Science.

When a man of Northern or Central Europe hears of science, his thoughts generally turn to the universities and their teachers. [pg 004] To him the university is the home of science, there its numerous branches dwell in good fellowship, there hundreds of men have consecrated themselves to its service. In those parts of Europe it is customary for men of science to be university professors. Of what university is he? is asked. Celebrated scientists, like Helmholtz, Liebig, Hertz, Kirchhoff; philosophers, like Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Herbart; great philologists, historians, and so on, were university professors.

For all that, science and university are not necessarily inseparable things. The university needs science, but science does not absolutely need the university. Science was in the world before the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the time when France and Italy built their first universities; and also since then science has been enriched by the achievements of many a genius who never occupied a university chair. Pythagoras, Aristotle, St. Augustine belonged to no universities; Copernicus, Newton, and Kepler never taught in the higher schools. In the countries of Western Europe and America the man of science and the university professor are to this day not so much identical in person. Therefore, if the freedom of science applies principally to the higher schools and their teachers, this is not its exclusive application. Science and university are not identical terms.

What, then, is science?

At the sound of this magic word there arises in the minds of many the image of a superhuman being: open on his lap lies the book of wisdom in which all mysteries are solved; in his hand is the flaming torch which enlightens the path down into the lowest depths of research, dispelling all darkness. This, in the minds of many, is what science means. The mere appeal to this infallible being suffices to settle all problems, to silence every contradiction; woe to him who dares open his profane mouth to utter an If or a But!

Were this science, there would be no dispute. We should have to admit that there could be no limit set to the freedom of this being; he must share the privileges of divine Intelligence, for no command to keep silent can be imposed on Infallible Truth; there can be no amendment. But, alas! in the world [pg 005] of reality this personified Science is nowhere to be found, it exists solely in the realm of rhetoric and poetry. Science, as it exists among men, has its seat, after all, nowhere else than in the human mind. It is, indeed, nothing else but the well-ordered summary of knowledge and of the research for the causes of things. Natural science is the summary of knowledge and research in the realm of natural phenomena, arranged in an orderly way, as a text-book will give it; that is, an investigation of phenomena and their causes. A mere description of natural phenomena, without any explanation, or reference of them to the laws of nature, would indeed be teaching about nature, but not natural science. Similarly, the science of history is the well-ordered summary of knowledge and research in the domain of human events, derived from their sources, with the statement of facts according to cause and effect.

And not all this knowledge is certain, and free from doubt. The modern conception of science, as we now have it—the ancients had a much narrower conception—includes certain as well as uncertain knowledge, results and hypotheses, and even the activity of research, together with its methods. Astronomy was thus in Ptolemy's time the summary of what was then known with more or less certainty about the stars; included in this, as is well known, was the opinion that the sun circles around the earth. And the philosophy of Aristotle embraced his philosophical ideas about God, the world and man; hence many errors. Further, when speaking of science in general, we mean the whole number of the individual sciences. It is the freedom of science in this sense that we have to investigate here. The individual sciences are distinguished one from another principally by the subjects of which they treat. Astronomy is distinguished from palæontology and philosophy by the fact that it treats of the stars, not of fossils, or of the fundamental truths of reason.

From this brief analysis of concepts it is clear that science and scientific research are not superhuman beings, but an activity or condition of the human mind, distinguished from the ordinary thought of the individual only by system and method, and, [pg 006] commonly, by greater thoroughness and by the united effort of many. It is subject to all the limitations of the human mind.

What follows from this? Two things. Let us at once make a brief reference to both of them, because in our discussion they are of the greatest importance.

Since, then, science is an activity of the human mind, it must, like it, always and everywhere be subject to the Truth and subject to God. Subject to the Truth: whenever science comes in contact with it, it must reverently bow to the truth. And subject to God: if God is the Creator of man and of his spiritual and bodily activity, He is also the master of his whole being, and man is subject to Him in all his activity and development, therefore in his intellectual life, and in his artistic and scientific pursuits. Everything is and remains the activity of the creature. As gravitation rules the entire planet and its material activity, attracts it towards the sun and makes it circle around it, so does the law of dependence on God rule the whole life of the creature. Man cannot therefore, even in his scientific research, ignore his Creator, cannot emancipate himself from His authority; and if God has given a revelation and demands faith, the man of science, too, must believe. There cannot be an emancipated, free, science in this sense.

Another consequence is this: since science is an activity of the human mind, it shares all its imperfections and weaknesses. It is truly flesh of its flesh. The fruit cannot be more perfect than the tree that produces it, nor the flower better than the plant on which it blossomed. Now, as the human mind is throughout limited in its nature, so is it also in its research. It is not given to man to soar aloft on eagle wings to the heights of knowledge, thence to gaze upon truth with unerring intuition; the ascent must be slow, with constant dangers of stumbling, even of falling headlong. To these dangers must be added his latent likes and dislikes, which imperceptibly guide his thought, especially in forming opinions on questions of the world and of life, which the human heart cannot view with indifference: they influence his thought. Hence ignorance, darkness, and error, everywhere accompany the [pg 007] investigator individually, and science as a whole, all the more the loftier the questions that present themselves.

If this is the nature of human science, its adepts would be badly deceiving themselves, if, in the pride of learning, they would reject every correction, even proudly pushing aside the hand of God that reaches down into the darkness of man's intellectual life to offer its guidance. He who realizes that he is in danger of losing his way in the dark, will not reject a reliable guide; and he who fears to stumble will not refuse a helping hand. Self-knowledge is the sister of wisdom, and the mother of modesty.

Freedom.

Such, then, is science: not the goddess that emanated from the head of immortal Jove, but the offspring of the puny mind of man, bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. And this science cries for freedom. It would be free and act freely; it urges its claim in the name of truth, which must not be slighted; in the name of the progress of civilization, which must not be hindered.

Freedom clearly means nothing less than to be untrammeled and free from restraint, from fetter and check, in action, thought, and desire. The prisoner is free when his chains drop off, a people is free when it has cast off the yoke of serfdom, the eagle is free and can spread out its wings in lofty flight when not bound down to the earth. Science, therefore, should be free in its activity from bond, fetter, and restraint. Does this mean it must be free from all restraint and law? Should the historian be given the right to make Solon a member of the French Academy, or of the heroes of Troy mediæval knights? Should the scientist be given the right to break every rule of logic, to ignore all progress, and perhaps in his capriciousness return to the four elements of Aristotle, or the astronomical chart of primitive ages? Nobody demands this. No, science must be bound by the truth. Freedom indeed should not mean lawlessness. Science remains bound by the general laws of logic, and by positive facts. Truth is the irremovable barrier set in restraint [pg 009] of the freedom of everything, even of scientific thought. The freedom of science therefore can only be freedom from unreasonable restraint and fetters; from such that hinder it unreasonably in its inquiry after the truth, and in the communication of the results of its investigation. It should be free, not from the internal bondage of truth, but from the restraint by external authority, the restraint which would hinder it, in an improper way, from approaching those questions, and using those methods, that lead to the discovery of truth, and from acknowledging the results it has found to be true; or which would unlawfully keep it from making known, for the benefit of others, the results of its investigation. It should be free from any unjust restriction, imposed by state or Church, by popular opinion, by party spirit, by hampering protectorate, or servility of any kind.

From any unjust restriction, we said. For this is clear: if under certain circumstances there might be warrant for a just restriction by external authority, such a restriction could not be refused in the name of freedom. So long, then, as we understand by freedom a lawful freedom, there cannot be included in this the freedom from every external authority, but only from unlawful interference. There is, then, the question whether there may be a legitimate restraint, imposed by external authority, which man must not evade, and what the nature of such restraint may be.

We must, moreover, take into consideration two elements, which are distinguished in the above definitions, both belonging to the modern idea of scientific freedom. We will call them freedom of research, and freedom of teaching. The investigator and the scientist claim the one; the teacher, the other. Searching after truth, and communicating the truth found, are, as is known, the principal occupations of science. The scientist should first of all be an investigator. He should not be content to appropriate to himself the knowledge of others, he should also make his own additions to knowledge. He is also commonly a teacher, by word of mouth, as at the university, or by his writing, in his literary activity. Research, as such, imparts directly a certain knowledge only to the investigator; [pg 010] it is of a private nature and as such does not reach beyond him. But by teaching, his ideas are communicated to others, and then begin to influence their thought, will, and action, often very strongly. Teaching is a social factor; with it are bound up the weal and woe of others. Suppose a man of influence conceives in his study the idea that monogamy is an infringement upon the universal rights of man; should he be given without any ado the right of disseminating, by teaching, the imagined results of his investigation, to the confusion of men, and with serious danger to the peace of society?

We shall therefore have to distinguish between freedom of research and freedom of teaching. The neglect of this distinction causes not a little confusion; thus, if one complains of his convictions being trammeled or his liberty of conscience being violated, when he is hindered from immediately proclaiming whatever he calls his convictions. Private opinion, and the public propaganda of this opinion, are evidently very different things. It may be that an opinion seems to me the right one, but, in spite of that, public dissemination of it may, always or under certain circumstances, mean danger to my fellow-men. If I am for this reason prevented from publishing it, I am not thereby hindered from giving it my own private assent. It is, moreover, quite clear that the state—we disregard here religious authority—cannot at all directly restrict research, which is something personal. It can only impose restrictions on the communication of one's ideas by teaching them to others, which is a social function.

So far there can be no serious diversity of opinion. Freedom from unjust restraint is demanded, and rightly demanded, for science. The very object of science requires it. In scientific research man's power of discernment should freely develop; his inclination towards truth should exert itself; and by communication of acquired knowledge mankind should advance in mental and material culture.

The bud bursts forth and freely unfolds its splendour; the butterfly grows unhindered in beauty; the tree, too, wants freedom, in order to develop its boughs and branches according to its nature, and if you try to bind and tie it, it resists as much as it can. Just so is freedom needful for the development of the noblest aspirations of human nature, for its progress in knowledge. Every friend of humanity, every one who loves his own kind, must be in sympathy with its progress. Who will not rejoice to see the mind of man happily trace the laws of nature, laid down by the Spirit of God in the stillness of eternity when as yet there was no creature to heed, the laws He then placed in nature in order that the reasonable creature might discern the marks of his Creator? Who would not rejoice to see man, diligently following the facts of history and studying the works of literature and art, find therein the ideas of God reflected, as the rays of the sun in the trembling drop of dew, and, finally, trying to solve the difficult problems of life? To this end has the Creator enkindled in the mind of man a spark of His own intelligence; to this end has He put in him a desire to inquire and learn, a desire which has exerted itself most in the noblest of men. Man is destined to find his ultimate gratification in beholding the Eternal Truth and Beauty, a vision which will be the completion of human science and culture, the highest perfection of created life. Thus man's noble desire for knowledge and truth must develop, it must be able to [pg 012] produce leaves and blossoms. For this he needs freedom, free air, and free light.

If science is to attain its high purpose, it must have freedom also to impart the knowledge acquired. It should indeed further the progress of mankind. By its discovery it should enhance the beauty of human life, should enrich the treasure of human knowledge, should promote education and morality, to the honour of the Creator. For this end, too, freedom is necessary: freedom to impart newly acquired knowledge, else there would be no pleasure in work, stagnation rather than progress.

The Christian View of the World and its Freedom.

On the one hand there is the Christian view of the world: it is essentially also the one which appears self-evident to every unbiassed mind. In this view man is a creature, limited in every way, therefore in many ways dependent upon external rules, forces, and authorities. To God alone is it reserved to be infinite, and, therefore, to possess in Himself all perfection, goodness, and truth; for which reason there is nothing above Him on which He could be dependent. This is not the case with man. As a creature man is subject to his Creator. The latter is master over man's life and therefore at the same time its ultimate aim. For this reason religion is of obligation to man, that is, he must honour God as He demands it; if God requires faith in a revelation, if He established a Church and duly authorized it to guide us, we must submit to it. In the same way the intellect of man is bound by the laws of objective truth, which is not of his making, but presents itself to him as a norm: he must always be subject to it whether he wishes or not. Man is, finally, a factor in social life; he lives in the family, state, and Church, in the great society of mankind; upon them he is dependent for his education and development. And society requires that man be subject to a ruling authority, that in many things his own interests be subordinated to the welfare of the community.

This is the order that God has established and wishes observed. Hence all human authority is a participation in God's supreme government. Thus it comes about that limits may be set to the scientist's free expression of his views, if the interest of the community require it.

Man is, nevertheless, free. But his freedom does not mean complete independence; nor freedom from all restraint, but only from those external restraints which are opposed to his nature and position, which hinder his legitimate development and activity. He possesses freedom, but only such a freedom as is his due, by which he can unfold and develop his physical and mental powers. To keep his place of subordination to, and dependence on, these higher authorities and powers of truth and order, tends not to injure but to improve his being, not to dwarf but to develop his personality; for they are sources of life to him, they impart to his existence order and harmony, they raise him above himself and his own littleness, they free him from the prison of his own narrowness and selfishness, from the chains of his unruly desires. If a man emancipates himself from these bonds, which he ought to bear, he has freedom of course, but an unnatural freedom, which will be harmful and perhaps ruinous to him.

Take the tree, for instance. It should have freedom for its natural growth. If you force it to creep along the ground instead of growing upward, if you deny it air and light, you infringe on the freedom it should have. Still it cannot have absolute freedom, for it is dependent on the ground from which it derives its nourishment, dependent on the laws of light and atmosphere and gravitation, on the laws of season; it must adapt itself to climate and soil. It may not say to the light: Away with you!—a stunted growth and deformity would be the result of such emancipation. It may not say to the ground: Away with you!—a sad but quick death would be its fate. It has its freedom, and in this freedom it grows and thrives. If it desires greater freedom, it would be an unnatural one, and it would tend, not to its development, but to its destruction.

Such is the Christian view of man and his thought. Here, then, there is but one question to solve: Are the external restraints imposed on me in my investigation and teaching against my nature; against the right of my mind to truth; against my position in human society? If so, then I reject them, because they mean serfdom, not duty; unjust bonds, not natural restraint. But if not, then I do not refuse them [pg 016] my submission. Freedom I want, but only the freedom of man.

Here we pause. Suffice it at present to have formulated the question; we shall return to this topic later and discuss it at greater length.

The Modern Idea of Freedom.

The Christian view of man and his freedom, which to past ages appeared self-evident, has grown obscure to many minds, and given place to another, a more modern view.1

For the modern man, freedom, especially freedom of intellectual life, means independence from external ties, from all authority, or, to express it positively, absolute right of self-determination, autonomy. He does not recognize any law or rule which he has not imposed upon himself. In civil life, of course, it is a principle that man must submit to external, legal restraint in many things that do not directly concern his own person, but only so far as is necessary in order that others, too, may enjoy the same freedom; but also here every citizen must be able to share in the legislation, according to the rules of constitutional or republican government. But he must be free from every external restraint in whatever touches the core of his personality, his feeling, desire, thought, and the expression of his thought.

It should now be clear, from what has been said, what is meant by freedom of science. It means independence from every external authority and restraint in research and teaching, the unhindered development and assertion of one's own intellectual personality. Man must let himself be directed only by his own judgment and his instinct for the truth, or his personal need, without heeding dogmas, Church laws, tradition, or any other external norm whatsoever. This is particularly true in the domain of philosophy and religion, in questions regarding the world and life, and in fundamental social questions. [pg 017] This is principally, and almost exclusively, the field in which an authoritative influence of the Church, or state, or society in general, is to be feared. Hence the importance of the question of the freedom of science in this field.

This is also the manner in which the advocates of modern freedom of science unanimously describe it.

Hence it is easily seen that this view differs from the one we considered before. Freedom from all external restraint [pg 018] has superseded freedom from unjust restraint. The presumption has found acceptance that every interference by authority is unjust, a violation of the natural rights of man and his thought. On what is this presumption based? In other words: What are the philosophical premises of modern freedom of science? We shall be occupied with this question now for some time. For only after we have attentively considered it, can we gain an intelligent idea of the nature of this freedom, of its methods, and of the justice of its claims. Advocates of this view not infrequently think they have exhausted its meaning when they have protested against ecclesiastical encroachments, when they have held forth against Syllabus and Index. Of the deeper thoughts it contains they have scarcely any idea.

The Humanitarian View of the World.

We may distinguish a twofold basis for this view, a general and a particular one. The latter, which is connected with the former, is subjectivism in thought. The former, the more general, at the same time the real basis of the modern freedom of science, is that particular view of man and his position in the world, which we may call the theory of humanitarianism. We are familiar with this word—it has its history. The word of itself conveys a good meaning: it means human nature and dignity, thought and desire worthy of man, nobility of culture. During the Renaissance the so-called “humanists” identified culture with knowledge of the ancient classical literature. Many of them, however, added to the admiration of classical literature also preference for pagan tastes, to the contempt of the Christian spirit. Since that time the word humanitarian has never lost its unchristian sense; it has ever been made the motto of men who emancipated themselves from God and Christianity. Hence it is extensively the motto of our times.

It has changed the position of man. It has forgotten that man is a created, limited, even a fallen being, withal destined for eternal existence. To it man is everything; man left to himself and to his life in this world, severed from God and his [pg 019] eternal destiny, an absolute, purely worldly being. No longer does he look up to Heaven, no longer does he get from above his laws, his hope for help, and strength, and eternal life. He is his own and only end: he and his earthly happiness and advancement. In himself alone he sees the source of his strength, in himself he finds his law, to himself alone is he responsible, the inherited corruption of his nature he has forgotten. What God once was to our fathers—the end and rule of their life—that now is Man to their sons. The anthropocentric has succeeded the theocentric view of the world. Diis extinctis successit humanitas (Man has succeeded the fallen gods). “Out of the corrupted nations and decaying religions let there arise a more beautiful humanity!” is the radical cry of this humanitarian religion.

When in 1892 the battle for a new school law was raging in Prussia, Caprivi, the Chancellor of the Empire, said: “It is here question of a contrast between Christianity and atheism. Essential to man is his relation to God.” Scarcely had these words been uttered when a champion of modern thought, Prof. Fr. Jodl, took up his pen and wrote: “No sharper contrast with the convictions of the modern world is imaginable than that expressed by the words of the imperial Chancellor, ‘essential to man is his relation to God.’ To this sentence, which might be expected in a speech of Cromwell, or in a papal encyclical, rather than from a statesman of modern Germany, liberalism must with all possible emphasis oppose this other sentence: What determines the real worth of a man, is, first and last, his relation to humanity” (Moral, Religion und Schule, 1892, 14f.). Diis extinctis successit humanitas. We shall not deny that the modern spirit is a complicated structure: but neither can any one deny that its chief characteristic is the humanitarian view, with its emancipation from God, its decided emphasis of the things of this world, and its boundless overestimation of man.

An attentive observer of these days, should he chance to come from an old, Catholic town, and saunter with observant eye through one of our great modern cities, particularly a Protestant one, would behold a vivid realization of this modern view [pg 020] of the world. The most prominent feature of the Catholic town of old was the House of God. It towered high above the city, its spires reached heavenward; the houses of the faithful clung around the House of God like chicks about the mother hen. The mere sight told the beholder that here dwelt a people whose thoughts were directed towards the other world; over their lives ruled the sacred peace of eternity.

But here all is different. Here the most prominent feature is no longer the House of God; worldly edifices have usurped its place; railroad depots, barracks, city-hall and court-house dominate the city. The state house bears no longer on its front the Christian motto, Nisi Dominus custodierit (“Unless the Lord keep the city he watcheth in vain that keepeth it”). It would be considered a degradation should the state base its existence upon religion. Should, then, the observer enter the legislature he would learn the modern principles of state wisdom. The state as such has no relation to religion; the principle is the separation of state and Church. In the public squares he beholds mighty monuments, erected, not to religious heroes and leaders, as perhaps of old, but to great men of the world, champions of national progress. At their feet lie wreaths of homage. They have brought modern humanity to its full stature, maturity, and self-consciousness. Here it is Man who is standing everywhere in the foreground. “It is I,” says he, “that lives here. Here I have pitched my tent, from this earth come all my joys, and this sun is shining upon my sorrows.”

Our observer, wandering about, finds everywhere magnificent state-schools, scientific institutes, splendid colleges and universities. In years gone by a cross or a word of divine wisdom was probably found here somewhere. It is seen no more. Often it would seem that we can almost hear the words: “We will not have this One rule over us.” Here a new race is being reared, which no longer follows blindly the “old tradition,” it believes in its own self and its own reason: culture and science take the place of the old religion. He finds but few churches; and where found they are mostly overshadowed by great palaces, and—mostly empty. The modern man passes them by. He has no longer any understanding [pg 021] for the truths of the Christian religion. It fails to satisfy him because it does not appeal to modern ways of thinking and feeling, because it does not symbolize the humanitarian creed. His desire is no longer for Heaven; his aspirations are earthward. “The life beyond concerns me little: my joys come from this world.” Contemplating modern civilization he exclaims, with the king of Babylon: “Is not this the great Babylon, which I have built to be the seat of the kingdom, by the strength of my power, and in the glory of my excellence?” (Dan. iv. 27). The doctrine of a nature corrupted by original sin, of a darkened intellect that needs divine revelation, of a weakened will that needs strength from above, of sin that demands atonement,—all this has become meaningless to him, it offends his higher sentiments, his human dignity. He has no longer any understanding for a Saviour of the world, in whom alone salvation is to be sought, much less for a Cross. This sign of redemption, as a certain herald of modern thought remarked, weighs like a mountain upon the mind of our day. He has no longer any understanding for the saving institution of the Church, by whom he should be led: she is to him an institution of intellectual serfdom. He makes his own religion, free from dogma, just as his individuality desires, just as he “lives” it.

Should our observer, while visiting the Protestant city, make a final visit to its university, he will find there the thoughts, which hitherto he had but vaguely felt, clothed in scientific language. There they meet his gaze, defined sharply on the pedestal of Research as the Modern Philosophy, protected, often exclusively privileged, by the state license of teaching. It is the modern scientific view of the world, the only one that men of modern times may hold. From here it is to find its way to wider circles.

This view of the world finds its most characteristic expression in pantheism, which, though expressed in various and often fantastic forms, is eminently the religion of modern man. From this gloomy depth of autotheism the apotheosis of man and his earthly life, the modern consciousness of freedom, draws its strength and determination.

To find this modern view of man expressed in the language of consistent radicalism, let us hear Fr. Nietzsche, the most modern of all philosophers. His ideal is the transcendental man, who knows that God is dead, that now there is no bar to stepping forth in unrestricted freedom to superhuman greatness and independence. To this “masterman,” who deems himself superior to others, everything is licit that serves his egotism and will, everything that will promote his interest to the disadvantage of the rabble; probity is cowardice! “But now this god is dead. Ye superior men, this god was your greatest danger.” Thus spoke Zarathustra. “Only since this god is buried do you begin to rise. Now at length the great Noon is in its zenith. Now the superior man becomes master. Onward and upward, then, ye superior men! At last the mountain of man's future is in travail. God is dead; let the superior man arise and live.” (Also sprach Zarathustra, W. W. VI, 418.) And, in the consciousness that the Christian [pg 024] religion condemns this self-exaltation, he breaks out in this blasphemous charge: “I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great internal corruption.... I call it the one immortal, disgraceful, blot on mankind” (Antichrist, W. W. VIII, 313). This is independent humanity in the cloak of fanaticism. Nietzsche has carried the modern view of the world to its final consequences; the autonomous man has developed into the god-like superman who carries into effect the behest: Ye shall be as gods; his code of ethics is that of the autocrat who is above the notions of good and bad.

And “let no one deceive himself,” writes an intelligent observer of the times, “the spirit of our time is attuned to Nietzsche's idea.” Consciously or unconsciously this sentiment dominates more minds than many a man learned in the wisdom of the schools may dream of. Did Nietzsche create this spirit? Certainly not: he grew out of it, he has only given it a philosophical setting. Nietzsche would never have caused that tremendous sensation, never have gathered around him his enthusiastic followers, had not the soil been prepared. As it was, he appeared to “his” men as the Messiah “in the fulness of time.” He, too, in his own way “loosened the tongue of the dumb and opened the eyes of the blind.” The veiled anti-Christian spirit, the unconscious religious and ethical nihilism, which no one before dared profess openly, though it was hatching in the minds, now had found its “master,” its “scientific system” (Von Grotthuss, Tuermer, VII, 1905, 79). It is, asserts Wundt, “the new ideal of free personality, dependent on precarious moods and chance influences, that has found in Nietzsche's philosophy a fantastic expression” (Ethik, ed. 3. 1905, p. 522).

The Autonomous Man.

Now we have a clearer idea of modern freedom. It is known as autonomism. The individual wants to be a law to himself, his own court of last appeal; he wants to develop his personality, feeling, desires, and thought, independently of all authority. Too long, it is said, have man's aspirations been directed upward, away from things, of this world, to a supernatural world. [pg 025] Religion and Church seek to determine his thought and desire, to subject him to dogma. Too long has he clung like a child to the apron-strings of authority. Man has at last awoken to self-consciousness and to a sense of his own dignity, after a period of estrangement, so to say, from himself; he has become himself again, as the poet sang when the century of the “illuminati” was closing:

Yes, man has discovered the treasure that long lay hidden in his breast, the seed and bud that longed to burst forth into life and blossom. Now the motto is: Independent self-development; no more restraint, but living out one's personality. The eagle is not given wings to be bound down upon the earth; nor does the bud come forth never to unfold. Full freedom, therefore, too, for everything human! And modern man leaps to the fatal conclusion: therefore all interference of external authority is unjust, is force, constraint upon my being; the same error that boys fall into when life begins to tingle with its fulness of strength. Being ignorant of their nature, they feel any kind of dependence a chain; only themselves, their judgments and desires, are law. Just so modern man, in his deplorable want of self-knowledge, fails to see how he is cutting himself off from the source and support of life; how he is pulling himself out by the roots from the soil whence he derives his strength; how, left to his own littleness, he withers away; how, abandoned to his own diseased nature, he condemns himself to intellectual decay.

Autonomism, individualism, independent personality—these have become the ideals that permeate the man of this age, and influence the thought of thousands without their knowing it.

A noted apostle of modern freedom exclaims enthusiastically:

It is true, of course, that man should strive for perfection of self in every respect; for the harmonious development of all the faculties and good inclinations of his own being, and, in this sense, for a nobler humanity; he should also develop and assert his own peculiar disposition and originality, so far as they are in order, and thus promote a healthy individualism. But all this he should do within the moral bonds of his created and limited nature, being convinced that only by keeping within the right limits of his being can he develop his ability and personality harmoniously; he dare not reach out, in reckless venture after independence, to free himself from God and his eternal end, and from the yoke of truth; he dare not transform the divine sovereignty into the distorted image of created autotheism.

He who professes a Christian view of the world, can see in such a view of man and his freedom only an utter misunderstanding of human nature and an overthrow of the right [pg 027] order of things. This overthrow, again, can only produce calamity, interior and exterior disorder. Woe to the planet that feels its orbit a tyrannical restraint, and leaves it to move in sovereign freedom through the universe! It will move along free, and free will it go to ruin. Woe to the speeding train that leaves its track; it will speed on free, but invariably dash itself to pieces! A nature that abandons the prescribed safeguards can only degenerate into a wild sprout. We shall see how these principles have actually become in modern intellectual life the principles of negation and intellectual degeneration.

St. Augustine states the history of mankind in the following, thoughtful words: “A twofold love divides mankind into the City of the World and the City of God. Man's self-love and his self-exaltation pushed to the contempt of God constitute the City of the World; but the love of God pushed to contempt of self is the foundation of the City of God.” (Fecerunt itaque civitates duas amores duo, terrenam scilicet amor sui usque ad contemptum Dei, coelestem vero amor Dei usque ad contemptum sui. De civ. Dei XIV, 28.) Thus St. Augustine, while contemplating the time when the war between heathenism and Christianity was raging. The same spectacle is presented to our own eyes to-day, probably more thoroughly than ever before in history.

The Period of Man's Emancipation.

The modern view of man and his freedom has shaped itself gradually in recent times; the present is ever the child of the past. The most important factor in this development was undoubtedly the Reformation. It emancipated man in the most important affair, religious life, from the authority of the Church, and made him independent. “All have the right to try and to judge what is right and wrong in belief,” so Luther told the Christian nobility of the German nation; “everybody shall according to his believing mind interpret the Scriptures, it is the duty of every believing Christian to espouse the faith, to understand and defend it, and to condemn all errors.” Protestantism means even to the modern man “the thinking [pg 028] mind's break with authority, a protest against being fettered by anything positive, the mind's return to itself from self-alienation” (Schwegler, Geschichte der Philosophie (1887), 167): “it puts out of joint the Christian Church organization, and overturns its supernatural foundation, quite against its will, but with an actual, and ever more plainly visible, effect” (E. Troeltsch, Die Bedeutung des Protestantismus fuer die Entstehung der modernen Welt (1906), 29).

The first step towards full autonomy was taken with energy; the emancipation from external authority then progressed rapidly in the domain of politics, sociology, economy, and especially of religion, to the very elimination of everything supernatural. There came the English individualism of the seventeenth century. The liberty of “individual conviction,” termed also “tolerance,” in the sense of rejecting every authoritative interference in the sanctuary of man's thought and feeling, was extolled; of course at first only as the privilege of those who were intellectually superior. Soon the Deism of a Herbert of Cherbury and Locke was reached; it was the religion of natural reason, with belief in God and the obligation to moral action. Whatever is added by positive religions, and therefore by the Christian religion, is superfluous; hence not dogma, but freedom! Locke, indeed, denied to atheists state toleration; but J. Toland already advised full freedom of thought, even to the tolerance of atheism. In the year 1717 Freemasonry came into existence in England. Adam Smith originated the idea of a liberal political economy which frees the individual from all bond, even in the economic field. The views prevailing in England then exert great influence in France. Rousseau and Voltaire appear.

In France and Germany the enlightenment of the eighteenth century makes rapid strides in the direction of emancipation. “The enlightenment of the eighteenth century,” writes H. Heltner, “not only resumes the prematurely interrupted work of the sixteenth century, the Reformation, but carries it on independently, and in its own way. The thoughts and demands of the ‘enlightened’ are bolder and more aggressive, more unscrupulous and daring.... With Luther the idea of revelation remained [pg 029] intact; the new method of thought rejects the idea of a divine revelation, and bases all religious knowledge on merely human thought and sentiment.... It is only the free, entirely independent thought that decides in truth and justice, moral and political rights and duties. Reason has regained its self-glory; man comes to his senses again” (Literaturgeschichte des 18. Jahrhunderts II (1894), 553). Kant gave it a philosophical setting.

Then the French Revolution breaks into fierce blaze, writing on the skies of Europe with flaming letters the ideas of emancipated humanity; the adherents to the old religion are sent to the guillotine. On August 27, 1789, the proclamation of the “rights of man” is made. “The principles of 1789,” as they are now called, henceforth dominate the nineteenth century. The system which adopted these principles called itself, and still calls itself, Liberalism.

Liberalism as a principle—we are speaking of the principles of liberalism, not of its adherents, who for the most part do not carry out these principles in their consequences, and occasionally do not even grasp them completely—tried to accomplish man's utter emancipation from all external and superior authority. It sought to accomplish this in the political field, by instituting constitutional, and, wherever possible, a republican form of government; in the field of economy, by granting freedom to labour and possession, to capital and commerce; but especially in the field of morals and religion, by emancipating thought and science, and the entire life of man,—school, marriage, state,—from every religious influence and direction, and in this sense it aimed at humanizing the whole life of man. This is its purpose. To achieve this, it aims at establishing itself in the state, by gaining political power through the aid of compulsory laws, of course against all principles of freedom; it tries to attain this by compulsory state-education, by obligatory civil marriage, and so on. At first there appeared only a moderate liberalism, which gradually gave place to a more radical tendency, striving more directly and openly toward the enfeeblement and, if possible, the destruction of the Christian view of the world and its chief representative, [pg 030] the Church. In 1848 the well-known materialist K. Vogt said at the national assembly in Frankfort: “Every church is opposed to a free development of mankind, in that it demands faith above all. Every church is an obstacle in the way of man's free intellectual development, and since I am for such intellectual development of man, I am against every church” (cf. Rothenbuecher, Trennung von Staat und Kirche (1908), 106).

In the field of economics, every one can see how liberalism has failed. In some countries people were ashamed to retain its name any longer. It suddenly disappeared from public life, and gave place to its translation,—free thought. This shows that nobody cares to boast of its success. All barriers of safety had been removed in a night; crises, confusion, and the serious danger of the social question were the consequence. In the field of actual economics it became clear that the principle of unlimited freedom could not be carried out, because it was utterly ruinous, and it really means a complete misunderstanding of human nature. Therefore liberalism has disappeared from this field, leaving to others to solve the problem it created, and to heal the wounds it inflicted. It is otherwise in the field of theoretical economics. Here it still strives to dominate, often more thoroughly than before, no matter what name it may assume. The consequences do not appear so gross to the eyes as they would in the tangible sphere of sociology. Especially science it wants to hold in subjection to its principles of freedom in undiminished severity.

That freedom which is identified with absolute independence from all authority, especially in the intellectual sphere, we shall here know as Liberal freedom, in contradistinction to Christian freedom, which is satisfied with independence from unjust restraint.

In the foregoing discussion it has been shown how deeply the liberal idea of freedom is imbedded in the unchristian philosophical view of the world. The inevitable result is a freedom of science which considers every authoritative interference in research and teaching as an encroachment upon the rights of free development in man's personality, especially in the sphere of philosophy and religion. Moreover, the humanitarian view [pg 031] of the world, insisting on the independence of man and his earthly life, naturally demands the exclusion of God and the other world, it orders the rejection of “dualism” as unscientific, and the adoption of the monistic view in its stead; an autonomous science can hardly be reconciled with a superior, restricting authority. Later on we shall demonstrate that the main law of modern science is that the supernatural is inadmissible. Furthermore, since science is not a superhuman being, but has its seat in the intellect of man, subject to the psychology of man, every one who knows the heart of man will suspect from the outset that man cannot stop at merely ignoring, but will often proceed to combat and explain away faith, the Church, and all authority that might be considered an oppressor of the truth. This undue love of liberty will of itself become a struggle for freedom against the oppressor. How far this is actually the case we shall have occasion to discuss later on.

We have heard Nietzsche's haughty and proud boast. Shortly after the philosopher had penned these words he was stricken (1889) with permanent, incurable insanity, with which he was afflicted till his death in 1900. The “transcendental man” was dethroned. The strength of the Titan was shattered. He that said with Prometheus, I am not a god, still I am in strength the equal of any of them, received the ironical answer, “Behold he has become as one of us” (Gen. iii. 22). He that cursed Christian charity towards the poor and suffering, was now cast helpless upon charity. His grave at Roecken, the place also of his birth, is a sign of warning to the modern world.

To the believing Christian a different grave opens on Easter day. From it comes the risen God-man; in His hand the banner of immortal victory. It points the way to true human greatness, to a superior humanity according to the will of God. Man longs for perfection; he longs to go beyond the narrow limits of his present condition. But modern man wants to rise to greatness by his own strength, without help from above; he would rise with giant bounds, without law. In his weakness he falls; error and scepticism and the loss of morality are the bitter fruit. Another way is pointed [pg 032] out by the great Friend of Man. Humanity is to be led on the way of progress by the hand of God, by faith in God, supported by His grace; thus man shall participate in God's nature, shall one day attain his highest perfection in eternal life, far beyond the limits of his present condition. “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”

Objectivism and Subjectivism.

It always has been, and still is, the firm conviction of unbiassed men,—a conviction which irresistibly forces itself upon us,—that in our intellectual perception and thought we grasp an objective, exterior order of things, an existence distinct from our thought; of this objective reality we reproduce an image in our minds, and thus grasp it intellectually. Cognitio est similitudo rei, says the old school; that is, Knowledge is [pg 034] the reproduction of an objective reality, which thus becomes the criterion of cognition. The reproduction is a counterpart of the original. In this perfect resemblance of our cognition to the objective reality there has ever been recognized the truth of knowledge.

When the thinking mind has arrived at the mathematical truth that the circumference of a circle is the product of the diameter multiplied by Ludolph's number, it knows—unless indeed it has lost its natural candour—that it has not of itself produced this result of reasoning, but that it has recognized in it an objective reality of truth, distinct from its own thought, and has reproduced that truth in itself. And because this reproduction corresponds to the reality, it is called true cognition. Similarly, when the intellect expresses the general law of causality, namely, everything that happens has a cause, the intellect is again convinced that it has not of itself produced this result of reasoning, but has only reproduced it by assimilating to itself an objective truth which is necessarily so and cannot be otherwise, and which the mind must assimilate if it wants to think aright. This is true not only when the mind is dealing with concrete things, but also when it would give expression to general principles, as in the present instance; these, too, are not subjective projections, but are independent of the thinking subject, and are eternal laws.

This view of the nature of human cognition and thought has gradually undergone an essential change, not indeed with those outside the influence of philosophical speculation, but with the representatives of modern philosophy, and those subject to its influence. Objectivism has been superseded by subjectivism. Its principle is this: cognition, imagination, and thought are not the intellectual apprehension of an objective world existing independent of us, of which we reproduce in ourselves a counterpart. No, the mind creates its own results of reason and cognition; the objects before us are the creatures of the imagining subject. At the utmost, we can but say that our reasoning is the manner in which a hidden exterior world appears to us. This manner must necessarily conform to the peculiarity of the subject, to his faculties and stage of development; but the exterior [pg 035] world as it is in itself we can never apprehend. Descartes, starting with the premise that consciousness is the beginning of all certainty, was the first modern philosopher to enter upon the way of subjectivism. He was followed by Locke, Berkeley, and Kant. It is due to them that in the modern theory of cognition the fundamental principle of idealistic subjectivism, no matter how difficult and unreasonable it may appear to an ordinary thinker, has obtained so many advocates who, nevertheless, cannot adhere to it, but contradict it at every step.

Subjectivism is really nothing but scepticism, for it eliminates the knowableness of objective truth. But it is a masked—if you will, a reformed—scepticism. Cognition is given another purpose; its task is not at all, so it is said, to reproduce or assimilate a world distinct from itself, but to create its own contents. The very nature of cognition is reversed.

The Autonomy of Reason.

It was Kant, the herald of a new era in philosophy, who gave to this gradually maturing subjectivism its scientific form and basis. At the same time he gave prominence to that element of subjectivism which seems to give justification to freedom of thought, to wit, autonomism, the creative power of the intellect which makes its own laws. Independence of reason and free thought have become catchwords since Kant's time. They are a precious ingredient of the autonomy of modern man.

When the flaming blaze of the French Revolution was reddening the skies of Europe, and inaugurating the restoration of the rights of man, Kant was sitting in his study at Königsberg, his heart beating strongly in sympathy with the Revolution, for he saw in it a hopeful turn of the times. An old man of nearly seventy, he followed the events with most passionate interest. Varnhagen records in his Memoirs, based on the stories of Staegemann, that, when the proclamation of the Republic was announced in the newspapers, Kant, with tears in his eyes, said to some friends: “Now can I say with Simeon, ‘Now dost Thou, O Lord, dismiss Thy servant in peace, because mine eyes have seen Thy Salvation’ ” (H. Hettner, Literaturgeschichte des 18. Jahrh. III, 4th ed., 3, 2, 1894, p. 38). While on the other side of the Rhine the Jacobins were doing their bloody work of political liberation, the German philosopher, the herald of a new era and an ardent admirer of Rousseau, sat in his study labouring for man's intellectual liberation. To give man the right of autonomous self-determination in action and thought was the work of his life. Autonomy was indeed to him “ ‘the source’ of all dignity of man and of every rational nature” (Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, II). And hence it was that his ardent followers beheld in him “the first perfect model of a really free German, one who had purged himself from every trace of Roman absolutism, dogmatism, and anti-individualism” (H. St. Chamberlain, Die Grundlagen des 19. Jahrh., 8th ed., 1907, II, 1127).

In his “Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten” (The Foundation of the Metaphysics of Ethics) and “Kritik der praktischen [pg 037] Vernunft” (Critique of Practical Reason) Kant sought to establish autonomy in moral life and action. Man himself, his practical reason, is the ultimate foundation of all moral obligation; did man lead a good life out of obedience to God it would be a heteronomy unworthy of the name of “moral.” “The autonomy of the will,” he teaches, “is the sole principle of all moral laws and the duties allied to them; all arbitrary heteronomy, on the contrary, far from having any binding force, is contrary to the principle of morality of the will” (Kritik der prakt. Vern., Elementarlehre, I, 1, 4. Lehrsatz). Or, as amplified by a faithful interpreter of the master: “In the moral world the individual should be not only a member but also a ruler; he is a member of the moral order when he obeys its law; he is its ruler when he enacts the law.... The distinction between autonomy and heteronomy separates true from false ethics, the system of Kant from all other systems. All moral systems, except that of Kant, are based on the principles of heteronomy; they can have no other. And critical philosophy was the first to grasp the principle of autonomy” (Kuno Fischer, Geschichte der neuen Philosophie, IV, 2d ed., 1869, p. 114 seq.). Kant's just man no longer prays “Thy will be done”; he identifies the law with himself. Nietzsche's transcendental man is seen in the background.

Autonomy of thought is the result of the “Critique of Pure Reason,” and in spite of its inconsistency of expression, its involved sentences, its extremely tiresome style, it is and will long continue to be the text-book of modern philosophy. According to Kant our cognition consists in our fashioning the substance of our perceptions and reasoning after innate, purely subjective, views and conceptions. Time and place, and especially the abstract notions of existence and non-existence, necessity, causality, substance, have no truth independent of our thought; they are but forms and patterns according to which we are forced to picture the world. Their first matter is supplied by sense experience, such as sound, colour, feeling; but these, too, according to Kant, are not objective. Nothing then remains to our cognition that is not purely subjective, having existence in ourselves alone. Our cognition is no longer [pg 038] a reproduction, but a creation of its object; our thought is no longer subject to an external truth that may be forced upon it. “Hitherto,” says Kant, “it has been generally supposed that our cognition must be governed by objects.... Let us see if we cannot make better headway in the province of metaphysics by supposing that objects must be governed by our cognition” (Kritik der Reinen Vernunft, Vorrede zur zweiten Ausgabe).

This is, indeed, nothing but a complete falsification of human cognition. It is evident to an unbiassed mind that there must be a reason for everything, not because I so think, but I think so because such is the fact; that the multiplication table is right, not because I think so, but I must multiply according to it simply because it is right. My thought is subject to objective truth. But Kant's autonomy means emancipation from objective truth, and hence, though Kant himself held fast to the unchangeable laws of thinking and acting, he energetically opened the way for subjectivism with all its consequences. This was Kant's doing, and history credits him with it. It was one of those events which have made men famous: the giving to the ideas and sentiments of a period their scientific formula, and thereby also their apparent justification.

Now, indeed, we easily understand the demand for freedom of thought. It is unintelligible how an external authority, a divine revelation or infallible Church, could have ever approached man, assured him of the truth of its teaching, and laid upon him in consequence of this testimony the obligation of accepting it as true. “An external authority,” we are assured, “be it ever so great, will never succeed in arousing in us a sense of obligation; its laws, be they ever so lofty and earnest, will be deemed arbitrary, simply because they come from without” (Sabatier, La Religion et la Culture moderne, apud Fonsegrive, Die Stellung der Katholiken gegenueber der Wissenschaft, Deutsch von Schieser (1903), 10). Man accepts only what he himself has produced, what is congenial to his individuality, what is in harmony with his personal intellectual life. In the place of truth steps “personal conviction,” the shaping of one's views and ideals; in the place of unselfish submission to the truth steps the “development of one's intellectual individuality,” the “evolution of one's intellectual personality”; in a word, free-thought. Exterior authority can no longer impose an obligation. “Is there on earth,” asks Paulsen, “an instance where authority can decide for us in matters of belief and thought?” And he answers: “There is none; there cannot be on this earth an infallible teaching authority.” And why not? “Philosophy and science must refuse to recognize such an authority.... If I could believe all that the Church or the Pope teaches, this one thing I could never believe, that they are infallible; it would include a resolution, once for all, to renounce my own judgment regarding whatever they declare true or false, good or bad; it would be the utter renunciation of the use of my reason and conscience.” (Ibid. 51-53. We shall often cite the testimony of Paulsen for the purpose of illustrating modern thought, partly because he is no longer living, partly because he is quite an outspoken representative of the modern view of the world, though generally regarded as moderate. Moreover, he is without doubt one of the most widely read of the modern German philosophers.)

The demonstration of all this is quite unique. Here it is in brief: Were there an infallible authority, one which necessarily [pg 040] taught the truth, then thought and science would be irrevocably subjected to this authority: that will not do; therefore there is no such authority. Or thus: Were there an infallible teaching, then we should have to accept it without contradiction: that is impossible; therefore there is no infallibility. Hence it is clear, the protest against an infallible authority, even though divine,—for the argument holds good also in regard to such an authority,—is not based on the impossibility of teaching the truth, for the authority is supposed to be infallible, but on man's refusal to be taught. And this refusal is made in accordance with that sovereign freedom of thought which is the natural offspring of subjectivism; the principal renunciation is based on its denial of objective truth. It is the rejection of the truth.

Truly encouraging words for the modern agitator and reformer. To summon the courage to rise above the level of the masses, to feel within himself the centre of gravity, and to fashion his thoughts regardless of the whole world, this is nothing less than the beginning of philosophy and wisdom. And should he feel himself strong-minded he may simply change all moral and religious values which do not square with his individual judgments. “To remain faithful to one's own self,” we are told again, “that is the essence of this ideal bravery. No one can possess this virtue who does not feel within himself the centre [pg 041] about which life gravitates; whoever pursues exterior things as his ultimate end cannot penetrate to interior freedom. Spinoza, by life and teaching, is a great preacher of this freedom” (Ibid. II, p. 27). Self-consciousness as arrogant as that of a pantheist like Spinoza, who indeed did not pursue “exterior things as the ultimate end,” nor God either; the self-consciousness in which man feels himself the centre about which world and life revolve; the will which now directs thought on its way,—these are the life-nerves of autonomous free-thought.

It is now clear that subjectivism and autonomism in thinking are rooted in the positive disregard of objective truth, in the refusal of an unconditional subjection to it; they mean emancipation from the truth. Here we have the most striking and deepest difference between modern subjectivistic and Christian objective thought. The latter adheres to the old conviction that our thoughts do not make the truth, but are subject [pg 042] to an objective order of things as a norm. For this reason autonomous freedom and subjective caprice, a manner of reasoning that would approach truth as a lawgiver, and even change it according to time and circumstance, are unintelligible in the Christian objective thought. This thought submits unselfishly to truth wherever met, be it without a divine revelation or with it, if the revelation be but vouched for. And the reward of this unselfishness is the preservation of the truth.

But subjectivism, with its freedom, leads inevitably to the loss of the truth; it is scepticism in principle, in fact, if my thoughts are not a counterpart of an objective world, but only a subjectively produced image; not knowledge of an external reality, but only a figment of the imagination, a projection, then I can have no assurance that they are more than an empty dream.

The Modern Separation of Knowledge and Faith.

Of course it would be too much to expect that subjectivism in modern thought and scientific work should go to the very limit, viz., to disregard all reasoning, to advance at will any theory whatever, to silence disagreeable critics by merely referring to one's autonomy in thinking, and denying that any one can attain to absolute truth. Errors in empirical speculation never prosper as others do; the power of natural evidence asserts itself at every step, and tears down the artificial cobwebs of apparently scientific scepticism. It asserts itself less strongly where the opposing power of natural evidence is weaker, than is the case in matters of actual sense-experience. Here indeed one sees the objective reality before him, which he cannot fashion according to his caprice. The astronomer has no thought of creating his own starry sky, nor does the archæologist wish to create out of his own mind the history of ancient nations. They both desire to know and to reveal the reality. But in the suprasensible sphere, in dealing with questions of the whence and whither of human life, where there is question of religion and morals, there autonomy and scepticism assert themselves as though they were [pg 043] in their own country, there the free-thinker steps in, boasting of his independence and taking for his motto the axiom of ancient sophistry: the measure of all things is man.

Here at the same time the natural product of subjectivism, sceptic agnosticism, has full sway. In such matters, we are told, there is no certain truth; nothing can be proved, nothing refuted: they are all matters of faith—not faith, of course, in the Catholic sense. The latter is the acceptance by reason of recognized divine testimony, hence an act of the intellect. The modern so-called faith, on the contrary, is not an act of the intellect, but is supposed to be a vague feeling, a want, a longing and striving after the divine in one's innermost soul, which divine is then to be grasped by the soul in some mysterious way as something immediately present in it. This feeling is said to emerge from the subconsciousness of the soul, and to raise in the mind those images and symbols which we encounter in the doctrines of the various religions, varying according to times and men. They are only the symbols for that unutterable experience of the divine, which can be as little expressed by definitions and tenets as sounds can by colour. It is a conviction of the ideal and divine, but different from the conviction of reason; it is an inner, actual experience. Hence there can no longer be absolute religious truth, no unchangeable dogmas, which would have to be adhered to forever. In religion, in views of the world and life, the free feeling of the human subject holds sway, a feeling that experiences and weaves together those thoughts and ideals that are in accord with his individuality. This is the modern doctrine.

The dark mysticism of the ancient East and the agnosticism of modern times here join hands. This modern method of separating knowledge and faith is, as we all know, a prominent feature of modern thought. Knowledge, that is, cognition by reason, is said to exist only in the domain of the natural sciences and history. Of what may be beyond these we can have no true knowledge. Here, too, Kant has led the way; for the important result of his criticism is his incessant injunction: we can have true knowledge only of empiric objects, never of things lying beyond the experience of the senses; our ideas are [pg 044] merely subjective constructions of the reason which obtain weight and meaning only by applying them to objects of sense experiment. Hence God, immortality, freedom, and the like, remain forever outside the field of our theoretical or cognitive reason. Nevertheless Kant did not like to drop these truths. Hence he constructed for himself a conviction of another kind. The “practical reason” is to guide man's action in accomplishing the task in which her more timid sister, theoretical reason, failed. And it does it, too. It simply “postulates” these truths; they are its “postulates,” since without them moral life and moral order, which it is bound to recognize, would be impossible. No one knows, of course, whether this be truth, but it ought to be truth. Stat pro ratione voluntas. The Gordian knot is cut. “It is so,” the will now cries from the depths of the soul, “I believe it”; while the intellect stands hesitatingly by protesting “I don't know whether it is so or not.” Doubt and conviction embrace each other; Yes and No meet peacefully. “I had to suspend knowledge,” Kant suggests, “in order to make room for faith” (Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 2. Vorrede). “It is an exigency of pure practical reason based on duty,” he further comments on his postulate, “to make something the highest good, the object of my will, in order to further it with all my power. Herein, however, I have to assume its possibility, and therefore its conditions, viz., God, freedom, and immortality, because I cannot prove them by speculative reason, nor yet disprove them.” Thus “the just man may say I wish that there be a God; I insist upon it, I will not have my faith taken from me” (Kritik der prakt. Vernunft, 1. Teil, 2. Buch, 2 VIII).

Others have followed the lead of Kant. For philosophers, Protestant theologians, and modernists, he has become the pilot in whom they trust.

This dualism of “faith” and knowledge is as untenable as it is common. It is a psychological impossibility as well as a sad degradation of religion.

How can I seriously believe, and seriously hold for true, a view of the world of which I do not know whether it be really true, when the intellect unceasingly whispers in my ear: it is all imagination! As long as faith is a conviction so long must it be an activity of the intellect. With my feeling and will I may indeed [pg 046] wish that something be true; but to wish simply that there be a God is not to be convinced that there actually is a God. By merely longing and desiring I can be as little convinced as I can make progress in virtue by the use of my feet, or repent of sins by a toothache. It is μετάβασις εἰς ἄλλο γένος. A dualism of this kind, between head and heart, doubt and belief, between the No of the mind and the Yes of the heart, is a process incompatible with logic and psychology. How could such a dualism be maintained for any length of time? It may perhaps last longer in one in whom a vivid imagination has dimmed the clearness of intellect; but where the intellectual life is clear, reason will very soon emancipate itself from a deceptive imagination. One may go on dreaming of ideal images, but as soon as the intellect awakens they vanish. Hallucinations are taken for real while the mind is affected, but they pass away the moment it sees clearly.

And is not the religious life of man thereby made completely valueless? The highest truths on which the mind of man lives, and which from the first stage of his existence not only interested but deeply stirred him, become fiction, pictures of the fancy, suggestions of an effeminate mind, that cannot make a lasting impression on stronger minds. And how can the products of autosuggestion give comfort and strength in hours of need and trial? It is true they do not impose any obligations. Every one is free to form his own notions of life; they are not to be taken seriously anyway, whether they be this or that; they are all equally true and equally false. Buddhism is just as true as Christianity, Materialism as true as Spiritualism, Mohammedanism as true as Quakerism, the wisdom of the Saints as true as the philosophy of the worldly. “The most beautiful flower is growing on the same soil (that of the emotions) with the rankest weed” (Hegel). The decision rests with sentiments which admit of no arguing. Thus all is made over to scepticism, to that constant doubting which degrades [pg 048] and unnerves the higher life of modern times, to that modern agnosticism which, though bearing the distinction of aristocratic reserve, is in reality dulness and poverty of intellect; not a perfection of the human intellect, but a hideous disease, all the more dangerous because difficult to cure. It is the neurasthenia of the intellect of which the physical neurasthenia of our generation is the counterpart.

The distinguishing mark between man and the lower animals has ever been held to be that the former could knowingly step beyond the sphere of the senses, into that world of which his intellect is a part. The conviction has always prevailed that man by means of his own valid laws of thought, for instance, the principle of causality, could safely ascend from the visible world to an invisible one. Thus also the physician concludes the interior cause of the disease from the exterior symptoms, the physicist thus comes to the knowledge of the existence of atoms and ions which he has never seen, and the astronomer calculates with Leverrier the existence and location of stars which no eye has yet detected.

One thing has certainly been established: a free sentiment can now assert itself with sovereignty in the most important spheres of intellectual life, without any barriers of stationary truths and immovable Christian dogmas; one is now free to fashion his religion and ideals to suit the individuum ineffabile. The latter asks no longer what religion demands of him, but rather how religion can serve his purposes. “For the gods,” it is said, “which we now acknowledge, are those we need, which we can use, whose demands confirm and strengthen our own personal demands and those of our fellow-men.... We apply thereby only the principle of elimination of everything unsuitable to man, and of the survival of the fittest, to our own religious convictions”; “we turn to that religion which best suits our own individuality” (W. James). Arrogant doubt can now undermine all fundamental truths of Christian faith until they crumble to pieces; beside it rises the free genius of the new religion, on whose emblem the name of God is no longer emblazoned, but the glittering seal of an independent humanity.

Relative Truth.

Freedom of thought appears still more justified when we take a further step which brings us to the consequence of subjectivism; i.e., when we advance so far as to assert that there are no unchangeable and in this sense no absolute truths, but only temporary, changeable, relative truths. And modern thought does profess this: there is no absolute truth, no religio et philosophia perennis; different principles and views are justified and even necessary for different times and even classes. This removes another barrier to freedom of thought, viz., allegiance to generally accepted truths and to the convictions of bygone ages.

The logicalness of this further step can hardly be denied. If the human intellect, independent of the laws of objective truth, fashions its own object and truth, especially in things above the senses, why can it not form for itself, at different periods and in different stages of life, a different religion and another view of the world? Cannot the human subject pass through different phases? He indeed changes his costume and style of architecture; why not also his thoughts? Every product of thought would then be the right one for the time, but would be untenable for a further stage of his intellectual genesis and growth, and would have to be replaced by a new one. The nature of subjectivistic thought is no longer an obstacle to this. Besides, we have the modern idea of evolution, already predominant in all fields: the world, the species of plants and animals, man himself with his whole life, his language, right, family, all of them the products of a perpetual evolution, everything constantly changing. Why not also his religion, morality, and view of the world? They are only reflexes of a temporary state of civilization. Hence also here motion and change, evolution into new shapes!

Therefore, so it is said, we have now broken definitely with the “dogmatic method of reasoning” of the belief in revelation, and of scholastic philosophy which adhered to absolute truth. They are replaced by the historical-genetical reasoning of the saeculum historicum which “has discarded absolute truth: there are only relative, no eternal truths” (Paulsen, Immanuel [pg 050] Kant, 1898, 389). We are further assured that “this treatment of the history of thought prevails in the scientific world; the Catholic Church alone has not adopted it. She still clings to dogmatic reasoning, and that is natural to her; she is sure that she is in possession of the absolute truth” (Idem, Philosophia militans, 2d ed., 1901, 5). Outside of this Church every period of time is free to construct its own theories, which will eventually go with it as they came with it.

We meet this relative truth, and all the indefinable hazy notions identified with it, in all spheres.

Thus modern subjectivism has lost all sense for definite rules of thought; in its frantic rush for freedom and in its confused excitement it seeks to upset all barriers. Now, of course, we may disregard convictions thousands of years old, by simply observing that they suited former ages but not the present; that they perhaps suit the uneducated but not the educated. Henceforth one may also reject the dogmas of Christianity by merely pointing out that they were at one time of importance, but are not suited to the modern man. That is an idea readily grasped, one which has already become quite general with those who are mentally tired of Christianity. What is demanded is a further evolution also of the Christian religion, a continuous cultivation of freer, higher forms, an undogmatic Christianity without duty to believe, without a Church: nothing else, in the end, but a veiled humanitarian religion.

This is the relativism of the present subjectivistic reasoning and its consequences.

Now, it is true that there is room for a certain relativity and evolution in the field of thought and truth. There is a relative truth in the sense that our knowledge of it is never exhaustive. Even the eternal truths of the Christian religion we always know only imperfectly, and we ought to perfect our knowledge continually; established facts of history can also be known, if studied, in greater detail. Thus there is progress and evolution. But from this we may not conclude that there can be no fixed truths at all. In the astronomy of to-day one can surely have the conviction that the fundamental truths of Copernicus's System of the Universe must remain an unchangeable truth, and that the time will never come when we shall go back to the obsolete doctrines of old Ptolemy, who made the sun revolve around the earth. Is astronomy therefore excluded from progress and evolution? It is moreover true that the individual as well as the community pass through an intellectual evolution in the sense that they gradually increase their knowledge and correct their errors, that literature and the schools gradually enhance the energy and wealth of our ideas and thoughts.

But a progressive change of the laws of thought, to the effect that we must now hold to a proposition which at another time we should naturally reject as untenable, can be maintained only upon the supposition that the thought of evolution has driven all others out of the intellect. It would be absurd to hold that the same view could be true at one time and false at another, that the same views about the world and life could be right to-day and wrong to-morrow, to be accepted to-day and rejected to-morrow. A view is either true or false. If true, it is always true and warranted. Or was old Thales right when he declared the world to consist of water; were Plato and Aristotle right in maintaining that it consisted of ideas, or forms, with real existences; was Fichte and his time right with his Ego, and are finally Schopenhauer, Wundt, and Paulsen right in claiming the world to be the work of the will? Were our heroic ancestors right, as the theories of evolution claim, in holding that trees are inhabited by ghosts; were then the Greeks right with their idea of a host of gods dwelling in the Olympus; and later [pg 053] on, was the civilized world right in holding that there is but one God, a personal one; and, after that, are many others of to-day right when they tell us that the world, and nature itself, is god? These are conclusions that threaten confusion to the human brain. And yet they are the logical consequences of “relative truth,” and any one reluctant to accept these consequences would prove thereby that he has never realized what absurdities are marketed as relative truth.

Or shall we give it up, as entirely impossible, to judge of the truth or falseness of doctrines and views? Are we to value them only so far as they are adapted to a period, and as moulding and benefiting that period? This opinion indeed is held. “The values of science and philosophy,” says Paulsen, “of our arts and poetry, consist in what they give us; whether a distant future will still use them is very questionable. Scholastic philosophy has passed away; we use it no longer; that is, however, no proof against its value; if it has made the generations living in the latter half of the Middle Ages more intelligent and wise ... then it has done all that could rightfully be expected of it: having served its purpose, it may be laid with the dead: there is no philosophy of enduring value.” “Whatever new ideas a people produces from its own inner nature will be beneficial to it. Nature may be confidently expected to produce here and everywhere at the right time what is proper and necessary” (System der Ethik, 8th ed., 1906, I, 339, seq., II, 241).

We have here a very deplorable misconception of the real value of truth, degrading it to suit passing interests and to promote them. This also is in conformity with subjectivism. But what could be answered to the straight question: suppose the opinions which some prefer to call “false” are more useful and valuable than “truth”? None but Nietzsche had the courage to say that “the falsity of a judgment is not yet a sufficient prejudice against it; here our new speech will perhaps sound strangest. The question is: How far is that judgment life-promoting, life-sustaining, preservative, even creative of species, and we are inclined, on principle, to say that the falsest judgments are to us the most indispensable” (Jenseits [pg 054] von Gut und Boese, I, 4, W. W. VII, 12.) The view that doctrines and opinions become especially or exclusively true and valuable by their usefulness for practical life, has become in our times the principle of pragmatism.

What others thought out only half way, Nietzsche reasons out to the end.

Thus, thanks to the science of modern subjectivism, every fixed and unchangeable truth, especially in the sphere of philosophy and religion, is removed, and with it also every barrier to freedom of thought in science as well as elsewhere. The human [pg 055] intellect in its autonomous self-consciousness may not only reject those truths which are proposed by revelation or the Church; it may not only experience its views of religion and the world by giving free activity to its feelings, it also knows that to be no longer satisfied with the old truths means to be progressive.

Above we have sketched the deeper-lying thoughts on which the liberal freedom of science is based; it is the humanitarian view of the world with its emancipation of man, and autonomous scepticism in thought, joined to that sceptical disregard of truth which once the representative of expiring pagan antiquity comprised in the words: Quid est veritas? Now we also understand better the liberal science which often claims the privilege of being “the” science, and which only too often likes to put down as unwarranted and inferior every other science that does not pursue its investigations in the same way. We understand its methods of thought in philosophy and religion, for which it claims an exclusive privilege; we can also form a judgment of its claim to be the leader of humanity in place of faith.

No doubt there are many who are flirting with this freedom without accepting its principles entirely. They do not reason out the thing to the end, they argue against the invasion of the Church into the field of science, and point to Galileo; they denounce Index and Syllabus, and then believe they have therewith exhausted the meaning of freedom of science. That the real matter in question is a view of the world diametrically opposed to the Christian view, that a changed theory of cognition is underlying it, is by many but insufficiently realized.

This freedom is not acceptable to one who professes the Christian view of the world. He will not offer any feeble apology to the eulogist of this freedom, as, for instance: Indeed you are quite right about your freedom, but please remember that I, too, as a faithful Christian am entitled to profess freedom. No; the answer can only be: Freedom, yes; but this freedom, no. A wholly different view of the world separates me from it. I see in it not freedom but rebellion, not the [pg 056] rights of man but upheaval, not a real boon of mankind but real danger.

The principle of liberalism has in the field of social economy already done enough to wreck man's welfare. It has here proved its incompetence as a factor of civilization. That in science also, where it is active in the field of philosophy and religion, liberalism is the principle of overthrowing true science, without any appreciation for truth and human nature, that it is a principle of intellectual pauperism and decay, that it despoils man of his greatest treasures, inherited from better centuries—this we shall prove conclusively.

It is difficult to say how long the high tide of liberalism will sweep over the fields of modern intellectual life before it subsides. One thing, however, is certain, that just so long it will remain a danger to Christian civilization, and to the intellectual life of mankind.

Introduction.

When the youth growing to maturity begins to feel the development of his own strength, it may happen that he finds his dependence on home unbearably trying. Perhaps he will say, “Father, give me the portion of substance that falleth to me,” and then depart into a strange country.

The men of Europe have for centuries lived in the Christian religion as in their fathers' house, and have fared well. But to many children of our time the old homestead has become too confining. Modern man, we are told, has at last come to his senses. He wants to develop his personality, thoughts, and sentiments freely, independently of every authority. He turns his back on his father's house. His parting words are the accusation: The old Church “opposes the modern principles of free individuality, the right to drain the cup of one's own reason and personal life, and it sets itself against the whole of modern feeling, investigation, and activity” (Th. Ziegler, Gesch. der Ethik, II, 2d ed., 1892, p. 589).

We are already acquainted with this freedom. We approach now the main question: What is the true relation of the freedom, which man may rightly claim for his scientific activity and reason, to external laws and regulations? Is man really justified to reject them all on the plea that they degrade his intellect and are an obstacle to his development, or does this rejection but manifest an error into which his desire of freedom has decoyed him? This is the question, it will be remembered, that we reached soon in the beginning of our investigation. We have already found the categorical answer—an emphatic rejection of such justification; we also traced the hypotheses on [pg 060] which the answer rests. We now return to the question to discuss it in principle. We begin with the freedom of scientific research, in order to take up afterwards the freedom in teaching.

What are those external powers that may interrupt or caution the scientist in his investigations and problems? Here we do not yet consider the scientist as a teacher, communicating to the public the result of his investigation, his ideas and views, from the university chair to his scientific audience, or to a wider circle of hearers by means of publications; we here regard him in his private study only, in the pursuit of which he perhaps encounters new questions, and new solutions suggest themselves to him. What freedom can he and must he enjoy here? This private freedom must evidently be judged from a point of view other than that from which the freedom in teaching should be judged. With the latter, the interests of his contemporaries must be taken into account, and the question must be considered, whether they suffer by such teaching. The freedom of the scientist is greater than that of the teacher. Moreover, research is the principal and most important activity of science: nothing, surely, is taught that has not been previously investigated. If, therefore, research is in any way restricted, so also is teaching; but not vice versa. Are there, then, exterior authorities that may restrain research and reasoning, and what are they?

One who lives in the Christian world knows at once of what authority to think. It is not the state. The state cannot directly influence the private work of the student: if it may exert its influence directly upon anything, it is only upon freedom in teaching. No, the authority to think of is the authority of the faith, revealed religion and its guardian, the Church.

Of course, this is not the only authority. Even if a revelation from heaven had not been given us, yet those general convictions of mankind, common to all nations and times, of the immutability of the laws of thought and morality, of the existence of a supramundane God, of the retribution for moral conduct to be made in the world to come, of the sanctity of state-authority, of the necessity of private property, and others, [pg 061] would ever remain most revered utterances of truth. No one would be allowed to contradict this avowal of all mankind, relying on his own reasoning, which he calls science, and give the lie to the reasoning of all other men, in order to make his own reason the sole measure of truth.

But for the present let us pass over the natural authority of mankind, of its convictions and traditions. It is surpassed and replaced by the authority of faith which belongs to our Christian religion. The latter comes to us claiming to possess the only true view of the world, and laying upon us the obligation of accepting it. It has even the courage to put its anathema upon propositions which the scientist may call science; it dares write out a list of the propositions which it condemns as untenable. Against this authority the protest is raised: Where is freedom of research, if one cannot even indulge in his own ideas, if the intellect is to be cropped and fettered? What is to become of frank, unprejudiced investigation, if I am from the outset bound to certain propositions, if from the outset the result at which I must arrive is already determined? It is intellectual bondage that the man of faith is languishing in. Thus reads the indictment; thus sounds the battle-cry. Is the indictment justified? Can and shall science take faith as a guide in many instances without detriment to its own innate freedom? And where, and when?

First, the more general question: Is freedom of research compatible with the duty to believe, or do they exclude each other in principle?

What Faith is Not.

What, then, is faith, and what does the duty to believe demand of us?

Here we meet at once with a false proposition which the opponents of the Christian faith will not abandon. To them faith is always a blind assent, in giving which one does not ask, nor dare ask, whether the proposition be true—a belief without personal conviction. According to them the believer holds himself “captive to the teaching of his Church. He cannot reflect personally, but follows blindly the lead of authority and [pg 062] force of habit.” Thus “Catholicism is the religion of bondage” (W. Wundt, Ethik, 3d ed., 1903, II, 255, 254). To them it is but an “uncritical submission to the existing authority, uninfluenced either by the testimony of the senses or the reflection of the intellect” (K. Menger, Neue Freie Presse, 24 Nov., 1907). The campaign for liberal science is denouncing those who “even to-day dare to demand blind faith,” “without proof or criticism,” faith in the “word of the Popes and men pretending to be interpreters and emissaries of God, men who have proved their incompetence and inability by the physical and religious coercion to which they have subjected mankind” (T. G. Masaryk, V boji o nábozenstvi, The Battle for Religion, 1904, p. 10, 23).

To be sure, if the Christian faith were such, it would be intellectual slavery. If I am compelled to believe something of which I cannot know the truth, this is coercion, and conflicts with the nature of the intellect and its right to truth. Infidelity would then be liberation. But faith is not that.

As a rule this view is based on a presumption, which has already been extensively discussed, viz., that faith and religion have nothing at all to do with intellectual activity, but are merely the product of the heart, a sentimental, freely acting notion; for, of metaphysical objects no human intellect can form a certain conviction. It is subjectivism that leads to this view. According to it the subject creates its own world of thought, free in action and feeling, not indeed everywhere,—in the sphere of sense-experience the evidence of the concrete is too great,—but at least in the sphere of metaphysical truth.

Such modes of expression find their way also into Catholic literature and language; even here we meet with the assertion that religion is a matter of the heart, and for that very reason has nothing to do with science. On the whole it is a remarkable fact that among believing men many expressions are current that have been coined in the mint of modern philosophy, and have there received a special significance. They are used without real knowledge of their origin and purposed meaning; but the words do not fail to colour their ideas, and to create imperceptibly a strange train of thought.

One who is of the opinion that religion and views of the world are but sentiment and feeling, which change with one's personality and individuality, can, of course, no longer understand a dogmatic Christianity and the obligation to hold fast to clearly defined dogmas as unchangeable truth. I can hold dogmas and doctrinal decisions to be unquestionably true only when I can convince myself of their credibility by the judgment of my reason. If I cannot do that, and am still bound to believe them, without the least doubt, then such obedience is compulsory repression of the reason. Then it would indeed be necessary for the Church, as Kant says, “to instil into its flock a pious dread of the least deviation from certain articles of faith based on history, and a dread of all investigation, to such a degree that they dare not let a doubt rise, even in thought, against the articles proposed for their belief, because this would be tantamount to lending an ear to the evil spirit” (Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft, 3. Stueck, 2. Abtlg.). Fixed dogmas may then at the very most, according to the great master of modern thought, be of pedagogic value to a minor, until he be grown to maturity. But to more advanced minds must be unconditionally conceded the freedom to construct dogmas as they think best, viz., as symbols and images for the subjective thought they underlie. This also, as is well known, is an article of Modernism, which here again follows in the steps of Kant.

Of course, to him who takes the position of Kant's dualism of belief and rational judgment, freedom from every authority [pg 064] in matters of faith, and in this sense tolerance, will appear to be self-evident. Whatever has nothing to do with knowledge, but is merely the personal result of an inner, subjective experience, cannot be offered by external authority as matter for instruction. The sole standard for this belief is the autonomous subject and its own needs. In this sense Harnack tells us: “The kernel of one's being is to be grasped in its own depths and the soul is merely to recognize its own needs and the road traced out for their gratification. This can only be done with the fullest freedom. Any restraint here is tantamount to the destruction of the problem; any submission to the teaching of others ... is treason to one's own religion” (Religioeser Glaube und freie Forschung. Neue Freie Presse, 7. Juni, 1908). To have one's religion determined by any authority, even a divine one, would be treason to the sovereignty of man!

Viewed from this standpoint, the reconciliation between faith and science is no longer a problem. And they congratulate themselves on the solution of this vexing question. Now, they say, deliverance from an oppressive misery has been found, now the peace sought for so long is restored. A fair division has been made: two worlds, the world of the senses, and the world above sense experience. One belongs to science, where it now rules supreme; the other belongs to faith, where it can move freely, undisturbed by, and even unapproachable to science. Just as the stars in the sky are inaccessible to the custodian of civil order,—he can neither support them nor hinder them, nor pull them down,—just so the realm of faith is inaccessible to science: peace reigns everywhere.

To a critical observer, such peace-making is utterly incomprehensible. They probably did not consider that in this way religion and faith were not liberated, but dispossessed; not brought to a place of safety, but transferred from the realm of reality into the realm of fancy. Similarly an aggressive ruler might address a neighbouring prince thus: We cannot agree any longer, let us make peace: you retain all your titles, and I shall see to your decent support, but you will have to lay down your crown and sovereignty and leave the country—in this way we can have peace. Religion, once the greatest power in the life of man, for the sake of which man made sacrifices and even laid down his life, has now become a matter of sterile devotion; it may, moreover, no longer claim power and importance; it is now reduced to a poetic feeling, with which one can fill up intellectual vacancies. No longer is man here for religion's sake; religion is here for man's sake. A buttonhole flower, a poetic perfume to sprinkle over his person. For he does not want to give up religion entirely. “We are the less inclined to give up religion forthwith, since we are prone to consider a religious disposition as a prerogative of human nature, even as its noblest title.” Thus D. F. Strauss, when he asked of those who sympathized with his opinions, Have we still religion? (Der alte u. neue Glaube, II, n. 33). Of course religion has now become something quite different; it has been consigned to deep degradation.

To be sure, feeling is of great importance in religion. Dissatisfaction with the things of this earth, man's longing for something higher, for the Infinite, his craving for immortality, for aid and consolation—are all naturally seeking for religious truths. If these are known, they in turn arouse fear and hope, love and gratitude; they become a source of happiness and inspiration. But these feelings have no meaning unless we are certain that there exists something corresponding to them; much less could they of themselves be a conviction, just as little as hunger could convince us that we have food and drink. If one cannot perceive that there is a God, a Providence, a life beyond, then religion sinks to the level of a hazy feeling, without reason and truth, which must appear foolish to men who think,—as [pg 066] “the great phantasmagoria of the human mind, which we call religion” (Jodl, Gedanken über Reform Katholizismus, 1902, 12),—which departs from the sphere of rational intellectual life, and which many have even begun to contemplate from the view-point of psychopathology. It is only due to the after-effect of a more religious past that religion is suffered to lead still a life of pretence: moral support in struggles it can give no more, nor comfort in dark hours, much less may it presume to guide man's thought. It stands far below science.

Despair of the possibility of knowing higher truths is confronting us, the disease of deteriorating times and intellectually decaying nations. But just as Christianity, once in youthful vigour, went to the rescue of an old World dying of scepticism, just as the Catholic Church has ever upheld the rights of reason, especially against Protestantism, which from its beginning has torn asunder faith and knowledge: so the Catholic Church stands to this day unaffected by the doubting tendency of our times, upholding the rights of reason. It also upholds faith. But its faith has nothing to do with modern agnosticism.

What Faith Is.

What, then, according to Catholic doctrine, is faith and the duty to believe?

Let us briefly recall to mind the fundamental tenets of the Christian religion. It tells us that even in the Old Testament, but more especially in the New, through His Incarnate Son, God has revealed to man all those religious and moral truths which are necessary and sufficient for the attainment of his supernatural end. Some of them are truths which reason by itself could not discover; others it could discover, but only by great labour. And this divine revelation demands belief. Belief is natural to man. The child believes its parents, the judge believes the witnesses, the ruler believes his counsellors. God wished to meet man in this way, and to give him certainty in regard to the highest truths.

But revelation was to be an heritage of mankind, it was to be transmitted and laid unadulterated before all generations. For [pg 067] this reason it could not be left unprotected to the vicissitudes of time, or the arbitrary interpretation of the individual. It would have utterly failed in its purpose of transmitting sure knowledge of certain truth,—the history of Protestantism proves this,—had it been given merely with the injunction: Receive what I have committed to your keeping, and do with it what you please. No, it had to be made secure against subjective, arbitrary choice.

To this end Christ established an international organization, the Church, and committed to it His Gospel as a means of grace, together with the right and sacred duty to teach it to all men in His Name, to keep inviolate the heirloom of revelation, defending it against all error. “Going, therefore, teach ye all nations” (Matt. xxviii. 19), was His command. “Go ye into the whole world and preach the Gospel to every creature; he that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, but he that believeth not shall be condemned” (Mark xvi. 15). “He that heareth you, heareth Me, and he that despiseth you, despiseth Me” (Luke x. 16). “Behold, I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world” (Matt. xxviii. 20). He gave His divine aid to the Church, in order that she might infallibly keep His doctrine to the very end of time.

Thus the divine revelation and the Church approach all men with the duty to believe: “he that believeth shall be saved,” God gravely commands; “and if he will not hear the Church, let him be to thee as the heathen and publican” (Matt. xviii. 17). They lay their teachings before the human intellect, bidding it retain them as indubitable truth, upon their infallible testimony, yet only after convincing itself that God has really spoken, and that this Church is the true one, which cannot err. And only after having convinced itself of the credibility of the proposed teaching is it obliged to believe. Hence, according to the Christian mind, faith is the reasonable conviction of the truth of what is proposed for belief, by reason of an acknowledged infallible testimony.

Hence, the act of faith by which I believe that the Son of God became man, that I shall rise from the dead, is first of all a judgment of the reason, not an act of the will, or a feeling of the heart. It is, moreover, a certain rational judgment upon weighty reasons, not, indeed, such which I draw from intellectual knowledge, but those which rest upon the infallible testimony of God. The act of faith agrees therefore with assent to historic truth in that it is of the same kind of knowledge, but upon the authority of infallible testimony. Just as I believe that Alexander once marched victoriously through Asia, because there is sure testimony to that effect, so I believe that I shall rise from the dead, because God has revealed it. The difference being that in the former case we have only human testimony, whereas in the latter God Himself speaks. Thus, according to Catholic teaching, faith and knowledge may be distinct from each other, but in a sense quite different from that of the representatives of modern, sentimental faith. The latter understand knowledge, in this connection, to be any judgment of the reason based upon evidence, and they deny that faith is such; but to a Catholic, faith, too, is a judgment of the reason, and in this sense true knowledge; only it is not knowledge in the more common sense of a cognition derived from one's own mental activity without the external means of authority.

As we have heard from the Vatican Council, it is the recognized [pg 069] fact of divine revelation which bestows upon the matter of faith its certainty in reason. Hence the knowledge of this fact must precede faith itself. But the knowledge must be certain, not merely a belief, for it is the very presupposition of belief, but a knowledge, derived from the intellect, which may at any time be traced back to scientific proofs if there is the requisite philosophical training. So long as man is not certain that God has spoken, he cannot have faith according to the Catholic view. One of the sentences condemned by Innocent XI., to say nothing of other ecclesiastical testimonies, is this: “The assent of supernatural faith, useful for salvation, can exist with merely probable information of the fact of revelation, even with the fear that God has not spoken.” And very recently there has been condemned also the proposition: “The assent of faith ultimately rests upon a sum of probabilities” (Decretum Lamentabile, July 3, 1907. Sent. 25).

It cannot be our task here to show at length how the Christian arrives at this certain knowledge. Our present purpose is only to state the Catholic concept of faith. We have already heard the Vatican Council refer to miracles and prophecies. To most of the faithful the chief fact that offers them this security is the wonderful phenomenon of the Catholic Church itself, which proposes to them the doctrines of faith as divine revelation.

These are sufficient proofs to produce even in the uneducated, and in children, true and reasonable certainty, provided they have had sufficient instruction in religion. It must, however, be emphasized that this conviction produced by faith need not first be gained by scientific investigation of the motives of faith, or by minute or extensive theological studies. A wrong notion of human knowledge frequently leads to the opinion that there is no true certainty at all unless it is the result of scientific study—a presumption on which is based the claim of freedom of science to disregard any conviction, be it ever so sacred, and the claim that it is reserved to science alone to attain the sure possession of the truth. Later on we shall dwell more at length upon this important point. Let it suffice here to remark that the intellect can attain real certainty even without scientific research; most of our convictions, which we all hold unhesitatingly as true, are of this kind. They constitute a belief that is based upon the real knowledge of the reason, which knowledge is not, however, so clear and distinct that it could be demonstrated easily in scientific form.

The certainty of faith, therefore, is based upon the knowledge that God Himself vouches for the truth of the teachings of faith. This relieves the faithful from the necessity of obtaining by his own reflection an insight into the intrinsic reasons of the why and the wherefore of the proposed truth, and to examine in each instance the correctness of the thing. He knows that God has revealed it, that His infallible Church vouches for it; hence it is credible and true; that suffices for him, just as trustworthy evidence suffices for the historian concerning facts which he himself has not observed.

Let no one say that faith is a blind belief and blind obedience, and that dogmatic Christianity, or, to use another phrase, “the religion of the law, demands first of all obedience: it is true it would like, besides that, an interior assent for its thoughts and commandments, but where this is lacking the law itself furnishes the ways and means to compensate the lack of this internal assent, if only obedience is there” (A. Harnack, Religioeser Glaube u. freie Forschung. Neue Freie Presse, June 7, 1908). Nor let any one say that free research has “at least this advantage over dogma, that its claims can be proved, which is not true of the other's claims” (J. H. van't Hoff, ibid., Dec. 29, 1907). These are misrepresentations.

There is no obedience to faith which is not internal assent and conviction, and there is no clinging to dogmas which is not based on motives of faith, or which could not at any time be subjected to scientific investigation. If the term “blindness of belief” were intended to express only that the believer holds the revealed doctrine to be true, not because he has discovered its truth by his own reasoning, but on the authority of God, then we might suffer the misleading word. But it is utterly false in the sense that the believer has no conviction at all. Even though others have it not, the faithful Catholic, the believing Christian, has it, and it is personal conviction. He has convinced himself that God has spoken, and of the credibility and hence the truth of the revealed doctrine, by his own reason, and this is why he assents.

Faith and Reason.

But to return to our question: In what relation do faith and the duty to believe stand to freedom of research? We said that freedom of research consists in exemption from all unjust external restraint, that is, from those external hindrances to the [pg 074] action of the human intellect which prevent it from attaining its natural end. Now what is this natural end? The answer will make clear what restraint and laws must be respected by the human mind, and which may be rightly rejected.

On the coat-of-arms of Harvard University is written the beautiful word “Truth.” Upon the human mind, too, is inscribed the word Veritati—for the truth. The human mind exists for the sake of truth; for the truth it reasons and searches; it is its natural object, as sound is the object of the human ear, and light and colour the object of the eye. And truth attracts the mind strongly. The child wants the truth, and tries to get it by its many questions; the historian wants the truth, and tries to get it by his incessant searching and collecting. “I can hardly resist my craving,” William von Humboldt confesses, “to see and know and examine as much as possible: after all, man seems to be here only for the purpose of appropriating to himself, making his own property, the property of his intellect, all that surrounds him—and life is short. When I depart this life I should like to leave behind me as little as possible unexperienced by me” (apud O. Willmann, Didaktik als Bildungslehre, 3d ed., II, 1903, p. 7). The great physicist, W. Thomson, a few years ago closed a life of eighty-three years—he died in December, 1907—devoted to the last to unabated search for the truth. It is true not all are called to labour in this field like W. Thomson. But every one who has capability may and should help to promote the noble work. Only they are excluded who do not want to look for the truth, or who are even ready, for external considerations, to pass off falsehood for the truth, unproved for established results. “I know of nothing,” says the ancient sage, Plato, “that is more worthy of the human mind than truth” (Rep. VI, p. 483 c.). And so the poet Pindar sings: “Queen Truth, the mother of sublime Virtue.”

If this is the aim of the human mind and its science, there is but one freedom of research, the freedom for the truth, the right not to be hampered in searching for the truth, not to be forced to hold as true what has not been previously vouched for to the intellect as true; in a word, the freedom to wear but one [pg 075] chain, the golden chain of the truth. Hence, if the scientist should be compelled by party interest, or public opinion, to pursue a course in science which he cannot acknowledge as the right one; if the younger scientist should feel constrained to conform the results of his research to the pleasure of his older colleagues or of men of name, against his own better judgment, then he would be deprived of his rightful freedom of searching for the truth, and of deciding for himself when he has found it. But there is one sort of freedom the scientist should never claim—freedom against the truth, freedom to ignore the truth, to emancipate himself from the truth. He is bound to accept every truth, sufficiently proved, even religious dogmas, miracles too, provided they are authenticated. Not freedom, but truth, is the purpose of research: emancipation from the truth is degeneration of the intellect, destruction of science.

What, then, does the duty to believe require of the faithful Christian? He is required, first of all, to assure himself of the certain credibility of those truths which he is required to believe, and here authentic proofs are offered him. On his perception of the credibility of these truths, he ought to assent to and accept God's testimony. Hence there should be no coercion to believe without interior conviction, no obstacle put in the way of recognizing the truth. Where, then, is here any opposition to the lawful freedom of research, to the right of unimpeded search for the truth? How is reason hindered in its search for the truth when truth is offered it by an infallible authority? We have here no opposition to the laws of reason, but due honour to its sacred rights; no bondage, but elevation and enrichment, completion and crowning of its thought, for the highest truth has been communicated to the reason that it may be of one mind with that Infinite Wisdom which has shaped reason for the truth, and from which it obtains its light as the planet from the sun around which it revolves.

Therefore, it cannot be said that “the Catholic resolves to believe as true what the Church teaches in the Apostles' Creed, but were he offered anything else as Church doctrine he would accept it as well. Hence these doctrines do not express his own personal opinions, they are something extraneous to him.” [pg 076] (W. Herrmann, Roemische u. evangelische Sittlichkeit, 3d ed., 1903, p. 3). No, what the Catholic, what any true Christian, believes by faith, that is his innermost conviction, as it is the firm conviction of the historian that what he has drawn from reliable sources is true.—But what if the contrary were offered him? Well, this assumption is absurd; and why? Because God and His Church are infallible, and an infallible authority cannot speak the truth and its contrary at the same time. Much less than a reliable historical witness can testify to the truth and its contrary at the same time.

This same conviction gives to the faithful Christian the firm assurance that no certain result of human research will ever come in conflict with his faith, just as the mathematician does not fear that his principle will ever be contradicted by any further work. Truth can never contradict truth. “Thus we believe and thus we teach and herein lies our salvation.” It is the very old conviction of the faithful Christian “that philosophy, that is, the study of wisdom, and religion are not different things.” Non aliam esse philosophiam, i.e., sapientiae studium et aliam religionem (Augustinus, De Vera Religione, 5). It is precisely this that enables the believing scientist to devote himself with great freedom and impartiality to research in every field, and to acknowledge any certified result without fear of ever having to stop before a definite conclusion.

Such is the peace between faith and science according to Christian principles. They are not torn apart, but join hands peacefully, like truth with truth, like two certain convictions, only gained in different ways. Similar is the peace and harmony between the results of various sciences, as physics and astronomy, geology and biology, which results, though arrived at by different methods, are still not opposed to each other, because they are both true.

The authority of faith, however, must be infallible; the authority of a scientist, a school or the state, can never approach us with an absolute obligation to believe it, because it cannot vouch for the truth. To the Catholic his Church proves itself infallible; hence everything is here logically consequent. Protestant Church authorities have not infallibility, nor do they [pg 077] claim it. Hence their precepts are seen more and more opposed. Hence to the Protestant the firm attachment of the Catholic to his Church must ever remain unintelligible, and it is regrettable that Catholics take instruction from Protestants about their relation to their Church.2

We must go a step further. If there is a divine revelation or an infallible Church—we speak only hypothetically—then no man and no scientific research can claim the right to contradict this revelation and Church. Scientific research is not the hypostatized activity of a superhuman genius, of a god-like intelligence. No, it is the activity of a human intellect, and the latter is subject to God and truth everywhere. There can be no freedom to oppose the truth; no privilege not to be bound to the truth but rather to have the right to construct one's views autonomously.

But here lies the deeper reason why to-day thousands to whom Kant's autonomism in thought has become the nerve of their intellectual life, will have nothing to do with guidance by [pg 078] revelation and Church. They can no longer understand that their reason should accept the truth from an external authority, not, indeed, because they would not find the truth, but because they would lose their independence.

It is for the sovereign subject himself to decide whether the ideas offered are compatible with the rest of his notions. A truth offered from without is acceptable to the subject only when, and because, he can produce of himself at the same time what is offered; but he cannot accept the obligation of submitting to that truth in obedience to faith. “There is no infallible teaching authority on earth, nor can there be any. Philosophy and science would have to contradict themselves to acknowledge it,” says another champion of Kant's freedom (Paulsen, Philosophia militans, 2d ed., p. 52). Hence the reason why there cannot be any infallible authority is, not because it does not offer the truth, but because the human intellect must not be chained down.

Now, this is no longer true freedom, but rebellion against the sacred right that truth has over the intellect. It is rebellion against the supreme authority of God, who can oblige man to embrace His revelation with that reason which He Himself has bestowed upon man. It is a misconception of the human mind, for it is by no means the source of truth and absolute knowledge, but weak and in need of supplement. Many truths it cannot by itself find at all, while in the quest for others it needs safe guidance lest it lose its way. If it refuses to be supplemented [pg 079] and guided from above, it demands the freedom of the weak vine allowed to break loose from the needed support of the tree, the freedom of the planet allowed to deviate from its orbit to be hopelessly wrecked in the universe. The barrenness and disintegration in the ideal life of our own unchristian age, are clear testimony that freedom is not only lawlessness but a sin against one's own nature.

Or, do they seek to save themselves by asserting that a divine revelation and the founding of an infallible Church are impossible? Very well, then, let them prove it. On this the question hinges. If they can prove it to us, that very moment we shall cease to be faithful Catholics, and Christianity will have been the most stupendous lie in history. But if the reverse is the case, then all declamations in the name of free research fall to the ground.

This impossibility, however, could only be proved by the aid of a presumption. This presumption is atheism, which denies the existence of a personal God, or at least doubts it. If it is admitted that there is a personal God, then it is self-evident that He can give a revelation, and found an infallible Church, and can oblige all to believe. But herewith collapses also the liberal principle that, in reasoning, one may reject an external authority. Hence the principle of liberal freedom in science can only then be taken seriously, when one advances to atheism. Then, of course, they will say with Nietzsche: God is dead; long live the transcendental man!

Our assertions are proved by experience. At the end of the eighteenth century the enlightenment began by excluding all revelation; but it was desired to retain the rational truth of God's existence. Since then, liberal science has been aiming at atheism in philosophy, whether open or masked. And if we follow up the career of men who have left their faith, we shall soon find that if they do not seek peace in the sheltering harbour of thoughtlessness, they have reached the terminal station of atheism. There is no stopping on this incline.

Since it is the express fundamental principle of the liberal freedom of research, that science is not bound to any external authority, it is evident that it is nothing else but the refusal [pg 080] to submit to God's authority, hence, also, to submit to truth if it appears as revelation. For, either it is admitted that if there is a divine revelation, we have to give it our assent—and in this event liberal freedom of science would have to be abandoned,—or this liberal freedom is adopted in real earnest—then it must be admitted that it is tantamount to radical apostasy and defection from the truth. If a man wishes to be a faithful Christian and at the same time to uphold the liberal freedom of science, then he has never made clear to himself what he wishes.

Ecce ancilla Domini. Thus spoke the Mother of the Lord, when she heard the message that she was to receive the Word of the eternal Father in her bosom. This word of humility and submission was the condition under which she could receive in herself the eternal Wisdom of the Father.

Behold, the Handmaid of the Lord! This word of humility and submission to God must also be spoken by the creature's intelligence, if it desires by faith to share in God's truth. Without humility of mind a faithful attachment to God is impossible; pride and arrogance lead to desertion of God, faith, and truth. Multum errant, quoniam superbi sunt, says Augustine of the erring companions of his youth. Only if there is humility does God's wisdom cross the threshold of the creature's mind, only if there is humility can it be said of man: Et verbum caro factum est et habitat in nobis, plenum gratiae et veritatis.

Preliminary Remarks.

We must not stop at what we have just said in general about the relation between the freedom of research and the obligation to believe. We must go further into detail, in order to give a more exact explanation of how and where the authority of faith clashes with research and restrains it. Is it true that the believing scientist cannot move freely in his research, that there are barriers on all sides which he may not overstep? Is it true that the Church may prescribe for the Catholic scientist what he is allowed to defend and approve, what he ought to refute and reprove, suppress or advocate, so that his eyes must ever be turned towards Rome, to inquire and ascertain what might there be approved? And what a chain of proscriptions of free thinking is attached to the name of Rome! Index, Syllabus, Galileo—link after link is added to this chain of miserable slavery!

We shall say something more about this chain later on. First we must consider the principal question: Where and how do faith and science come in contact? And what we are going to say we shall condense into four points. Thus freedom of science will be more precisely defined; it will be shown what freedom revelation, and especially the guardian of revelation, the Church, offers to science: there can be no doubt that its natural freedom of exercise must be left to science intact.

We shall deal in the first place with the profane sciences, and, at least for the present, leave aside the discussion of theology, since it is clear that theology, being the science of faith, must assume a peculiar position in regard to the authority [pg 082] of faith: theology, moreover, is a special mark for attack; accordingly we shall deal with it particularly later on. However, the principles to be cited, being of a general nature, refer also to the science of faith, and for this reason we shall have occasion to refer to them.

1. Authority of Faith and Private Authority.

We often meet with the most inconceivable notions. We are told quite seriously that the Church teaches, and that the Catholic has therefore to believe, that the earth is a flat disc surrounded by the sea, as the ancients believed; above it is a vault, below it hell-fire; that the earth stands still and the sun and stars revolve about it, just as Ptolemy of Egypt taught; that God created the whole world just as it is now in exactly six days of twenty-four hours each; that He made the sun and moon, just as they are now illuminating the skies; that the strata, just as they now look when bared by the geologist's hammer, even the coal-fields and petrified saurians and fossils—all were made, just as they now are, well nigh six thousand years ago. The Scriptures teach this, the Fathers of old and the theologians believe this: and that is where the Catholic must get his science. And then they are astonished, and consider dogma retreating before science, when they see other notions prevailing, when they see Catholic scientists defend without prejudice the evolution of the solar system, and even the system of the whole universe, from some primitive matter, or assume an organic evolution, as far as science supports it (cf. Braun, Ueber Kosmologie u. Standpunkt christlich. Wiss., 2d ed., 1906, etc.). They would be still more astonished perhaps to learn that similar ideas had long ago been proposed by St. Augustine and St. Thomas (cf. Summa c. G. l. 3, c. 77; Knabenbauer, in Stimmen a. M. Laach xiii, 75 seq.).

A distinction must be made between the teaching of the Church and the private views of individuals, schools, or periods. Only the teaching of the Church is the obligatory standard of Christian and Catholic thought, not the opinion of individuals. Hence not everything that Catholic savants have held to be true belongs to the teaching of the Church. Only when theologians unanimously declare something to be contained in the [pg 083] deposit of revealed truth, or the teaching of the Church,—only then is their teaching authoritative; not because it is the teaching of theologians, but because it is contained in revelation or the teaching of the Church. Else the maxim holds good: Tantum valet auctoritas, quantum argumenta. Nor is all that which a former age found in Holy Scripture, therefore to be believed as revealed truth, to the exclusion of all other interpretations.

The foregoing may be elucidated by the examples given above. When Holy Writ describes in figurative language and Oriental, demonstrative style, how God created the heaven and earth, the sun and moon, the sea and its contents, it means to teach us religious truths: that God is the First Cause of everything, and hence that the sun and moon, for instance, are not uncreated deities, as the Egyptian believed them to be. The narrative need not be taken in a literal sense, as if God immediately formed everything in the exact condition as it now appears to us; it may be interpreted in the sense that God let the present condition of things gradually grow out of the forces and materials and plan of nature He created, the result of a lengthy evolution. When our Lord tells us in the gospel that His Father in heaven feeds the birds of the air and clothes the grass of the field, we know that this is to be understood as a mediate action of God, which He exercises through the instinct of animals and through natural forces which He created for the purpose. Now when former ages, reading the narrative of Genesis, generally understood an immediate creation of the world, because the knowledge of nature at the time did not admit of any other interpretation, it is by no means necessary to conclude from it that every other interpretation must be rejected as against the Bible, or that the Church herself has prescribed this literal interpretation as the only correct one. As is known, St. Augustine, the greatest Father of the Church, had another very liberal explanation of the Genesis narrative, and the Church has never censured him. (He taught that the whole world had been created at one time, and that the six days of the Mosaic narrative were the logical divisions of an account of the various orders of creatures.) And now the interpretations vary greatly. The passages in Scripture, [pg 084] in which, according to popular modes of expression, the sun is said to rise and set and revolve about the earth, the latter standing in the centre of the world—these, too, were interpreted literally in the days of the Fathers: there was no cause for interpreting them otherwise; but it was only due to defective knowledge of nature at the time. These temporary errors remained till corrected by research in the field of the natural sciences: had the discoveries been made sooner, the errors, too, would have disappeared sooner.

The Church knows, and the holy Fathers knew, that it is not the purpose of Holy Writ to teach profane sciences, but to instruct in faith and morals; if it speaks of other matters, it is but occasionally, and then in the idiom of common life, which is not the same as the scientific language of the specialist. Indeed, the Bible does not intend to give scientific instruction in such matters, nor could it have done so at a time when men were not ripe for such enlightenment.

Now if one simply opens Holy Scripture, takes up some passage at random, explains it in its most literal sense, and then insists that this is the evident meaning, and goes on to assert with the same insistence that this is the interpretation of the Church, and a part of the faith of Catholics in regard to the natural sciences, then of course it is very easy to make out contradictions between faith and science: but such efforts cannot claim to be scientific. It is not necessary to know theology and the principles of Catholic exegesis; but it is not proper that those who are ignorant of these matters pass judgment on them, not even in the name of objective research.

The result is that we must distinguish clearly between dogmas of faith and private opinions or interpretations. Of course it may frequently happen, and has happened, that the Christian savant is too timorous, and looks askance at the discoveries of science, and even thinks he ought to resist them, [pg 088] because he is afraid that religious truth might be opposed by them. Nor can it be said that this timidity is altogether without excuse, for there was hardly one scientific discovery of the nineteenth century that was not immediately grasped and exploited by eager enemies of the Christian religion. Too often has science been made the menial of infidelity, and the assertion has been untiringly repeated that science and faith cannot agree. No wonder, then, that timid souls become suspicious, that they are prone to resist the whole theory of evolution in a lump, instead of trying to distinguish between what is of scientific value in it, and what is misused for the purpose of denying creation.

Nevertheless, such narrow-mindedness is strongly to be censured. It has often caused the reproach, that Catholics lack the freedom to admit scientific discoveries. They forget the wise admonition of the prince of mediæval theologians, that it were advisable, in regard to scientific views which have nothing to do with religion, neither to set them down as truths of faith, nor either to reject them as contrary to faith lest occasion be given to think contemptuously of the faith. As long as men are and men think, narrow-mindedness will never be lacking. Hence if the believing scientist wants to know whether he is running counter to faith in any particular, he has to ascertain from theological text-books what the Church declares to belong to faith, what explanation of Holy Scripture is unconditionally binding, and not what is the individual opinion of theologians, much less what some pious nurse is telling the little ones.

This is the first rule concerning the relation between faith and science: it states what the scientist is not tied down to.

2. Science Retains its Method of Research.

But when and how may the scientist be restricted? Here we come to the second point: the directions which faith may give to the profane sciences are in themselves not of a positive but of a negative kind; revelation and Church cannot tell the scientist what he is to assert or defend in the field of the profane sciences, but only what propositions he must avoid. Thus [pg 089] every science is left free to pursue its own method of research. It is not difficult to understand this.

Faith draws from divine revelation; profane sciences, as such, do not draw from divine revelation, but only from experience and reason. Philosophy would cease to be philosophy and become theology did it demonstrate the immortality of the soul by revelation. The anthropologist would cease to be an anthropologist and become a theologian if he would attempt to prove the common origin of mankind by Holy Scripture.

In other words, the profane sciences are distinguished from faith and theology by their formal object, by the end they have in view, by the scientific method with which they handle their subject. Theology, of course, uses revelation extensively; and in this it differs from the other sciences. Hence faith cannot command the anthropologist to defend also in profane science the common origin of the human race from Adam and Eve, because it is held to be a revealed truth. He must say: I believe as a Christian that this is true, established by divine revelation, and no science will ever prove the contrary; but whether I can positively defend this fact as resulting from anthropology, depends on my ability to corroborate it by the methods of this science, that is by the testimony of profane history. And just as little could the historian be required to obtain historical results of which he cannot produce the evidence according to his method.

Therefore faith can only tell the profane scientist that he must not assert anything which is held by faith to be erroneous; that it is false to say there is nothing but force and matter, that the human soul ends in death, or that the various families of the human race have not a common origin. As soon as the scientist knows by faith that a thing is false, he is bound to refrain from asserting it: bound in the first place by the duty to believe, but also by the principles of his own science, which is to find not error, but truth, which forbids to assert what has been proved to be erroneous. Perhaps his own means will not enable him to prove the truth independently of revelation; then from the standpoint of his science he must say, Non liquet.

These few remarks show the lack of intelligence in the charge that “Catholic philosophy starts from dogmas and revelation,” or that the Church would dictate to scientists everything they should teach; that, according to its principles it could claim the right “to impose upon a physicist of Zeppelin's era the task of proving the Ascension of Christ or the Assumption of Mary by aërostatic rules.” This is simply gross ignorance or misrepresentation.

3. Restraint Only in the Province of Revelation.

In what matters may faith and the Church be a guide to research in this negative sense? In all fields, or only some? Evidently only in their own sphere. But to the sphere of faith belongs only what is contained in divine revelation, viz., the truths of religion and morality, as laid down in Scripture and tradition, the truths of God and His work of salvation, of man and his way to his eternal destiny, of the means of grace, and of the Church. Whatever lies outside of that sphere does not belong to the province of faith. This is true also of the teaching authority of the Church. The purpose of the Church is to guard faithfully the treasure of divine revelation and to transmit it in an authoritative manner to mankind: hence her authority in teaching is confined to what is contained in revelation, and what is necessary for an efficient custody and transmission of it to mankind. Hence she may declare certain truths as revealed, she may reject opposing errors, she may condemn books offensive to faith, she may approve or reject systems [pg 091] of ethics. But she cannot set up wholly new religious truths or revelations. Depositum custodi—this is the purpose of the Church. Still less are matters of an entirely profane nature subject to the teaching authority of the Church. Profane sciences can therefore receive direction from faith only in those matters which at the same time belong to the province of faith.

What follows from this? It follows that almost all the profane sciences are incapable of being instructed or restricted by faith, because their province lies outside that of faith, and does not come in touch with it: they are left to themselves to correct their errors. When the astronomer in his observatory watches the movements of the planets, and bases thereon his mathematical calculations, when the physicist or chemist in his laboratory observes the laws of nature or makes new discoveries, when the pathologist studies the symptoms of diseases in organisms, no warning voice interrupts their work of study. Of course when they deny the creation, the possibility of miracles, then they conflict with faith; but then they have ceased to be naturalists, they have become philosophers. When the botanist or zoölogist in his laboratory is studying plants and animals and collecting his specimens, when the palæontologist is excavating and examining his fossils, they enjoy perfect freedom: all this has nothing directly to do with faith. And there is no warning sign set up for the geographer or geologist when settling the orographical or hydrographical conditions of countries or measuring geological strata; no danger signal disturbs the linguist in establishing the grammar of unknown languages, nor the archæologist or the historian, when they discover new documents or decipher inscriptions. Nor does anybody interrupt the mathematician in his calculations.

What unnecessary worry, then, for the representatives of mathematics, geology, palæontology, and chemistry to write burning protests against the fetters of dogma in the interest of their scientific activity! And it is superfluous worry for professors of the technical arts to get excited by imagining that electricity and steam must be treated according to ecclesiastical precepts. Nor is there need of emphasizing the statement that [pg 092] there cannot be a Catholic chemistry, geography, or mathematics—it is self-evident.

Hence almost the entire province of the profane sciences, which are the pride of our age and occupy the foremost position in our universities, with their laboratories, institutes and observatories and meteorological stations, are free and perfectly undisturbed by faith. If accordingly any one should be of the opinion that the Christian-minded scientist were hindered in his scientific research, he would have to consider him an unhampered investigator at least in this vast field.

Most in touch with faith comes philosophy. Not in the vast field of logic, of empirical psychology, in questions concerning the essence of bodies and their forces, in matters of mere history of philosophy; but in questions of views of the world and life, in metaphysics and ethics, it does. These, the highest questions, bearing on the direction and pursuit of human life, matters that most occupy the human mind, are at the same time subjects of revelation; God Himself has deigned to teach the truth in these matters, to make them safe for all time against the error of the mind of man. Here philosophers encounter danger-signals. They hear, what their reason even tells them, that it is erroneous to think there is no world of spirits, no God above nature, no immortality, no life hereafter, no providence. Nor could one say that philosophy is the loser by being kept from error which endangers human life. Nowhere are errors so apt to occur as in questions which are outside the sphere of immediate experience; nowhere are self-deceptions more common than there, where disposition and character continually influence the mind.

The science of history again has not the duty of praising everything that has happened within the Catholic Church or else to repress it; no, only the truth is desired. But it must not start out with the assumption that God's influence in the world, a divine revelation, miracles, and a supernatural guidance of the Church, are impossible; nor must it attempt to construe history according to that assumption. Hence it must not undertake to explain the religion of the Jewish nation, or the origin of Christianity, by unconditionally ignoring everything supernatural, and attempting to eliminate it by prejudiced research and by means of natural factors, whether they be called Babylonic myths or Greek philosophy or anything else; it must not impugn the credibility of the Gospel, claiming that reports of miracles must be false; it must not write the history of the Church and deliberately ignore its supernatural character, as if it were the violent struggle of a federation of priests for universal rule. Assured results undoubtedly are arrived at in history less frequently than in other sciences; it offers full play to suppositions, hypotheses, constructive fancy, the influence of ideas inculcated by education and personal views of the world, especially when summing up facts. Hence here more than anywhere else must moral character and unselfish love of the truth stand higher than the desire for freedom.

The history of religion and anthropology must be forbidden to assume that the human mind is but a product of animal evolution, that therefore religion and morality, family and state life, reason and language, and the entire intellectual and social life have necessarily evolved from the first stages [pg 094] of animal life. If we add that jurisprudence in its highest principles comes in touch with faith, and that it also must not dispute the divine right of the Church, we have mentioned the most important sciences and instances in which the investigator must take faith into consideration.

We now understand in what sense we may rightly speak of a “Christian philosophy and science” or of a “Catholic science of history.” Surely not in this sense that philosophy and history have to draw their results from Holy Scripture or from the dogmatical decisions of the Church; nor in the sense that they have to make positive defence for everything that the Church finds it necessary to prescribe. The sense is merely this: they guide themselves by faith, as we said above, by refraining from propositions and presumptions proved by faith to be false. In a large measure this is also the meaning of the often-misrepresented term, Catholic University. In the reverse sense we may speak of a liberal science. It is that science which in the field of philosophy and religion guides itself by the principles of liberalism and the principle of liberal freedom and the rejection of faith. But to speak of a Catholic, Protestant, Liberal chemistry or mathematics, has no sense at all, because these disciplines, like most other profane sciences, have no direct connection with Catholicism, Protestantism, or Liberalism.

Another question may be touched upon: Is the Catholic historian free to proceed steadily in the search after historic truth, even where he discovers facts which do not reflect honour on his Church? And where it is a question of uncertain, private revelation, of doubtfulness of relics and other sacred objects exposed for public worship, may he proceed undisturbed with his critical research, or is he restrained by ecclesiastical authority?

Should the Catholic meet with dark passages in the history of his Church, then every well-meaning observer will demand that he display in the treatment of such matters a pious forbearance for his Church. His respect for her will dictate this. Unsparing criticism and hunting for blemishes and shadows must be excluded. But he cannot on this account be bound to pass by the unpleasant facts he may meet in his researches, or to cloak or deny them against his better knowledge. He knows that the divinity of his Church shows itself to best advantage just because, notwithstanding many weaknesses and faults, past and present, she passes unvanquished and imperishable through all storms,—a token of the supernatural origin of her strength and power of endurance.

It was this very thought that moved Leo XIII. to open the Vatican Archives for freest research to friend and enemy,—the clearest proof that could possibly be given that the Church does not fear historical truth. In his letter of admonition, of August 18, 1883, urging the fostering of historiography, the same Pope gives the following rules for the Catholic scientist: “The first law of history is that it must not say anything false; the second, that it must not be afraid of saying the truth, lest a suspicion of partiality and unfairness arise.” An excellent example of [pg 096] the application of these rules is found in L. v. Pastor's “History of the Popes,” especially in what he says about Alexander VI. and Leo X.

In his historical investigation of private revelations, such as those of St. Gertrude, St. Mechtild, Bl. Juliana of Liège, or of relics and objects of veneration, the historian is likewise not restricted by Church-direction. Having merely the task of preserving the treasure of the faith received from Christ and the Apostles, the Church in her function as Teacher never vouches for the divine origin of new, private revelations, nor for the accuracy of pious traditions of another kind. True, she decides authoritatively whether private revelations contain anything against faith and morals, but she decides nothing more. If she accepts such revelations or traditions as genuine, she claims for the facts in question only that human faith which corresponds to their historical proof.

4. Infallible and Non-Infallible Teachings.

Now to consider a last point. Does it not rest entirely with the pleasure of ecclesiastical authority, as would seem from what has been said above, to suppress at any time the results, or at least the hypotheses, of scientific research by pointing to putative truths of faith presumed to be in opposition? Then, of course, the scientist would be at the mercy of a zealous ecclesiastical authority. Or will it perhaps be said that this authority is infallible in its every decision? Think of Galileo, of the interdict against the Copernican view of the world, and you will be able fully to appreciate the danger alluded to!

We shall later on return to the famous case of Galileo. For the present we only call attention to a distinction which must not be overlooked, the distinction between infallible teachings and those that are not infallible.3

According to Catholic teaching, the universal teaching body of the Church, when declaring unanimously to be an object of faith something relating to faith and morals, is endowed with infallibility, and also when in its daily practice of the faith it unanimously professes a doctrine to be a truth of faith. This infallibility is also possessed by the Pope alone when, acting in his capacity as Supreme Teacher of the Church in matters of faith and morals, he intends to give a permanent decision for the whole Church (ex cathedra).

Besides these infallible teachings there are also non-infallible teachings, and they are the more frequent. Such are, first of all, the ordinary doctrinal utterances of the Pope himself in his regular supervision of the teaching of doctrine: these instructions and declarations are of a lower kind than those peremptory [pg 098] ones that are pronounced ex cathedra: he is infallible only in the utterance of these ultimate, supreme decisions, the chief bulwark, as it were, erected against the floods of error. Decisions ex cathedra are very rare. Encyclical letters, too, are, as a rule, not infallible. It is self-evident that the theological opinions and statements of the Pope as a private person, not as Supreme Head of the Church, do not belong here at all. They have no official character and are in no way binding.

Among decisions that are not infallible are further included, in various degrees, the doctrinal utterances of Bishops, of particular synods, and especially those of the Roman Congregations. The latter are bodies of Cardinals, delegated by the Head of the Church, as highest Papal boards, to co-operate with him in the various offices of administration. Of these, the Congregation of the Holy Office and that of the Index may also render decisions on doctrinal questions. Although the Congregations act by virtue of their delegation from the Pope, and publish their decrees with his consent, the decisions are not decisions of the Pope himself, but remain decisions of the Cardinals. Much less can the infallibility of the Pope pass over to them: it is his personal prerogative, the aid of the Holy Ghost is promised to him, and protects his judgments under certain conditions against error.

But the Catholic owes submission also to the non-infallible teachings; and not only an outer submission, a reverent silence, that offends not either verbally or in writing against the decision rendered, but he owes also his inner assent. But it cannot be that unconditional inner assent which he owes to the infallible decision, for this he holds to be irrevocably certain; nor is his assent to non-infallible decisions a real act of faith. He is not given any unconditional guarantee of the truth. An error is, of course, most unlikely, but not absolutely impossible. Hence the faithful Catholic should always be ready to accept such decisions in as far as they are warranted by recognized truth. This applies to all kinds of doctrinal teaching, but of course in different ways, corresponding to the degree of authority,—for instance, Papal decisions are of higher authority than those of the Congregations,—yet it applies also to the [pg 099] doctrinal decisions of the Congregations, because they are the ordinary teaching organs of the Church.

The obligation to give interior assent also to an authority not infallible, cannot seem strange if this authority offers a guarantee for the truth commensurate to the assent demanded. We certainly ask of a child to receive the instruction from his parent and teacher with internal assent, so far as the latter does not run counter to its instinct for the truth, else the education of the child and the needful influence over its intellectual life would be impossible. Upon the Church has been bestowed by her divine Founder the task of guiding the faithful [pg 100] authoritatively in the educational matters committed to the Church, and not only in their youth but throughout their lives. This guidance in religion and morality would be impossible if the faithful could constantly deny their internal assent to the instruction of the Church, which is given generally in a form that is not infallible. The full power of the Church to teach with authority implies a corresponding duty of the faithful to assent to her teachings as far as this is possible. Does not the scientific specialist think himself obliged to accept a proposition on the strength of a certain authority, even if the latter's infallibility is not established? He reads in his scientific periodical and finds in it the report of special researches made by a colleague. He cannot examine them over again, yet he accepts them because of the reliability of his colleague, in which he sees the guarantee of truth. Likewise, only more so, does the Catholic owe it to his sense of truth to impose upon himself an assent even where the representatives of the teaching authority of the Church are not endowed in their decision with the gift of infallibility. For he knows that even in such teachings the Church is commonly under the guidance of the Holy Ghost, who will seldom tolerate error. He is promised to the teaching Church for the safe guidance of the faithful; these declarations are, however, the ordinary doctrinal utterances of that ecclesiastical office. And the Holy Ghost cannot permit that the teaching authority should by a wrong decision forfeit the confidence it enjoys.

Moreover, this authority ranks very high even when looked at from a purely human standpoint. Those who are invested with it are mostly men of great learning, competent to give such doctrinal decisions by virtue of their experience and position, and learned advisers are at their side. They are guided by the tradition and wisdom of a universal Church, which measures its history by thousands of years: the decisions, too, are for the most part but the application or repetition of previous doctrinal utterances. Besides, there is the hesitating caution which advances to a decision only after long deliberations, and in undemonstrated matters usually refrains from decision; a caution which has increased still more in recent times, since so [pg 101] many subtle questions have arisen on the boundaries of science and faith. It is also known that many inquisitive eyes are constantly turned on Rome, and a single wrong decision might entail most disagreeable consequences for friend and foe. The pressure must be very great before a much-disputed question is taken up at all.

Of course it is by no means impossible that difficulties may pile up in such a way that an error may really be made. History knows of such a case. But the very fact that the one case of Galileo is always quoted, and, therefore, that in the long history of the Congregations this is considered to be almost the only case of importance, is a proof how carefully the Congregations proceed, and that supernatural aid is granted them. An institution which in the course of its long existence had to reply to innumerable questions and against which only one wrong decision of importance can be pointed out, must necessarily be an exemplary institution. An institution so free from human error must surely be guided by the Holy Ghost. Compare with this the many cases in which science has had to correct itself, had to abandon its long-championed propositions as untenable.

Thus, in a given case, the decision is not difficult for the Catholic. On one side stand the representatives of a science which has erred, very often, incomparably more frequently than the ecclesiastical teaching authority, and which lacks the special aid of God. On the other side is the ecclesiastical authority, which has almost never erred, and which enjoys special divine aid; moreover, it examines into its questions with greater caution and care, because it has more to lose. In addition it is almost invariably able to point to a large number, and frequently the majority, of savants who indorse its decisions, because these mostly concern disputed questions not yet scientifically determined. Hence the Catholic will find no difficulty in presuming that the decision is in accord with the truth; the more so because, as a rule, he himself is unable to examine scientifically both sides of the question.

Should any one, nevertheless, be clearly convinced, by substantial and valid reasons, that there has been prejudgment, then he would not be any longer obliged to give it his interior [pg 102] assent: truth before all else. It would be easy, too, by presenting reliable information to an authoritative quarter, to secure the triumph of the truth. However, in this case a man must be ever on his guard against the tendency to overrate his own arguments. In excitement he easily thinks himself to be certainly in the right, but when considering the matter quietly before God and his conscience, he will rarely come to the conclusion that it would be wise to set his judgment above the decision. In the case of Galileo the decision of the Congregation was by no means opposed by a clear conviction of the truth of the opposite.

So much about assenting to doctrinal decisions that are not infallible.

In regard to infallible decisions, the Catholic knows that there are certain truths which no result of science can contradict. To these decisions he owes unconditional submission, and he gives it with conviction: he knows the promise, “I am with you always, even unto the consummation of the world.” New decisions of this kind are very rare. When the dogma of the Infallibility of the Pope was proclaimed in 1870, the fear [pg 103] was frequently expressed that the Head of the Roman Church would hasten to make the fullest use of this prerogative, by erecting theological barriers at all nooks and corners in the realm of thought. The fear did not come true; it was unfounded.

We may get a good idea of the precaution taken prior to the proclamation of an infallible decision by perusing the History of the Vatican Council, published by Granderath, in three volumes. He describes the proceedings with conscientious objectiveness. He shows how minutely all questions had been previously studied, with all the available means of scientific investigation, and how minutely and freely they were discussed by the most venerable representatives of the Catholic world.

Cardinal Gibbons, Archbishop of Baltimore, gave his impressions of the Vatican Council as follows:

“I happened to be the youngest Bishop that attended the Council of the Vatican, and, while my youth and inexperience imposed on me a discreet silence among my elders, I do not remember to have missed a single session, and I was an attentive listener at all the debates.... I think I am not exaggerating when I say that the Council of the Vatican has been excelled by few, if any, deliberative assemblies, civil or ecclesiastical, that have ever met, whether we consider the maturity of years of its members, their learning, their experience and piety, or the widespread influence of the Decrees that they framed for the spiritual and moral welfare of the Christian Republic.

“The youngest Bishop in the Council was thirty-six years old. Fully three-fourths of the Prelates ranged between fifty-six and ninety years. The great majority, therefore, had grown gray in the service of their Divine Master. Several Fathers of the Church, bent with age, might be seen passing through St. [pg 104] Peter's Basilica to the council chamber every morning, leaning with one hand on their staff, the other resting on the shoulder of their secretary. One or two blind Bishops could be observed, guided by their servants, as they advanced to their posts with tottering steps, determined to aid the Church in their declining years by the wisdom of their counsel, as they had consecrated to her their vigorous manhood by their Apostolic labours.

“But to the gravity of years the members of the Council generally united profound and varied learning....

“They were men, too, of world-wide experience and close observation. Each Bishop brought with him an intimate knowledge of the history of his country and of the religious, moral, social, and political condition of the people among whom he lived. One could learn more from an hour's interview with this living encyclopædia of divines, who were a world in miniature, than from a week's study of books.... The most ample liberty of discussion prevailed in the Council. This freedom the Holy Father pledged at the opening of the synod, and the pledge was religiously kept. I can safely say that neither in the British House of Commons, nor in the French Chambers, nor in the German Reichstag, nor in our American Congress, would a wider liberty of debate be tolerated than was granted in the Vatican Council. The presiding Cardinal exhibited a courtesy of manner and a forbearance even in the heat of debate that was worthy of all praise. I do not think that he called a speaker to order more than a dozen times during the eighty-nine sessions, and then only in deference to the dissenting murmurs or demands of some Bishops. A Prelate representing the smallest diocese had the same rights that were accorded to the highest dignitary in the Chamber. There was no limit prescribed as to the length of the speeches. We may judge of the wide scope of discussion from the single fact that the debate on the Infallibility of the Pope lasted two months, occupying twenty-five sessions, and was participated in by one hundred and twenty-five Prelates, not counting one hundred others who handed in written observations. No stone was left unturned, no text of Sacred Scripture, no passage in the writings of the Fathers, no page of Ecclesiastical History bearing on the subject, escaped the [pg 105] vigilant investigations of the Bishops, so that the whole truth of God might be brought to light....

“The most important debate in the Council was that on the Infallibility of the Pope. It may be proper to observe here that the discussion was rather on the expediency or opportuneness of defining the dogma than on the intrinsic truth of the doctrine itself. The number of Prelates who questioned the claim of Papal Infallibility could be counted on the fingers of a single hand. Many of the speakers, indeed, impugned the dogma, not because they did not personally accept it, but with the view of pointing out the difficulties with which the teaching body of the Church would have to contend in vindicating it before the world. I have listened in the council chamber to far more subtle, more plausible, and more searching objections against this prerogative of the Pope than I have ever read or heard from the pen or tongue of the most learned and formidable Protestant assailant” (North American Review, April, 1894).

Obedience of Faith and Freedom of Action.

In looking back at what has been said, we see the justice of the question: where is here any real injury to lawful freedom in thought and scientific research? In most of the profane sciences the scientist receives no directions from the authority of faith; he is altogether free, as long as he keeps within his province. In some matters he is given a list of errors to beware of: these are in the first place the great questions concerning views of the world and life, of which, after all, it is very difficult to obtain scientific knowledge. But here he knows, through the conviction he has of the truth of his faith, that he is offered the truth free from error and prejudice.

It is true, adhering to a religious authority implies restraint. But it is only the restraint of truth. Truth does not lose its claim upon the mind because it is offered to the latter by a supernatural authority; much less does the Creator lose the right to the tribute of homage of his rational creature; and this tribute is rendered by voluntary submission to the revealed [pg 106] truth. Upon the Church, however, has been laid the task of preserving unadulterated the legacy of her Founder from generation to generation. She is responsible before God and history for the faithful presentation of the most sacred inheritance of mankind. Therefore the Church must raise her voice when the puny thoughts of men, called science and progress, rise against the saving truth to disparage, to falsify, to annihilate it. It is not science the Church opposes, but error; not truth, but the emancipation of the human mind from God's authority, an emancipation that is trying to hide its real self under the guise of scientific truth.

“The Church,” says the Vatican Council (Sess. III, ch. 4), “having received with her apostolic office to teach, the obligation of preserving the legacy of the faith, has also the God-given right and duty to condemn what is falsely called science, 'lest any one be cheated by philosophy and vain deceit.'” That the denial of the faith is flippantly called science does not alter the case. What determines the attitude of the Church is not eagerness to rule, not a propensity to apply force to the mind, but loyalty to her vocation. If it is disagreeable for any superior to have to correct those under him, then it requires an heroic strength and courage to cry out time and again to the whole world and its leading minds, Errastis, you have erred! It requires heroism to reject, to oppose and condemn, time and again, propositions sailing under the flag of progress, light and enlightenment, in spite of the protest of those concerned, who denounce whatever opposes them as darkness and retrogression. How much easier it would be to fawn upon the pet ideas of the age, Neo-protestantism and Modernism, and thus to gain their approval, than to hear repeatedly the distressing words, “We will not have her to rule over us—crucifige, crucifige!”

But why not let science correct itself? Why these violent condemnations and indictments? Science, by virtue of its instinct for the truth will by itself find the way back, when it has gone on the wrong track; only be patient. Science has in itself the cure for all its defects. Has it not already all by itself overcome numerous errors in the course of the centuries? Indeed, were there nothing at stake but scientific theories they [pg 107] might be readily left to themselves: the loss to mankind would not be great. But here there are more important issues at stake. The protection of the faith, of truths of the vastest importance for Christian life and the souls of men. And it is the duty of the Church to protect her charges from going astray, from dangers to salvation. How many thousands of them would suffer harm before it would please science to correct its heresies! It often takes a long time to pull down the idols placed upon pedestals, and then it may be only to erect another idol. How long will it take modern philosophy to agree that the will of man is free, that there is a substantial immortal soul, that a Creator of the world dwells above the heavens? Is the Church to wait till the men of science make up their minds to desist from denying the existence of a personal God, and to bow before the Creator of heaven and earth? Should she meanwhile look on calmly how such ruinous doctrines are pervading and penetrating society deeper and deeper? Souls cannot wait thus to suffer shipwreck. Finally, the duty to believe remains the same for all, for the scientist, too—he is not free to delay his assent until he has exhausted all his antagonistic scientific experiments.

To be sure, the scientist is restricted in so far as he is not allowed to pursue any and every hypothesis, regardless of the immutable truth; he may no longer follow every scientific fashion. But is this a real detriment to the human intellect and science? Has not every science to bear restraint from other sciences at all times? The adherent of Darwin's theory of natural selection needs a billion years for his slow evolution; but the geologist tells him that neither the formation of the earth's surface nor the strata or sub-strata have taken so long in formation—he corrects him. When the philosopher, drawing the logical deductions from his materialistic views of the world, assumes that the first living being sprang from lifeless matter, the naturalist informs him that this is contradicted by facts—there never has been a case of spontaneous generation. The naturalist is corrected by the better experiment of men of his profession, the scientific author is corrected by his critic. Hence if a man submits to the guidance of other men of his profession, if one science accepts direction from another science, [pg 108] without any one seeing any injury to freedom therein, why, then, should it be mental oppression for God's infallible wisdom to call out through His Church to the fallible human mind: this is error, I declare it so? When the guide-post points out to the traveller that he is on the wrong way, will the wanderer indignantly resent the correction as an interference with his freedom of action? Is the railing along the steep precipice, to guard against falling down, an interference with liberty? Is the lighthouse, warning the sailor of cliffs and shoals, any interference with his freedom?

Generally those who oppose the Christian and Catholic duty to believe use the following argument: Where there is restraint and dependence there is no freedom; the Christian, and especially the Catholic, is restrained and dependent; hence he is not free: consequently he has no true science, because there can be no true science without freedom. In the same way it may be argued: The civilized nation is restrained in various ways by the civil order, therefore it is not free. The careful writer of scientific works is tied down on all sides by the rules of logic, by the dictates of good style, by scientific usages: hence he is not free.

Let us not lose sight of the question. It cannot be denied that the man who does not bother about faith has a greater outer freedom than the man who does. We speak purposely of outer freedom. It is quite another question, where real internal freedom exists, i.e., freedom from the fetters of one's own inclinations and prejudices,—in the religiously disciplined mind, or in the other. Here we speak of inner freedom. Obviously it is greater in the former. The deer in the forest is freer in his movements than the cautious mountain-climber, who keeps to marked roads and paths, so as to journey safely, yet the latter is not without freedom. Nor will any one deny that the Australian bushman enjoys a greater outer freedom than the civilized white, restrained by laws, by rules and regulations, by standards of decency. And the busy writer of many things and everything, who in his writing never pays any attention to logic, to scientific form, to style and tact, has more freedom than one who strictly conforms to all these.

Every civilization, culture, and education implies restriction of freedom, and the more the rejection of dependence and laws increases the nearer we approach the state of uncultured and barbarous nations. The same applies to intellectual culture. The higher it is, the more learning and mental culture a man has, the greater the number of truths, principles, and intellectual standards he carries within him. By these he is bound if he wants to advance into the higher spheres of intellectuality. And the more the intellect rejects laws and standards the more unregulated and dull its intellectual life will become. The more one knows the more strictly is he bound to truth in every respect; the less one knows the freer he is to commit errors. This is no advantage, it is the privilege of the ignorant and untrained mind. The believer is bound by religious truth in the same way as one who knows the truth is bound by it, while one who is ignorant of it is not.

It is certainly not impossible for the obedience of faith to create intellectual conflict. There may be cases when scientific views look probable to the scientist, while they contradict a doctrine of faith or an ecclesiastical decision. The roads may even cross more radically. It may happen that his views and books are condemned, forbidden by the Church.

If the conflicting doctrine should be an infallible one, the decision of the believing scientist is soon reached. He knows now what to think of his hypothesis, that it is not true progress but aberration, and consistency with his own conviction moves him to desist. Thus the philosophical errors of modern times are opposed almost throughout to infallible dogmas, for the most part fundamental doctrines of the Christian religion. This is also the legal right under which revelation and the Church approach the scientist with the demand not to permit his views to go contrary to faith, because there can never be a contradiction between faith and reason. “There can never be a contradiction between faith and reason,” the Vatican Council teaches; “the apparent conflict is due either to the doctrine not being understood and interpreted in the sense of the Church, or to erroneous opinions that are mistaken for conclusions of reason” (Conc. Vat. sess. III, cp. 4). If the Catholic [pg 110] finds his position opposed to non-infallible decisions, then he will re-examine his views in unselfish impartiality before God. If he must calmly tell himself that his arguments are not so weighty as to be able to stand up before so high an authority, guided by the Holy Ghost, then he will forego the gratification of holding fast to his own opinions, and will remind himself that true wisdom knows the fallibility of the human mind, and is ever ready to take advice from a divinely guided authority. Perhaps he will recall the words of the great St. Augustine: “Better bow before an incomprehensible but saving symbol than entangle one's neck in the meshes of error” (De doctr. Christ. III, 13). This Christian self-denial surpasses in beauty even science itself, and sheds upon it a greater splendour.

Even should the future prove as scientifically correct that which the believing scientist does not as yet clearly see, that he was scientifically in the right, no considerable damage would result to science. Providence, which guides human affairs, will protect science for its noble modesty in submitting meanwhile to an authority appointed by God. As a matter of fact, science cannot be shown ever to have suffered any real loss by such submission, not even in the Galileo case, as we shall see further on. On the other hand, countless are the errors and injuries which have befallen human thought and belief, and which the Church has warded off from those who yielded to her guidance. Of course the submission may become difficult if a man clings to his views, or has already publicly proclaimed them. Then, indeed, a bitter struggle may ensue. A number of scientists have failed to stand the test and have left to posterity the ill-fated name of apostates. The Church regrets such cases; but the deposit of faith is too precious to be endangered for the sake of any individual.

For this reason the Church is and must be conservative; for this reason she may have to warn against the dissemination of propositions which may not in themselves be false, but fraught with danger for the time being. She cannot take part in any hasty effort to make experiments, risking everything inherited in order to try something new.

Sentiments of the kind just set forth are of course possible only in conjunction with the belief in a revelation and in the supernatural character of the Church, where the interests of faith come first, and must be unconditionally preserved. He who lacks this conviction, he to whom the Church is but a human institution, founded in the course of time, tending perhaps to oppose truth and science for fear they might endanger the submission of minds—to such a one the Catholic's confident devotion to his Church, and consciousness of unimpaired freedom at the same time, will be unintelligible; and the inflexibility of the Church in defending the faith will pass his comprehension. And woe to the Church when her position toward science is being tried before this court: only harsh denunciations are to be expected where the judge does not understand the matter he undertakes to decide.

Nor do we attempt to bridge the chasm that separates the two views of the world which we here again encounter, the one, which rejects the supernatural world, the other, the view of the believing Christian. We have but endeavoured to show that faith does not restrain the mental freedom of one who is convinced of the truth of his faith. Submission to the authority of faith is the consequence of his conviction. This is the question to be decided: Either there is a revelation and a Church founded by God, or there is not. If such there be, or if it is only possible, then modern freedom of thought, with its demand of exemption from all authority, is against reason and morality. If there is not, then this should be proved. It can [pg 113] be done consistently only by acknowledging atheism. For if there is a personal God, then He can give a revelation and found a Church, and demand submission from all. Since the days of Celsus to this day the attempt to demonstrate that the convictions of a faithful Christian are unjustifiable has proved futile.

Obedience of Faith and Injury to Science.

While all this is true, yet one may not share this conviction, nor rise to the certainty that there is a supernatural world whence the Son of God descended to teach man and to found an infallible Church. Still, to be fair, he must admit that no real danger to freedom of research and progress of science results from submission to faith, as shown above.

In the first place it must be admitted that the assertion is still unproved, that a positive result of research has ever come in hopeless conflict with a dogma of faith; hence that science has been prevented from accepting this result. No such case can be found. The condemnation of the Copernican view of the world will be considered presently; we pass over the fact that at the time of its condemnation it was not a positive result of science: the main point is that the condemnation was not an irrevocable dogma of faith, but only the decision of a Congregation, which was withdrawn as soon as the truth was clearly demonstrated. Besides, science has suffered no injury from that decision.

In general, where there is real contradiction between science and faith, the matters in question are invariably hypotheses. Is it more than an hypothesis, and a very doubtful hypothesis at that, that the world and God are identical, that there is an eternal, uncreated course of the world, that miracles are impossible? That what is said about the natural origin of Christianity, the origin of the Jewish religion from Babylonian myths, the origin of all religions from fear, fancy, or deception, is it anything more than hypothetical? The false systems of knowledge, subjectivism, and agnosticism—are they more than hypotheses? Ask their originators and champions; they will admit it themselves; and if they will not admit it, others will [pg 114] tell them that their propositions are not only hypotheses, but often quite untenable. There is hardly a single hypothesis which has not its vehement opponents. That the serious conflict between dogma and science is waged only in this field could be proved by abundant examples. Besides, is it not the philosophical axiom of modern freedom of thought, that in the sphere of philosophy and religion there is no certain knowledge, but only supposition?

Can hypotheses claim to rank as assured results of research which should be universally accepted? Why should it not be allowed to contradict them, to oppose them with other suppositions? Is it not in the interest of science that this be done, that they be subjected to sharp criticism, lest they gradually be given out for positive results? Is it not a shameful trifling with the truth, when a Haeckel deceives wide circles by pretending that most frivolous hypotheses are established results of science? Is it not misleading when modern science treats the rejection of a supernatural order as an established principle?

Erravimus.

Yet another fact may be pointed out. It is an undeniable fact that science, after straying for some time, is not unfrequently compelled to return to what is taught by faith and the Church, thus confirming the truth of the faith. Frequently the new theory has come on like a tornado, sweeping all minds before it. But the tempest was soon spent, the minds recovered their balance and the hasty misjudgment was recognized.

Many similar instances of science confessing Erravimus in regard to the Christian or Catholic position could be cited. They are an admonition to be modest, not to overrate the value of a scientific proposition, and not, with supreme confidence and infallibility, to brand it as an offence against the human intellect to let one's self be guided by the principles of faith.

Moreover, it has often happened that science emphatically and sneeringly rejected propositions, and called them false and absurd, which to-day are considered elementary.

Newton, in 1687, had correctly explained the revolution of the moon around the earth, and of the planets around the sun, as the co-operation of gravitation and inertia, and thence concluded also the elliptic form of the orbits of planets previously discovered by Kepler. Leibnitz rejected this theory, Huygens called it absurd, and the Academy of Paris as late as 1730 still favoured the theory of revolution of Descartes; it was only about the year 1740 that it was generally accepted. Huygens, himself, had formed in 1690 his theory about light-waves. For a long time it was misunderstood. Only in 1800, or somewhat later, it received its merited acknowledgment, but noted physicists like Biot and Brewster rejected it still for some time and held to the theory of emission. “Even in the intellectual world the law of inertia holds good” (Rosenberger, Gesch. der Physik, III, 1887, 139).

When Benjamin Franklin explained the lightning-rod to the Royal Academy of Sciences, he was ridiculed as a dreamer. The same happened to Young with his theory of the undulation of light. “The Edinburgh Review” proposed to the public to put Thomas Grey in a strait-jacket when he presented his plan for railroads. Sir Humphry Davy laughed at the idea of illuminating the city of London by gas. The French Academy of Sciences actually sneered at the physicist Arago when he proposed a resolution to merely open a discussion of the idea of an electric telegraph (Wallace, Die wissensch. Ansicht des Uebernatuerlichen, 102 seq.).

Do not these examples bear a striking resemblance to the attitude of many of the representatives of modern science towards facts and truths of our faith?

This has not been said with a view of detracting from the [pg 120] reputation of science. Not at all. It has fallen to the lot of man to be subject to error. The above was said to recall that fact. Science is not so infallible as to be able to claim the right to ignore, in religious and ethical questions, faith and the Church, and even to usurp the place of the faith given by God, in order to lead its disciples upon the new paths of a delivered mankind.

What It Is.

In the year 1901 a case, insignificant in itself, caused great excitement in and even beyond the scientific world. What had happened? At the University of Strassburg, in a territory for the most part Catholic, no less than one-third of the students were Catholic, yet of the seventy-two professors sixty-one were Protestant, six Israelites and but four Catholics (according to the report of the Secretary of State, Koeller, in the 115th session of the Reichstag, January 11, 1901). The government resolved, in view of the state of affairs, to give more consideration, when appointing professors, to the Catholic members of the university. Even the non-Catholic members of the Bundesrat desired it. A vacancy occurring in the faculty of history, the government, besides appointing the Protestant professor proposed by the faculty of philosophy, decided to create a new chair to be filled by a Catholic.

The appointment of a Catholic professor of history was regarded as seriously endangering science. The storm broke. The venerable historian, Th. Mommsen, who had been a champion of liberty in the revolution of 1848, promptly gave the alarm. In the Munich “Neueste Nachrichten” there appeared over his signature an article that created a general sensation. “German university circles,” he said, in his solemn protest, “are pervaded by a feeling of degradation. Our vital nerve is unprejudiced research; research that does not find what it seeks and expects to find, owing to purposes, considerations, and restraints that serve other, practical ends extraneous to science—but finds what logically and historically appears to the conscientious scientist the right thing, truthfulness. The appointment of a college teacher whose freedom is restricted by barriers [pg 122] is laying the axe to the root of German science. The call to a chair of history, or philosophy, of one who must be a Catholic or a Protestant, and who must serve this or that confession, is tantamount to compelling him to set bounds to his work whenever the results might be awkward for a religious dogma.” And he concludes with a ringing appeal for the solidarity of the representatives of science: “Perhaps I am not deceived in the hope of having given expression to the sentiments of our colleagues.” This statement of the famous scientist, conceived in the temper of his days of '48, was soon softened, if not neutralized, by a subsequent statement from his pen. But the spark had already started the fire. From most universities there came letters of approval and praise of his courageous stand, in behalf of the honour of the universities and of German science. On the other hand, some gave vent to their regret of his hot-spurred action. Since then the song of unprejudiced science has been sung in countless variations and keys, ending as a rule with the chorus: Hence the believing, especially Catholics, cannot be true scientists. For this was the central idea of Mommsen's protest, and in that sense it had been understood.

For the sake of clearness we shall condense the substance of the thought into a brief form: The vital nerve of science, the condition under which alone it can exist, is unprepossession, that is, a straightforward honesty that knows of no other consideration than to aim at the truth for its own sake. The believer, the Catholic, cannot be unprepossessed, because he must pay regard to dogmas and Church-doctrine and precept. Therefore he is wanting in the most essential requisite of true science. Hence college professors of a Catholic conviction are anomalous: they have no right to claim a chair in the home of unprepossessed science. For reasons of expediency it may be advisable to appoint some of them, but they cannot be regarded as sterling scientists. Catholic theology, building upon faith, is not science in the true sense of the word, and deserves no place in a university. A Catholic university, a home of scientific research built upon a Catholic foundation, is something like a squared circle. It may be that Catholic scientists, too, have their achievements, but they cannot be [pg 123] expected to be possessed of that unflinching pursuit of the truth which must be part of the man of science.

These are thoughts which have petrified in the minds of many into self-evident principles, with all the obstinacy of intolerance. It is not difficult to recognize in it the old reproach we have already dealt with, it is here in a slightly different form. The believing scientist is not free to search for the truth, being tied down by his duty to believe. Science, however, must be free. Hence the believer cannot properly pursue science.

Freedom of science and science unprepossessed are related terms and are often used synonymously. Therefore, in putting the probe to the often-repeated demand for unprepossession, we shall meet with ideas similar to those we have already discussed, only in a slightly different shape.

What, then, is that unprepossession which science must avow? Can the Catholic, the believing scientist, possess it? Unprepossessed research—“I don't like the expression,” says a representative of free-thought, “because it is a product of that shortcoming which has already done great damage to free-thought in its struggle with the powers of the past” (Jodl). Hence we have reason to fear that the confidence with which this word is used is greater than the clearness of thought it represents.

What is meant by saying that science must be unprepossessed? Undoubtedly it means that science should make no presuppositions, it must enter upon its work free from prejudice and presumption. And what is presumption? Evidently something presumed, upon which the research is to rest the level and rule of its direction: the supposition being taken for granted, without express proof. What I have expressly proved in my process of thought is no longer a supposition to the structure of thought, but a part of that structure.

Is the scientist, however, to allow no presumption at all? That would be impossible. When making his calculations the mathematician presupposes the correctness of the multiplication table. Or is he first to prove that twice three are six? He could not do it, because it is immediately self-evident. In his optical experiments in the laboratory, in drawing inferences as [pg 124] to the nature of light from different indications, the physicist presupposes that senses are able to observe the facts correctly, that everything has its respective reason, that nothing can be and not be, at the same time, under the same conditions. Can he or must he try first to prove it? He must presume it because it is beyond a doubt, and because it cannot be proved at all, at least all of it cannot. The astronomer, too, makes unhesitating use of the formulas of mathematics without examining them anew; every natural scientist calmly presupposes the correctness of the results established by his predecessors and goes on building upon those results: he may do so because he cannot with reason doubt them. Hence presumptions are common; they may be made when we are convinced of their truth; they must be made because not everything can be proved. Much cannot be proved because it is immediately self-evident, as, for instance, the ability to recognize the true or the elementary principles of reasoning; many other things cannot always be proved minutely, because not every scientist cares to begin with the egg of Leda. He that wants to build a house builds upon a given base; if he will not accept it, if he desires to dig up the fundament to the very bottom, in order to lay it anew, he will be digging forever, but the house will never be built.

Hence to say that science must be unprepossessed cannot mean that it must not make any presupposition. What, therefore, does it mean? Simply this: Science must not presume anything to be true which is false, nor anything as proved which is still uncertain and unproved. Whatever the scientist knows to be certain he may take as such, presuming it as the foundation and direction of further work; and what he knows to be probable he may suppose to be probable.

In so doing he in no way offends against the ideal that should be ever-present to his mind—the truth, because he merely allows himself to be guided by the truth, recognized as such. And the sequence of truth cannot but be truth, the sequence of certainty cannot but be certainty. But should he presuppose to be true what is false and unproved, and the uncertain to be certain, then he would offend against truth, against the aim of every science.

Unprepossession and Religious Conviction.

Is it possible for the Christian scientist who adheres to his faith, to be unprepossessed, as demanded by science? According to all that has been said hitherto about the relation of science to faith, the answer can be only in the affirmative. The believing Christian and Catholic looks upon the doctrines of faith taught him by revelation and the Church as an established truth. What to me is true and certain I can take for the true and certain basis and standard of my thought. This is demanded by unprepossession—nothing more.

Considering the immense extent of the sciences, the profane sciences will but seldom, and in but few matters, have occasion to presuppose truths of faith in the above-mentioned way; and only in a negative form at that. We have previously shown that the profane sciences must never take truths of faith for a positive basis to build upon; they must regard the doctrines of revelation only in so far as it is not allowed to teach anything in contradiction to them. And with this demand they will meet in rare instances only, because, if not overstepping their province, they will very seldom come in touch with faith (cf. pp. 88-96). When Kepler was studying his planetary orbits, and Newton discovered the law of gravitation, both worked independent of the Christian view of the world which they both professed; it was in no way a necessary presupposition to their research. When Scheiner discovered the sun-spots, and Secchi classified [pg 126] the spectra of the stars, they were not doing so as Jesuits nor as Catholics; as Mohammedans or atheists they might have made the same discoveries. Steam engines and railways, Volta's electricity, cathode-rays and X-rays, all discoveries that the nineteenth century can boast of, do not depend directly on any special view of the world.

And if the believing scientist does take his faith for a guide in some matters, when in all his researches in the history of the Christian religion and the Church he presupposes that God's miraculous interference is not impossible, because the contrary would offend not only against his faith, but also against his common sense; when in pondering the ultimate reasons of all things he allows himself to be influenced by the idea that atheism is false, or at least not proved—for that there is a God both his faith and his reason tell him—then these presumptions are by no means inadmissible. The naturalist, too, presupposing certain results of science to be true, takes care not to get into conflict with them, and he will soon correct himself should he arrive at different results. If a mathematician should arrive at results conflicting with other proved results, he would infer therefrom that his calculation was faulty; why, then, cannot the Christian now and then be led by the truths of his faith, of which he is certain, without by doing so offending against the spirit of scientific truthfulness?

Or may he not do so just because they are religious truths, vouched for by a supernatural authority? As a fact many of them are established also by the testimony of reason. This is shown by the examples just mentioned. However, the question is not how a truth is vouched for, but whether it be a truth or not. If the scientist is assured that something is unquestionably true, then he owes it to the spirit of truthfulness to accept it. In doing so he will in no way be unfaithful to his scientific method; the truths of faith are to him not a source of proofs for the results of his profane science, but only hints, calling his attention to the fact that certain propositions are not proved, that they are even false.

Or are the Christian truths of faith perhaps regrettable errors, hence presumptions that should not be made? If so, demonstrate it. Hitherto such demonstration has not succeeded. So long as the creed of the believing Christian cannot be refuted convincingly, he has the right to cling to it in the name of truth.

Or can we not have reasonable certainty at all in religious matters? Are they the undemonstrable things of an uncontrollable sentiment? To be sure, this is asserted often enough, explicitly or by insinuation. If this were true, then of course duty of faith and true unprepossession could not go together; one would be regarding as the truth things of which one cannot be convinced. But this is also an unproved assumption: it is the duality of subjectivism and agnosticism, the fundamental presumption of liberal freedom of science, which we have already sufficiently exposed.

However, let us assume again the position of those who do not feel themselves personally convinced of the truth of the Christian dogmatic faith, or of the Catholic Church. But the Catholic is firmly convinced thereof and, if need be, will make sacrifices for this conviction, as millions have done. Hence, can any one forbid him to think and judge according to his conviction? Would they who differ from his opinion for this very reason force him to think against his own conviction? Would not that indeed be “seduction to sin against the Holy Ghost”? If the jurist or historian has formed the conviction that Mommsen is on historical questions concerning Roman law an authority, who may be followed without scruple, and he does so without re-examining the particular points, will this be looked upon as an offence against unprepossession? If, then, the Catholic is certain that he may safely trust to revelation [pg 128] and the Church—and there is no authority on earth of more venerable standing, even if viewed from a purely natural point—will he alone be accused of mental blindness and lack of freedom?

Or may the scientist have no view of the world at all, because he might be influenced thereby in certain directions? The champions of this demand will surely not admit that they have not a definite view of the world. By no means! We know very well that just those who are most vehement in urging unprepossessed science have a very pronounced notion of the world, we know also that they are resolutely propagating that notion. Yet nothing is said against a scientist who is a monist, or who starts from agnosticism. It seems they intend to exclude one view only, the positive religious view. Yet not even this one wholly. No one finds the Jew who adheres to his religion unfit for scientific research. Of course not. Protestants, too, find favour: according to the statutes of some German universities Protestants only may be professors there. Neither Mommsen nor any other herald of unprepossession deems it necessary to defend science against these institutions and usages. It is plain what is meant by the popular cry for science unprepossessed: The man of science may be anything, sceptic or atheist, pagan or Hottentot, only he must not be a faithful Catholic. Is this fair? Is this the spirit of truth and justice with which they claim to be filled?

The bluster about unprepossession proceeds from shallowness and dishonesty. The most varied presumptions, that have nothing to do with science and the pursuit of the truth, may pass without notice; only when Christian and Catholic religious convictions, resting upon divine authority, are encountered, then tolerance gives way to excitement, a hue and cry is raised, the gate is shut, and entrance to the scientific world denied.

The Duty to Believe and Scientific Demonstration.

But cannot the believing Christian submit to scientific investigation the doctrine of faith itself, which he must without doubt hold to be true? This must surely be allowed if he is to convince himself scientifically of the truth of it. Indeed, this is allowed. He may critically examine everything to the very bottom, even the existence of God, the rationality of his own mind. But how can he, if no doubt is permissible? To examine means to search doubtingly; it means to call the matter in question—this, too, is right. It is, on the one hand, a doctrine of the Catholic Church that they who have received faith through the ministry of the Church, that is, they that have been made familiar with the essential subjects of the faith and the motives of their credibility by proper religious instruction, must not doubt their faith. They have no reasonable excuse for doubting because they are assured of the truth of the faith. We have discussed this point before.4

Nevertheless a scientific examination of the foundations and truths of faith is allowed and wholesome. Nearly all the theological works written by Catholics since the days of Justin and Augustine are nothing but examinations of this kind. At every examination one proceeds with doubt and question. This is [pg 132] admitted; but this doubt must be merely a methodical one, not a serious one, nor need it be serious. These two kinds of doubt must be clearly distinguished. In case of a serious doubt I look upon the matter as really dubious, and withhold my assent. I am not yet convinced of its truth. This kind of a doubt is not allowed in matters of faith and it is the only one that is forbidden. In case of a methodical doubt I proceed as convinced of a truth, but I do not yet see the reasons plainly, and would like to be fully conscious of them. Evidently there is no need of casting aside the convictions I have hitherto held, and of beginning to think that the matter is by no means positively established.

For instance, I am convinced that a complicated order must be the work of intellect; however, I would like to find the proof of it. Hence I proceed as if the truth were yet to be found. But it would evidently be absurd to think in the meantime that such admirable order could be the result of blind accident. Or, I am convinced that there must be a source for every event: I desire to find the demonstration of it. In the meantime shall I think it possible for another Nova Persei to be produced in the sky without any cause? Or, investigating to see whether I am capable of recognizing the truth, shall I seriously become a sceptic till I am convinced that I ought not to be such? As soon as I really doubt that I can recognize anything at all as true, obviously I cannot proceed any further. Kant begins his “Critique of Pure Reason” with this doubt, and many imitate him, but only by evident inconsistency are they able to continue their researches by means of reason. Scientific examination does not consist in repudiating a certainty held hitherto, in order to arrive at it anew; it consists in bringing to one's clear consciousness the reasons for that certainty, and in trying to formulate those reasons precisely. To investigate the light it is evidently not necessary first to extinguish it.

Thus the believing Christian may most certainly probe into his religious conviction without interfering with his adherence, and by doing so proceed unprepossessed in the fullest sense, for unprepossession does not mean the rooting up of all certainty. At the threshold of wisdom does not sit Scepticism.

What Unprepossession is Not.

But the deeper, modern meaning of unprepossession is precisely the right to doubt seriously everything, especially the truths of the Christian faith; this is the freedom demanded. Scepticism, the stamp of our time.

Many a misconception may have contributed to the definition of this unprepossession. For instance, overlooking the important difference between methodical doubt and serious doubt.

Then there is the erroneous opinion that we should and could proceed everywhere in the same way as in the natural sciences. Almost parallel with the progress in the natural sciences grew the doubt of the correctness of the ancient physical and astronomical notion of the world; piece after piece crumbled away under the hand of research; new truths were discovered. In just admiration of these results it was concluded that all provinces of human cognition should be “researched” in the same way, not excepting religion and theories of the world; here, too, science should cast a radical doubt upon everything and discover truth—as if here we had to deal with matters similar to astronomy and physics, in the state they were centuries ago; as if all mankind was still ignorant of the truth and science had to discover it.

This right to doubt is claimed especially in the higher questions of religion. Certain cognition by reason is, after all, impossible here, such is the presumption, and therefore, first of all, it is the right and duty of man, as soon as he has attained his intellectual maturity, to shape by doubt his views of the world to the satisfaction of his mind and heart, to win them by a struggle; nor is this true only in the case of the single individual, but also of entire generations. To see problems everywhere, not to have any convictions, this is taken to be true unprepossession.

Research without ever arriving at the sure possession of the truth, this is now the meaning of science, especially of philosophy. Hence there cannot be a philosophy conclusive and immutable, and any point which seems established may at any time be revised according to new perceptions. “There is no question that may not be asked; none which in the abstract could not just as well be denied as affirmed. In this sense philosophy is unprepossessed” (Paulsen, Die deutschen Universitaeten, 1902, 304 seq.). The highest achievement it declares itself capable of, is not to point out the truth to its disciples, for it does not know the truth itself, but only this: “We expect, or at least we should expect, that during the years of study the mind give itself earnestly to philosophy, and strive for a firm grasp of ideas. The great pathfinders in world thought, Plato, Aristotle, Spinoza, Kant, and whoever may be ranked with them, remain the living teachers of philosophy.” Thus we hold those great intellectual achievements, Plato's doctrine and ideas, Spinoza's atheistic pantheism, Aristotle's objectivism and Kant's subjectivism, with other views of the world of most variegated patterns, all contradicting and excluding one another, all dubious, none sure. What would be said of an astronomy that could do nothing better than fix the telescope on the different stars and then tell its disciples: Now look for what you please, ideas of Ptolemy or Copernicus; Aristotle's theory of the spheres or Newton's theory of gravity; each has its points, but of none can it be said it is certain! Such an astronomy would probably be left to its deserved fate.

In the most important points of religion mankind has ever, even in pagan times, recognized the truth, albeit imperfectly. This is evinced by the conviction that there exists a personal [pg 135] God and a hereafter; convictions which can be proved historically. God's revelation has provided those who desire to believe with a fuller knowledge of the truth: heaven and earth will pass away, but these words will not pass away. But what is already in our safe possession cannot be once more discovered by research. What has already been found is no longer an object of research. Mankind's lot would be a sad one indeed were this unprepossessed science in the right; if in the most important questions of life it were condemned forever to tantalizing doubt. God's providence has ordained matters more kindly for humanity.

On the other hand, it is a poor science that has nothing to offer but an eternal query for the truth. A poor science, that with self-consciousness promises enlightenment and what not, but finally can give nothing but ceaseless doubt instead of truth, tormenting darkness instead of cheerful light. Why, then, research where nothing can be found? Why raise searching eyes to the sky when the stars do not show themselves? What kind of progress is this when science does nothing further than dig forever at the foundation? The great St. Augustine has long also passed judgment on this kind of science: “Such doubting is abhorred by the City of God as false wisdom, because among the things which we grasp with our intellect and reason there is a knowledge, limited, it is true, because the soul is weighed down by a perishable body, as the Apostle says: ex parte scimus—but which has full certainty” (De Civitate Dei, XIX, 18).

An Erroneous Supposition.

The errors just dealt with, and the demand that scientific research must doubt everything, is based on a supposition often stated expressly as a principle, and which appears quite plausible even to a mind not trained in philosophy. It says: There is but one certainty, the scientific certainty; the certain possession of the truth can be obtained only by scientific research. To rid the world of error, we are told, “there is but one way, viz., scientific work. Only science and scientific truth are able to dispose of error” (Th. Lipps, Allgemeine Zeitung, Muenchen, [pg 136] August 4, 1908). “Truth is scientific truth, based on criticism, hence the religion of modern man must also rest on critical truth.... There is no other authority but science” (Masaryk, Kampf um die Religion, 13).

This sort of speech we hear from the college chair as the slogan for education and enlightenment: any one deficient in science or in education belongs more or less to the unthinking mass who have no convictions of their own, but submit blindly to impressions and authority.

Thus science may summon everything before its forum, no one having a right to interfere; in the superiority bestowed by the right of autocracy it may sweep aside everything that is opposed to it, no matter by what authority. Hence science must be free to jolt everything, free to question the truth of everything, which it has not itself examined and approved. This is the fundamental supposition of modern freedom of science; also a fatal error, betraying a woeful ignorance of the construction of the human intellect, in spite of all its pretentiousness. As a rule we have a true certainty in most matters, particularly in philosophical-religious convictions, a certainty not gained by scientific studies; by aid of the latter we may explain or strengthen that certainty, but we are not free to upset it.

We cannot avoid examining this point a little closer. There is a twofold certainty, one, which we shall call the natural certainty, [pg 137] is a firm conviction based on positive knowledge, but without a clear reflexive consciousness of the grounds on which the conviction is actually resting. Reason recognizes these grounds, but the recognition is not distinct enough for reason to become conscious of them, to be able to state them accurately and in scientific formulas. scientific certainty is a firm conviction, with a clear consciousness of the grounds, hence it can easily account for them. Natural certainty is the usual one in human life; scientific certainty is the privilege of but a few, and even they have it in but very few things.

This certainty is destined to be the reliable guide of man through life. It precedes science, and can even exist without it. Long before there was a science of art and of jurisprudence the Babylonians and Egyptians had built their monuments, and Solon and Lycurgus had given their wise laws. And long before philosophers were disputing about the moral laws, men had the right view in regard to virtue and vice (cf. Cicero, De Oratore, I, 32). The same certitude is also destined to guide man in the more important questions, in the questions of religion and morality. The Creator of human nature and its destiny, who implanted instinct in the animal to guide it unconsciously in the necessities of life, has also given to man the necessary light to perceive with certainty truths without which it would be impossible to live a life worthy of man.

It is just this natural knowledge and certitude that gives man certainty of divine revelation, after God vouchsafed to give it to mankind for its unfailing guidance and help. For revelation was not only intended for theologians, Bible critics, philosophers, and Church-historians, but for all. And God has taken care, as He had to do, that man has ample evidence that God has spoken, and that the Church is the authorized Guardian of this revelation, even without critical research in history and philosophy. We have elsewhere briefly stated this evidence in the words of the Vatican Council.

How high this wisdom rises above the limited thought of a science that imagines itself alone to be wise! Sad indeed would be the lot of mankind could it attain to certain truth in the most important questions of life only by lengthy scientific investigations. The overwhelming majority of mankind would be forever excluded from the certain knowledge that there is a God, an eternity, liberty, that there are immutable moral laws and truths, on the value of which depends the woe and weal of humanity.

Hence the result of our discussion is: independent of science mankind has its positive convictions, independent of science it finds here rest and gratification in its longing for truth. Scientific study and research are for the purpose of setting these truths in a brighter light, of defending the patrimony of mankind. But the fosterer of science must not claim the freedom to ignore these positive convictions in himself and in others, to endanger the patrimony of mankind by doubts and attacks instead of protecting it, much less must he condemn the human mind to the eternal labour of Sisyphus, to the eternal rolling of a huge stone which, recoiling, must always be lifted anew.

The Enemy of Progress.

In her journey through the centuries the Church has had to listen to many accusations because she, the keeper of the truth entrusted to her care, has refused to respond to the demand to accept unconditionally the ideals devised by existing fashions. Cantavimus vobis et non saltastis (we have piped to you and you have not danced). Therefore the Church has been called reactionary; the heretics of the first centuries of Christianity denounced her as the enemy of the higher gnosis; a later period [pg 143] denounced her as an enemy of the genuine humanism, in the eighteenth century she was denounced as the enemy of enlightenment, to-day she is denounced as the enemy of progress. Again the Church is accused before the judicial bar of the children of the age. They desire to eat plentifully from the tree of knowledge, but the Church, they say, prevents them. They wish to climb the heights of human perfection, to ascend higher than any preceding generation, but the Church holds them back. She will keep them in the fetters of her guardianship. And with a keen, searching eye the smart children of our age have looked the old Church over, taking notice of everything, anxious to put her in the wrong.

Their charges do not fail to make an impression, even on the Church herself. She wishes to justify herself before the plaintiffs, and still more before her own children who trust in her. Thus she has not hesitated in declaring loudly on most solemn occasions that she is not an enemy of noble science and of human progress, and with great earnest she takes exception to this charge.

No wonder, one might say, that the Church makes such assurances. It is time for her to realize that unless she can clear herself from it this accusation will be her moral ruin at a time when the banner of progress is held aloft, and when even the Catholic world shares in that progress. True, but let us not forget this: if there is anything characteristic of the Catholic Church it is her frankness and honesty. She is not afraid to proclaim her doctrines and judgments before the whole world; she leaves her Index and Syllabus open for inspection, openly avowing that she is the irreconcilable enemy of that emancipated freedom proclaimed by modern liberalism as the ideal of the age. It is the honesty which she inherited from her Founder, who told the truth to friend and enemy, to His disciples and to the Scribes, to Nicodemus, that lonely night, and to Caiaphas. With the same straightforwardness the Church declares that she feels not enmity but sympathy toward civilization. A fair-minded critic will admit here again that the Church is in earnest. “Far from opposing the fostering of human arts and sciences, the Church is supporting and promoting them in [pg 144] various ways,” declares the Vatican Council. “The Church does not underrate nor despise their advantages for human life: on the contrary, it avows that they, coming as they do from God, the Master of the sciences, also lead to God by aid of His grace, when properly used” (Sess. III, c. 4). The Church has put this accusation on the list of errors of the age condemned by Pius X. (Sent. 57). She feels the charge as an injury.

The Testimony of History.

Nevertheless, in anti-ecclesiastical circles it is taken very often for an established fact that the Roman Church has ever tried her best to hamper the progress of science, or has suppressed it, or at least scowled at it. How could it be otherwise? they say. How could she favour the progress made in enlightening reason or in advancing human knowledge? Must she not fear for its intellectual sway over men whom she keeps under the yoke of faith? Must she not fear that they might awaken from the slumber in which they were held prisoners by the suggestive force of her authority, held to be transcendental; that they might awaken to find out the truth for themselves? And what is the use of science? He that believes will be saved: hence faith suffices. If we wish to hear the accusation in the language of militant science, here it is: “Outside the monastic institutions no attempt at intellectual advancement was made (in the Middle Ages), indeed, so far as the laity were concerned, the influence of the Church was directed to an opposite result, for the maxim universally received was, that ‘ignorance is the mother of devotion’ ” (J. W. Draper, History of the Conflict between Religion and Science).

This is the train of thought and the result of anti-ecclesiastical a-priorism and its historical research. Are the plain facts of history in accord with it? The first and immediate task of the Church is certainly not to disseminate science: her task, first of all, lies in the province of morals and religion. But as she is the highest power of morality and religion, she stands in the midst of mankind's intellectual life, and cannot but come in contact with its other endeavours, owing to the close unity [pg 145] of that life. Hence, let us ask history, not about everything it might tell us in this respect, but about one thing only.

We do not wish to show how the Church, headed by the Papacy, has become the mother of Western civilization and culture. Nor shall we enumerate the merits of the Church in art, nor point out the alertness she has certainly shown, in her walk through the centuries, by taking up the intellectual achievements of the time and assimilating them with her moral and religious treasure of faith, withal preserved unchanged. The old Church had done this with the treasures of ancient learning and science; “this spirit of Christianity proved itself by the facility with which Christian thinkers gathered the truth contained in the systems of old philosophy, and, even before that, by assimilating those old truths into Christian thought, the beginning of which had already been made in the New Testament. They were appropriated, without hesitating experiment, without wavering, and were given their place in a higher order” (O. Willmann, Gesch. des Idealismus, 2d ed., II, 1907, 67). This, she unceasingly continues to do, as proved by the high standard of Catholic life and Catholic science at the present, a fact not even disputed by opponents. We point only incidentally to the foundation and the fostering of primary schools by the Church. It is an historical fact that public education began to thrive only with the freer unfolding of the Church.

But we will not dwell longer on this subject. We wish, however, to point out more plainly something more closely related to our subject, viz., the attitude of the Church towards the universities, at a time when the most prominent nurseries of science were first coming into existence and beginning to flourish, when they began to exert their influence upon the civilization of Europe. Here, in the first place, it should become clear whether it be true that the Church has ever looked upon the progress of science with suspicion or even suppressed it. History teaches, in this instance again, that no one has shown more interest, more devotion, more readiness, to make sacrifices in promoting the establishment and growth of the university, than the Church.

When, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the thirst for knowledge, stronger than at any time in history, made itself felt in the Christian countries of Europe, there were erected in the universities great international homes of science, so as to gratify the deeply felt need of education. And thousands hastened to these places to acquire the knowledge of the period, overcoming all difficulties, then much greater than now. A recent writer remarks about this not without reason: “The academic instruction met on part of the thronging [pg 147] thousands with a psychic disposition more favourable than at any other time. In a way it was here a case of first love” (W. Muench, Zukunftspaedagogik, 1908, 337). At the universities of the Middle Ages there were taught theology, ecclesiastical and civil law, the liberal arts, and medicine. But not in the manner that all four faculties were everywhere represented. Theology especially was quite frequently lacking, though the aim was to have all sciences represented. What since the beginning of the thirteenth century was first of all understood by a university were studia generalia—then the usual name for universities, in contradistinction to studium particulare. Universities enjoyed the privilege of having their academic degrees honoured everywhere, and their graduates could teach anywhere. The universities were of an international character. Hence it happened that at the German universities there were sitting in quest of knowledge by the side of Germans also foreign youths, from Scotland, Sweden, and Norway, from Italy and France, all contending for academic honours—a moment which unquestionably contributed in no small degree to the improvement of education.

Prior to the Reformation, universities were not state institutions, as they are at present in Europe, but free, independent corporations. They were complete in themselves, they made their own statutes, had their own jurisdiction, and many other privileges. The modern university enjoys but a small remnant of those ancient prerogatives. In a public speech, made in the presence of the Duke of Saxony, the Leipsic professor, Johann Kone, could say in 1445: “No king, no chancellor, has any right to interfere with our privileges and exemptions; the university rules itself, and changes and improves its statutes according to its needs” (Janssen, 1. c. 91).

Up to the year 1300 there were no less than 23 universities established in Italy, 5 in France, 2 in England, 4 in Spain, and 1 in Portugal. “Had all intentions been realized, Europe would have had by the year 1400 no fewer than 55 universities, including Paris and Bologna. But of 9 of them there are extant only the charter deeds that were never executed. At any rate, there were 46 of them, of which 37 or 39 existed at the turn of [pg 148] the fourteenth century; a considerable number, which was not known till recent years” (Denifle). Germany, Austria, and Hungary shared in 8: Prague, Cracow, Vienna, Fuenfkirchen, Ofen, Heidelberg, Cologne, and Erfurt. Within fifty years, from 1460 to 1510, no less than 9 universities were founded in Germany—a clear proof of the generous enthusiasm for science of that period.

By their fostering and founding of universities, secular princes have won the lasting gratitude of posterity, and so have the municipalities of a later period for showing an even greater zeal than those princes. But it was indisputably the Church that bestowed upon these homes of learning and culture the greatest benevolence and support for their foundation and maintenance.

In the first place, history shows that the majority of them were founded by Papal charters. Since universities were understood to have the power of conferring degrees of international value, they had to be universally acknowledged; this could be effected only by an authority of universal recognition; hence by the Roman-German Emperor—as the supreme prince of the world-wide Christian monarchy, or by the Pope, who was considered in the first place. He was the general Father and Teacher of Christendom; this is why Papal charters were so zealously sought after, in addition to imperial charters. Of the 44 universities called into existence before the year 1400, 31 were founded by Papal charters. A similar condition prevailed in the fifteenth century and afterwards, up to the Reformation. This was no interference in foreign affairs: such an interpretation would have caused just surprise in the Middle Ages. That the highest spiritual power on earth should have the first claim in education was a matter of general concession. And certainly the manner in which the Church made use of this right, to speak with an historian of the universities, forms “one of the most important, and by no means least inglorious, parts of an activity so manifold and difficult” (V. A. Huber, Die Englischen Universitaeten, I, 1839, p. 14).

These Papal charters breathe a warm benevolence for science. Everywhere we find the wish expressed, that studies thrive in those places which are most suitable for the effectual [pg 149] spread of science, and that the different countries have a sufficient number of scientifically trained men.

But the Church was not satisfied with granting charters. She also gave very substantial material aid to most of the universities. The Popes maintained two universities at Rome, one of them connected with the Papal Curia, a sort of court-school. It was founded by Innocent IV., in order that the many who came to the Papal court from all parts of Christendom might satisfy also their thirst for knowledge. Theology, law, especially civil law, medicine, and languages, including Oriental languages, were taught there. Besides this there was another university at Rome, founded by Boniface VIII. for a similar purpose: it did not flourish long, though in 1514 it counted no less than eighty-eight professors. Many attempts to found or support universities would have proved abortive had not the Popes provided for the salaries of professors by prebends and stipends, and by allotting to that end a portion of the income of priests and churches. Bishops, too, proved themselves zealous patrons of [pg 150] the universities (Paulsen, Gesch. des gelehrten Unterrichts, 2d ed., I, 1898, p. 27).

It is true, the Church then owned much property. But it is just as true that she was ever ready to support science and colleges out of this property. Pope and clergy were also taking incessant pains to make it possible for poor students to attend the university, not only for theological students, but for those of all the faculties, to give an opportunity to rich and poor alike to enjoy the advantages of higher education. Stipends and legacies of this kind are numerous. Even in our own days many a son of an alma mater owes the stipend he enjoys to endowments made by the Church. In the course of time there were established at most of the universities so-called [pg 151] colleges for the purpose of offering shelter and maintenance to poor students.

Finally, nearly all universities, whether they owed their existence to ecclesiastical or civil power, received many and far-reaching privileges from the Popes. Not the least one was for clerical students the dispensation to free them from the requirement of residence for the enjoyment of their benefices, which made it possible for them to study in remote university towns, where they were free to study not only theology, but other sciences as well. This dispensation was quite common. [pg 152] Furthermore, the Popes protected in the most energetic way the universities in their privileges and freedom every time they were applied to for aid.

Considering these facts, one may subscribe to the judgment of Denifle which he pronounces at the conclusion of his thorough treatise on the universities of the Middle Ages: “So far as the foundation of the universities can be spoken of, its merit belongs to the Popes, to secular rulers, clergy, and laity. But that the lion's share belongs to the Popes every one must admit who has followed my presentment, which is exclusively based on documents, and who examines history with impartiality” (Ib. 792 seq.). Even Kaufmann, who is very unfavourably disposed towards the Church, cannot deny that “numerous Popes have shown warm interest for the fostering of sciences during those centuries, and were for the most part themselves prominent representatives of science” (Ib. 403).

That the mediæval universities in some points, though not in all, were inferior to modern universities, was not their fault. No good judge of human conditions could expect it to be otherwise. The experience and efficiency of the mature man is not attained at once, but only after the exertions and experiments made by him during the period of youth and development. At a time when all the experiences in the field of school legislation, which are the property of the present day, had yet to be collected, when the relation between lower and higher schools had not been regulated in all respects, at that time it was not possible to be in the position we are in to-day. Future critics of our times will see in our present educational systems many gross defects, which often are not hidden even to our own eyes. But it would be arrogance for them to belittle our efforts, the fruits of which they will once enjoy without any merit on their part. The university of yore conformed to the educational purposes of that period; it was the focus of intellectual life, perhaps to a larger degree than is the case to-day. This suffices. Moreover, the number of professors was quite considerable, that of the students even more so. In Bologna in 1388 the number of professors was 70, not including the theologians, among them 39 jurists; in Piacenza there were from the years 1398 to 1402 71 professors; among them were 27 teachers of Roman law and 22 teachers of medicine (Denifle, 209, 571).

In regard to the zeal displayed by the Church in promoting universities, it might be objected that she was caring in the first place for theology, not for the other sciences, and that the universities then had chiefly been established for theological students. This, however, is not the case. The universities especially favoured by the Popes were first of all law schools, chiefly of civil law, or medical schools. Those at Bologna, Padua, Florence, and Orleans were principally law schools; in Italy, in general, chief attention was paid to jurisprudence, particularly to Roman law. Montpellier was essentially a medical college; it attained during the thirteenth century preponderance even over Salerno. The assertion has been made that the vigorous life at this medical college was owing to its independence of Rome (Haeser, Lehrbuch der Geschichte der Medizin, 1, 655. Cfr. Denifle, 342). But Denifle has proved that “clerical organs have been the moving spirits of the medical college at Montpellier.”

Nor did the Papal charter deeds exclude any profane science. The common formula, which always prevails, authorizes to teach indiscriminately in jure canonico et civili necnon in medicina et qualibet alia licita facultate. Only one science was frequently excepted, and that was just theology. Of the forty-six high schools that had been established up to the year 1400, about twenty-eight, therefore nearly two-thirds, excluded by their charter the teaching of theology. At first a number of universities sprang up merely as law schools, others as medical schools, and there was then no need to include the science of theology in the schedule of studies. Furthermore, Paris was ever since the twelfth century looked upon as the home and the natural place for theology (Denifle, 703 f.). Hence the benevolence of the Church towards the universities was not merely determined by selfish interest.

Or was it, nevertheless? May the Church not have bestowed so much care on the homes of science in order to increase her own influence thereby, and also with an eye to the future? This assertion has been made. But this assertion is an injustice and it is against the testimony of history. The Popes very often issued their charter deeds only then, when request was made [pg 155] by worldly rulers and by the cities themselves. Hence there was no hurried self-assertion. And the Church has never denied the right to worldly powers to found their own high schools. The theologians of the thirteenth century expressedly declared it to be the duty of princes to provide for institutions of learning (Cfr. Thomas of Aquin, De regimine principum, I, 13; Op. contra impug. relig. 3).

And the universities repaid the Church by gratitude and devotion. The effort has been made to demonstrate that the modern separation of science from religion had already begun in the Middle Ages, and had showed itself everywhere; this tendency for autonomy “appeared at first only timidly and in manifold disguises” (Kaufmann, 14). How easy it is to find such disguises may be shown by an example. The university of Paris had after the death of St. Thomas asked for his remains. Kaufmann holds that the notion of the autonomy of science had found sharp expression in the memorandum wherein the university stated the motive of its request. Now how does this harmless document sound? “Quoniam [pg 156] omnino est indecens et indignum ut alia ratio aut locus quam omnium studiorum nobilissima Parisiensis civitas quae ipsum prius educavit nutrivit et fovit et post modum ad eodem doctrinae monumenta et ineffabilia fomenta suscepit ossa ... habeat.... Si enim Ecclesia merito ossa et reliquias Sanctorum honorat nobis non sine causa videtur honestum et sanctum tanti doctoris corpus in perpetuum penes nos habere in honore.” Evidently the university requests the relic for itself, or rather for the Parisiensis civitas, not in opposition to the Church, but in opposition to other cities, altera natio aut locus. I wonder if the Parisian admirers of St. Thomas ever dreamed that they would one day be put in the light of forerunners of liberal science, because of their pious application for the bones of their great teacher? This is tantamount to carrying one's own idea into the fact. Denifle, probably the most competent judge of the affairs of mediæval universities, writes as follows: “If we weigh the different acts which suggest themselves to us in these various foundations, and if we compare them with one another, there is revealed to us, in the realm of history of the foundation of mediæval universities, a wonderful harmony between Church and State, between the spiritual and material. This is the reason why the universities of the Middle Ages appear to us as the highest civil as well as the highest ecclesiastical teaching institutions. Fundamentally, they are the product of the Christian spirit which penetrated the whole, wherein Pope and Prince, clergy and laity, each held the proper position” (l. c. p. 795).

One consequence of this relation between the universities and the Church was that “they attained their greatest prosperity as long as the unity of Church and faith remained unimpaired, and that, at the time of the Reformation, they all sided with the Church with the exception of two, Wittenberg and Erfurt. Torn away from their ecclesiastical and established basis only by violent means, they were led to the new doctrine, but really succumbed to it only when their freedom had been curtailed and they had been reduced to state institutions” (Janssen, l. c. p. 91). They had been, as the learned Wimpheling wrote at the close of the sixteenth century, “the most favoured daughters [pg 157] of the Church, who tried to repay by fidelity and attachment what they owed to their Mother” (De arte impressoria, apud Janssen, l. c. 91).

A False Progress.

Hence history cannot subscribe to the accusation that the Church is the enemy of progress. How then does it happen that this accusation is made so frequently? The idea suggests itself that there may be here a different meaning given to the word “progress,” that the Church opposes a certain kind of progress which her enemies call “the” progress. And this is the actual fact. If we examine the proofs which are to show the hostile attitude of the Church, we meet at every step Galileo, the Copernican system, the Syllabus, and Index. But this appears only on the surface, which hides beneath it something that is easily overlooked by the cursory glance. And this is the precise definition of scientific and civilized progress. Progress has ever been an ideal of powerful attraction. The noblest and best of men have ever displayed the most earnest endeavour onward and upward. In our times, however, this ideal comes forward differently garbed, in the name of the new view of the world, and resolutely censures as reactionary everything that will oppose it. What is this definition?

Since the theory of evolution of Lamarck and Darwin entered biology, it has also more and more invaded other branches of science. The principle is now that everywhere, in the organic or inorganic world and in the whole province of human life there is a gradual growth and change—nothing permanent, nothing definite and absolute. Uninterrupted evolution hitherto; hereafter restless development; especially in the greatest good belonging to human life, thought, philosophy, and chiefly religion. Here, too, there are no forms nor dogmas which evolution in its continual development does not evolve and elevate. This idea of evolution is supplemented by subjectivism with its relativism of truth: all views, especially philosophical and religious “Truths,” are no longer the reproduction of objectively existing things, but a creation of the [pg 158] subject, of his inner experience and feeling; hence each age must proceed to new thought of its own.

Such is progress in thought and science, for which the way must be opened. That the immutable dogmas of Christianity, that the task of the Catholic Church to preserve revelation intact, are incompatible with it, that the Church appears reactionary, [pg 159] and as an obstacle to this progress, is now self-evident. Here we have the deeper contrast between progress, in the anti-Christian sense, and the essence of Christianity in general, and, especially, of the Catholic Church.

There is no error, says St. Augustine, which does not contain some truth, especially when it is able to rule the thought of many. Hence its capacity to deceive. The same is true in the present case.

There is evolution and progress in everything, or at least there should be. The individual gradually develops from the embryo into a perfect form, though it becomes nothing else than what it had formerly been in its embryonic state. Mankind advances rapidly in civilization; we no longer ride in the rumbling stage-coach but in a comfortable express train, and the tallow candle has been replaced by the electric light. Thus we demand progress also in knowledge and science, and even in religion. Many things that were obscure to older generations have become clear to us; we have corrected many an error, made many discoveries which were unknown to our ancestors. Many doctrines of faith, also, appear to our eyes in sharper outlines than before; of many we have a deeper understanding, discovered new relations, meanings, and deductions. Thus there is progress and development everywhere.

But it would be erroneous to conclude from all this that there cannot be any stable truths and dogmas, that progress to new and different views and doctrines is necessary. By the same right we might conclude that the main principles of the Copernican system cannot be immutable, because they would [pg 160] hinder the progress of science. Progress certainly does not consist in throwing away all certainty acquired, in order to begin anew. Or does it really belong to progress in astronomy to again give up Copernicus, to go back to Ptolemy and let the sun and all the stars revolve again around the earth? Does not progress rather consist in our studying these astronomical results more closely, in building up the details, and, first of all, in trying to solve new problems?

The champion of the faith will reply: Just as established results do not hinder the progress of science, just so do the doctrines of faith not form an obstacle to progress and evolution. The fixed doctrines of the faith themselves, in themselves and in their application to the conditions of life, offer rich material for the growth of religious knowledge. And there is the immense field for progress in the profane sciences. If any one should say that the believing scientist, who is bound by his dogmas, can do nothing further but reiterate his old truths, one might in turn argue: Then the astronomer bound by the fundamental rules of the Copernican system could have only the monotonous task of drawing over and over again the outlines of his system, while the mathematician who holds the multiplication table to be an unalienable possession would not be allowed to do aught but to repeat the multiplication table.

Or the argument may be put thus: We have made great progress in the material province of civilization, in science and art; “can an old religion suffice under these new and improved conditions, a religion which originated at an age when these conditions did not exist? This contradiction is shocking.... Progress in culture demands progress in religion.... We want a more perfect religion, a higher religion” (Masaryk, Im Kampf um die Religion, 1904, 29). Note the logic of this demonstration. We no longer light our rooms by the dim light of a small oil lamp, we walk no longer at night through dark narrow lanes, but through brightly illuminated avenues, does it follow from this that it can no longer be true that Christ is the Son of God, nor that He has worked miracles, or founded a Church, and a new religion is therefore necessary? We have made progress in our knowledge of history; we know a good [pg 161] deal of Rome and Carthage, of the civilization of ancient Egypt and of Greece, and of their mutual relations; we have other fashions of life than our fathers had, we build and paint differently—our political life, too, has grown more complicated; does it follow from all this, that it cannot be true that we are created by God, that we must believe a divine revelation, hence a new religion is necessary? Progress and evolution to consist in ever abandoning the old and advancing to new and different views—this is absurd. Absurd, in the first place, because it is no progress at all, but a retrogression, a hopeless alternation of forwards and backwards. There can be no progress if I am always withdrawing from my old position; progress is possible only by retaining the basis established and then advancing therefrom. And evolution is not a continuous remodelling and shaping anew, but a continuance in growth. Evolution means that the embryo unfolds, and by retaining and perfecting the old matter gradually becomes a plant; evolution is in the progress from bud to blossom; but not in the changing mass of clouds, swept away to-day by the current wind and replaced to-morrow by other clouds. An absurdity, also, for the reason that it violates all laws of reason, that once there was a revelation of God to be believed, but that this is no longer true.

Furthermore, the demand to follow always “the ideas of the period” suggests the question: Who is to represent the period? Who represented Greece, the sophists or Plato? Who was representative of the first days of Christianity, the Roman emperors or the martyrs? Will not the passage in Goethe's Faust apply in most cases: “What they call the spirit of the times is but their own mind wherein the times are reflected”? True, if progress is taken to be the overstepping by human reason of the eternal standards of immutable truth and the barriers of faith, if it is to be the attempt at emancipation from God and religion, then there is no more resolute foe of progress than the Christian religion, than the Catholic Church. But this is not progress but loss of the truth, not higher religion but apostasy, not development of what is best in man, but retrogression to mental disintegration by scepticism.

The Syllabus.

In the eyes of many it is especially the Syllabus of Pius IX. by which the Catholic Church has erected a lasting monument to its enmity to civilization. It is the Syllabus, we are told, in which Pius IX. has “ex cathedra condemned the freedom of science” (W. Kahl, Bekenntnissgebundenheit und Lehrfreiheit, 1897, 10); “in which modern culture and science is being cursed” (Th. Fuchs, Neue Freie Presse, Nov. 25, 1907); in which “the most general foundations of our political order, the freedom of conscience, are rejected” (G. Kaufmann, Die Lehrfreiheit an den deutschen Universitaeten, 1898, 34); “in which it has simply anathematized the achievements of the modern concept of right” (F. Jodl, Gedanken über Reformkatholizismus, 1902, 5); the Syllabus “strikes blows against the autonomy of human development of culture, it is a non possumus, I cannot make peace, I cannot compromise with what is termed progress, liberalism, and civilization.” The Syllabus is a favorite stock argument of professional free-thinkers and agitators, and the one with which they like to open the discussion. For this reason we must say a few words about it.

When a Syllabus is spoken of without any distinction, the Syllabus of Pius IX. is meant. It is a list of eighty condemned propositions which this Pope sent on December 8, 1864, to all the Bishops of the world, together with the encyclical letter “Quanta Cura.” Pius IX. had, prior to this, and on various occasions, denounced these propositions as false and to be repudiated. They were now gathered together in the Syllabus. They represent the program of modern liberalism in the province of religion and in politics in relation to religion. They are repudiated in the following order: Pantheism; liberal freedom of thought and of conscience as a repudiation of the duty to believe; religious freedom as a demand of emancipation from faith and Church; religious indifferentism; the denial of the Church and of her independence of the state; the omnipotence of state power, especially in the province of thought. The single propositions are not all designated as heretical, hence the contrary is not always pronounced to be dogma; they are rejected [pg 163] in general as “errors.” It is not necessary to discuss here the question whether and to what extent the Syllabus is an infallible decision. Suffice it to say it is binding for believing Catholics.

Has the Catholic any reason to be ashamed of the Syllabus?

It was a resolute deed. A deed of that intrepidity and firm consistency which has ever characterized the Catholic Church. With her fearless love of truth the Church has in the Syllabus solemnly condemned the errors of the modern rebellion against the supernatural order, of the naturalization and declaration of independence of the human life. For this reason the Syllabus is called an attack upon modern culture, science, and education, upon the foundations of the state. Is this true?

It is, and it is not. All that is good and Christian in modern culture is not touched by the Syllabus; it strikes only at what is anti-Christian in our times and in the leading ideas of our times. It does not condemn freedom of science, but only the liberal freedom which throws off the yoke of faith; it does not repudiate freedom of religion and conscience, but the liberal freedom which will not acknowledge a divine revelation nor take the Church as a guide. Not the foundations of modern states are attacked, but only the liberal ideas of emancipation from religion, and of opposition to the Church. The Church proclaims to the world only what has been known to all Christian centuries, that, just as the single individual is bound to have the Christian belief and must lead a Christian life, so are nations and organized states; that the human creature is subject to the law of Christ in all its relations. Nor does she contend against genuine progress in science, education and in the material domain, but merely against liberal progress towards the irreligious materialization of life.

This emancipation from the Christian faith poses mostly under the attractive and deceptive name of “modern progress.” Indeed, it has ever been the pretension of liberalism to look upon itself as the sole harbinger of civilization, to claim the guidance of intellectual life for its aim, and to stigmatize as a foe of culture any one that opposes the dissemination of its anti-Christian humanism. It is also an expert in giving [pg 164] to words a charm and an ambiguous meaning that deceive. Emancipation from religion is “progress” and “enlightenment.” Everything else is reactionary. Its infidelity is freedom of conscience and thought. Everything else is “bondage.” Only its secular schools, its civil marriage, its separation of Church and State are “modern.” Everything else is obsolete, hence no longer warranted. For the Church to defend her rights is arrogance; when the Church uses her God-given authority for the good of the faith, she practises intellectual oppression; the Catholic who lets himself be guided by his Church is called unpatriotic, bereft of his civil spirit.

What striking contrast to the honesty in which the Church presents her doctrines frankly before the whole world, without disguise or artifice. The reason is that she has sufficient interior strength and truth to render it unnecessary for her to take refuge in disguise or present the truth in ambiguity.

Of course it may be taken for granted that the Syllabus is distasteful to modern liberalism, which is branded there as one of the errors of the day. Yet the Church cannot be censured for not becoming unfaithful to her vocation of preserving the patrimony of Christianity to mankind, or for acting as the invincible defender of the Christian religion in the universal struggle between truth and error, even though the latter pose with great assurance.

The Condemnation of Modernism.

The great excitement caused in intellectual circles by the Syllabus of Pius IX. was aroused again, though not with the same intensity, when some years ago the news of another Syllabus was circulated through the world, and the excitement increased when the rumour was followed by the publication of the encyclical “Pascendi Dominici gregis.” Indeed, the new event was not very unlike the former: in the 60's Rome's sentence was [pg 166] directed against the Modernism of that period, which called itself liberalism. The excitement caused by its condemnation was more intense, because it struck directly at the principles governing the liberal politics against the Church, which principles were claimed to be the foundation of the modern state. Now the Modernism repudiated by the Church's voice was nothing more than the old humanistic, fundamental, errors of liberalism, but put in the form of a religious and philosophical view of the world, and in Catholic garb: it meant man detached from everything supernatural, and dependent alone on himself in his intellectual life, more especially in his religious life.

Now, as then, similar charges were raised: The Church is the irreconcilable foe of modern achievements and the opponent of them; “the encyclical aims at modern intellectual life in all its phases and forms” (XX. Jahrh., 1908, 568). Now, as then, we have the same ambiguity of the terms “modern” and “progress.”

What was condemned by the Church? The document “Lamentabili sane exitu,” issued by the teaching authority of the Church on July 3, 1907, is entitled “A Decree of the Holy Congregation of the Roman and General Inquisition or the Holy Office,” which has to watch over the unadulterated preservation of the faith. The decree soon was christened the “New Syllabus,” because of its similarity with the Syllabus of Pius IX. In a similar way it condemns sixty-five propositions against the inspiration and the historical character of Holy Scripture, against the divine origin of revelation and of faith, against the divinity of Christ, His Resurrection and His atoning death, against the Sacraments, and against the Church. These are component parts of the philosophical religious system of thought which soon after was set forth and condemned by the encyclical “Pascendi,” of September 8, 1907.

Modernism is essentially philosophy, combining modern agnostic-autonomous subjectivism with evolutionism, and applied to the Christian religion, which thereby becomes disfigured beyond recognition. Its chain of thought, excellently stated by the encyclical, starts with the proposition that the supernatural is beyond the knowledge of man, and hence man [pg 167] cannot know anything of God. The faith which unites us to God is nothing but a feeling, born of a blind impulse, which may be considered a divine revelation. If this religious feeling is expressed in forms, the result is “doctrines of faith”; for Christian “dogmas” are this and nothing more, images and symbols of the noble and divine, hence they are of human origin and are changeable according to the disposition and the degree of learning of the individual, as well as of the times. There is no dogmatic Christianity, in the sense of an immutable religious doctrine, nor is there any absolutely true religion, for religion is but a variable feeling, that has nothing to do with cognition and knowledge. For this reason they never can come in conflict. The Christian religion originally was nothing else but the religious experience of Christ, who was not God but a man; in the course of time it has undergone changes which are reflected in the shaping of Christian dogma. Holy Scripture is, similarly, the expression of the religious experience of its human authors; the Sacraments are symbols, arousing religious sentiments; the Church is not founded by God, and only has the task of regulating the development of Christianity, and of sanctioning at any time whatever religious experiences the changeable spirit of progressive civilization may produce.

This is Modernism, as represented chiefly in France, Italy, and to an extent also in England; in Germany it did not appear as a system, but even there its spirit became quite apparent. Thus, Modernism is nothing else but the systematic arrangement of those ideas which we have hitherto met, in various places, as the fundamental principles of modern religious thought opposed to Christianity. It is subjectivism with its autonomy of the human subject, its agnosticism, its relativism of truth, sailing under the name of “historical method of thought” and “progress,” and, finally, with its freedom of thought and conscience which rejects all authority. It is Kant in the robe of a Catholic theologian. Ultimately it is nothing else but the shocking negation of everything supernatural, hence complete apostasy. “The salient point is recognized,” says Troeltsch, “the enemy is the modern historical method of thought, the [pg 168] concept of evolution, the theory of inner experience and relativism as applied to religion, the negation of supernaturalism as taught by the old Church” (l. c. 22). Hence, was it not manifest that the Church had to take measures against this positive denial of Christianity as a whole, the more so as the uneducated could be easily deceived by it? Every organism will throw off excrescences, the more energetically the stronger it is. Any religion lacking this strength is doomed. That the Papal declaration aroused such opposition must not be wondered at; it hit once more the central idea of the anti-Christian view of the world. The judgment was not passed against modern intellectual life, but only against the grave errors inherent in it; the Church did not condemn progress, nor the increase and deepening of knowledge of the truth; not the enrichment of the life of the mind, of feeling, and the will, but only pretended progress; she did not condemn the historical method nor the idea of evolution, but their false application, which dissolved anything and everything in growth, purely natural growth at that, without acknowledging a revelation of absolute truths.

Puny men, entangled in the ideas of their time and surroundings, are easily led to take for their standard the thoughts and actions of their age. They often imagine that [pg 169] they possess not a little strength and independence, when they are intellectually entirely dependent and unable to rise above their time. “It is the fashion, others think that way, therefore I must think so, too”; these are often the principles of their wisdom, and they ask the Church to do likewise. The Church, however, looks back upon a long history, and numerous ideas and opinions she has seen arise and vanish. And whoever can look back upon a great experience, and moreover carries in himself the call to lead the times, feels no restless impulse to be carried away by changing doctrines.

The Index.

Whenever the subject of Rome's enmity to science and progress of culture is discussed, there invariably appears on the scene, beside Syllabus and Galileo, also the Index. The latter is held by many to be Rome's permanent means of hindering the progress of humanity in general, and the free scientific activity of the Catholic in particular, and to annihilate the freedom of teaching and learning (Hoensbroech, Die Kath. theol. Fakultaeten, 1907, 40 seq.). They say “the Congregation of the Index has no pity nor consideration for the classical works of literature, and condemns in the name of religion the most admirable products of the human intellect” (Grande Dict. univ. du XIX. siècle, IX, 640, apud J. Hilgers, Der Index der Verb. Buecher, 1904, 166; much of what we shall say on this topic is taken from this work by Hilgers).

What then is the Index, and how is it to be judged?

Ever since the Apostle of the Nations had at Ephesus the superstitious books burned under his eyes, the Holy Fathers, Bishops, and Councils since the first centuries of Christianity have been careful to keep from the faithful writings hurtful to faith and morals. Thus even in the olden time we find several catalogues of forbidden books, then followed the Indices of the Middle Ages. In the year 1571 a special Congregation of Cardinals was formed, the “Congregation of the Index,” which has ever since had charge of the ecclesiastical book-laws. [pg 171] The last edition of the Index, obligatory for the whole Church, emanated from Leo XIII. The title of the work now in force reads, “The Index of Forbidden Books, revised and published by order of and in the name of Leo XIII. 1900.” It is divided into two parts. The first and shorter part contains the general book regulations, giving in short paragraphs the rules on various classes of forbidden books, the permission required for reading them, the examination to be made previous to the publication of certain books. The second part enumerates the writings forbidden by special decree—the Index in the particular sense, and the part most often considered. But it is second in importance to the first, because by far not all books dangerous to faith and morals are named in it. Most such books are forbidden by the general laws contained in the first part, without mentioning the many which are forbidden by mere common sense.

Ecclesiastical legislation on books is composed of two factors: first, the previous censorship—certain books must be examined by ecclesiastical authority before their publication. Second, the prohibition of books already published.

The previous scrutiny in general is delegated to the Bishop; all books dealing with morals and theology must be submitted. The license to print the book is to be given if the book is in accord with the teaching of the Church, in so far as determined by ecclesiastical authority, the decision based on it rests solely with the censor; if the author of the book should fail to see that the passages objected to need revision he may try to clear himself by stating his reasons; however, he is also free to submit his work to another Bishop and to look for a printer in the latter's diocese. If one looks over the numerous books bearing the ecclesiastical imprimatur, he will readily notice how much freedom is given, if the author keeps within the doctrine of the Church.

The condemnation of a book never strikes at the person of the author, nor at what he has intended to express by the passages objected to; judgment is passed only upon what is actually expressed in them. Hence it is not necessary to give to the author himself a hearing, or a chance to explain. [pg 172] The reason is that the judgment is rendered on the sense of the passages, not on the meaning of the author. In general those books and periodicals are forbidden which are likely to do serious damage to faith and morals. The isolated cases of indicting the works of Catholic authors in the nineteenth century—we may mention Lamennais, Hermes, Guenther, Loisy, and Schell—show that the Church proceeds but slowly and with consideration against the author involved.

To appreciate the Index properly, one must try to grasp without prejudice the purpose the Church has in view. This purpose is to protect the faithful from error and from moral contagion, and to preserve the faith intact. “What is more precious than souls, what more precious than the faith? But both suffer damage from such reading.” Such was the judgment of the Council of Ephesus when it drew up its book-decrees; such was the judgment of an Augustine, of Leo the Great, and of the Holy Fathers; such is still the judgment of the Church. Books and writings that offend against morals are a menace to her faithful. They become infected with wrong ideas; they are as a rule not in a position to distinguish by themselves the false from the true, and for the most part they are not morally strong enough to resist the allurements of error. It may also happen that certain thoughts are true in the abstract, yet for the time being would be a danger for many. Now, it is the right and duty of any social authority, beginning with the head of the family and up to the government, to protect with strong hand the precious possessions of its subjects.

The state keeps under control the sale of poison and dynamite, keeps out contagious diseases from its boundaries—it protects the possessions of its subjects. European states have for centuries claimed the right to censure books, and have used it much more rigorously than the Church ever did, to say nothing of the censures of the Protestant Church of former times (see abundant proof apud Hilgers, 206-402). The modern state also, despite the great freedom granted to the press, cannot entirely forego its sense of responsibility. It restricts the freedom of the press by censorship, and by preventive measures often not less drastic than the censure itself, and it [pg 173] always regards the confiscation of particularly dangerous writings to be a matter of course. It puts under censure school-books, political posters, and theatrical plays, and does not tolerate any socialistic literature in the soldiers' barracks. And do we not take it as a matter of course if a father forbids his child to associate with dangerous playmates, and takes bad books from its hands? We cannot find fault with the Church if she seeks to protect her children, if she represses the promiscuous dissemination of false ideas and doctrines, and if she takes dangerous books under her control. “Feed my lambs, feed my sheep,” was the command given to the Church.

The objection should therefore not be made that “such precaution is proper when dealing with children but not with men; especially since the thinking elements among the Catholics of the Germanic tongue or origin are too profound and firm in their faith to warrant a fear of the effects of unrestricted free research” (from the petition of the so-called “Index-league” of Muenster). This perusal may become dangerous even for highly educated men, else how could Modernism break so forcefully into the Church? Manifestly only because learned theologians did not possess that firmness of Catholic faith and Catholic knowledge which would prevent them from being deceived by the misleading ideas of modern philosophy, and of the new Protestant theology. Moreover, all forbidden books may be read upon obtaining the necessary permission.

“Preserve the deposit of faith,” the Church has been told. She cannot look on silently when her doctrines are being falsified and denied, when the most venerable sphere of theology is made the stamping ground for immature minds and a laboratory for all kinds of experiments. When Zola's novel, “Rome,” had been put on the Index, the atheistic literary critic, Sarcey, made the following comment: “If my own criticisms of literature are regarded by many people as highest decisions, why should a positive criticism be looked upon as monstrous just because it comes from the Pope? It is my aim to guard good taste in literature, and it is the aim of the Pope to guard the true faith” (Allgemeine Rundschau, 1908, 828). Every social authority must interfere when its foundations are attacked. [pg 174] A church that tolerates false doctrines cannot be the teacher that Christ sent to the nations. As a matter of fact the Index has from the first helped in no small degree to keep the Catholic doctrine pure, to induce caution in reading certain authors, and to keep awake in the faithful that aversion against immoral and irreligious writings which is the characteristic of Catholics, and which has rescued the faith for thousands.

To judge the Index fairly one must be convinced that the preservation of true Christian doctrine is its highest aim. Then the zeal of the Catholic Church will be intelligible. Of course, he who thinks that the true weal of mankind consists in the speedy emancipation from all Christian dogma, he who holds the task of science to be the establishment of a new “scientific view of the world,” he who no longer knows faith, will see in the Index nothing but restraint. But, whoever is of a different view will not take offence at the restriction of the freedom of writing and reading when it is productive of higher good. Freedom of science cannot be unrestricted, especially in regard to teaching; the welfare of humanity must be considered. Moreover, the Index concerns almost exclusively theology and some branches of philosophy, the rest of the profane sciences but little or not at all; the scientific works prohibited, however, are not removed from scientific perusal: only permission is necessary, and this is granted without difficulty and without cost.

It is true, an error on the part of the Church authorities is not impossible. We know of such a case, putting on the Index the writings of Copernicus, in 1616. But just the circumstance that history knows of but one such case of importance is a clear testimony to the Holy Ghost's direction of the teaching office even when it is rendering non-infallible decisions. Besides, the damage that might result from a few mistakes would not be so great as the damage resulting if everything were allowed to be written and read.

The Catholic scientist who appreciates the supernatural mission of his Church will yield to her guidance in humble confidence, he will practise this submission to the Church by requesting permission for reading forbidden books, and by this spirit he will obtain God's blessing on his work.

The Catholic scientist also will readily ask the ecclesiastical Imprimatur for certain of his works. If a careful author before publishing a work submits the proofs to a friend of his profession, taking his comment for a guide, why should we deem it intellectual bondage if the Catholic scientist, in matters of faith and morals, submits his work to the formal approval of his Church, which to him is a higher authority than any other? and does this willingly, as in consistency with his Catholic conviction?5

Via stulti recta in oculis ejus, qui autem sapiens est audit consilia, says the Wise Man. It is characteristic of the fool to be wise in his own eyes, and stubbornly to cling to his own judgment; but the prudent man seeks advice, and suffers his attention to be called to his mistakes.

The believing scientist, too, will submit to correction; should the rare case fall to his lot to have the Church condemn his work, he will know how to be generously obedient. Splendid examples are blazing the way for him. “Were we to draw up a list of the scientists, who, in a similar critical position as Fénelon, [pg 176] found strength in the virtue of obedience, and on the other hand a list of all those whose subjective scientific views did not allow them to submit, then we should perceive at a glance that their proud persistence in their own opinion has been injurious to true wisdom in the same degree as humble submission proved a benefit to science” (Hilgers, 412). Finally, he who is convinced that the Christian faith is the greatest heritance of truth from the past, which must be preserved in him, he will take no offence if the Church is not impressed even by names like Kant, Spinoza, Schopenhauer, Strauss, men much featured as the captains of modern science and philosophy. In the eyes of the Church nothing is genuine and true science that is contrary to the testimony of God, and errors are errors even then when their perpetrator is receiving cheers and applause. Just as the state prohibits the physician from designedly assisting any one to commit suicide, even though the physician be a noted scientist, just so the Church opposes any one who assaults God's truth, be he journalist or philosopher.

“In the moral world nothing can support that cannot also resist” is a truthful saying of Treitschke: it is also the principle of the Catholic Church. Without ever surrendering to the unchristian tendency of a time, she opposes error with unsubdued courage. If this be intolerance, it is not intolerance towards erring men but towards their errors, it is the intolerance that the gardener shows in uprooting harmful weeds, it is the intolerance of the physician towards disease. Obedience to the Index makes high moral demands upon the Catholic. But it has been characteristic of the Christian religion and of its faithful children never to shrink before any moral action where it appeared demanded. And if the preservation of moral purity exacts conscientious discipline, this is also true of the preservation of the pure faith, especially at a time when a neo-paganism in [pg 180] league with an uncontrolled mania for reading is threatening in many forms.

Galileo, and Other Topics.

Galileo Galilei—but few names have achieved equal fame. Men like Alexander and Cæsar, like Homer and Dante, have scarcely succeeded in writing their names with a sharper pencil on the tablet of history than the astronomer of Pisa. His grand discoveries in natural science have done little to crown his temples with the wreath of immortality—it was the fate of his life that did it. And one may add: if this fate had been caused by the French government, or by a Protestant General Assembly, he would never have obtained his position in history; but since this lot came to him by the human limitation of a Roman Church authority, his name is not only entered on the calendar of the anti-Roman journalist, it also stands surrounded with the halo of a Martyr in the esteem of serious scientists, who see in Galileo and in the consequent condemnation of the Copernican system the proof that dogma and science cannot agree, that the Catholic Church assumes a hostile attitude toward science. Whenever this theme is mentioned, Galileo's ghost is paraded. For this reason we cannot pass by this fact of history. To a son of the Church they are unpleasant recollections, but this shall not keep us from looking history firmly in the eye.

There are some other charges brought forth from history, but the Galileo case overshadows them all. We shall touch upon them but briefly, and then return to Galileo.

Attention is called to the Church's condemnation of the doctrine of Antipodes. The Priest Vigilius was accused in Rome, in 747, of having taught that there exists another world under the earth, and other people also, or another sun and moon (quod alius mundus et alii homines sub terra sint seu sol et luna). Such was his doctrine as stated by Pope Zacharias in his reply to Boniface, the Apostle of Germany, in which he said that he had cited Vigilius to Rome in order that his doctrine be thoroughly investigated: if it should turn out that this had [pg 181] really been taught by him, he would be condemned. Further particulars of his teaching are unknown, because it is mentioned only in the above passage. The assertion ascribed to him is that there is another world besides this one, with other inhabitants and with another sun and moon—an assertion scientifically absurd and dogmatically inadmissible, as this might call in question the common descent of mankind from one pair of parents. The anxiety and rebuke of the Pope is directed solely against the latter point. The condemnation of Vigilius has never taken place, for he remained in his office, won great respect, was elevated to the bishopric of Salzburg, and later canonized by Gregory IX. Had a condemnation of his particular doctrine taken place, this would not have involved the condemnation of the antipodean theory, in the sense that the side of the globe opposite to us is also inhabited by human beings, a proposition which does not conflict with any doctrine of faith. The doctrine described above has another tendency. The entire case is hidden in obscurity (Hefele, Conc. Gesch., 2d ed., III, 557 seq.).

Furthermore, it has been said that at the time when the universities were in close union with the Church, medical science could not advance because the Church had prohibited human anatomy (Prof. J. H. van't Hoff, Neue Freie Presse, December 29, 1907). In amplification it was said: “Boniface VIII. had forbidden every anatomical dissection of a body” (O. Zoeckler, Theologie und Naturwissenschaft, 1877, I, 342). What is true of this assertion?

Galileo Galilei, the great Italian physicist, was born in 1564, at Pisa. At first he was professor in his native town, then at Padua, where he taught the doctrine of Ptolemy, although at that time there was no obstacle to accepting the Copernican system. In 1611 he became mathematician at the court of Cosimo II. at Florence. His talents and happy discoveries soon won fame. In general he was more of a physicist than an astronomer; his astronomical discoveries were, almost without exception, of a kind that did not presuppose a thorough astronomical training. As is known, he was not the original inventor of the telescope, though with its aid he achieved some of the most important of his discoveries; for instance, that of the satellites of Jupiter. The telescope was invented in Holland.

When he went to Rome, in 1611, he was received with great honour. In one of his letters from there he wrote: “I have received marked favours from many Cardinals and prelates here, and from several princes. They wanted to hear of my inventions, and were all well pleased.” The Jesuits gave a special reception in his honour at the Roman College. This shows in what esteem science was then held at Rome. But [pg 184] five years later Galileo returned to the Eternal City under quite different circumstances. What had happened? In 1612 he had issued a treatise on “The History and Explanation of the Sun-spots,” in which he declared unreservedly for the Copernican system. And this caused the change. True, Copernicus himself was a Catholic Priest, and had dedicated his principal work to Pope Paul III. But it was generally supposed that he had brought forward the doctrine only as an hypothesis, only to illustrate and facilitate calculations, not claiming for it absolute certainty. This assumption was based on the preface of the first edition of his book, containing assurance to that effect. That preface, however, was not the work of Copernicus, but had been smuggled into the book by the Protestant publisher Osiander, without the author's knowledge, because Osiander feared his own church authorities.

Galileo spoke in quite another tone. He defended the doctrine as true. He soon aroused opposition. Men standing for the geocentric theory were opposed by others, siding with Galileo for the solar system, such as the learned Benedictine, Castelli. Galileo's great bitterness and sarcasm in dealing with his opponents aggravated the quarrel with the “partisans of Aristotle.” Extreme irritability and love of praise were prominent traits of Galileo's character.

It was the custom of that time to bring Scripture into controversies about nature. This was done also in Galileo's case. Passages were quoted against him, referring to the “rising and setting sun,” to the “earth that never moves,” of Joshua's “commanding the sun to stand still.” This prompted Galileo to cross over into the field of theology himself. In a letter to Castelli in 1613 he says: “Holy Writ can never lie nor err; on the contrary, its sayings are absolute and incontestable truth; but its interpreters are liable to err in various ways, and it is a fatal and very common mistake to stop always at the literal sense” (Kepler, even prior to Galileo, had interpreted the respective passages of the Scriptures properly and with surprising skill; especially in his introduction to his “Astronomia nova.” Cfr. Anschuetz, Johannes Kepler als Exeget. Zeitschrift für katholische Theologie, XI, 1887, 1-24).

Correct as these arguments were, it was nevertheless imprudent for the court mathematician to trespass upon grounds regarded by theologians as their own, instead of furnishing natural scientific proofs. Thus the matter was brought to Rome before the Congregation of the Inquisition. Galileo, worrying about his case, went voluntarily to Rome, in 1615. He failed to assuage the opposition against his theory, though he says he was received favourably by the princes of the Church. Moreover, heedless of the admonition of his friends, he pursued the matter with indiscreet zeal, with vehemence and impetuosity, practically provoking a decision. Cardinal Bellarmin opposed the haste with which the matter was being pressed; the Jesuit Grienberger thought that Galileo should first set forth his proofs, and then speak about the Scriptures. Had scientific proofs been brought forth, theological difficulties would have been easily cleared away; but scientific proof was lacking, and what there perhaps was of it, Galileo failed to offer.

The right of the Congregation to take up the matter can hardly be denied, for although the matter was one of natural sciences, yet, by introducing theology and Scripture, it had assumed the character of theology and exegesis. Galileo personally was dealt with very leniently. During the discussions of 1616 he was never cited before the bar of the Inquisition, nor was his exterior freedom in any way restricted. Only one thing was done: he was cautioned by Cardinal Bellarmin, “by order of the Holy Congregation,” not to adhere to, nor teach any longer, the Copernican theory. The documents of the case say that “Galileo submitted to this order and promised to obey.” The Congregation of the Index prohibited, March 5, 1616, all books defending the Copernican theory, declaring the doctrine to be against Holy Scripture. Even the work of Copernicus was prohibited donec corrigatur—until it be corrected. A decision of the year 1620 declared which passages should be corrected. They are those in which the author speaks of his theory not as an hypothesis but as of an established truth: non ex hypothesi, sed asserando. The Protestant Kepler, upon hearing this, wrote: “By their imprudent acts some have caused the work of Copernicus to be condemned, after it had [pg 186] been left unmolested for nearly eighty years; and the prohibition will last at least till the corrections are made. I have been assured, however, by competent authority, both ecclesiastical and civil, that the decree was not intended to put any hindrance in the way of astronomical research” (A. Mueller, J. Kepler, 1903, 105). The reproach of imprudence was intended for Galileo.

To teach the doctrine as an hypothesis was permitted even to Galileo, and this left the way clear for the development of the hypothesis, because whatever showed the usefulness of the hypothesis was sure to increase its value as a truth, but Galileo would not keep within these limits. Instead of showing in a Christian spirit a submission to Providence, which even an erring authority may demand, he openly violated his promise and disobeyed the command he had received. In the spring of 1632 there appeared at Florence his “Dialogue on the two most important systems of the world.” It contained an open, though by no means victorious, defence of the Copernican system—seeking to hide under a confidence-inspiring mask. It contained many passages of caustic sarcasm, with the evident intention of arousing public opinion against the attitude of the Roman Congregations. It was a flagrant violation of the command given him personally.

The Pope under whom the proceedings against Galileo took place was Urban VIII., who, when a Cardinal, had followed Galileo's discoveries with enthusiasm, though never partial to the system of Copernicus, and, in accord with the custom of the age, he had written an ode to Galileo.

Cited to Rome, Galileo came only after repeated urging, on February 14, 1633. The story of his having been imprisoned and tortured on this second visit to Rome is false. Galileo wrote on April 16 of that year: “I live in an apartment of three rooms, belonging to the Fiscal of the Inquisition, and am free to move in many rooms. My health is good.” This stay in the apartment belonging to the Inquisition lasted but twenty-two days; after that Galileo was allowed to live in the palace of the Ambassador of Tuscany. During his whole life Galileo was never even for an hour in a real prison.

Galileo's demeanour before the Inquisition bespeaks little [pg 187] truthfulness and manliness. It makes a painful impression. Many other events in his life cast dark shades of insincerity upon his character, especially his relations with Kepler. While in his dialogue he openly defended the truth of the Copernican system, while he had written, time and again, that the theory had been demonstrated by “forceful, convincing arguments,” whereas nothing but insignificant reasons could be pleaded for the contrary, he now assumes the attitude before the Inquisition of denying that he had championed that theory, at least not consciously; that he had never taught that doctrine otherwise than hypothetically. And this he asserts although he had taken the oath to say nothing but the truth. We even hear him declare that he considers the doctrine to be false, and that he was ready to refute it at once.

The judges were convinced of the untruthfulness of the defendant. In those times, in order to obtain further confessions, especially when the accused had been previously convicted of guilt, torture was resorted to. This regrettable practice was then in vogue at every European court; the Inquisition, too, had adopted it, but strict rules were laid down to guard against abuses. Very old persons were exempt from the rack; they were only threatened with it. This happened also in Galileo's case, he was never actually put on the rack. Moreover, one can safely presume that this threat did not terrify him much. His reading must have enlightened him on this point, and even without it he must have known the practice by his active intercourse with those theologians of the Curia who were friendly to him. In fact, he clung obstinately to his denial, to the very end of the hearing, although it must be surmised that he would not have aggravated his case by confession. The commissioner of Inquisition, Macolano, at the first stages of the trial had expressed his hope that in this event “it would be possible to show indulgence to the guilty, and whatever the result might be, he would realize the benefit received, apart from all other consequences to be expected from a desired mutual satisfaction” (Letter to Cardinal Fr. Barberini, April 28, 1633).

On June 22 the final verdict was rendered: it told the defendant: “Thou art convicted by the Holy Congregation [pg 188] of being suspected of heresy, to wit, to have held for true, and believed in, a false theory, contrary to Holy Writ—which makes the sun the centre of the orbit of the earth, without moving from east to west, and which lets the earth, on the other hand, move outside the centre of the world, and to have believed that an opinion may be considered probable and be defended, though it had been expressly declared to be contrary to the Scripture.” Galileo was declared suspect of heresy, because, in the opinion of the judges, he had assumed that a doctrine in contradiction to the Scriptures might be defended. Galileo retracted by oath. That upon retraction he arose and exclaimed, stamping with his foot, “Pur si muove!” (“and yet it does move!”) is a fable. He was sentenced to be jailed in the Holy Office. But already the next day he was allowed to go to the palace of the Grand Duke of Tuscany and to consider that palace his prison. Soon after he departed for Siena, “in the best of health,” according to the report of the Tuscan ambassador, Niccolini, and there took up his abode with his friend the Archbishop Piccolomini. After a lapse of five months he was allowed to return to his villa at Arcetri, near Florence, where he remained, with the exception of occasional visits to Florence, till his death. Two of his daughters were nuns in the nearby cloister of S. Matteo. His literary activity was not suppressed by the surveillance of the Inquisition. His lively and fertile mind, cut off from polemics, turned to the completion of his researches in other directions. His lively intercourse with friends and disciples, of whom many belonged to various Orders, proved beneficial to him. In the year 1638 he published his “Dialogue on the New Sciences,” which he rightly pronounced to be his best effort, and by which he became the founder of dynamics. His productiveness continued until he became blind.

We may say without fear of contradiction that, apart from their theoretical error, the Roman Congregations had shown the greatest indulgence towards one guilty of having broken his pledge, and doubtless they would have been still more lenient had Galileo, confirmed by flattering friends in his anger at the supposed intrigues of his enemies, not himself made this [pg 189] impossible; if he had not continued to propagate secretly his views, verbally and in writing, which was bound to be discovered. Considering all this, Rome's proceeding in the case appears to be quite indulgent. Here the position was taken that the spread of the doctrine would mean an imminent danger to the purity of the faith. The unfortunate scientist died on January 8, 1642, at the age of seventy-eight years, fortified by the holy Sacraments. Urban VIII. sent him his blessing. Undoubtedly Galileo had nothing in common with the champions of that unbelieving freedom of science, which now tries to lift him upon its shield; notwithstanding his later bitterness he remained to his death steadfast in his Catholic faith.

Comments on the Galileo Case.

The above is a brief history of Galileo's conviction, and of the occurrences leading to it. An event regrettable to all, a stumbling-block for not a few; for others a welcome event to make the Church appear in the light of an enemy of science. Let us now give more particulars of the merits of the case.

We have before us two decisions of Roman Tribunals: the Index decree of 1616, announcing the rejection of the Copernican doctrine and prohibiting books maintaining it, and the conviction of Galileo in 1633 by the Congregation of the Inquisition. It is freely admitted that these Roman Tribunals committed an error in advocating an interpretation of the Bible which was false in itself, and is to-day recognized as false.

Well, does this confute the infallibility of the Church? It does not. The matter in point is merely an error of the Congregations, of bodies of Cardinals, who were responsible for the transactions and decisions. The Congregations, however, are not infallible organs. There is no Bull or Papal decree designating the Copernican doctrine as false, much less is there extant a decision ex cathedra. Neither in 1616 nor in 1633, nor at any other time, has the Holy See ever manifested its intention of declaring, by a peremptory, dogmatic decision, the new system to be against Scripture.

But have we here not at least a wilful attack on science? or a manifestation of the Congregation's narrow-mindedness and ignorance, which are bound to deprive it of all respect and confidence of sober-minded people?

This harsh judgment overlooks two points. In the first place, the error of the judges was quite pardonable. Could the liberal critics of to-day, who so harshly denounce the Cardinals of the Congregation, be suddenly changed into ecclesiastical prelates, and transferred back to the years of 1616-1633, and placed in the chairs of the tribunal which had to decide those delicate questions, it may be feared that, did they carry into the decision but a part of the animosity they now show, they would disgrace themselves and compromise the Church even more than the judges of Galileo did. It is true that were we to judge the handling of the question by the knowledge of to-day, we might be astonished at the narrow-mindedness of the judges, trying to uphold their untenable views against the established results of scientific research. But it would be altogether unhistorical to look at the matter in that way. When [pg 191] the Copernican theory entered upon the battlefield, it was by no means certain and demonstrated.

For this reason it would be wrong to call Galileo a martyr for science, because he did not suffer any martyrdom. He has seen neither rack nor prison. But he was not a martyr chiefly for the reason that he could not have had any scientific conviction, apart from the fact that he did not claim any such conviction, even denied it expressly.

No wonder, then, that the heliocentric system had considerable opponents at that time; no wonder the opposite view was even the prevalent one. A. Tanner wrote in 1626: “Ita habet communis ac certa omnium theologorum ac philosophorum naturalium sentia” (Theol. Schol. I, disp. 6, q. 4., dub. 3). Had valid argument been brought forth there never would have been a Galileo case. In this respect a passage from a letter of Bellarmin deserves attention: “If it could be really demonstrated that the sun be in the centre of the world ... then we would have to proceed quite cautiously in explaining the apparently opposite passages in the Scriptures, we would rather have to say that we do not understand them, than to say of things demonstrated that they are false” (to Foscarini, April 12, 1615). The Cardinals of that time could not be expected to anticipate the knowledge of a later period. They had to consult the judgment of their contemporaneous savants. When seeing the majority of them sharply rejecting the new theory and refuting the arguments of their opponents, it is little wonder that the Cardinals could not overcome their theological scruples.

The scruples arose from the opinion, then prevalent, that the Holy Scripture taught that the earth stood still and the sun moved; that the words of the Scripture must be taken literally till the contrary is demonstrated. The unanimous explanation of the Christian centuries was also cited. As a matter of fact, however, the Christian past had not taught this to be the only true sense of the words, but at that time the words were understood that way, because no one could arrive at any other sense in those days.

Under these circumstances, an error was hardly avoidable, if a decision was required. And a decision seemed to be urgent, and this is the second point we must not overlook, if we wish [pg 193] to judge fairly. It was a time eager for innovations, full of anti-religious ideas. A renaissance, sidling off into false humanism, was combating religious convictions, false notions were invading philosophy; in addition, Protestantism was trying to invade Italy. All this caused suspicion of any innovation apt to endanger the faith; interpretations of the Scriptures deviating from the accustomed sense were particularly distrusted. The Galileo quarrel happened at an inopportune time. Indeed a sudden spread of the Copernican theory might have been accompanied by great religious dangers. Even now, after nearly three hundred years, the leaders of the anti-Christian propaganda are still pointing out that the progress of natural science has proved Holy Scripture to be erroneous, and many are impressed by the argument; many thousands would have been confused in those days by the sudden collapse of old astronomical views that were connected with unclarified religious ideas—dreading that victorious science might shatter all religious traditions. Now, if one is convinced that the damage to religion is to be estimated greater than any other, then one may also have the conviction that it was better for the nations of the new era to have their scientific progress a little delayed, than to have their most sacred possession endangered. Of course considerations of this kind will have no weight with representatives of the naturalistic view of the world. Then it can only be emphasized that a science that has no appreciation of the supernatural character of the Catholic Church cannot be in a position to render a fair judgment on many facts in the history of that Church.

What we have said shows sufficiently that the condemnation of Galileo was not due to any hostility to science.

Copernicus on the Index till 1835.

And what of the fact that Copernicus remained on the Index until the nineteenth century? Does it not show a rigid adherence to old, traditional method and opposition to progress? The fact is true: The work of Copernicus, and other Copernican writings, remained on the Index until 1835. But it is also true that a great deal connected with this fact is not generally known or ignored. Let us mention here some of these facts.

But did not the decrees of 1616 and 1633 do great harm to research? Not at all. That this was hardly the case with Galileo himself we have shown above. Soon after we find in Italy a goodly number of distinguished scientists; the Church in no way opposed the newly awakened life, nor even held aloof from it. Galileo himself was honoured in ecclesiastical circles. Soon after Galileo's conviction the Jesuit Grimaldi named a mountain on the moon after him.

Nor was there any considerable harm done to the development of the Copernican theory. Although after Galileo the occasions were not lacking, still no further advocate of his theory was ever up for trial. Nor was any other book on the subject prohibited. Freedom was quietly granted more and more. In the edition [pg 196] of the Index of 1758, the general prohibition of 1616 of Copernican writings was withdrawn; it was an official withdrawal from the old position. But not until 1822 were the special prohibitions repealed, although they had long since lost their binding force. The occasion was given by an accidental occurrence. The Magister S. Palatii of the time intended to deny the Imprimatur to a book on the Copernican theory, on account of the obsolete prohibition. An appeal was made, which brought about the formal repeal of the prohibition. Of course there had been no hurry to revoke a decision once given. But according to the astronomer Lalande's report of his interview with the Cardinal Prefect of the Congregation of the Index, in 1765, the removal from the Index of Galileo's Dialogue had been postponed only on account of extraneous difficulties. Leibnitz, while in Rome, worked for a repeal of the decree. According to Eméry, there are extant statements of Leibnitz vouching for the fact that he very nearly succeeded (Eméry, Pensées de Leibnitz, 1, 275). The name of Copernicus, too, was omitted in the next edition of the Index, which appeared in 1835.

But even while the prohibition was still in force, the works of Galileo and Copernicus were read everywhere. As early as 1619 John Remus wrote from Vienna to Kepler that the Copernican writings may be read by scientific men who had received special permission, and that this was done in all Italy and in Rome itself. Besides, it was allowed at any time to make use of the doctrine as an hypothesis. Thus it advanced continually nearer and nearer to the position of an established truth.

Soon after the publication of the decree, according to the report of Kepler, it was the general conviction in ecclesiastical and civil circles of Austria “that the censure was no obstacle to the freedom of science in the investigation of God's work.” In 1685 we are assured by the Jesuit Kochansky, that any Catholic was free to “look for an irrefutable, mathematical, and physical demonstration of the movement of the earth.” It was also known that the condemnation of the theory had been aided by the supposition that there were no valid arguments in support of the new theory. Hence the Congregation's decree had in the eighteenth century for the most part lost its force. [pg 197] The Jesuit Boscovich, a celebrated physicist and astronomer, wrote in 1755: “In consequence of the extraordinary arguments offered by the consideration of Kepler's laws, astronomers no longer look upon his theory as a mere hypothesis, but as an established truth” (Grisar, 347, 350).

Thus in the light of history the condemnation of the Copernican theory appears quite differently from the picture presented by the superficial accusation that Rome up to the nineteenth century condemned this theory. There is no trace of callousness and oppression, but only submission to legitimate authority, in so far and as long as one deemed himself obliged. It was a science enlightened by Christianity, which, in questions not yet clearly decided, laid down upon the altar of the Giver of all wisdom the tribute of humble submission, for the sake of higher interests.

We shall have to class with St. Augustine the uncertainty of human judgments and tribunals among the “troubles of human life,” and say with him: “It is also a misery that the judge is subject to the necessity of not knowing many things, but to the wise man it is not a fault” (De Civ. Dei, IX, 6). May we therefore infer that the teaching authority is an evil? Were that true, we should have to abolish the authority of the state and of parents, because they also make mistakes. We should have to conclude that there had better be no authority at all on earth. Where men live and rule, mistakes will certainly be made. The physician makes mistakes in his important office, yet patients return to him with confidence. Every pedagogue, every professor, has made mistakes, yet they still command respect. The state government is subject to mistakes, yet none but the anarchist will say that it must therefore be abolished. “That the judge is subject to the necessity of not knowing many things, is a misery, but to the wise man not a fault.”

The Objection.

We shall not go wrong in presuming that the reader, who has patiently followed our deductions, has had for some time in his mind the question: How about the representatives of scientific research themselves? Do not a large majority of them, perhaps virtually all, stand alien and repellant to Christian faith and its fundamental truths? We do not refer to our modern philosophers, for of them it might be said that their researches yield questionable speculations of individualistic stamp, rather than exact results. But there are the representatives of the more exact sciences, especially of the most exact of all, natural science. They may be considered the legitimate representatives of modern science, since their results are the most accurate, their methods the most strictly scientific; and are they not, every one of them, opposed to Christian faith, especially to its fundamental dogma? Is not Haeckel right when he states in the final summary of his “Welträtsel,” in which he so strongly insists on the incompatibility of religion and natural science: “I am supported by the accord of nearly all modern naturalists who have the courage to express their convictions”? Is it not true that A. von Humboldt is considered the prince of German naturalists? and yet in his voluminous “Kosmos” he not once mentions the name of God? Have not, with few exceptions, German naturalists, under Humboldt's influence, turned against Christianity? (W. Menzel, Die letzten hundertzwanzig Jahre der Weltgeschichte, VI, 1860, p. 70; cfr. Pohle, P. Angelo Secchi, 1904, p. 6). Here indeed the antagonism between true scientific spirit and the faith seems to take shape in tangible reality, and to invalidate every argument to the contrary.

Thus runs the speech that is ever recurring in the literature of the day, in newspapers and magazines no less than in books. And this speech makes an impression on its hearers. Indeed, why should it not? After describing how these heroes of science in recent times marched on triumphantly from victory to victory, how they renewed the face of the earth, and became the pioneers of human progress, how can they fail to make a deep impression if in the same breath they state that these discoverers of truth have, almost to a man, broken with the ancient teachings of the Christian religion?

Without doubt the suggestive effect of such speculation must be very considerable with those who lack sufficient historical knowledge. The case is different with those better acquainted with the history of the natural sciences. They know that it is not true to state that the leading natural scientists, for the most part, or even unanimously, have rejected and denied Christian religion, that it is a lie and a falsification of history.

Let us illustrate it briefly. We do not, of course, mean to say, that if it were true that all the leading naturalists were infidels, the inference would necessarily follow that Christianity is untenable, and incompatible with science. Not at all. First of all, natural scientists who oppose Christianity could hardly ever come forward in the capacity of experts in this matter. For by venturing the assertion that world-matter and world-force are eternal and uncreated, that they develop by force of natural causality, by unending evolution, and not by the power and direction of an intelligent cause, they leave their own province and trespass on the domain of philosophy. These and similar questions are not solved by natural science research, by experiment, observation, or calculation, but are the subjects of philosophical speculation. Atheism, materialism, the denial of the soul's immortality or of eternal destination, all these are philosophical matters, and a natural science theory of the world is a misconception about as absurd as a Swiss England or a Bavarian Spain.

As it is impossible to review here all scientists of the past centuries, to probe their bent of mind, we shall restrict ourselves in the following to scientists of the first rank, for to [pg 200] them the assertion above mentioned must chiefly refer. First of all, they were possessed of that spirit of scientific research claimed to be incompatible with the faith; and they, more than others, should have been conscious of this contradiction. It is plain that if they did not know anything of the claimed antagonism between the theories of evolution and of creation, between physical facts and spirituality of soul, between natural law and miracles; if it be shown that many of them were actually orthodox Christians, believing in the supernatural and yet enthusiastic friends of science, fathoming the laws of nature and yet unshaken in their faith, then the fact that inferior minds talk of a contradiction unknown to these great ones can no longer make much of an impression.

Therefore let us look over the long list of great scholars of the last centuries, those great men to whom we owe knowledge and discoveries that are our joy to this very day. Among them we shall find many who, in their life and thought, have plainly confessed themselves faithful Christians; we shall find that others were at least the opponents of atheism and materialism, that they clung to the fundamental truths of the Christian faith, and that is a matter of moment when the antagonism between natural science and faith is under discussion.

We shall not go back to the ancient representatives of natural science, men like Pythagoras, Aristotle, Archimedes, Albert the Great, Roger Bacon, and others of past ages, partly because there is no doubt about the religious views of those men, partly because research at their time was imperfect. We begin at the rise of modern natural science.

The Old Masters.

At the threshold of modern natural science there stands the man who solved the riddle that had puzzled centuries before him, the father of modern astronomy, Nikolaus Copernicus. He had studied at the universities of Cracow, Bologna, Ferrara, and Padua, and while he was one of the foremost historians of his time, it was astronomy that had engaged his enthusiastic devotion from his youth. He was a Catholic priest, a Canon [pg 201] of Frauenberg. “If recent representatives of the Roman Church,” so writes the Protestant theologian, O. Zoeckler, “praise this Frauenberg Canon as a faithful son of their Church, this fact must be granted by Protestants, despite the frankness with which he opposed the Aristotelian and Ptolemaic theories taught by the scholastics, and despite his friendship with the Protestant Rheticus” (Gottes Zeugen im Reiche der Natur, 1906, p. 82). George Joachim, a native of Feldkirch, surnamed Rheticus, and a Protestant professor at Wittenberg, came to Copernicus at Frauenberg, and was cordially received. His praise for “his teacher” is unreserved. He speaks in the same admiring terms of Tiedemann Giese, in those days Bishop of Kulm.

For nearly forty years Copernicus sat in the modest observatory which he had erected at Frauenberg, studying and collecting the material for his book. Even after all this time this deliberate scholar, despite the urging of his friends, especially Bishop Tiedemann Giese and Cardinal Schoenberg, Archbishop of Capua, hesitated for ten years longer before publishing his discoveries. The work was entitled De revolutionibus orbium caelestium, libri VI, and was dedicated to Pope Paul III. The author himself could enjoy his achievement but very little. The first copy sent by the printer reached Copernicus on his deathbed, and a few hours later he breathed his last, on May 24, 1543.

In the introduction to his work this devout Christian scientist wrote: “Who would not be urged by the intimate intercourse with the work of His hands to the contemplation of the Most High, and to the admiration for the Omnipotent Architect of the universe, in whom is the highest happiness, and in whom is the perfection of all that is good?”

Without Copernicus there could have been no Kepler, without Kepler no Newton. These three men, in the words of a recent astronomer, belong inseparably together, they support and supplement one another. It might be fittingly asked, after which of these three the celestial system should be named; and were it possible to ask these three men for their opinion in this matter, they would probably all give the answer that has been [pg 202] ascribed to one or the other of them: Not my system, but God's Order. Like Copernicus, so Kepler and Newton were profoundly religious men.

Johann Kepler, born of Protestant parents in Württemberg in 1571, was raised a Lutheran. In 1594 he was appointed professor of mathematics at a school in Graz, and after that he dwelt for the most time in Austria, which country became his second home. From Graz he was called to Prague to be mathematician at the imperial court, and from there to Linz to be professor at the college there. His last years were passed at Sagan and Ratisbon, where he died in 1630. Even after having left Austria he gratefully remembered the clementia austriaca and the favor archiducalis. Kepler's astronomical achievements are known to everybody, especially his laws of the planets. With an untiring spirit of research he combined beautiful traits of character, cheerfulness, kindness, and modesty, but chiefly a profoundly religious mind. However, he was in difficult circumstances as far as his religious life was concerned. Quite early he came in conflict with the religious authorities of his confession, particularly for the reason that they considered Kepler's Copernican views as against the Bible, a fact which the learned astronomer could not see. There were also other differences. The conflict became more and more aggravated. It cannot be denied that the Lutheran Church-authorities proceeded against Kepler with a lack of consideration never shown by Rome against men like Galileo. Kepler was expelled from the Lutheran Church, and despite his efforts to be reinstated the ban was never lifted.

But let us return to Kepler. There is evidence that at various times in his life he wavered between his Lutheran confession and the Catholic faith, but that is as far as he went. He was of the opinion that the fundamental truths of both were in accord, and he would not presume to judge of the differences; he had taken a view-point of his own, from which he could not be made to recede. On the other hand, he was shocked when his fellow-Lutherans in Styria were on two occasions severely dealt with, although he personally had been treated with especial consideration. Otherwise his opinions on Catholic matters and the “wisdom” of the Catholic Church were eminently fair; he censured his co-religionists for their invidious attacks on Rome, and for their hesitancy in adopting the Gregorian reform of the calendar. He had friendly relation with many a Catholic scientist, was in correspondence with many Jesuits, was even frequently their guest, receiving stimulus, commendation, and scientific communications from them.

To Kepler the study of astronomy became largely a prayer; the finest of his scientific works he was wont to conclude with the doxology of the Psalmist, “Great is our Lord, and great is His power, and of His wisdom there is no number: praise Him ye Heavens; praise ye Him, O Sun, and Moon, ye Stars and light, and praise Him in your language. Thou, too, praise Him, O soul of mine, thy Lord, thy Creator, as long as it is granted to thee” (Harmonices Mundi, v. 9). His name and work is commemorated in the Keplerbund in Germany, which aims at the promotion of scientific knowledge in the sense of Kepler, in opposition to the misuse of natural science for purposes of materialism and atheism.

The work, begun so happily by Copernicus and Kepler, was completed by the great Englishman, Newton (died 1727). It was he who in his immortal work, Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica, laid bare the law of the universe, which compels the heavenly bodies to revolve about one another. Therewith the laws of Kepler, and consequently the Copernican hypothesis, became established. When, in 1727, this scientist, at the age of eighty-five, died, his mortal remains were entombed in Westminster Abbey, the Pantheon of the British nation. Lofty [pg 204] science and the reverent worship of his Creator were combined in the noble mind of this great Briton. In an appendix to his master-work, referred to above, he cited his proofs for the existence of God, and stated that “the entire order, as to space and time of all things existing, must have necessarily proceeded from the conception and will of an existing Being,” that “the admirable arrangement of sun, planets, and comets could only emanate from the decree and the design of an All-wise and Omnipotent Being,” that “we admire Him for His perfections, we adore and worship Him as the ruler of the world, we, the servants of the great Sovereign of the Universe.” According to Voltaire, it was stated by Newton's disciple, Clarke, that his master invariably pronounced the name of God with reverent attitude and expression.

One of the greatest physicists of recent times was Christian Huygens, who died in 1695 at his native city, The Hague. To him we owe the epoch-making discovery of the undulation of light, while Newton had held light to be a matter of emission. But while Huygens advanced over Newton in this respect, he paid tribute to human limitation by remaining prejudiced against Newton's theory of gravitation, which he rejected. Huygens was a believing Christian.

Religious fervour is still more pronounced in Huygens' contemporary, Robert Boyle (died 1692), a son of Ireland. While he had made considerable achievements in physics, his chief fame lies in chemistry: he inaugurated the period in which chemistry became gradually an independent science. Although working in a different field of research, he is similar to Newton in many respects: like Newton and Huygens, his love of scientific studies induced him to remain unmarried, like Newton he found his last resting place in Westminster Abbey, but chiefly he is like Newton because of his pious, religious mind. He was much occupied with theological studies, and in them the demonstration from nature of the existence of God, and the author's reverence for the Scriptures are most conspicuous: “In relation to the Bible,” he writes, “all the books of men, even the most learned, are like the planets that receive their light and brightness from the sun.” On his deathbed he made a foundation for apologetic lectures: the Boyle-lectures are held to this very day.

We shall name but one more, a son of northern Sweden, the famous botanist, Karl Linné (died 1778). He, too, found God in the living nature which he studied so diligently.

These are the great masters and reformers of recent natural science, the men who opened up the paths which natural science of the present day is still pursuing; most of these savants were of a Christian mind, many of them even pious. There were but few indifferent or irreligious, such as E. Halley (died 1742), who computed the cycle of the comet since named after him, and G. de Buffon (died 1788): but they are a small minority. The period of highest achievement in modern natural science bears the stamp of religion; indeed, to a great extent it bears the halo of devotion and fervour. An incompatibility of research and faith, a solidarity of science and anti-Christian tendency, was never known to the mind of these great masters.

“Any one who has grasped even the elements of natural science, the unity of natural forces and their rigid conformity to laws, becomes a monist if he has the faculty for clear reasoning, and as to the others, there is no help for them anyway” (L. Plate, Ultramontane Weltanschauung und moderne Lebenskunde, 1907, 11). This sort of argument is shouted at us in manifold variations. How does that statement look in the light of history? Men like Copernicus, Kepler, Newton, Linné, Boyle, thus knew nothing of the elements of natural science, nothing of the conformity to laws of natural forces: because they were neither monists nor atheists, but worshippers of the Creator of heaven and earth! A more painful contrast cannot be imagined than to see these great masters and pioneers rated as lesser minds, ignorant of real natural science, by those who trail far behind them and who are seeking their footsteps. The religious conviction of the natural scientists of a past age is sufficient proof that, not the research in natural science, but other causes lead minds to infidelity.

Modern Times.

We turn to the nineteenth century. Does the picture perhaps change essentially in the century that has shown its children so much progress, that has disclosed so many secrets of nature, but has also taught irreligion to thousands of men? Does it become true now that natural science and Christian fundamental [pg 207] truths are opposed to each other in hostile attitude? Claims to this effect are not lacking. In fact, the number of those who refuse assent to the Christian religion is increasing. But even at this time we do not find such to be the majority of eminent scientists, and our inquiry is about eminent scientists, those who make the science of a period, not those who can hardly expect to have their names known by posterity. A considerable number, indeed the majority, of the master minds of natural science, even in the nineteenth century, reject materialism and atheism, and not infrequently they are pious Christians; another proof that just upon the deeper and more serious minds religion exercises a stronger power of attraction.

Let us commence with the astronomers.

“The sciences and their true representatives,” so states the renowned Mädler of Dorpat, “do not deserve the reproaches and imputations heaped upon them from a certain side, that they would estrange man from God, even turn him into an atheist ... we hope to show of astronomy especially that just the contrary is taking place” (Reden und Abhandlungen über Gegenstände der Himmelskunde, 1870, 326).

The greatest astronomer of the nineteenth century, and one of the greatest discoverers of all ages, was undoubtedly William Herschel (died 1822). His son John Herschel (died 1871) became his “worthy successor, almost his peer, who won a fame nearly equal to that of the inherited name” (R. Wolf, Geschichte der Astronomie, 1877, 505). While not hostile to religion, the father had been so engrossed in his restless research, that religion received little attention, but religious thought and sentiment played a prominent part in the son. Time and again he opposed with zeal the materialistic-atheistic explanation of the universe. “Nothing is more unfounded than the objection made by some well-meaning but undiscerning persons, that the study of natural science induces a doubt of religion and of the immortality of the soul. Be assured that its logical effect upon any well-ordered mind must be just the opposite” (Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy, 1830, 7).

It was Leverrier (died 1877), Director of the Paris Observatory, [pg 208] who by calculations ascertained the existence and exact position of the remotest planet Neptune even before it was discovered. When eventually Galle of Berlin really found the planet in the position indicated, Leverrier's name became famous. But greater still were the achievements of this indefatigable investigator in respect to the known planets. When he presented to the French Academy the final part of his great work, the calculations of Jupiter and Saturnus, he said: “During our long labours, which it took us thirty-five years to complete, we needed the support obtained by the contemplation of one of the grandest works of creation, and by the thought that it strengthened in us the imperishable truths of a spiritualistic (i.e., non-materialistic) philosophy.” He was an orthodox Catholic, known as a Clerical. A newspaper complained of him that “Under the empire he was a clerical Senator, concerned with the interests of the altar no less than with those of the throne” (Kneller, Das Christenthum und die Vertreter der neueren Naturwissenschaft, 1904, 96. In the following pages we have made frequent use of the material gathered in this sterling work. See also James J. Walsh, Makers of Modern Medicine (1907); and the same author's Catholic Churchmen in Science, I (1909), II (1910)).

One year after the death of Leverrier another scientist of the first rank died. It was A. Secchi (died 1878). Member of nearly all the scientific academies of the world, he was not only a faithful Christian, but also a priest: for forty-five years, and until his death, he wore the garb of the Society of Jesus. As an astronomer he has been named, not without good cause, the father of astrophysics: he ascertained the chemical composition of about 4,000 stars and classified them into what is known as Secchi's four types of stars. As a physicist he wrote an important work on The Unity of Natural Forces. He was also an eminent meteorologist.

Mathematics, although not natural science proper, is inseparably connected with it. For this reason we may extend our consideration to mathematicians. We only point to the three greatest, Euler, Gauss, and Cauchy, and all three were religious men. Euler (died 1783 at Petersburg) has no peer in the recent history of science in prolific activity: ten times he was awarded the prize by the Paris Academy of Sciences. Cantor says of him: “Like most great mathematicians, Euler was profoundly religious, though without bigotry. He personally conducted every evening the private devotions at his home, and one of the few polemical books he wrote was a defence of revelation against the objections of free-thinkers.” Its publication at Berlin in 1747, in close proximity of the court of Frederick the Great, presupposed a certain moral courage. In this book he refers to the difficulties found in all sciences, even in geometry, adding: “By what right then can the free-thinkers demand of us to reject at once Holy Writ in its entirety, because of some difficulties which frequently are not even so important as those complained of in geometry?” Gauss (died 1855) is perhaps the greatest mathematician of all times. It sounds incredible, yet it is well attested, that as a child of three years, when in the workshop of his father, a plain mechanic, he was able to correct the father if he made a mistake in figuring out the wages paid to his journeymen. His biographer, Waltershausen, says of him: “The conviction of a personal existence after death, the firm belief in an ultimate Ruler of things, in an eternal, just, all-wise and all-powerful God, formed the foundation of his religious life, which, with his unsurpassed scientific researches, resolved itself into a perfect harmony.” Cauchy (died 1857) was a man of most extraordinary genius, whose creative genius knew how to discover new paths everywhere, and almost at every weekly meeting of the Paris Academy Cauchy had something new to offer. In addition he was a dutiful Catholic, and a member of St. Vincent's Society. When, shortly before the February revolution, an onslaught upon the Jesuit schools was made, he defended them in two pamphlets.

We now come to the physicists. To begin with the most prominent representatives of the science of optics, which was developed especially during the first half of the century, there are to be named chiefly Fresnel, Frauenhofer, Fizeau, Foucault. A. Fresnel (died 1827), the originator of the modern theory of light, clung to his conviction of the spirituality and immortality of the soul. Frauenhofer (died 1826) showed himself to be a man of refinement and of kindness, which only occasionally was disturbed by natural irritability: he was much devoted to his religion, so that even his guests while at his house had to observe the abstinence prescribed by the Church; this was quite significant, considering the indifference of his times in this respect. Fizeau (died 1896), too, was a staunch Catholic, who fearlessly testified to his belief, even before the Paris Academy. Though his work was of the first rank, France's chief marks of honour passed him by, and little notice was even given to his death. A significant fact. “These circumstances,” so writes Kneller, “induced us to inquire for particulars; and through the services of friends we obtained information in Paris from most reliable source that Fizeau was a faithful Christian, who fulfilled his religious duties. For this very reason his name had been stricken, at the Centenary of the Academy, from the list of candidates for the cross of the legion of honor, notwithstanding the fact that, on the strength of his scientific achievement, he should long have been Commander and even Grand Officer of this order.” Cornu was the only one to protest against this slight. Foucault (died 1868) had, in the time of his restless scientific [pg 212] work, taken an unsympathetic attitude towards the Catholic religion. In his last illness he returned, step by step, to his Creator and Redeemer, in whom he found his comfort, and he breathed his last in peace with God and the Church.

Foucault's great countryman, Ampère (died 1836), the celebrated investigator in the fields of electricity, was also estranged from the Christian religion, but, after passing through torturing doubts, he regained undisturbed possession of his Catholic faith, and was a pious Christian at the time of his brilliant discoveries. He had frequent intercourse with A. F. Ozanam, and the discussion almost without exception turned to God. Then Ampère would cover his forehead with his hands, exclaiming: “How great God is! Ozanam! how great God is, and our knowledge is as nothing.” “This venerable head,” Ozanam relates of his friend, “covered with honours and full of knowledge, bowed down before the mysteries of the faith; he knelt at the same altars where before him Descartes and Pascal worshipped humbly, beside the poor widow and the small child, who perhaps were less humble than he” (A. F. Ozanam, Oeuvres Complètes, X, 37, and VIII, 89). As he was dying, and M. Deschamps, director of the college of Marseille, began to read aloud some passages from the “Imitation of Christ,” the dying man remarked that he knew the book by heart.

Another great discoverer in the domain of electricity, who had preceded Ampère, was Volta (died 1827). Like his great fellow countryman, Galvani (died 1798), who did not disdain to be a member of the third order of St. Francis, Volta was a staunch Catholic; every day he recited the rosary.

At Como, his home, he was daily seen to go to holy Mass and, on holidays, to the Sacraments. Those who passed his house on Saturdays saw a small lamp burning before the picture of the Blessed Virgin Mary over his door. If the servant forgot to light the lamp, Volta did it himself. On Feast days, when visiting the parish church, the great electrician could be seen among the children, explaining the catechism to them.

He who, for the first time, is made aware of the religious confession of the greatest natural scientists may perhaps be astonished. Hitherto, he had heard little of the Christian mind of these men, but a great deal about their alleged indifference for religion, and about their materialism and atheism. Now, suddenly, he sees a large number of them to be the enemies of atheism, many, indeed, to be zealous Christians.

This is due to the biographers: they dwell largely on the scientific achievement of a man, likewise on his human qualities, but his religion is often not mentioned at all. When, in 1888, a monument was erected to Ampère in his native city, Lyons, not a word in the speeches referred to the fact that he was a faithful Catholic. Nay, more; on one of the books seen on his monument is chiselled in bold letters the word “Encyclopédie.” [pg 214] Those unaware of the facts would infer that Ampère had been one of the Encyclopædists. His actual relation to this infamous work was that he had read it in his youth, but abhorred it in his later age.

The English physicist, Faraday (died 1867), according to Tyndall and Du Bois-Reymond the greatest experimentist of all times, was, like Volta and Ampère, of religious mind.

Of the same bent of mind was Faraday's fellow countryman, Maxwell (died 1879), known to every one who has studied the development of the theories of electricity. This ingenious theoretician of electrics, professor of experimental physics at Cambridge, was deeply religious. Every evening he led in the family prayer; he regularly attended divine service, and partook of the monthly communion of his denomination. Those more intimately acquainted with Maxwell agree, that he was one of the worthiest men they ever met.

Maxwell's devout mind is especially significant here, because, like Ampère and Volta, he occupied himself much with philosophical and theological questions. Every Sunday upon return [pg 215] from church he is said to have buried himself in his theological books.

Many others might be mentioned of English physicists of the past century, who combined religious belief with great knowledge. The peculiar trait of the English character to respect and preserve with piety the inherited institutions of the past, as against radicalism and the craze for innovation, manifests itself also in the absence of the immature and frivolous juggling with the great truths of the Christian past, not infrequently met with elsewhere. Let us mention but one more of England's great men who have died in recent years. In December, 1907, the papers reported the death of William Thomson, latterly better known as Lord Kelvin. He lived to the age of 83 years, up to his death incessantly busy with scientific work. As early as 1855, Helmholtz described him as “one of the foremost mathematical physicists of Europe.7” The Berlin Academy of Science expressed high praise and admiration in its address felicitating Thomson on his Golden Jubilee. Undoubtedly, he merited this admiration also by stoutly defending from the viewpoint of science the necessity of a Divine Creator.

Such were the views of those to whom, in the first place, the establishment of natural science and its progress are due. It is not science and strong reasoning that lead away from God, but the lack of true science. Bacon said: Leviores gustus in philosophia movere fortasse animum ad atheismum, sed pleniores haustus ad Deum reducere. Another thing must be observed. Among those earnest men, earnest in the investigation of nature, and earnest in the consideration of questions of a supernatural life, there are many who made the religious question the subject of mature study, and who were well acquainted with the objections against religion and Christianity. But they cling to their religious persuasion only the more firmly. We may be reminded of men like Volta, Cauchy, Ampère, and Maxwell.

To speak of authorities, what comparison is there between these great scientists and discoverers, and those who are satisfied with the general assurance that “any one who has grasped the [pg 217] elements of natural sciences must become a monist,” and “that the supernatural exists only in the brain of the visionary and ignorant,” that, “in the same measure in which the victorious progress of modern knowledge of nature surpasses the scientific achievements of former centuries, the untenableness of all mystical views of life that tend to harness the reason in the yoke of so-called revelation has been made clear” (Haeckel), and who in such assurance find perfect intellectual gratification. They recall an incident at the Congress of English natural scientists, held at Belfast in 1874, when Tyndall delivered from the platform a materialistic lecture, and among the audience sat Maxwell, his superior in scientific research, who put down the lecture in doggerel rhyme, in a humorous vein, of course, but not without deserved sarcasm.

We proceed on our way, trying to make haste, and omitting many names that might be mentioned, limiting ourselves to the most prominent ones.

Among the chemists we name Lavoisier. A martyr to his science, he died under the guillotine of the Revolution in 1794; he had remained true to his Christian faith. The Swede, J. Berzelius (died 1848), openly professed his belief in God. Thénard (died 1859), the discoverer of boron, of a blue dye named after him, and of many other chemicals, was a staunch Catholic. The pastor of St. Sulpice could testify at his funeral as follows: “He attended church every Sunday, eyes and heart fixed on his prayer-book, and on solemn Feast days he received Holy Communion.... With Baron Thénard one of the greatest benefactors of my poor people is gone” (Kneller).

Dumas (died 1884), who is esteemed by his pupil Pasteur as the peer of Lavoisier, was also a practical Catholic, as was his compatriot Chevreul (died 1889). This great man had the rare good fortune to be present at his own centenary in 1886. At this great celebration he received an address by the Berlin Academy, stating that his name had a prominent place on the list of the great scientists who had carried the scientific repute of France to all quarters of the globe. When, in view of the mundane character of the celebration, the liberal press endeavoured to rank him among the representatives of [pg 218] unbelieving science, and this question being discussed in public, Chevreul felt himself constrained to proclaim his religious persuasion openly in a letter to Count de Montravel, in which he said: “I am simply a scientist, but those who know me, know also that I was born a Catholic, that I lead a Catholic life, and that I want to die a Catholic” (Civilta Cattolica, 1891, 292).

Two Germans may conclude the list of chemists, Schoenbein (died 1868) and J. Liebig (died 1873).

Now let us turn to the geographers. We merely mention Ritter (died 1859), the man who raised geography to the dignity of a science; he was a faithful Protestant, while biassed against the Catholic Church. In spite of this, a Catholic historian, J. Janssen, has sketched his life, in which we read: “Firm in his belief in the living God, and in the Incarnate Son of God, His Redeemer, he furnishes a clear and convincing proof that this faith, far from being a contradiction to natural science ... alone enables man to acquire an extensive and deep knowledge of nature.” We give only passing notice to the founder of scientific crystallography, R. Hauy (died 1822), who was a dutiful Catholic priest. The geologists now will get a hearing.

As a last division of an imposing phalanx, there are now the biologists and physiologists. Modern biology, as the science of life, has in the eyes of many accomplished the bold deed of demonstrating the superfluity of a soul distinct from matter. Claim is made that it has sufficiently explained the sensitive and mental life by the sole agency of physical and chemical forces, and thus to have removed the boundary between live and dead matter. It is said, further, that biology in conjunction with zoölogy and botany has furnished proof that the wonderful organic forms of life may be explained by purely natural causes, without having to assume as an ultimate cause the act of a higher intelligence; that a never ceasing evolution is the sole ultimate cause,—creation is made superfluous by evolution. Biology is thus claimed to have refuted the old dualism of soul and matter, of world and God, and to have awarded the palm to monism.

Are the eminent representatives of this science really the materialists and monists they would have to be, if all this were true? The foremost physiologist of the nineteenth century was J. Müller (died 1858), buried in the Catholic cemetery at [pg 220] Berlin. He was a decided opponent of materialism; he not only contended for the existence of a spiritual soul, but also for an immaterial vital force in plants. Th. Schwann (died 1882) is the founder of the cellular theory. In the year 1839 he accepted a call to take the chair of anatomy at the Catholic University of Louvain. One of the most prominent physiologists of the nineteenth century was A. Volkmann (died 1877). He was a stout champion of the spirituality and immortality of the soul, of purposive cause in animated beings, and an opponent of Darwin's theory. G. J. Mendel (died 1884) became by his work on Experimenting with Hybrid Plants the pioneer of the modern theory of hereditary transmission, adopted by modern biology; and scientists like H. de Vries, Correns, Tschermak, and Bateson followed his lead. “His important laws of hereditary transmission are the best so far offered by the research in this field” (Muckermann, Grundriss der Biologie). He was a Catholic priest, and the abbot of the Augustinian Monastery at Old-Brünn. Karl von Vierordt (died 1884) is well known by his “Manual of Physiology,” still in demand as a reference book in the libraries of universities. In 1865 he delivered a speech at the Tübingen University on the unity of science, concluding with this appeal to the students: “Until your religious notions become clear by a mature insight, trust in the well-meant assurance that the belief in the divinity of the religion of Jesus has not been put falsely into your heart. True piety is equally remote from narrow pietism as from freethinking indifference; it leaves to reason its full rights, but it also assures to us the faculty to be aware, in joyful confidence in Almighty Providence, of an immaterial and for us eternal destiny.” Ch. Ehrenberg (died 1876) is the explorer of the world of little things: of infusoria and protozoa. He did not countenance Haeckel's materialism nor Darwin's denial of teleology: to him they were fantastic theories and romances. A friend of his, and of the same mind, was K. von Martius, who admired God's wisdom in the wonders of the world of vegetation. Long before his death he ordered his burial dress to be made of white cloth embroidered with a green cross,—“a cross because I am a Christian, and green in honour of botany.” [pg 221] Another renowned name may be mentioned, that of the Austrian anatomist J. Hyrtl (died 1894).

Every one knows the celebrated name of Louis Pasteur (died 1895), the discoverer of various bacteria, of whom Huxley says that his manifold inventions have repaid to French industry the five billion francs indemnity which France had to pay to Germany after the war. It is equally well known that Pasteur was to his death a staunch Catholic. “As his soul departed, he held in his hands a small cross of brass, and his last words were the confession of faith and hope” (La Science Catholique, X, 1896, 182). The story is told that one of his pupils asked him how he could be so religious after all his thinking and studying. Pasteur replied: “Just because I have thought and studied, I remained religious like a man of Brittany, and had I thought and studied still more, I would be as religious as a woman of Brittany” (Revue des Questions Scientifiques, 1896, 385).

Mature Science Respects Faith.

There have now passed in review the great natural scientists of the past, those living at the present time we shall leave to the judgment of the future. Is it true, then, that the foremost representatives of natural science had the conviction that science and faith are incompatible? No! On the contrary, most of them, and the greatest of them, have professed the fundamental truths of religion, or have even been devout Christians themselves.

Still it cannot be denied that some of the great scientists were of different mind, men like R. von Virchow, Tyndall, A. von Humboldt, Du Bois-Reymond. Nor shall it be disputed that, at the present time, a large number of men of average learning are on the side of unbelief. However, it must not be forgotten that unbelief is more frequently pretended to the outside world for appearance's sake than it really dwells in the heart. This is, to a great extent, due to human respect, to public opinion, and the prevailing tendency of science. Then again, it must be remembered, that religiously minded scientists are often crowded out from the schools of science, with the natural result that the others predominate. Another point to be borne in mind is that the atheistic representatives of science are doing more to get themselves talked about; they are seeking more diligently the attention of public opinion. Men like Tyndall, Vogt, Moleschott, Haeckel, are known in larger circles than men like Faraday, Maxwell, Ampère, Volta, Pasteur, who, engaged in serious work, gave no time to making propaganda, as the others did by lecturing and popular writing for materialistic and monistic views in the name of science; they had no desire for the limelight of attention, and for posing as personified science.

All this does not change the fact that a very large number, indeed the largest number, of natural scientists of first rank were believers in God, or of pious, Christian mind. And that is of the greater importance. To do pioneer work in the field of science, to give impetus, to make progress, requires a penetrating and, at the same time, an independent mind, one that can rise above conventional commonplace. The fact that such men have largely been very religious, that they never belittled religion, weighs much more in the balance than the disparagement of inferior minds.

These, then, are the often-cited witnesses for the incompatibility of science and faith. While only taken from the province of natural science, they may in our case be deemed representative of science in general. For natural science is generally regarded the most exact of all, and as the one which, more than [pg 225] any other, has the scientific spirit said to be incompatible with faith, and which, by many, is believed to have brought about in the modern world of thought the irreconcilable conflict between faith and science. This is not so! Such antagonism does not exist. It cannot exist, because it is certain from the outset that both faith and science unfold the truth. Truth, however, can never be in conflict with truth. Nor has that antagonism ever existed historically in any of the great representatives of science. This antagonism is fictitious, it is false in its very essence. It is fabricated, either by distorting faith into a blind belief of absurd things, or else by distorting the human faculty of conception into infallible omniscience, or, the other extreme, by denying its faculty for a higher perception.

Faith has nothing to fear from a mature science that has arrived at the conviction of its cognitions, nor has it anything to fear from the great intellects who reason profoundly and seriously. But it has to fear mock-science and ignorance, and those small and superficial minds that aim at stretching their pseudo-knowledge to a gigantic infallibility.

Ignoramus, We Ignore.

The liberal principle of research rests on the basis of the humanitarian view of the world, which makes man autonomous, and causes him to turn his eyes from above and downward, and to fix them upon his earthly existence. To remain true to its own idea, this liberal science will feel the necessity to sever itself gradually from the restraining powers of the world beyond, and to shun the thought of God and of His divine influence and supremacy over the world and human life. It must resent such truths as a burdensome yoke that oppresses human freedom.

And to this thought it remains faithful, if not in all its representatives, then at any rate in a good many of them. With unremitting persistency it enforces in all its domains the demand: Science must not reckon with supernatural factors. Ignoramus is its watchword, “we do not know it” in the sense of its usual agnosticism, but “we ignore it” in the spirit of the impulse which dreads the loss of its freedom through higher powers. Creation and miracles, divine revelation and the God-imposed duty of belief, it does not know. A moral law, as given by God, does not exist for this science. It wants nothing to do with a religion that worships a personal God, much less with a supernatural religion, with mysteries, miracles, and grace. It praises all the higher that modern religion of sentiment, without dogmas and religious duties, which sovereign man creates for himself, a poetical adornment of his individuality, a religion he need not ask what he owes it, but rather what it offers him. All connection with the world beyond is cut off. Man is now free in his own house. We shall show this in detail, by the testimony [pg 234] chiefly of men generally accepted as foremost representatives of modern science. We do not assert, however, that all representatives of modern science belong here. Far be it from us to sit in judgment as to the good intentions of the champions of liberal science. We know very well that an education indifferent to religion, early habitual association with the ideas of a sceptical, naturalistic philosophy, the acquisition of prejudices and unsolved difficulties, a continuous stay in an intellectual atmosphere foreign and inimical to religious belief—all this, we well understand, will gradually rob the mind of all inclination and unbiassed judgment for religious truth, and thus make for apostasy from religion. Nor do we assert that the idea of God and Christianity are extinct in the hearts of the representatives of liberal science, but we do assert that their science no longer wants to know God and His true religion, that only too often it is in the grip of a Theophobia, which slinks past God and His works, with its eyes designedly averted.

At the same time the unprepossession of this science will be made clear. “A feeling of degradation pervades the German university circles,” so the learned Mommsen expressed himself some years ago when Strassburg was to get a Catholic chair of history; therefore a Catholic who takes his Catholic view of the world as his guide cannot be unprepossessed, hence cannot be a true scientist. We have become used to this reproach; nevertheless it is very painful to a Catholic, especially when he devotes his life to scientific work. The other side claims very emphatically to have a monopoly on unprepossession and truthfulness; it gives most solemn assurances of not desiring anything but the truth, of serving the truth alone, with persevering unselfishness, unaffected by disposition and party interest, and that it has its unbiassed spiritual eye turned only to the chaste sunlight of truth. Hence, we may be permitted to inquire whether these assurances square with the facts. As they demand belief, we may also demand proofs; and if those assurances are accompanied by sharp accusations, the accused will have even a greater right to examine the deeds and records of this assertive science.

What about the unprepossession of liberal science, especially in the province of philosophy and religion? It cannot be our intention to explore the whole territory in every direction. We shall keep to the central and main road, the road to which chiefly lead all other roads of life, we mean the attitude of this school of research towards the world beyond. We find this attitude to be one of persistent ignoring! Science cannot acknowledge the supernatural; this presumption, unproved and impossible of proof, it never loses sight of, it is even made a scientific principle, which is called:

The Principle of Exclusive Natural Causation.

This principle demands that everything belonging to nature in its widest sense, consequently all objects and events of irrational nature and of human life, must be explained by natural causes only; supernatural factors must not be brought in. To assume an interposition by God, in the form of creation, miracle, or revelation, is unscientific; he who does so is not a true scientist. A presumption, a mandate of truly stupendous enormity! How can it be proved that there is no God, that creation, miracles, the supernatural origin of religion, are impossible things? And if they are possible, why should it be forbidden to make use of them in explaining facts which cannot otherwise be explained?

However, it is readily admitted that the principle is merely a postulate, an unproved presumption.

It is merely another expression for the same thing if one calls, with Paulsen, the unbroken causal connection “the fundamental presumption of all our natural research”; or concludes, with A. Drews, that the assumption of a transcendental God, beyond the visible, and in causal relation to the world, destroys the universal conformity to laws in the world, the self-evident presumption of all scientific knowledge; or one may say, with F. Steudel, “The theory of unbroken causal connection has become the fundamental presupposition of all philosophical explanation of world happenings. This finally disposes of a transcendental God, together with his empiric correlative, the miracle, as a philosophical explanation of the world.” The same result is achieved by declaring evolution from natural factors as the universal world-law.

“I Know not God the Father, Almighty Creator of Heaven and of Earth”

With inexorable persistency this principle is now applied wherever science meets with God and the world beyond. Hence, let us proceed on our way and halt at some points to watch this science at work.

The unbiassed reasoning of the mind shows that this world, limited and finite, in all its phenomena accidental and perishable, cannot have in itself the cause of its existence, hence, that it [pg 237] demands a supernatural creative cause. This solution of the question is by no means demonstrated by liberal science as untenable, it is simply declined.

Thus they frankly violate the scientific method that demands acceptance of the explanation demonstrated as necessary, and violate it only for the reason to dodge the acknowledgment of a Creator. This is not science, but politics.

But let us ask, Why should it be against science to reckon with supernatural factors? Is it because we cannot disclose with certainty the other world? Are they not aware that such a principle is opposed by the conviction of all mankind, that always held these conceptions to be the highest, and therefore not to be considered illusions? Do they not see, moreover, how they involve themselves in flagrant contradictions? Does not science by means of its laws of reasoning, especially on the principle of causality, constantly infer invisible causes from visible facts? From physical-chemical facts ether and physical atoms, which no man has ever seen, are deduced: from falling stones and the movement of astral bodies is inferred a universal gravitation, undemonstrable by experience; from an anonymous letter is deduced an author. The astronomer deduces from certain facts that fixed stars must have dark companions, [pg 238] visible to no one; from disturbances in the movements of Uranus Leverrier found by calculation the existence and location of Neptune, then not as yet discovered. Hence, what does it mean: “to fall back upon explanations of this sort always amounts to straying away from scientific ground”? Let us imagine a noble vessel on the high seas to have become the victim of a catastrophe. It lies now at the bottom of the sea. Fishes come from all sides and stop musingly before the strange visitor. Whence did this come? Was it made out of water? Impossible! Did it creep up from the bottom of the sea? No! At last a fish reasons: “What we see here has undoubtedly come down to us from a higher world, far above us, and invisible to us.” The speech meets with approval. But another fish objects: “Nonsense! To fall back upon explanations of this sort always amounts to straying away from the scientific grounds on which we fish must stand. We cannot assume such a world to exist, because this would offend against the first principle of our science, the principle of the exclusive natural causation of sea and water.” With these words the speaker departs, wagging his tail, his speech having been received with stupefaction rather than with understanding.

To this philosophy may be applied the word of the Apostle: “Beware lest any man cheat you by philosophy and vain deceit” (Col. ii. 8). No, it is not the spirit of true science that opposes the belief in supernatural factors, but it is the desertion of the traditions and the spirit of a better science. To the representatives of paganism, to Plato and others, the highest goal of human quest of truth was to find God and to worship Him. For the great leaders in recent natural science, Copernicus, Kepler, Newton, Linné, Boyle, Volta, Faraday, and Maxwell, the highest achievement was to point to God's wisdom in the wonderful works of nature; their science ended in prayer. A principle of unbroken natural causation, as a boycott of the Deity, was to them not a postulate of science but an abomination. They were carried by a conviction expressed by a later scientist, W. Thomson, in the following words: “Fear not to be independent thinkers! If you think vigorously enough, you will be forced by science to believe in a God, Who [pg 239] is the basis of all religion”; and expressed by R. Mayer in the following words: “True philosophy must not and cannot be anything else but the propædeutics of the Christian religion.”

But let us proceed. We have before us an astonishing order, we behold uncounted wonders of well-designed purpose in the world. The question suggests itself: Whence this Order? The watch originates from the intelligence of a maker, an accident could not have produced it; hence also the great world-machine must have had an intelligent maker. This is the logic of unbiassed reason. But the principles of liberal research object to the acceptance of this explanation. What is theirs?

There appears to them, like a rescuing plank in a shipwreck, Darwin's Natural Selection. The artistic forms in the kingdom of plants and animals arose, says Darwin, by the fact that, among numerous seemingly tentative formations, there were some useful organs or their rudiments which survived in the struggle for existence and became hereditary in the offspring, while others disappeared. It was seen very soon, and it is even better understood to-day, that this enormous feat of “natural selection” is contrary to the facts, and would be, above all, an incredible accident. Nevertheless Darwin has become the rescuing knight for many who became alarmed about the threatening Supernaturalism.

Is this the boasted spirit of truthfulness, which desires only the truth,—but is evading it persistently? Is this that unbiassed eye that seeks only the truth? Truly, it seems to be unsound, since it cannot bear the rays of truth. Let us go to another workshop of liberal science. It is known now that our earth has once been a ball of glowing fluid, with a temperature in which no living being could exist. Consequently the latter must have appeared at a later stage of evolution. As a fact, palæontology does not show any remnants of organisms in the lower strata of the earth. Now again a question suggests itself to the scientist, Whence did the first life come from? We have the choice of only two explanations: either it has risen by itself, out of unorganic, dead matter, or it was produced by [pg 241] the hand of a Creator: either by generatio aequivoca or the act of creation. Now there has never been observed a generatio aequivoca, as is testified to by natural science itself, and never has it been accomplished in the laboratory. Therefore, inasmuch as the natural laws of olden times cannot have been any different from those of the present, there has never been a primordial genesis. Do they perhaps give the Creator his due here, where the case is so obvious? Let us see.

Is this science, or is it not rather Theophobia? Does the freedom of science consist, first of all, in the privilege of emancipating one's self from truth, whenever truth is not to one's taste? True, liberal science will then be free from distasteful truths, but all the more shackled by its irreligious prejudices.

In modern times, the theory of evolution is in high favour. [pg 242] On earth we do not only see life, but life in a great variety of forms, from plant to man. The question, whence this variety, admits in its turn only of the alternative: either it was immediately created by God's hand, or it is the result of a slow evolution from common original forms. Whether there has been an evolution within the vegetable and animal kingdom is a problem for natural science. But it is a philosophical question, whether the essentially superior human soul, endowed with spirituality and reason, could have evolved from the inferior animal soul. Philosophy must answer: No, just as impossible as to evolve ten from two, or a whole book from a single proofsheet. Faith says the human soul is created by God. We do not intend to discuss the problem here any further, but shall only point out how science here, too, expressly or tacitly, is determined very energetically by the presumption of the exclusive natural causation; this is applied to the entire theory of evolution, but especially in regard to man.

The aim to eliminate the “miracle of creation” is manifested even more conspicuously in the question about the origin of man: man with his entire equipment, intellectual as well as cultural, must have evolved upward from the most imperfect rudiments; this is regarded as a self-evident proposition.

All these are suitable commentaries upon the trite proposition that natural science, or more generally science, is incompatible with religious belief. Of course research, like that described above, does not agree with Faith. But the fault lies in its unscientific method, rather than in its scientific character, in its latent atheistic presumption which prevents an unbiassed conception of truth.

The compulsory dogma of the inadmissibility of a supernatural order of the world, and of its operation in the visible world, becomes most manifest when liberal science comes in contact with the miracle. Forsooth, it shirks this contact. But time and again, now and in the past, it is confronted by clearly attested facts and it cannot avoid noticing them. However, it is determined from the outset that miracles are impossible. Of course, this cannot be proved except by the presumption that there is no supermundane God. Even the agnostic Stuart Mill admits that if the existence of God is conceded, an effect produced by His will, which in every instance owes its origin to its creator, appears no longer as a purely arbitrary hypothesis, but must be considered a serious possibility (Essays, 1874). [pg 246] Generally, however, liberal science does not try hard to demonstrate in a scientific way the impossibility.

This is the presumption, from which is drawn the most extravagant conclusion, which, though so manifestly improper, is made the basis for rejecting the entire supernatural religion of Christianity. Because God's Incarnate Son, in a small town of Palestine, once turned water into wine, will the Christian housewife lose her confidence in the stability of water? When it was suddenly discovered that the orbit of the planet Uranus was not a perfect ellipsis, as required by the law of Kepler, was it thought that these deviations are impossible because there must not be any exception to the law of perfect elliptical movements? Happily, this law continued to be accepted without deeming an irregularity impossible, and shortly afterwards Neptune was discovered and found to be the cause of the disturbance. But anything miraculous, no matter how well proven, must be considered unacceptable by reason of such unsound presumption. Philosophical a-priorism is superior to facts.