296 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



compressibility of water, were studied by the right method and 

 with results that enriched the world. 



The Academy was a fortress of science, and siege was soon 

 laid to it. The votaries of scholastic learning denounced it as 

 irreligious ; quarrels were fomented ; Leopold was bribed with 

 a cardinal's hat and drawn away to Rome ; and, after ten years 

 of beleaguering, the fortress fell : Borelli was left a beggar ; Oliva 

 killed himself in despair. 



So, too, the noted Academy of the Lincei at times incurred the 

 ill-will of the papacy by the very fact that it included thoughtful 

 investigators. It was " patronized " by Pope Urban VIII in such 

 manner as to paralyze it, and it was afterward vexed by Pope 

 Gregory XVI ; even in our own time sessions of scientific asso- 

 ciations were discouraged and thwarted by Pope Pius IX.* 



Such was the struggle of the physical sciences in general. Let 

 us now look briefly at one special example out of many, which 

 reveals, as well as any, the beginning, continuance, and end of 

 theological interference with the evolution of them. 



It will doubtless seem amazing to many that for ages the 

 weight of theological thought in Christendom was thrown against 

 the idea of the suffocating properties of certain gases, and espe- 

 cially of carbonic acid. Although in antiquity we see men form- 

 ing a right theory of gases in mines, we find that, early in the 

 history of the Church, St. Clement of Alexandria put forth, the 

 theory that these gases are manifestations of diabolic action, and 

 that, throughout Christendom, suffocation in caverns, wells, and 

 cellars was attributed to the direct action of evil spirits. Evi- 

 dences of this view abound through the mediaeval period, and 

 even as late as the Reformation period a great authority, Agri- 



* For Porta, see the English translation of his main summary, " Natural Magick," Lon- 

 don, 1658. The first chapters are especially interesting, as showing what the word "magic" 

 had come to mean in the mind of a man in whom mediaeval and modern ideas were curiously 

 mixed ; see also Hoefer, Histoire de la Chimie, vol. ii, pp. 102-106 ; also Kopp ; also Sprengel, 

 llistoire de la Medeeine, iii, p. 239 ; also Musset-Pathay. For the Accademia del Cimento, 

 see Napier, Florentine History, yoI. v, p. 485 ; Tiraboschi, Storia della Litteratura ; Henri 

 Martin, Histoire de France ; Jevons, Principles of Science, vol. ii, pp. 36-40. For value 

 attached to Borelli's investigations by Newton and Huygens, see Brewster's Life of Sir 

 Isaac Newton, London, 18*75, pp. 128, 129. Libri, in his Essai sur Galilee, p. 37, says that 

 Oliva was summoned to Rome and so tortured by the Inquisition that, to escape further 

 cruelty, he ended his life by throwing himself from a window. For interference by Pope 

 Gregory XVI with the Academy of the Lincei, and with public instruction generally, see 

 Carutti, Storia della Accademia dei Lincei, p. 126. Pius IX, with all his geniality, seems to 

 have allowed his hostility to voluntary associations to carry him very far at times. For his 

 answer to an application made through Lord Odo Russell regarding a society for the pre- 

 vention of cruelty to animals and his answer that " such an association could not be sanc- 

 tioned by the Holy See, being founded on a theological error, to wit, that Christians owed 

 any duties to animals," see Frances Power Cobbe, Hopes of the Human Race, p. 207. 



