3o8 PROGRESS OF SCIENCE. 



Luther, assaulted illegitimate and untenable dogmas and a 

 spurious and despotic hierarchy. Their onslaught was, with 

 equal energy, also directed against social and political evils. 

 And because the privileged interests they overthrew were 

 more numerous than those assailed by Luther, their traducers 

 are also more numerous than those of Luther they include 

 all the social, political, and religious supporters of bygone 

 systems. The representatives of the dethroned castes, still 

 trained in the traditions of the past, raise a cry which appeals 

 to the indiscriminating feelings of artless souls. For in order to 

 decoy the pious into credulity and enlist their aid ; in order 

 to keep on their remaining authority ; in order to put out of 

 sight the real causes of the conflict, they raise the cry of 

 " Religion in danger ! " Once more, it was not religion 

 which was attacked, but its pseudo-priests. 



The victors were not faultless ; they were in the fierce- 

 ness of the strife, often unjust and one-sided ; they were 

 assisted by a few irreverent^ offensive, and discreditable co- 

 adjutors; they often were inexact and superficial; they 

 frequently were extravagant and paradoxical ; the lives 

 they led were not exemplary all this is true. But they 

 fought stoutly and well the great BATTLE OF HUMANITY 

 AGAINST INJUSTICE ; they thought not -of themselves but of 

 mankind alone ; they daily risked imprisonment, fines, 

 exile; and when we are told, "Touch not their books," 

 let us at least remember that the authors above mentioned 

 did more than armies for the abolition of persecution, of 

 torture, of mendacity, and the rise of modern philanthropy, 

 liberty of conscience, political equality, and social re- 

 generation.* And they did so much because they were 

 the exponents of the ideas born of the sciences, without 

 which all human efforts would have remained fruitless. 



The proposition which was laid down at the beginning 

 of this concluding chapter has now, so far as this survey 

 permits, been fairly substantiated : science has been, in the 

 main, the prime mover of all that is highest in civilisation, 

 as it has been in all that is material. It is, from all 

 * Mr. John Morley. 



