MORAL EFFECTS OF SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS. 305 



and was due " to the doctrine of exclusive salvation." St. 

 Augustine first, and all the doctors who came after him 

 for centuries, made it an act agreeable to God to propagate 

 and strengthen the faith by it mattered not what means, 

 " provided they conduced to the edification of the people " 

 hence forgeries of sacred revelations, divine decree?, 

 papal bulls, spurious miracles, twenty-five thousand of which 

 are known to have been recorded as actual occurrences 

 between the Vth and XVIth centuries. Mendacity of every 

 description practised by the priesthood of Europe was the 

 usual device resorted to to keep a hold upon the converts 

 and the faithful. Absolute credulity, as all writers have 

 remarked since the XVIIIth century, was inculcated as a 

 virtue, and doubt punished as a crime. The moral type 

 had become perverted. 



Science and its intellectual consequences brought back 

 TRUTHFUL SPIRIT. It caused the disappearance of doctrines 

 which clashed with conscience and are opposed to our moral 

 sense. " Science made men intolerant of what is false " ; 

 scientific truth, whatever its effects, is now received as the 

 revelation of divine law, whilst the practice of truthfulness 

 has become the principle of our conduct. 



Modern Philanthropy is another sphere in which the 

 intellectual movement inaugurated by scientific knowledge 

 has played a conspicuous part. Philanthropy is the essence 

 of true humanity. It existed before science. The poor were 

 tended, and tended tenderly, it is only fair to acknowledge, 

 by the religious power. But it was limited to the distribution 

 of alms and the institution of hospitals. Modern philanthropy 

 is far deeper and wider. It has become, as it has justly been 

 observed by recent writers, what asceticism was in the Middle 

 Ages, a ubiquitous fact which pervades the whole European 

 community. Sympathy with suffering, so restricted until the 

 XVIIIth century, is one of the vital sentiments which makes 

 our age so superior to all ages. It is the soul of philanthropy. 

 It has caused the disappearance of barbarous habits and 

 cruel amusements ; it has extended to the enemy fallen on 

 the battlefield ; it has brought in tenderness in the treatment 

 of the epileptics and lunatics who were tortured as demoniacs ; 



