NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 301 



But justice forbids raising an outcry against Roman Cathol- 

 icism alone for this. In 1864 a number of excellent men in Eng- 

 land drew up a declaration to be signed by students in the natural 

 sciences, expressing " sincere regret that researches into scientific- 

 truth are perverted by some in our time into occasion for casting 

 doubt upon the truth and authenticity of the Holy Scriptures." 

 Nine tenths of the leading scientific men of England refused to 

 sign it ; nor was this all : Sir John Herschel, Sir John Bowring, 

 and Sir W. R. Hamilton administered, through the press, castiga- 

 tions which roused general indignation against the proposers of 

 the circular, and Prof. De Morgan, by a parody, covered memorial 

 and memorialists with ridicule. It was the old mistake, and the 

 old result followed in the minds of multitudes of thoughtful 

 young men.* 



And in yet another Protestant country this same mistake was 

 made. In 18G8 several excellent churchmen in Prussia thought it 

 their duty to meet for the denunciation of "science falsely so 

 called." Two results followed : upon the great majority of these 

 really self-sacrificing men — whose first utterances showed com- 

 plete ignorance of the theories they attacked — there came quiet 

 and wide-spread contempt ; upon Pastor Knak, who stood forth 

 and proclaimed views of the universe which he thought scriptural, 

 but which most school-boys knew to be childish, came a burst of 

 good-natured derision from every quarter of the German na- 

 tion, f 



Warfare of this sort against science seems petty indeed ; but 

 it is to be guarded against in Protestant countries not less than in 

 Catholic ; it breaks out in America not less than in Europe. Do 

 conscientious Roman bishops in France labor to keep all advanced 

 scientific instruction under their own control — in their own uni- 

 versities and colleges ; so do many not less conscientious Protes- 

 tant clergymen in our own country insist that advanced education 

 in science and literature shall be kept under control in their own 

 sectarian universities and colleges, wretchedly one-sided in their 

 development, and miserably inadequate in their equipment: did 

 a leading Spanish university, until a recent period, exclude pro- 

 fessors holding the Newtonian theory ; so have many leading 

 American colleges excluded professors holding the Darwinian 

 theory : have Catholic colleges in Italy rejected excellent candi- 

 dates for professorships on account of " unsafe " views regarding 



may be noted the following comment on the affair by the Revue, which is as free as possible 

 from anything like rabid anti-ecclesiastical ideas : " Elle a ete vraiment curieuse, instruc- 

 tive, assez triste et nieme un peu amusante." For Wurtz's statement, see Revue de Thera- 

 peutique for 1868, p. 303. 



* De Morgan, Paradoxes, pp. 421^128 ; also, Daubeny's Essays. 



f Fee the Berlin newspapers for the summer of 1868, especially Kladderadatsch. 



