THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 559 



from Paris, and forbade them to live in towns or enter places of 

 public resort.' 



At the middle of the eighteenth century, Buffon made another 

 attempt to state simple and fundamental geological truths. The theo- 

 logical faculty of the Sorbonne immediately dragged him from his 

 high position, forced him to recant ignominiously and to print his 

 recantation. 



It required a hundred and fifty years for Science to carry the day 

 fairly against this single preposterous theory. The champion who 

 dealt it the deadly blow was Scilla, and his weapons were facts re- 

 vealed by the fossils of Calabria. 



But the advocates of tampering with scientific reasoning now re- 

 tired to a new position. It was strong, for it was apparently based 

 on Scripture, though, as the whole world now knows, an utterly false 

 interpretation of Scripture. The new position was that the fossils 

 were produced by the deluge of Noah. 



In vain had it been shown, by such devoted Christians as Bernard 

 Palissy, that this theory was utterly untenable ; in vain did good men 

 protest against the injury sure to result to religion by t^ing it to a 

 scientific theory sure to be exploded : the doctrine that fossils were 

 the remains of animals drowned at the flood continued to be upheld by 

 the great majority as " sound doctrine," and as a blfssed means of 

 reconciling science with Scripture.' 



To sustain this " scriptural view," so called, efibrts were put forth 

 absolutely herculean, both by Catholics and Protestants. Mazurier 

 declared certain fossil remains of a mammoth, discovered in France, to 

 be bones of giants mentioned in Scripture. Father Torrubia did the 

 same thing in Spain. Increase Mather sent similar remains, discovered 

 in America, to England, "with a similar statement. Scheuchzer made 

 parade of the bones of a great lizard discovered in Germany, as the 

 homo diluvii testis^ the fossil man, proving the reality of the deluge.^ 



In the midst of this appears an episode very comical but very in- 

 structive ; for it shows that the attempt to shape the deductions of 

 science to meet the exigencies of theology may mislead heterodoxy 

 as absurdly as orthodoxy. 



Morley, " Life of Palissy the Potter," vol. ii., p. 315, et seq. 



2 Audiat, "Tie de Palissy," p. 412. Cantu, "Hist. Uuiverselle," vol. xv., p. 492. 



^ For ancient beliefs regarding giants, see Leopardi, " Saggio sopra gli errori popolari," 

 etc., chapter xv. For accounts of the views of Mazurier and Scheuchzer, see Buchner, 

 " Man in Past, Present, and Future," English translation, pp. 235, 236. For Increase 

 Mather's views, see " Philosophical Transactions," xxiv., 85. For similar fossils sent 

 from New York to the Royal Society as remains of giants, see Weld, "History of the 

 Royal Society," vol. i., p. 421. For Father Torrubia and his G'ujaniolocj'm Espafwla, see 

 D'Archiac, "Introduction k I'Etude de la Paleontologie stratiographique," Paris, 1864, 

 p. 202. For admirable summaries, see Lyell, " Principles of Geology," London, 1867 ; 

 D'Archiac, " Geologic et Paleontologie," Paris, 1866 ; Pictet, " Traite de Paleontologie," 

 Paris, 1853; Yezian, "Prodrome de la Geologic," Paris, 1863; Haeckel, " History of 

 Creation," New York, 1876, chapter iii. 



