76 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



however, forget that the Roman Church has never formally retracted 

 her claim to adjudicate upon scientific truth. An "Index" of pro- 

 scribed books is still issued, and within the present century Pope 

 Gregory, in an encyclical letter, characterized the freedom of the 

 press as "deterrima ilia ac nunquam satis execranda et detestabilis 

 libertas artis literariae." 



In Britain the anti-scientific spirit still lingers more decidedly than 

 elsewhere. Its chief lurking-places are sometimes said to be among 

 the clergy and country gentlemen. We are not sure that this view is 

 correct. Passing through a street in one of our northern manufactur- 

 ing towns, the present writer once heard a demagogue addressing a 

 crowd on something which he contended must be put down. That 

 something was science ! We are bound to say that his listeners gave 

 every mark of sympathy and approval. The manner in which inventors 

 have often been treated in different parts of England seems to show 

 that such feelings are widely spread. The country which first wins 

 over her working-classes to favor invention and to become themselves 

 inventors will command the industrial supremacy of the world. 

 America is fast attaining this object by her patent system, which 

 enables even a poor man to secure his property in an invention. Our 

 statesmen, Whig and Tory alike, can scarcely be restrained from lay- 

 ing additional difficulties in the way of patent right. 



If we now, summing up, seek to know who have been the chief 

 persecutors of science, we shall find the conventional answers too nar- 

 row. Many persons have laid the chief blame upon Roman Catholi- 

 cism. It is very questionable, however, whether other churches, if they 

 had been as widely spread, and had possessed as great civil power and 

 authority, might not have equaled or even exceeded Rome. The reli- 

 gious bodies of Britain, established or dissenting, have certainly been 

 unsurpassed in the virulence of their attacks upon geology and upon 

 the new natural history. We strongly suspect that the Church of 

 Rome will be the first religious body to admit that the doctrines of 

 evolution and of the high antiquity of the human race are not neces- 

 sarily opposed to the teachings of the Scriptures. So-called infidels of 

 various grades of opinion have contended that Christianity in any and 

 every form is the persecutor of science. We would submit, on the 

 contrary, that discovery was persecuted in heathen and democratic 

 Athens, where all the influence of Pericles barely sufficed to save his 

 friend the philosopher Anaxagoras from a worse fate than banishment. 

 Nay, we may even venture to predict that modern " free-thought " will 

 before long appear as the adversary of Science, and, if sufficiently pow- 

 erful, as her persecutor. 



The jealousy of the industrial classes we have already glanced at. 



Lest we should feel tempted to ridicule the suicidal folly of the 

 working-classes in thus seeking to repress improvement, let us remem- 

 ber that Science is sometimes her own persecutor. Men who have 



