386 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



at any real variance even with a truth written upon a fossil whose 

 poor life ebbed forth millions of years ago. 



This being so, it would also seem a truth irrefragable, that the 

 search of each of these kinds of truth must be followed out on its 

 own lines, by its own methods, to its own results, without any inter- 

 ference from investigators on other lines, or by other methods. And 

 it would also seem logical to work on in absolute confidence that 

 whatever, at any moment, may seem to be the relative positions of 

 the two different bands of workers, they must at last come together, 

 for Truth is one. 



But logic is not history. History is full of interferences which 

 have cost the earth dear. Strangest of all, some of the direst of them 

 have been made by the best of men, actuated by the purest motives, 

 and seeking the noblest results. These interferences, and the struggle 

 against them, make up the warfare of science. 



One statement more, to clear the ground. You will not under- 

 stand me at all to say that religion has done nothing for science. It 

 has done much for it. The work of Christianity, despite the clamps 

 which men have riveted about it, has been mighty indeed. Through 

 these two thousand years, it has undermined servitude, mitigated 

 tyranny, given hope to the hopeless, comfort to the afflicted, light to 

 the blind, bread to the starving, joy to the dying, and this Avork con- 

 tinues. And its work for science, too, has been great. It has fos- 

 tered science often. Nay, it has nourished that feeling of self-sacrifice 

 for human good, which has nerved some of the bravest men for these 

 battles. 



Unfortunately, some good men started centuries ago with the idea 

 that purely scientific investigation is unsafe-^that theology must in- 

 tervene. So began this great modern war. 



The first typical battle-field to which I would refer is that of Ge- 

 ography the simplest elementary doctrine of the earth's shape and 

 surface. 



Among the legacies of thought left by the ancient world to the 

 modern, were certain ideas of the rotundity of the earth. These ideas 

 were vague; they were mixed wuth absurdities; but they Avere ^erw* 

 ideas, and, after the barbarian storm which ushered in the modern 

 world had begun to clear away, these germ ideas began to bud and 

 bloom in the minds of a few thinking men, and these men hazarded 

 the suggestion that the earth is round is a globe.' 



The greatest and most earnest men of the time took fright at once. 

 To them, the idea of the earth's rotundity seemed fraught with dan- 



^ Most fruitful among these were those given by Plato in the " Timaeus." See, also, 

 Grote on Plato's doctrine of the rotundity of the earth. Also Sir G. C. Lewis's " Astron- 

 omy of the Ancients," London, 1862, chap, iii., sec. i. and note. Cicero's mention of 

 the antipodes and reference to the passage in the " Timaeus " are even more remarkable 

 than the original, in that they much more clearly foreshadow the modern doctrine. See 

 "Academic Questions," ii., xxix. Also, " Tusc. Quest.," i., xxviii., and v., xxiv. 



