SCIENCE IN "BONDAGE" 97 



committed himself to misleading views, views 

 which he knew to be misleading, because he 

 thought that he was thereby serving the interest 

 of the Church. What he said concerned fossils, 

 then beginning to puzzle the scientific world of 

 the day. Confronted with these objects and 

 living, as he did, in an unscientific age, when the 

 seven days of creation were interpreted as periods 

 of twenty-four hours each and the universality 

 of the Noachian deluge was accepted by everybody, 

 it would have been something like a miracle if he 

 had at once fathomed the true meaning of the 

 shark's teeth, elephant's bones, and other fossil 

 remains which came under his notice. His idea 

 was that all these things were mere concretions 

 " generated by fermentation in the spots where 

 they were found," as he very quaintly and even 

 absurdly put it. The accusation, however, is 

 not that Fallopius made a mistake as many an- 

 other man has done but that he deliberately 

 expressed an opinion which he did not hold and 

 did so from religious motives. Of course, this 

 includes the idea that he knew what the real 

 explanation was, for had he not known it, he 

 could not have been guilty of making a false state- 

 ment. There is no evidence whatever that 

 Fallopius ever had so much as a suspicion of the 

 real explanation, nor, it may be added, had any 

 other man of science for the century which fol- 

 lowed his death. 



Then there arose another Catholic churchman, 

 Nicolaus Stensen (1631-1686), who, by the way, 

 ended his days as a bishop, who did solve the 



