the Church. His theological view of science marks an epoch.
As to the "waters above the firmament," Isidore contends that
they must be lower than, the uppermost heaven, though higher than
the lower heaven, because in the one hundred and forty-eighth
Psalm they are mentioned AFTER the heavenly bodies and the
"heaven of heavens," but BEFORE the terrestrial elements. As to
their purpose, he hesitates between those who held that they were
stored up there by the prescience of God for the destruction of
the world at the Flood, as the words of Scripture that "the
windows of heaven were opened" seemed to indicate, and those who
held that they were kept there to moderate the heat of the
heavenly bodies. As to the firmament, he is in doubt whether it
envelops the earth "like an eggshell," or is merely spread over
it "like a curtain"; for he holds that the passage in the one
hundred and fourth Psalm may be used to support either view.

Having laid these scriptural foundations, Isidore shows
considerable power of thought; indeed, at times, when he
discusses the rainbow, rain, hail, snow, and frost, his theories
are rational, and give evidence that, if he could have broken
away from his adhesion to the letter of Scripture, he might have
given a strong impulse to the evolution of a true science.[203]

[203] For Cosmas, see his Topographia Christiana (in Montfaucon,
Collectio nova patrum, vol. ii), and the more complete account of
his theory given in the chapter on Geography in this work. For
Isidore, see the Etymologiae, lib. xiii, cap. 7-9, De ordine
creaturarum, cap. 3, 4, and De natura rerum, cap. 29, 30.
(Migne, Patr. Lat., vol. lxxxii, pp. 476, 477, vol. lxxxiii, pp.
920-922, 1001-1003).

About a century later appeared, at the other extremity of Europe,
the second in the trio of theological men of science in the early
Middle Ages--Bede the Venerable. The nucleus of his theory also
is to be found in the accepted view of the "firmament" and of the
"waters above the heavens," derived from Genesis. The firmament
he holds to be spherical, and of a nature subtile and fiery; the
upper heavens, he says, which contain the angels, God has
tempered with ice, lest they inflame the lower elements. As to
the waters placed above the firmament, lower than the spiritual
heavens, but higher than all corporeal creatures, he says, "Some
declare that they were stored there for the Deluge, but others,
more correctly, that they are intended to temper the fire of the
stars."  He goes on with long discussions as to various elements
and forces in Nature, and dwells at length upon the air, of which
he says that the upper, serene air is over the heavens; while
the lower, which is coarse, with humid exhalations, is sent off
from the earth, and that in this are lightning, hail, snow, ice,
and tempests, finding proof of this in the one hundred and
forty-eighth Psalm, where these are commanded to "praise the Lord
from the earth."[204]

[204] See Bede, De natura rerum (Migne, Patr. Lat., vol. xc).

So great was Bede's authority, that nearly all the anonymous
speculations of the next following centuries upon these subjects
were eventually ascribed to him. In one of these spurious
treatises an attempt is made to get new light upon the sources of
the waters above the heavens, the main reliance being the sheet
containing the animals let down from heaven, in the vision of St.
Peter. Another of these treatises is still more curious, for it
endeavours to account for earthquakes and tides by means of the
leviathan mentioned in Scripture. This characteristic passage
runs as follows: "Some say that the earth contains the animal
leviathan, and that he holds his tail after a fashion of his own,
so that it is sometimes scorched by the sun, whereupon he strives
to get hold of the sun, and so the earth is shaken by the motion
of his indignation; he drinks in also, at times, such huge
masses of the waves that when he belches them forth all the seas
feel their effect."  And this theological theory of the tides, as
caused by the alternate suction and belching of leviathan, went
far and wide.[205]

[205] See the treatise De mundi constitutione, in Bede's Opera
(Migne, Patr. Lat., vol. xc, p. 884).

In the writings thus covered with the name of Bede there is much
showing a scientific spirit, which might have come to something
of permanent value had it not been hampered by the supposed
necessity of conforming to the letter of Scripture. It is as
startling as it is refreshing to hear one of these medieval
theorists burst out as follows against those who are content to
explain everything by the power of God: "What is more pitiable
than to say that a thing IS, because God is able to do it, and
not to show any reason why it is so, nor any purpose for which it
is so; just as if God did everything that he is able to do! You
talk like one who says that God is able to make a calf out of a
log. But DID he ever do it?  Either, then, show a reason why a
thing is so, or a purpose wherefore it is so, or else cease to
declare it so."[206]

[206] For this remonstrance, see the Elementa philosophiae, in
Bede's Opera (Migne, Patr. Lat., vol.xc, p. 1139). This
treatise, which has also been printed, under the title of De
philosophia mundi, among the works of Honorius of Autun, is
believed by modern scholars (Haureau, Werner, Poole) to be the
production of William of Conches.

The most permanent contribution of Bede to scientific thought in
this field was his revival of the view that the firmament is made
of ice; and he supported this from the words in the twenty-sixth
chapter of Job, "He bindeth up the waters in his thick cloud, and
the cloud is not rent under them."

About the beginning of the ninth century appeared the third in
that triumvirate of churchmen who were the oracles of sacred
science throughout the early Middle Ages--Rabanus Maurus, Abbot
of Fulda and Archbishop of Mayence. Starting, like all his
predecessors, from the first chapter of Genesis, borrowing here
and there from the ancient philosophers, and excluding everything
that could conflict with the letter of Scripture, he follows, in
his work upon the universe, his two predecessors, Isidore and
Bede, developing especially St. Jerome's theory, drawn from
Ezekiel, that the firmament is strong enough to hold up the
"waters above the heavens," because it is made of ice.

For centuries the authority of these three great teachers was
unquestioned, and in countless manuals and catechisms their
doctrine was translated and diluted for the common mind. But
about the second quarter of the twelfth century a priest,
Honorius of Autun, produced several treatises which show that
thought on this subject had made some little progress. He
explained the rain rationally, and mainly in the modern manner;
with the thunder he is less successful, but insists that the
thunderbolt "is not stone, as some assert."  His thinking is
vigorous and independent. Had theorists such as he been many, a
new science could have been rapidly evolved, but the theological
current was too strong. [207]

[207] For Rabanus Maurus, see the Comment. in Genesim and De
Universo (Migne, Patr. Lat., vol. cvii, cxi). For a charmingly
naive example of the primers referred to, see the little Anglo-
Saxon manual of astronomy, sometimes attributed to Aelfric; it is
in the vernacular, but is translated in Wright's Popular
Treatises on Science during the Middle Ages. Bede is, of course,
its chief source. For Honorius, see De imagine mundi and
Hexaemeron (Migne, Patr. Lat., vol. clxxii). The De philosophia
mundi, the most rational of all, is, however, believed by modern
scholars to be unjustly ascribed to him. See note above.

The strength of this current which overwhelmed the thought of
Honorius is seen again in the work of the Dominican monk, John of
San Geminiano, who in the thirteenth century gave forth his Summa
de Exemplis for the use of preachers in his order. Of its
thousand pages, over two hundred are devoted to illustrations
drawn from the heavens and the elements. A characteristic
specimen is his explanation of the Psalmist's phrase, "The arrows
of the thunder."  These, he tells us, are forged out of a dry
vapour rising from the earth and kindled by the heat of the upper
air, which then, coming into contact with a cloud just turning
into rain, "is conglutinated like flour into dough," but, being
too hot to be extinguished, its particles become merely sharpened
at the lower end, and so blazing arrows, cleaving and burning
everything they touch.[208]

[208] See Joannes a S. Geminiano, Summa, c. 75.

But far more important, in the thirteenth century, was the fact
that the most eminent scientific authority of that age, Albert
the Great, Bishop of Ratisbon, attempted to reconcile the
speculations of Aristotle with theological views derived from the
fathers. In one very important respect he improved upon the
meteorological views of his great master. The thunderbolt, he
says, is no mere fire, but the product of black clouds containing
much mud, which, when it is baked by the intense heat, forms a
fiery black or red stone that falls from the sky, tearing beams
and crushing walls in its course: such he has seen with his own
eyes.[209]

[209] See Albertus Magnus, II Sent., Op., vol. xv, p. 137, a.
(cited by Heller, Gesch. d. Physik, vol. i, p. 184) and his Liber
Methaurorum, III, iv, 18 (of which I have used the edition of
Venice, 1488).

The monkish encyclopedists of the later Middle Ages added little
to these theories. As we glance over the pages of Vincent of
Beauvais, the monk Bartholomew, and William of Conches, we note
only a growing deference to the authority of Aristotle as
supplementing that of Isidore and Bede and explaining sacred
Scripture. Aristotle is treated like a Church father, but
extreme care is taken not to go beyond the great maxim of St.
Augustine; then, little by little, Bede and Isidore fall into the
background, Aristotle fills the whole horizon, and his utterances
are second in sacredness only to the text of Holy Writ.

A curious illustration of the difficulties these medieval
scholars had to meet in reconciling the scientific theories of
Aristotle with the letter of the Bible is seen in the case of the
rainbow. It is to the honour of Aristotle that his conclusions
regarding the rainbow, though slightly erroneous, were based upon
careful observation and evolved by reasoning alone; but his
Christian commentators, while anxious to follow him, had to bear
in mind the scriptural statement that God had created the rainbow
as a sign to Noah that there should never again be a Flood on the
earth. Even so bold a thinker as Cardinal d'Ailly, whose
speculations as to the geography of the earth did so much
afterward in stimulating Columbus, faltered before this
statement, acknowledging that God alone could explain it; but
suggested that possibly never before the Deluge had a cloud been
suffered to take such a position toward the sun as to cause a
rainbow.

The learned cardinal was also constrained to believe that certain
stars and constellations have something to do in causing the
rain, since these would best explain Noah's foreknowledge of the
Deluge. In connection with this scriptural doctrine of winds
came a scriptural doctrine of earthquakes: they were believed to
be caused by winds issuing from the earth, and this view was
based upon the passage in the one hundred and thirty-fifth Psalm,
"He bringeth the wind out of his treasuries."[210]

[210] For D'Ailly, see his Concordia astronomicae veritatis cum
theologia (Paris, 1483--in the Imago mundi--and Venice, 1490);
also Eck's commentary on Aristotle's Meteorologica (Ausburg,
1519), lib. ii, nota 2; also Reisch, Margarita philosophica, lib.
ix, c. 18.

Such were the main typical attempts during nearly fourteen
centuries to build up under theological guidance and within
scriptural limitations a sacred science of meteorology. But
these theories were mainly evolved in the effort to establish a
basis and general theory of phenomena: it still remained to
account for special manifestations, and here came a twofold
development of theological thought.

On one hand, these phenomena were attributed to the Almighty,
and, on the other, to Satan. As to the first of these theories,
we constantly find the Divine wrath mentioned by the earlier
fathers as the cause of lightning, hailstorms, hurricanes, and
the like.

In the early days of Christianity we see a curious struggle
between pagan and Christian belief upon this point. Near the
close of the second century the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, in his
effort to save the empire, fought a hotly contested battle with
the Quadi, in what is now Hungary. While the issue of this great
battle was yet doubtful there came suddenly a blinding storm
beating into the faces of the Quadi, and this gave the Roman
troops the advantage, enabling Marcus Aurelius to win a decisive
victory. Votaries of each of the great religions claimed that
this storm was caused by the object of their own adoration. The
pagans insisted that Jupiter had sent the storm in obedience to
their prayers, and on the Antonine Column at Rome we may still
see the figure of Olympian Jove casting his thunderbolts and
pouring a storm of rain from the open heavens against the Quadi.
On the other hand, the Christians insisted that the storm had
been sent by Jehovah in obedience to THEIR prayers; and
Tertullian, Eusebius, St. Gregory of Nyssa, and St. Jerome were
among those who insisted upon this meteorological miracle; the
first two, indeed, in the fervour of their arguments for its
reality, allowing themselves to be carried considerably beyond
exact historical truth.[211]

[211] For the authorities, pagan and Christian, see the note of
Merivale, in his History of the Romans under the Empire, chap.
lxviii. He refers for still fuller citations to Fynes Clinton's
Fasti Rom., p. 24.

As time went on, the fathers developed this view more and more
from various texts in the Jewish and Christian sacred books,
substituting for Jupiter flinging his thunderbolts the Almighty
wrapped in thunder and sending forth his lightnings. Through the
Middle Ages this was fostered until it came to be accepted as a
mere truism, entering into all medieval thinking, and was still
further developed by an attempt to specify the particular sins
which were thus punished. Thus even the rational Florentine
historian Villani ascribed floods and fires to the "too great
pride of the city of Florence and the ingratitude of the citizens
toward God," which, "of course," says a recent historian, "meant
their insufficient attention to the ceremonies of
religion."[212]

[212] See Trollope, History of Florence, vol. i, p. 64.

In the thirteenth century the Cistercian monk, Caesarius of
Heisterbach, popularized the doctrine in central Europe. His
rich collection of anecdotes for the illustration of religious
truths was the favourite recreative reading in the convents for
three centuries, and exercised great influence over the thought
of the later Middle Ages. In this work he relates several
instances of the Divine use of lightning, both for rescue and for
punishment. Thus he tells us how the steward (cellerarius) of his
own monastery was saved from the clutch of a robber by a clap of
thunder which, in answer to his prayer, burst suddenly from the
sky and frightened the bandit from his purpose: how, in a Saxon
theatre, twenty men were struck down, while a priest escaped, not
because he was not a greater sinner than the rest, but because
the thunderbolt had respect for his profession! It is Cesarius,
too, who tells us the story of the priest of Treves, struck by
lightning in his own church, whither he had gone to ring the bell
against the storm, and whose sins were revealed by the course of
the lightning, for it tore his clothes from him and consumed
certain parts of his body, showing that the sins for which he was
punished were vanity and unchastity.[213]

[213] See Caesarius Heisterbacensis, Dialogus miraculorum, lib.
x, c. 28-30.

This mode of explaining the Divine interference more minutely is
developed century after century, and we find both Catholics and
Protestants assigning as causes of unpleasant meteorological
phenomena whatever appears to them wicked or even unorthodox.
Among the English Reformers, Tyndale quotes in this kind of
argument the thirteenth chapter of I. Samuel, showing that, when
God gave Israel a king, it thundered and rained. Archbishop
Whitgift, Bishop Bale, and Bishop Pilkington insisted on the same
view. In Protestant Germany, about the same period, Plieninger
took a dislike to the new Gregorian calendar and published a
volume of Brief Reflections, in which he insisted that the
elements had given utterance to God's anger against it, calling
attention to the fact that violent storms raged over almost all
Germany during the very ten days which the Pope had taken out for
the correction of the year, and that great floods began with the
first days of the corrected year.[214]

[214] For Tyndale, see his Doctrinal Treatises, p. 194, and for
Whitgift, see his Works, vol. ii, pp. 477-483; Bale, Works, pp.
244, 245; and Pilkington, Works, pp. 177, 536 (all in Parker
Society Publications). Bishop Bale cites especially Job xxxviii,
Ecclesiasticus xiii, and Revelation viii, as supporting the
theory. For Plieninger's words, see Janssen, Geschichte des
deutschen Volkes, vol. v, p. 350.

Early in the seventeenth century, Majoli, Bishop of Voltoraria,
in southern Italy, produced his huge work Dies Canicularii, or
Dog Days, which remained a favourite encyclopedia in Catholic
lands for over a hundred years. Treating of thunder and
lightning, he compares them to bombs against the wicked, and says
that the thunderbolt is "an exhalation condensed and cooked into
stone," and that "it is not to be doubted that, of all
instruments of God's vengeance, the thunderbolt is the chief";
that by means of it Sennacherib and his army were consumed; that
Luther was struck by lightning in his youth as a caution against
departing from the Catholic faith; that blasphemy and
Sabbath-breaking are the sins to which this punishment is
especially assigned, and he cites the case of Dathan and Abiram.
Fifty years later the Jesuit Stengel developed this line of
thought still further in four thick quarto volumes on the
judgments of God, adding an elaborate schedule for the use of
preachers in the sermons of an entire year. Three chapters were
devoted to thunder, lightning, and storms. That the author
teaches the agency in these of diabolical powers goes without
saying; but this can only act, he declares, by Divine
permission, and the thunderbolt is always the finger of God,
which rarely strikes a man save for his sins, and the nature of
the special sin thus punished may be inferred from the bodily
organs smitten. A few years later, in Protestant Swabia, Pastor
Georg Nuber issued a volume of "weather-sermons," in which he
discusses nearly every sort of elemental disturbances--storms,
floods, droughts, lightning, and hail. These, he says, come
direct from God for human sins, yet no doubt with discrimination,
for there are five sins which God especially punishes with
lightning and hail--namely, impenitence, incredulity, neglect of
the repair of churches, fraud in the payment of tithes to the
clergy, and oppression of subordinates, each of which points he
supports with a mass of scriptural texts.[215]

[215] For Majoli, see Dies Can., I, i; for Stengel, see the De
judiciis divinis, vol. ii, pp. 15-61, and especially the example
of the impurus et saltator sacerdos, fulmine castratus, pp. 26,
27. For Nuber, see his Conciones meteoricae, Ulm, 1661.

This doctrine having become especially precious both to Catholics
and to Protestants, there were issued handbooks of prayers
against bad weather: among these was the Spiritual Thunder and
Storm Booklet, produced in 1731 by a Protestant scholar,
Stoltzlin, whose three or four hundred pages of prayer and song,
"sighs for use when it lightens fearfully," and "cries of anguish
when the hailstorm is drawing on," show a wonderful adaptability
to all possible meteorological emergencies. The preface of this
volume is contributed by Prof. Dilherr, pastor of the great
church of St. Sebald at Nuremberg, who, in discussing the Divine
purposes of storms, adds to the three usually assigned--namely,
God's wish to manifest his power, to display his anger, and to
drive sinners to repentance--a fourth, which, he says, is that
God may show us "with what sort of a stormbell he will one day
ring in the last judgment."

About the end of the first quarter of the eighteenth century we
find, in Switzerland, even the eminent and rational Professor of
Mathematics, Scheuchzer, publishing his Physica Sacra, with the
Bible as a basis, and forced to admit that the elements, in the
most literal sense, utter the voice of God. The same pressure
was felt in New England. Typical are the sermons of Increase
Mather on The Voice of God in Stormy Winds. He especially lays
stress on the voice of God speaking to Job out of the whirlwind,
and upon the text, "Stormy wind fulfilling his word."  He
declares, "When there are great tempests, the angels oftentimes
have a hand therein,...yea, and sometimes evil angels."  He gives
several cases of blasphemers struck by lightning, and says,
"Nothing can be more dangerous for mortals than to contemn
dreadful providences, and, in particular, dreadful tempests."

His distinguished son, Cotton Mather, disentangled himself
somewhat from the old view, as he had done in the interpretation
of comets. In his Christian Philosopher, his Thoughts for the
Day of Rain, and his Sermon preached at the Time of the Late
Storm (in 1723), he is evidently tending toward the modern view.
Yet, from time to time, the older view has reasserted itself, and
in France, as recently as the year 1870, we find the Bishop of
Verdun ascribing the drought afflicting his diocese to the sin of
Sabbath-breaking.[216]

[216] For Stoltzlin, see his Geistliches Donner- und Wetter-
Buchlein (Zurich, 1731). For Increase Mather, see his The Voice
of God, etc. (Boston, 1704). This rare volume is in the rich
collection of the American Antiquarian Society at Worcester. For
Cotton Mather's view, see the chapter From Signs and Wonders to
Law, in this work. For the Bishop of Verdun, see the Semaine
relig. de Lorraine, 1879, p. 445 (cited by "Paul Parfait," in his
Dossier des Pelerinages, pp. 141-143).

This theory, which attributed injurious meteorological phenomena
mainly to the purposes of God, was a natural development, and
comparatively harmless; but at a very early period there was
evolved another theory, which, having been ripened into a
doctrine, cost the earth dear indeed. Never, perhaps, in the
modern world has there been a dogma more prolific of physical,
mental, and moral agony throughout whole nations and during whole
centuries. This theory, its development by theology, its fearful
results to mankind, and its destruction by scientific observation
and thought, will next be considered.

II. DIABOLIC AGENCY IN STORMS.

While the fathers and schoolmen were labouring to deduce a
science of meteorology from our sacred books, there oozed up in
European society a mass of traditions and observances which had
been lurking since the days of paganism; and, although here and
there appeared a churchman to oppose them, the theologians and
ecclesiastics ere long began to adopt them and to clothe them
with the authority of religion.

Both among the pagans of the Roman Empire and among the
barbarians of the North the Christian missionaries had found it
easier to prove the new God supreme than to prove the old gods
powerless. Faith in the miracles of the new religion seemed to
increase rather than to diminish faith in the miracles of the
old; and the Church at last began admitting the latter as facts,
but ascribing them to the devil. Jupiter and Odin sank into the
category of ministers of Satan, and transferred to that master
all their former powers. A renewed study of Scripture by
theologians elicited overwhelming proofs of the truth of this
doctrine. Stress was especially laid on the declaration of
Scripture, "The gods of the heathen are devils."[217] Supported
by this and other texts, it soon became a dogma. So strong was
the hold it took, under the influence of the Church, that not
until late in the seventeenth century did its substantial truth
begin to be questioned.

[217] For so the Vulgate and all the early versions rendered Ps.
xcvi, 5.

With no field of action had the sway of the ancient deities been
more identified than with that of atmospheric phenomena. The
Roman heard Jupiter, and the Teuton heard Thor, in the thunder.
Could it be doubted that these powerful beings would now take
occasion, unless hindered by the command of the Almighty, to vent
their spite against those who had deserted their altars?  Might
not the Almighty himself be willing to employ the malice of these
powers of the air against those who had offended him?

It was, indeed, no great step, for those whose simple faith
accepted rain or sunshine as an answer to their prayers, to
suspect that the untimely storms or droughts, which baffled their
most earnest petitions, were the work of the archenemy, "the
prince of the power of the air."

The great fathers of the Church had easily found warrant for this
doctrine in Scripture. St. Jerome declared the air to be full
of devils, basing this belief upon various statements in the
prophecies of Isaiah and in the Epistle to the Ephesians. St.
Augustine held the same view as beyond controversy.[218]

[218] For St. Jerome, see his Com. in Ep. ad Ephesios (lib. iii,
cap.6): commenting on the text, "Our battle is not with flesh and
blood," he explains this as meaning the devils in the air, and
adds, "Nam et in alio loco de daemonibus quod in aere isto
vagentur, Apostolus ait: In quibus ambulastis aliquando juxta
Saeculum mundi istius, secundum principem potestatis aeris
spiritus, qui nunc operatur in filos diffidentiae (Eph, ii,2).
Haec autem omnium doctorum opinio est, quod aer iste qui coelum
et terram medius dividens, inane appellatur, plenus sit
contrariis fortitudinibus." See also his Com. in Isaiam, lib.
xiii, cap. 50 (Migne, Patr. Lat., vol. xxiv, p. 477). For
Augustine, see the De Civitate Dei, passim.

During the Middle Ages this doctrine of the diabolical origin of
storms went on gathering strength. Bede had full faith in it,
and narrates various anecdotes in support of it. St. Thomas
Aquinas gave it his sanction, saying in his all authoritative
Summa, "Rains and winds, and whatsoever occurs by local impulse
alone, can be caused by demons."  "It is," he says, "a dogma of
faith that the demons can produce wind, storms, and rain of fire
from heaven."

Albert the Great taught the same doctrine, and showed how a
certain salve thrown into a spring produced whirlwinds. The
great Franciscan--the "seraphic doctor"--St. Bonaventura, whose
services to theology earned him one of the highest places in the
Church, and to whom Dante gave special honour in paradise, set
upon this belief his high authority. The lives of the saints,
and the chronicles of the Middle Ages, were filled with it.
Poetry and painting accepted the idea and developed it. Dante
wedded it to verse, and at Venice this thought may still be seen
embodied in one of the grand pictures of Bordone: a shipload of
demons is seen approaching Venice in a storm, threatening
destruction to the city, but St. Mark, St. George, and St.
Nicholas attack the vessel, and disperse the hellish crew.[219]

[219] For Bede, see the Hist. Eccles., vol. i, p. 17; Vita
Cuthberti, c. 17 (Migne, tome xliv). For Thomas Aquinas, see the
Summa, pars I, qu. lxxx, art. 2. The second citation I owe to
Rydberg, Magic of the Middle Ages, p. 73, where the whole
interesting passage is given at length. For Albertus Magnus, see
the De Potentia Daemonum (cited by Maury, Legendes Pieuses). For
Bonaventura, see the Comp. Theol. Veritat., ii, 26. For Dante,
see Purgatorio, c. 5. On Bordone's picture, see Maury, Legendes
Pieuses, p. 18, note.

The popes again and again sanctioned this doctrine, and it was
amalgamated with various local superstitions, pious imaginations,
and interesting arguments, to strike the fancy of the people at
large. A strong argument in favour of a diabolical origin of the
thunderbolt was afforded by the eccentricities of its operation.
These attracted especial attention in the Middle Ages, and the
popular love of marvel generalized isolated phenomena into rules.
Thus it was said that the lightning strikes the sword in the
sheath, gold in the purse, the foot in the shoe, leaving sheath
and purse and shoe unharmed; that it consumes a human being
internally without injuring the skin; that it destroys nets in
the water, but not on the land; that it kills one man, and
leaves untouched another standing beside him; that it can tear
through a house and enter the earth without moving a stone from
its place; that it injures the heart of a tree, but not the bark;
that wine is poisoned by it, while poisons struck by it lose
their venom; that a man's hair may be consumed by it and the man
be unhurt.[220]

[220] See, for lists of such admiranda, any of the early
writers--e. g., Vincent of Beauvais, Reisch's Margarita, or Eck's
Aristotle.

These peculiar phenomena, made much of by the allegorizing
sermonizers of the day, were used in moral lessons from every
pulpit. Thus the Carmelite, Matthias Farinator, of Vienna, who
at the Pope's own instance compiled early in the fifteenth
century that curious handbook of illustrative examples for
preachers, the Lumen Animae, finds a spiritual analogue for each
of these anomalies.[221]

[221] See the Lumen animae, Eichstadt, 1479.

This doctrine grew, robust and noxious, until, in the fifteenth,
sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, we find its bloom in a
multitude of treatises by the most learned of the Catholic and
Protestant divines, and its fruitage in the torture chambers and
on the scaffolds throughout Christendom. At the Reformation
period, and for nearly two hundred years afterward, Catholics and
Protestants vied with each other in promoting this growth. John
Eck, the great opponent of Luther, gave to the world an annotated
edition of Aristotle's Physics, which was long authoritative in
the German universities; and, though the text is free from this
doctrine, the woodcut illustrating the earth's atmosphere shows
most vividly, among the clouds of mid-air, the devils who there
reign supreme.[222]

[222] See Eck, Aristotelis Meteorologica, Augsburg, 1519.

Luther, in the other religious camp, supported the superstition
even more zealously, asserting at times his belief that the winds
themselves are only good or evil spirits, and declaring that a
stone thrown into a certain pond in his native region would cause
a dreadful storm because of the devils, kept prisoners
there.[223]

[223] For Luther, see the Table Talk; also Michelet, Life of
Luther (translated by Hazlitt, p. 321).

Just at the close of the same century, Catholics and Protestants
welcomed alike the great work of Delrio. In this, the power of
devils over the elements is proved first from the Holy
Scriptures, since, he declares, "they show that Satan brought
fire down from heaven to consume the servants and flocks of Job,
and that he stirred up a violent wind, which overwhelmed in ruin
the sons and daughters of Job at their feasting."  Next, Delrio
insists on the agreement of all the orthodox fathers, that it was
the devil himself who did this, and attention is called to the
fact that the hail with which the Egyptians were punished is
expressly declared in Holy Scripture to have been brought by the
evil angels. Citing from the Apocalypse, he points to the four
angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back
the winds and preventing their doing great damage to mortals;
and he dwells especially upon the fact that the devil is called
by the apostle a "prince of the power of the air."  He then goes
on to cite the great fathers of the Church--Clement, Jerome,
Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas.[224]

[224] For Delrio, see his Disquisitiones Magicae, first printed
at Liege in 1599-1600, but reprinted again and again throughout
the seventeenth century. His interpretation of Psalm lxxviii,
47-49, was apparently shared by the translators of our own
authorized edition. For citations by him, see Revelation vii,
1,; Ephesians ii, 2. Even according to modern commentators
(e.g., Alford), the word here translated "power" denotes not
MIGHT, but GOVERNMENT, COURT, HIERARCHY; and in this sense it was
always used by the ecclesiastical writers, whose conception is
best rendered by our plural--"powers."  See Delrio,
Disquisitiones Magicae, lib. ii, c. 11.

This doctrine was spread not only in ponderous treatises, but in
light literature and by popular illustrations. In the Compendium
Maleficarum of the Italian monk Guacci, perhaps the most amusing
book in the whole literature of witchcraft, we may see the witch,
in propria persona, riding the diabolic goat through the clouds
while the storm rages around and beneath her; and we may read a
rich collection of anecdotes, largely contemporary, which
establish the required doctrine beyond question.

The first and most natural means taken against this work of Satan
in the air was prayer; and various petitions are to be found
scattered through the Christian liturgies--some very beautiful
and touching. This means of escape has been relied upon, with
greater or less faith, from those days to these. Various
medieval saints and reformers, and devoted men in all centuries,
from St. Giles to John Wesley, have used it with results claimed
to be miraculous. Whatever theory any thinking man may hold in
the matter, he will certainly not venture a reproachful word:
such prayers have been in all ages a natural outcome of the mind
of man in trouble.[225]

[225] For Guacci, see his Compendium Maleficarum (Milan, 1608).
For the cases of St. Giles, John Wesley, and others stilling the
tempests, see Brewer, Dictionary of Miracles, s. v. Prayer.

But against the "power of the air" were used other means of a
very different character and tendency, and foremost among these
was exorcism. In an exorcism widely used and ascribed to Pope
Gregory XIII, the formula is given: "I, a priest of Christ,...
do command ye, most foul spirits, who do stir up these clouds,...
that ye depart from them, and disperse yourselves into wild and
untilled places, that ye may be no longer able to harm men or
animals or fruits or herbs, or whatsoever is designed for human
use."  But this is mild, indeed, compared to some later
exorcisms, as when the ritual runs: "All the people shall rise,
and the priest, turning toward the clouds, shall pronounce these
words: `I exorcise ye, accursed demons, who have dared to use,
for the accomplishment of your iniquity, those powers of Nature
by which God in divers ways worketh good to mortals; who stir up
winds, gather vapours, form clouds, and condense them into
hail....I exorcise ye,...that ye relinquish the work ye have
begun, dissolve the hail, scatter the clouds, disperse the
vapours, and restrain the winds.'" The rubric goes on to order
that then there shall be a great fire kindled in an open place,
and that over it the sign of the cross shall be made, and the one
hundred and fourteenth Psalm chanted, while malodorous
substances, among them sulphur and asafoetida, shall be cast into
the flames. The purpose seems to have been literally to "smoke
out" Satan.[226]

[226] See Polidorus Valerius, Practica exorcistarum; also the
Thesaurus exorcismorum (Cologne, 1626), pp. 158-162.

Manuals of exorcisms became important--some bulky quartos, others
handbooks. Noteworthy among the latter is one by the Italian
priest Locatelli, entitled Exorcisms most Powerful and
Efficacious for the Dispelling of Aerial Tempests, whether raised
by Demons at their own Instance or at the Beck of some Servant of
the Devil.[227]

[227] That is, Exorcismi, etc. A "corrected" second edition was
printed at Laybach, 1680, in 24mo, to which is appended another
manual of Preces et conjurationes contra aereas tempestates,
omnibus sacerdotibus utiles et necessaria, printed at the
monastery of Kempten (in Bavaria) in 1667. The latter bears as
epigraph the passage from the gospels describing Christ's
stilling of the winds.

The Jesuit Gretser, in his famous book on Benedictions and
Maledictions, devotes a chapter to this subject, dismissing
summarily the scepticism that questions the power of devils over
the elements, and adducing the story of Job as conclusive.[228]

[228] See Gretser, De benedictionibus et maledictionibus, lib.
ii, c. 48.

Nor was this theory of exorcism by any means confined to the
elder Church. Luther vehemently upheld it, and prescribed
especially the first chapter of St. John's gospel as of
unfailing efficacy against thunder and lightning, declaring that
he had often found the mere sign of the cross, with the text,
"The word was made flesh," sufficient to put storms to
flight.[229]

[229] So, at least, says Gretser (in his De ben. et aml., as
above).

From the beginning of the Middle Ages until long after the
Reformation the chronicles give ample illustration of the
successful use of such exorcisms. So strong was the belief in
them that it forced itself into minds comparatively rational, and
found utterance in treatises of much importance.

But, since exorcisms were found at times ineffectual, other means
were sought, and especially fetiches of various sorts. One of
the earliest of these appeared when Pope Alexander I, according
to tradition, ordained that holy water should be kept in churches
and bedchambers to drive away devils.[230] Another safeguard was
found in relics, and of similar efficacy were the so-called
"conception billets" sold by the Carmelite monks. They contained
a formula upon consecrated paper, at which the devil might well
turn pale. Buried in the corner of a field, one of these was
thought to give protection against bad weather and destructive
insects.[231]

[230] "Instituit ut aqua quam sanctum appellamus sale admixta
interpositus sacris orationibus et in templis et in cubiculis ad
fugandos daemones retineretur."  Platina, Vitae Pontif. But the
story is from the False Decretals.

[231] See Rydberg, The Magic of the Middle Ages, translated by
Edgren, pp. 63-66.

But highest in repute during centuries was the Agnus Dei--a
piece of wax blessed by the Pope's own hand, and stamped with the
well-known device representing the "Lamb of God."  Its powers
were so marvellous that Pope Urban V thought three of these cakes
a fitting gift from himself to the Greek Emperor. In the Latin
doggerel recounting their virtues, their meteorological efficacy
stands first, for especial stress is laid on their power of
dispelling the thunder. The stress thus laid by Pope Urban, as
the infallible guide of Christendom, on the efficacy of this
fetich, gave it great value throughout Europe, and the doggerel
verses reciting its virtues sank deep into the popular mind. It
was considered a most potent means of dispelling hail,
pestilence, storms, conflagrations, and enchantments; and this
feeling was deepened by the rules and rites for its consecration.
So solemn was the matter, that the manufacture and sale of this
particular fetich was, by a papal bull of 1471, reserved for the
Pope himself, and he only performed the required ceremony in the
first and seventh years of his pontificate. Standing unmitred,
he prayed: "O God,...we humbly beseech thee that thou wilt bless
these waxen forms, figured with the image of an innocent lamb,...
that, at the touch and sight of them, the faithful may break
forth into praises, and that the crash of hailstorms, the blast
of hurricanes, the violence of tempests, the fury of winds, and
the malice of thunderbolts may be tempered, and evil spirits flee
and tremble before the standard of thy holy cross, which is
graven upon them."[232]

[232] These pious charms are still in use in the Church, and may
be found described in any ecclesiastical cyclopaedia. The
doggerel verses run as follows:

"Tonitrua magna terret,        Inimicos nostras domat
Et peccata nostra delet;       Praegnantem cum partu salvat,
Ab incendio praeservat,        Dona dignis multa confert,
A subersione servat,           Utque malis mala defert.
A morte cita liberat,          Portio, quamvis parva sit,
Et Cacodaemones fugat,         Ut magna tamen proficit."

See these verses cited in full faith, so late as 1743, in Father
Vincent of Berg's Enchiridium, pp. 23, 24, where is an ample
statement of the virtues of the Agnus Dei, and istructions for
its use. A full account of the rites used in consecrating this
fetich, with the prayers and benedictions which gave colour to
this theory of the powers of the Agnus Dei, may be found in the
ritual of the Church. I have used the edition entitled Sacrarum
ceremoniarum sive rituum Sanctae Romanae Ecclesiae libri tres,
Rome, 1560, in folio. The form of the papal prayer is as follows:
"Deus . . . te supplicater deprecamur, ut . . . has cereas
formas, innocentissimi agni imagine figuritas, benedicere . . .
digneris, ut per ejus tactum et visum fideles invitentur as
laudes, fragor grandinum, procella turbinum, impetus tempestatum,
ventorum rabies, infesta tonitrua temperentur, fugiant atque
tremiscant maligni spiritus ante Sanctae Crucis vexillum, quod in
illis exculptum est. . . ."(Sacr. Cer. Rom. Eccl., as above). If
any are curious as to the extent to which this consecrated wax
was a specific for all spiritual and most temporal ills during
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, let them consult the
Jesuit Litterae annuae, passim.

Another favourite means with the clergy of the older Church for
bringing to naught the "power of the air," was found in great
processions bearing statues, relics, and holy emblems through the
streets. Yet even these were not always immediately effective.
One at Liege, in the thirteenth century, thrice proved
unsuccessful in bringing rain, when at last it was found that the
image of the Virgin had been forgotten! A new procession was at
once formed, the Salve Regina sung, and the rain came down in
such torrents as to drive the devotees to shelter.[233]

[233] John of Winterthur describes many such processions in
Switzerland in the thirteenth century, and all the monkish
chronicles speak of them. See also Rydberg, Magic of the Middle
Ages, p. 74.

In Catholic lands this custom remains to this day, and very
important features in these processions are the statues and the
reliquaries of patron saints. Some of these excel in bringing
sunshine, others in bringing rain. The Cathedral of Chartres is
so fortunate as to possess sundry relics of St. Taurin,
especially potent against dry weather, and some of St. Piat,
very nearly as infallible against wet weather. In certain
regions a single saint gives protection alternately against wet
and dry weather--as, for example, St. Godeberte at Noyon.
Against storms St. Barbara is very generally considered the most
powerful protectress; but, in the French diocese of Limoges,
Notre Dame de Crocq has proved a most powerful rival, for when, a
few years since, all the neighbouring parishes were ravaged by
storms, not a hailstone fell in the canton which she protected.
In the diocese of Tarbes, St. Exupere is especially invoked
against hail, peasants flocking from all the surrounding country
to his shrine.[234]

[234] As to protection by special saints as stated, see the Guide
du touriste et du pelerin a Chartes, 1867 (cited by "Paul
Parfait," in his Dossier des Pelerinages); also pp. 139-145 of
the Dossier.

But the means of baffling the powers of the air which came to be
most widely used was the ringing of consecrated church bells.

This usage had begun in the time of Charlemagne, and there is
extant a prohibition of his against the custom of baptizing bells
and of hanging certain tags[235] on their tongues as a
protection against hailstorms; but even Charlemagne was
powerless against this current of medieval superstition.
Theological reasons were soon poured into it, and in the year 968
Pope John XIII gave it the highest ecclesiastical sanction by
himself baptizing the great bell of his cathedral church, the
Lateran, and christening it with his own name.[236]

[235] Perticae. See Montanus, Hist. Nachricht van den Glocken
(Chenmitz, 1726), p. 121; and Meyer, Der Aberglaube des
Mittelalters, p. 186.

[236] For statements regarding Pope John and bell superstitions,
see Higgins's Anacalypsis, vol. ii, p. 70. See also Platina,
Vitae Pontif., s. v. John XIII, and Baronius, Annales
Ecclesiastici, sub anno 968. The conjecture of Baronius that the
bell was named after St. John the Baptist, is even more startling
than the accepted tradition of the Pope's sponsorship.

This idea was rapidly developed, and we soon find it supported in
ponderous treatises, spread widely in sermons, and popularized in
multitudes of inscriptions cast upon the bells themselves. This
branch of theological literature may still be studied in
multitudes of church towers throughout Europe. A bell at Basel
bears the inscription, "Ad fugandos demones."  Another, in
Lugano, declares "The sound of this bell vanquishes tempests,
repels demons, and summons men."  Another, at the Cathedral of
Erfurt, declares that it can "ward off lightning and malignant
demons."  A peal in the Jesuit church at the university town of
Pont-a-Mousson bore the words, "They praise God, put to flight
the clouds, affright the demons, and call the people."  This is
dated 1634. Another bell in that part of France declares, "It is
I who dissipate the thunders"(Ego sum qui dissipo
tonitrua).[237]

[237] For these illustrations, with others equally striking, see
Meyer, Der Aberglaube des Mittelalters, pp. 185, 186. For the
later examples, see Germain, Anciennes cloches lorraines (Nancy,
1885), pp. 23, 27.

Another, in one of the forest cantons of Switzerland, bears a
doggerel couplet, which may be thus translated:

"On the devil my spite I'll vent,
And, God helping, bad weather prevent."[238]

[238] "An dem Tufel will cih mich rachen,
Mit der hilf gotz alle bosen wetter erbrechen."
(See Meyer, as above.)

Very common were inscriptions embodying this doctrine in sonorous
Latin.

Naturally, then, there grew up a ritual for the consecration of
bells. Knollys, in his quaint translation of the old chronicler
Sleidan, gives us the usage in the simple English of the middle
of the sixteenth century:

"In lyke sorte [as churches] are the belles used. And first,
forsouth, they must hange so, as the Byshop may goe round about
them. Whiche after he hath sayde certen Psalmes, he consecrateth
water and salte, and mingleth them together, wherwith he washeth
the belle diligently both within and without, after wypeth it
drie, and with holy oyle draweth in it the signe of the crosse,
and prayeth God, that whan they shall rynge or sounde that bell,
all the disceiptes of the devyll may vanyshe away, hayle,
thondryng, lightening, wyndes, and tempestes, and all untemperate
weathers may be aswaged. Whan he hath wipte out the crosse of
oyle wyth a linen cloth, he maketh seven other crosses in the
same, and within one only. After saying certen Psalmes, he
taketh a payre of sensours and senseth the bel within, and
prayeth God to sende it good lucke. In many places they make a
great dyner, and kepe a feast as it were at a solemne
wedding."[239]

[239] Sleiden's Commentaries, English translation, as above, fol.
334 (lib. xxi, sub anno 1549).

These bell baptisms became matters of great importance. Popes,
kings, and prelates were proud to stand as sponsors. Four of the
bells at the Cathedral of Versailles having been destroyed during
the French Revolution, four new ones were baptized, on the 6th of
January, 1824, the Voltairean King, Louis XVIII, and the pious
Duchess d'Angouleme standing as sponsors.

In some of these ceremonies zeal appears to have outrun
knowledge, and one of Luther's stories, at the expense of the
older Church, was that certain authorities thus christened a bell
"Hosanna," supposing that to be the name of a woman.

To add to the efficacy of such baptisms, water was sometimes
brought from the river Jordan.[240]

[240] See Montanus, as above, who cites Beck, Lutherthum vor
Luthero, p. 294, for the statement that many bells were carried
to the Jordan by pilgrims for this purpose.

The prayers used at bell baptisms fully recognise this doctrine.
The ritual of Paris embraces the petition that, "whensoever this
bell shall sound, it shall drive away the malign influences of
the assailing spirits, the horror of their apparitions, the rush
of whirlwinds, the stroke of lightning, the harm of thunder, the
disasters of storms, and all the spirits of the tempest."
Another prayer begs that "the sound of this bell may put to
flight the fiery darts of the enemy of men"; and others vary the
form but not the substance of this petition. The great Jesuit
theologian, Bellarmin, did indeed try to deny the reality of this
baptism; but this can only be regarded as a piece of casuistry
suited to Protestant hardness of heart, or as strategy in the
warfare against heretics.[241]

[241] For prayers at bell baptisms, see Arago, Oeuvres, Paris,
1854, vol. iv, p. 322.

Forms of baptism were laid down in various manuals sanctioned
directly by papal authority, and sacramental efficacy was
everywhere taken for granted.[242] The development of this idea
in the older Church was too strong to be resisted;[243] but, as
a rule, the Protestant theologians of the Reformation, while
admitting that storms were caused by Satan and his legions,
opposed the baptism of bells, and denied the theory of their
influence in dispersing storms. Luther, while never doubting
that troublesome meteorological phenomena were caused by devils,
regarded with contempt the idea that the demons were so childish
as to be scared by the clang of bells; his theory made them
altogether too powerful to be affected by means so trivial. The
great English Reformers, while also accepting very generally the
theory of diabolic interference in storms, reproved strongly the
baptizing of bells, as the perversion of a sacrament and
involving blasphemy. Bishop Hooper declared reliance upon bells
to drive away tempests, futile. Bishop Pilkington, while arguing
that tempests are direct instruments of God's wrath, is very
severe against using "unlawful means," and among these he names
"the hallowed bell"; and these opinions were very generally
shared by the leading English clergy.[244]

[242] As has often been pointed out, the ceremony was in all its
details--even to the sponsors, the wrapping a garment about the
baptised, the baptismal fee, the feast--precisely the same as
when a child was baptised. Magius, who is no sceptic, relates
from his own experience an instant of this sort, where a certain
bishop stood sponsor for two bells, giving them both his own
name--William. (See his De Tintinnabulis, vol. xiv.)

[243] And no wonder, when the oracle of the Church, Thomas
Aquinas, expressly pronounced church bells, "provided they have
been duly consecrated and baptised," the foremost means of
"frustrating the atmospheric mischiefs of the devil," and likened
steeples in which bells are ringing to a hen brooding her
chickens, "for the tones of the consecrated metal repel the
demons and avert storm and lightning"; when pre-Reformation
preachers of such universal currency as Johannes Herolt declared,
"Bells, as all agree, are baptised with the result that they are
secure from the power of Satan, terrify the demons, compel the
powers"; when Geiler of Kaiserberg especially commended bell-
ringing as a means of beating off the devil in storms; and when a
canonist like Durandus explained the purpose of the rite to be,
that "the demons hearing the trumpets of the Eternal King, to
wit, the bells, may flee in terror, and may cease from the
stirring up of tempests." See Herolt, Sermones Discipuli, vol.
xvii, and Durandus, De ritibus ecclesiae, vol. ii, p. 12. I owe
the first of these citations to Rydberg, and the others to
Montanus. For Geiler, see Dacheux, Geiler de Kaiserberg, pp. 280,
281.

[244] The baptism of bells was indeed, one of the express
complaints of the German Protestant princes at the Reformation.
See their Gravam. Cent. German. Grav., p. 51. For Hooper, see
his Early Writings, p. 197 (in Parker Society Publications). For
Pilkington, see his Works, p. 177 (in same). Among others
sharing these opinions were Tyndale, Bishop Ridley, Archbishop
Sandys, Becon, Calfhill, and Rogers. It is to be noted that all
of these speak of the rite as "baptism."

Toward the end of the sixteenth century the Elector of Saxony
strictly forbade the ringing of bells against storms, urging
penance and prayer instead; but the custom was not so easily
driven out of the Protestant Church, and in some quarters was
developed a Protestant theory of a rationalistic sort, ascribing
the good effects of bell-ringing in storms to the calling
together of the devout for prayer or to the suggestion of prayers
during storms at night. As late as the end of the seventeenth
century we find the bells of Protestant churches in northern
Germany rung for the dispelling of tempests. In Catholic Austria
this bell-ringing seems to have become a nuisance in the last
century, for the Emperor Joseph II found it necessary to issue an
edict against it; but this doctrine had gained too large headway
to be arrested by argument or edict, and the bells may be heard
ringing during storms to this day in various remote districts in
Europe.[245]  For this was no mere superficial view. It was
really part of a deep theological current steadily developed
through the Middle Ages, the fundamental idea of the whole being
the direct influence of the bells upon the "Power of the Air";
and it is perhaps worth our while to go back a little and glance
over the coming of this current into the modern world. Having
grown steadily through the Middle Ages, it appeared in full
strength at the Reformation period; and in the sixteenth century
Olaus Magnus, Archbishop of Upsala and Primate of Sweden, in his
great work on the northern nations, declares it a
well-established fact that cities and harvests may be saved from
lightning by the ringing of bells and the burning of consecrated
incense, accompanied by prayers; and he cautions his readers
that the workings of the thunderbolt are rather to be marvelled
at than inquired into. Even as late as 1673 the Franciscan
professor Lealus, in Italy, in a schoolbook which was received
with great applause in his region, taught unhesitatingly the
agency of demons in storms, and the power of bells over them, as
well as the portentousness of comets and the movement of the
heavens by angels. He dwells especially, too, upon the perfect
protection afforded by the waxen Agnus Dei. How strong this
current was, and how difficult even for philosophical minds to
oppose, is shown by the fact that both Descartes and Francis
Bacon speak of it with respect, admitting the fact, and
suggesting very mildly that the bells may accomplish this purpose
by the concussion of the air.[246]

[245] For Elector of Saxony, see Peuchen, Disp. circa
tempestates, Jena, 1697. For the Protestant theory of bells,
see, e. g., the Ciciones Selectae of Superintendent Conrad
Dieterich (cited by Peuchen, Disp. circa tempestates). For
Protestant ringing of bells to dispel tempests, see Schwimmer,
Physicalische Luftfragen, 1692 (cited by Peuchen, as above). He
pictures the whole population of a Thuringinian district flocking
to the churches on the approach of a storm.

[246] For Olaus Magnus, see the De gentibus septentrionalibus
(Rome, 1555), lib. i, c. 12, 13. For Descartes, see his De
meteor., cent. 2, 127. In his Historia Ventorum he again alludes
to the belief, and without comment.

But no such moderate doctrine sufficed, and the renowned Bishop
Binsfeld, of Treves, in his noted treatise on the credibility of
the confessions of witches, gave an entire chapter to the effect
of bells in calming atmospheric disturbances. Basing his general
doctrine upon the first chapter of Job and the second chapter of
Ephesians, he insisted on the reality of diabolic agency in
storms; and then, by theological reasoning, corroborated by the
statements extorted in the torture chamber, he showed the
efficacy of bells in putting the hellish legions to flight.[247]
This continued, therefore, an accepted tenet, developed in every
nation, and coming to its climax near the end of the seventeenth
century. At that period--the period of Isaac Newton--Father
Augustine de Angelis, rector of the Clementine College at Rome,
published under the highest Church authority his lectures upon
meteorology. Coming from the centre of Catholic Christendom, at
so late a period, they are very important as indicating what had
been developed under the influence of theology during nearly
seventeen hundred years. This learned head of a great college at
the heart of Christendom taught that "the surest remedy against
thunder is that which our Holy Mother the Church practises,
namely, the ringing of bells when a thunderbolt impends: thence
follows a twofold effect, physical and moral--a physical, because
the sound variously disturbs and agitates the air, and by
agitation disperses the hot exhalations and dispels the thunder;
but the moral effect is the more certain, because by the sound
the faithful are stirred to pour forth their prayers, by which
they win from God the turning away of the thunderbolt."  Here we
see in this branch of thought, as in so many others, at the close
of the seventeenth century, the dawn of rationalism. Father De
Angelis now keeps demoniacal influence in the background.
Little, indeed, is said of the efficiency of bells in putting to
flight the legions of Satan: the wise professor is evidently
preparing for that inevitable compromise which we see in the
history of every science when it is clear that it can no longer
be suppressed by ecclesiastical fulminations.[248]

[247] See Binsfeld, De Confessionbus Malef., pp. 308-314, edition
of 1623.

[248] For De Angelis, see his Lectiones Meteorol., p. 75.

III. THE AGENCY OF WITCHES.

But, while this comparatively harmless doctrine of thwarting the
powers of the air by fetiches and bell-ringing was developed,
there were evolved another theory, and a series of practices
sanctioned by the Church, which must forever be considered as
among the most fearful calamities in human history. Indeed, few
errors have ever cost so much shedding of innocent blood over
such wide territory and during so many generations. Out of the
old doctrine--pagan and Christian--of evil agency in atmospheric
phenomena was evolved the belief that certain men, women, and
children may secure infernal aid to produce whirlwinds, hail,
frosts, floods, and the like.

As early as the ninth century one great churchman, Agobard,
Archbishop of Lyons, struck a heavy blow at this superstition.
His work, Against the Absurd Opinion of the Vulgar touching Hail
and Thunder, shows him to have been one of the most devoted
apostles of right reason whom human history has known. By
argument and ridicule, and at times by a lofty eloquence, he
attempted to breast this tide. One passage is of historical
significance. He declares: "The wretched world lies now under
the tyranny of foolishness; things are believed by Christians of
such absurdity as no one ever could aforetime induce the heathen
to believe."[249]

[249] For a very interesting statement of Agobard's position and
work, with citations from his Liber contra insulsam vulgi
opinionem de grandine et tonitruis, see Poole, Illustrations of
the History of Mediaeval Thought, pp. 40 et seq. The works of
Agobard are in vol. civ of Migne's Patrol. Lat.

All in vain; the tide of superstition continued to roll on;
great theologians developed it and ecclesiastics favoured it;
until as we near the end of the medieval period the infallible
voice of Rome is heard accepting it, and clinching this belief
into the mind of Christianity. For, in 1437, Pope Eugene IV, by
virtue of the teaching power conferred on him by the Almighty,
and under the divine guarantee against any possible error in the
exercise of it, issued a bull exhorting the inquisitors of heresy
and witchcraft to use greater diligence against the human agents
of the Prince of Darkness, and especially against those who have
the power to produce bad weather. In 1445 Pope Eugene returned
again to the charge, and again issued instructions and commands
infallibly committing the Church to the doctrine. But a greater
than Eugene followed, and stamped the idea yet more deeply into
the mind of the Church. On the 7th of December, 1484, Pope
Innocent VIII sent forth his bull Summis Desiderantes. Of all
documents ever issued from Rome, imperial or papal, this has
doubtless, first and last, cost the greatest shedding of innocent
blood. Yet no document was ever more clearly dictated by
conscience. Inspired by the scriptural command, "Thou shalt not
suffer a witch to live," Pope Innocent exhorted the clergy of
Germany to leave no means untried to detect sorcerers, and
especially those who by evil weather destroy vineyards, gardens,
meadows, and growing crops. These precepts were based upon
various texts of Scripture, especially upon the famous statement
in the book of Job; and, to carry them out, witch-finding
inquisitors were authorized by the Pope to scour Europe,
especially Germany, and a manual was prepared for their use--the
Witch-Hammer, Malleus Maleficarum. In this manual, which was
revered for centuries, both in Catholic and Protestant countries,
as almost divinely inspired, the doctrine of Satanic agency in
atmospheric phenomena was further developed, and various means of
detecting and punishing it were dwelt upon.[250]