274 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



founders of modern science, owing to the fact that with them originated 

 the monotheistic religions. Modern natural science, paradoxical as the 

 statement is, owes its origin to Christianity. 



Between polytheism and monotheism there is this difference, that 

 the former is essentially tolerant, the latter essentially intolerant. Soc- 

 rates apparently fell the victim of religious zeal, but, as we know, 

 political considerations, and his uncomplying behavior toward his 

 judges, had most influence in procuring his condemnation. At the 

 time of the Acts of the Apostles the Athenians paid worship even to 

 unknown gods, lest any deity should be slighted. The Roman Pan- 

 theon admitted all gods, even the gods of conquered nations. The 

 Christians were persecuted by the Roman emperors solely because they 

 were esteemed to be dangerous to the state. On the other hand, Juda- 

 ism, Christianity, and Islam, have imagined that they each alone pos- 

 sessed the saving faith, and, in a measure, the idea of an absolute truth 

 only came into the world through them. As the Greeks and Romans 

 recognized all sorts of strange gods in addition to their own, and as 

 the Semitic parable of the three rings would have been amiss among 

 them, so, too, with regard to scientific truth, they were not over-par- 

 ticular. Their undeveloped instinct of causality was satisfied when 

 they could assign for a phenomenon some ingenious explanation which 

 pleased the fancy ; and their researches of ultimate causes consisted 

 really only of delightful conversations about what appeared admissible. 

 " What is truth ? " asked the Roman magistrate, in derision. " I came 

 into the world to bear witness to the truth," said Jesus, and allowed 

 himself to be crucified. 



The idea of a God who suffers no other gods beside him, who ap- 

 pears not as a human invention involved in unworthy fables, but as the 

 highest, the absolute Being, who is the centre of all man's moral aspi- 

 rations, and who with unerring omniscience notes every transgression 

 this idea of God, entertained for hundreds of years by generation 

 after generation of men, accustomed the mind of man, even in scientific 

 matters, to the thought that throughout the universe the cause of things 

 is one only, and inspired him with the wish to know this cause. Faust's 

 heart-felt cry 



" Du musst, du musst, una* kostet' es mein Leben ! " ' 



is one quite foreign to the spirit of the ancient world. The fearful ear- 

 nestness of a religion which claimed for itself all knowledge, which 

 threatened its adversaries with everlasting torture in the next world, 

 and claimed the right even in this life of visiting them with the most 

 horrible punishment, imparted to humanity in the lapse of centuries 

 that character of sobriety and of profundity which certainly fitted 

 them better for patient research than did the light-hearted joy of life 

 favored by the heathen religions. Where so many martyrs were teach- 



1 " Thou must, thou must, though it cost me my life ! " 



