596 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



NEW CHAPTERS IN" THE WAEFARE OF SCIENCE. 



Br ANDEEW DICKSON WHITE, 



LATK PRESIDENT OF CORNELL UNIVERSITY. 



IV. — GEOLOGY {concluded). 



LONG before the end of the struggle described in the last article, 

 even at a very early period, the futility of the usual scholastic 

 weapons had been seen by the more keen-sighted champions of ortho- 

 doxy ; and, as the difficulties of the ordinary attack upon science 

 became more and more evident, many of these champions began en- 

 deavors to patch up a truce. So began the third stage in the war — 

 the period of attempts at compromise. 



The position which the compromise party took was that the fossils 

 were produced by the Deluge of Noah. 



This position was strong, for it was apparently based upon Scripture. 

 Moreover, it had high ecclesiastical sanction — some of the fathers 

 had held that fossil remains, even on the highest mountains, repre- 

 sented animals destroyed at the Deluge — Tertullian was especially 

 firm on this point, and St. Augustine thought that a fossil tooth dis- 

 covered in North Africa must have belonged to one of the giants 

 mentioned in Scripture.* 



In the sixteenth century especially, weight began to be attached to 

 this idea by those who felt the worthlossness of various scholastic ex- 

 planations. Strong men in both the Catholic and the Protestant camps 

 accepted it ; but the man who did most to give it an impulse into 

 modem theology was Martin Luther. "With his keen eye he saw that 

 scholastic phrase-making could not meet the difficulties raised by fos- 

 sils, and he naturally urged the doctrine of their origin at the Deluge 

 of Noah.f 



With such support, it soon became the dominant theory in Chris- 

 tendom. Nothing seemed able to stand against it, but before the end 

 of the same sixteenth century it met some serious obstacles. Bernard 

 Palissy, one of the most keen-sighted of scientific thinkers in France, 

 as well as one of the most devoted of Christians, showed that this the- 

 ory was utterly untenable. Conscientious investigators in other parts 

 of Europe, and especially in Italy, showed the same thing.;}; All in 

 vain — in vain did good men protest against the injury sure to be 

 brought upon religion by tying it to a scientific theory sure to be ex- 



* For Tertullian. sec his " De Pallio," c. ii (Migne, " Patr. Lat.," ii, 1033). For Angus- 

 tine's view, see Cuvier, " Recherches sur Ics Ossemcnts fossilcs," fourth edition, vol. ii, 

 p. 143. 



f For Luther's opinion, see his " Commentary on Genesis." 



X For a very full statement of the honorable record of Italy in this respect, and for 

 the enlightened views of some Italian churchmen, sec Stoppani, " II Dogma e le Scienze 

 Positive," Milan, 1886, pp. 203 et scq. 



