NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 599 



instructive ; for it shows that the attempt to shape the deductions of 

 science to meet the exigencies of theology may mislead heterodoxy as 

 absurdly as orthodoxy. 



About the year 1760 news of the discovery of marine fossils in 

 various elevated districts of Europe reached Voltaire. He, too, had a 

 theologic system to support, though his system was opposed to that 

 of the sacred books of the Hebrews. He feared that these new dis- 

 coveries might be used to support the Mosaic accounts of the Deluge : 

 all his wisdom and wit, therefore, were compacted into arguments to 

 prove that the fossil fishes were remains of fishes intended for food, but 

 spoiled and thrown away by travelers ; that the fossil shells were acci- 

 dentally dropped by Crusaders and Pilgrims returning from the Holy 

 Land ; and that sundry fossil bones found between Paris and ifitampes 

 were parts of a skeleton belonging to the cabinet of some ancient 

 philosopher. Through chapter after chapter, Voltaire, obeying the 

 supposed necessities of his theology, fought desperately the growing 

 results of the geologic investigations of his time.* 



But far more prejudicial to Christianity was the continued effort 

 on the other side to show that the fossils were caused by the Deluge 

 of Noah. 



No supposition was too violent to support this theory, which was 

 considered vital to the Bible. By taking the mere husks and rinds of 

 biblical truth for truth itself, by taking sacred poetry as prose, and by 

 giving a literal interpretation of it, the followers of Burnet, Whiston, 

 and "Woodward built up systems which bear to real geology much the 

 same relation that the " Christian Topography " of Cosmas bears to 

 real geography. In vain were exhibited the absolute geological, zoo- 

 logical, astronomical proofs that no universal deluge, or deluge cover- 

 ing any great extent of the earth, had taken place within the last six 

 thousand or sixty thousand years ; in vain did so enlightened a 

 churchman as Bishop Clayton declare that the Deluge could not have 

 taken place save in that district where Noah lived before the Flood ; 

 in vain did others, like Bishop Croft and Bishop Stillingfleet, and the 

 nonconformist Matthew Poole, show that the Deluge might not have 

 been and probably was not universal ; in vain was it shown that, even 

 if there had been a universal deluge, the fossils were not produced by it : 

 the only answers were the citation of the text, " And all the high 

 mountains which were under the whole heaven were covered," and, to 

 clinch the matter, Worthington and men like him insisted that any 

 argument to show that fossils were not remains of animals drowned 

 at the Deluge of Noah was " infidelity." In England, France, and 



for the most recent progress, Professor 0. S. Marsh's " Address on the History and 

 Methods of Paleontology," given at Saratoga in 1879. 



* See Voltaire, " Dissertation sur les Changements arrives dans notre Globe " ; also, 

 Voltaire, "Les Singnlarites de la Nature," chapter xii ; also, Jevons, "Principles of 

 Science," vol, ii, p. 328. 



