396 EVOLUTION AND DOGMA. 



as science. In like manner those who impeded the 

 advance of science were not the representatives of 

 the Church, as such, but the advocates of some 

 theory or the adherents of some school or system of 

 thought. For generally, if not always, those who 

 are accused of opposing the advancement of science, 

 and who may actually be in error in matters scien- 

 tific, are as zealously laboring, so far as their lights 

 go, in the interests of science, as those who have 

 the truth on their side. The enemies of Galileo, 

 for instance, imagined that they were doing the 

 greatest possible service to science in battling as 

 they did for Peripateticism and Ptolemaism. But if 

 they had had before them the same evidences of the 

 truth which we at present possess, they would have 

 made no hesitation in acknowledging their mistakes, 

 or rather, they would never have fallen into the 

 errors for which they are now condemned. 



Conflict of Opinions Beneficial. 



In the long run, however, the conflict of opinions 

 in questions of science, far from having a pernicious, 

 has a beneficial influence on the advancement of 

 knowledge. It stimulates investigation and discov- 

 ery, and serves to place the truth in such a light as 

 no longer to admit of contradiction. 



The long-fought battle on the subject of sponta- 

 neous generation is a case in point. Pasteur and 

 Van Beneden have proven by their epoch-making 

 researches, that so far as experiment can give any in- 

 information on the subject, abiogenesis is a chimera. 



