NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 291 



which none the less sterilized the field of physical investigation 

 for ages. That debased Platonism which had been such an im- 

 portant factor in the evolution of Christian theology from the 

 earliest days of the Church continued its work. As everything in 

 inorganic Nature was supposed to have spiritual significance, the 

 doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation were turned into an argu- 

 ment in behalf of the philosopher's stone : arguments for the 

 scheme of redemption and for transubstantiation suggested others 

 of similar construction to prove the transmutation of metals ; the 

 doctrine of the resurrection of the human body was by similar 

 mystic jugglery connected with the processes of distillation and 

 sublimation. Even after the middle ages were past strong men 

 seem unable to break away from such reasoning as this; — among 

 them such leaders as Basil Valentine in the fifteenth century, 

 Agricola in the sixteenth, and Van Helmont in the seventeenth. 



The greatest theologians aided in developing the fetichism in 

 which much of this pseudo-science was grounded. One question 

 largely discussed was, whether at the redemption it was necessary 

 for God to take the human form. Thomas Aquinas answered 

 that it was necessary, but William Occam and Duns Scotus an- 

 swered that it was not ; that God might have taken the form of a 

 stone, or of a log, or of a beast. The possibilities opened to wild 

 substitutes for science by this sort of reasoning were infinite. 

 Men have often wondered how it was that the Arabians accom- 

 plished so much in scientific discovery as compared with Christian 

 investigators : the reason is not far to seek ; the Arabians were 

 comparatively free from these mystic allurements, these theologic 

 modes of thought which in Christian Europe flickered in the air 

 on all sides, luring men into paths which led no-whither. 



Strong investigators like Arnold de Villanova, Raimond Lully, 

 Basil Valentine, Paracelsus, and their compeers, were thus drawn 

 far out of the only paths which led to fruitful truths. In a work 

 generally ascribed to Arnold of Villanova, the student is told that 

 in mixing his chemicals he must repeat the psalm Exsurge Do- 

 mine, and that on certain chemical vessels must be placed the last 

 words of Jesus on the cross. Vincent de Beauvais insists that as 

 the Bible declares that Noah, when five hundred years old, had 

 children born to him, he must have possessed alchemical means 

 of preserving life ; and much later Dickinson insists that the 

 patriarchs generally must have owed their long lives to such 

 means. It was loudly declared that the reality of the philoso- 

 pher's stone was proved by the words of St. John in the Revela- 

 tion, " To the victor I will give a white stone/' The reasonable- 

 ness of seeking to develop gold out of the baser metals was for 

 many generations based upon the doctrine of the resurrection of 

 the physical body, which, though explicitly denied by St. Paul, 



