THE GREAT CONFLICT. 231 



is the soul ? What is the world ? How is it governed ? Have we 

 any standard or criterion of truth ? And the thoughtful reader will 

 earnestly ask, " Are our solutions of these problems any better than 

 theirs ? " 



The general argument of this book, then, is as follows : 



I first direct attention to the origin of modern science as distin- 

 guished from ancient, by depending on observation, experiment, and 

 mathematical discussion, instead of mere speculation, and shall show 

 that it was a consequence of the Macedonian campaigns, which brought 

 Asia and Europe into contact. A brief sketch of those campaigns, and 

 of the Museum of Alexandria, illustrates its character. 



Then with brevity I recall the well-known origin of Christianity, 

 and show its advance to the attainment of imperial power, the trans- 

 formation it underwent by its incorporation with paganism, the exist- 

 ing religion of the Roman Empire. A clear conception of its incom- 

 patibility with science caused it to suppress forcibly the Schools of 

 Alexandria. It was constrained to this by the political necessities of 

 its position. 



The parties to the conflict thus placed, I next relate the story of 

 their first open struggle ; it is the first or Southern Reformation. 

 The point in dispute had respect to the nature of God. It involved 

 the rise of Mohammedanism. Its result was, that much of Asia and 

 Africa, with the historic cities Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Carthage, 

 were wrenched from Christendom, and the doctrine of the Unity of 

 God established in the larger portion of what had been the Roman 

 Empire. 



This political event was followed by the restoration of science, the 

 establishment of colleges, schools, libraries, throughout the domin- 

 ions of the Arabians. Those conquerors, pressing forward rapidly in 

 their intellectual development, rejected the anthropomorphic ideas 

 of the nature of God remaining in their popular belief, and accepted 

 other more philosophical ones, akin to those that had long previously 

 been attained to in India. The result of this was a second conflict, 

 that respecting the nature of the soul. Under the designation of 

 Averroism, there came into prominence the theories of Emanation 

 and Absorption. At the close of the middle ages the Inquisition suc- 

 ceeded in excluding those doctrines from Europe, and now the Vati- 

 can Council has formally and solemnly anathematized them. 



Meantime, through the cultivation of astronomy, geography, and 

 other sciences, correct views had been gained as to the position and 

 relations of the earth, and as to the structure of the world ; and since 

 Religion, resting itself on what was assumed to be the proper inter- 

 pretation of the Scriptures, insisted that the earth is the central and 

 most important part of the universe, a third conflict broke out. In 

 this Galileo led the way on the part of Science. Its issue was the 

 overthrow of the Church on the question in dispute. Subsequently a 



