io Evolution of Life and Form, 



the limits of the mighty Church of Rome, touch- 

 ed by a longing for the new learning, stretched 

 out their hands to take the gifts that science was 

 bringing. These men were regarded with suspicion, 

 nay, with more than suspicion, with hatred that 

 broke out in bitter persecution. Who can read the 

 history of Roger Bacon, the wondrous monk ; who 

 can picture Copernicus on his death-bed as his 

 immortal work is brought to him ere yet his eyes 

 are closed, he having shrunk from earlier publica- 

 tion, lest the stake should be his portion ; who can 

 stand in the Field of Flowers in Rome, and see 

 there the statue erected where he was burned to 

 death, who dying in one century, lives for all cen- 

 turies to come Giordano Bruno ; who can listen 

 to Galileo, as with faltering lips he denies the 

 truth he knows and utters the falsehood that he 

 knows not ; who can follow these martyr-steps, led 

 on by bitter memories of blood and fire, without 

 understanding the reason for the hostility of science 

 to religion, without confessing with shame and 

 sorrow that that hostility was caused and was 

 justified by the cruelties wreaked by religion on 

 science, when science was young and feeble ? 

 Bvery one of us who stands upon the side of 

 religion should recognise that we are reaping the 

 bitter harvest of our own past errors, and that the 



