RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 291 



might be so; it probably was so; but he was not ready to die for it. 



The early fathers of the christian church took some one view, some 

 another, of the shape of the earth. St. Augustine tolerated the scien- 

 tific view, and said at the same time : " What concern is it to me [as 

 a theologian, he meant] whether the heavens as a sphere enclose the 

 earth at the middle of the world, or overhang it on either side?" It 

 was a matter of almost no concern to the Bishop of Hippo at that 

 time, in that place, under those conditions. The mission of the 

 church in the fifth century was to civilize the teeming millions of 

 pagans and barbarians. It was a mighty task. It was performed. 

 It required the entire energy of all churchmen. It was of infinitely 

 small importance, then, whether the barbarians were crowded together 

 on a flat or on a spherical earth. The entire indifference of church- 

 men, then and later, to purely scientific matters is a fact to be kept 

 in mind. 



The theory of a flat earth was enforced from scripture in the sixth 

 century by an Egyptian monk and traveler, Cosmas Indicopleustes. 

 The warfare-of -science books all treat his theory as monkish (because 

 it is wrong). But he was a great traveler and he was reputed scien- 

 tific in his time. His theory agreed well enough with the simpler facts 

 as he knew them, although it can not stand a moment in face of the 

 facts as they are. Are we to blame him for ignorance? If so, who 

 shall 'scape whipping? Is it a merit of ours that we happen to have 

 been born since 1521, when Magellan's voyage of circumnavigation 

 was completed? 



The books in question tickle our vanity with a suggestion that our 

 fortune of birth is somehow a merit. Our children 'know' that the 

 earth is round ; that England is an island. How ? Because they have 

 been told so. It rests on authority for them. Their elders have a 

 better basis for belief. They know how to prove or to disprove these 

 assertions. But how many of the elders can prove that the earth turns 

 on its axis ? It is not an easy matter, and here, in their turn, they rest 

 on authority. How many of my readers can describe Foucault's pen- 

 dulum experiment off-hand, or explain how a change of gravity with 

 the latitude demonstrates the earth's rotation? Our predecessors in 

 the middle ages rested on the best authority they could attain. Are 

 they to be blamed because our centuries of experience were not behind 

 them ? 



The implied conclusion of the warfare-books seems to be that our 

 predecessors are to be blamed for lack of open-mindedness to scientific 

 truths. Open-mindedness implies long experience. It is a product 

 of past centuries. Until the centuries are, in fact, past, this virtue 

 can not be evolved; nor can its opposite vice be atrophied except by 

 time. 



It is a pertinent fact that in the seventh century Isidore of Seville, 



