504 FRA GMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



which has crushed out of Catholics every tendency to free 

 mental productiveness." It is, indeed, in Catholic coun- 

 tries that the weight of Ultrarnontanism lias been most 

 severely felt. It is in such countries that the very finest 

 spirits, who have dared, without quitting their faith, to 

 plead for freedom or reform, have suffered extinction. 

 The extinction, however, was more apparent than real, and 

 Hermes, Hirscher, and Giinther, though individually 

 broken and subdued, prepared the way, in Bavaria, for 

 the persecuted but unflinching Frohschammer, for Dol- 

 linger, and for the remarkable liberal movement of which 

 1)61 linger is the head and guide. 



Though molded for centuries to an obedience un- 

 paralleled in any other country, except Spain, the Irish 

 intellect is beginning to show signs of independence; 

 demanding a diet more suited to its years than the pabu- 

 lum of the middle ages. As for the recent manifesto in 

 which pope, cardinal, archbishops, and bishops are united 

 in one grand anathema, its character and fate are shadowed 

 forth by the vision of Nebuchadnezzar recorded in the 

 book of Daniel. It resembles the image, whose form was 

 terrible, but the gold, and silver, and brass, and iron of 

 which rested upon feet of clay. And a stone smote the 

 feet of clay, and the iron, and the brass, and the silver, 

 and the gold, were broken in pieces together, and became 

 like the chaff of the summer threshing-floors, and the wind 

 carried them away. 



Monsignor Capel has recently been good enough to pro- 

 claim at once the friendliness of his church toward true 

 science, and her right to determine what true science is. 

 Let us dwell for a moment on the proofs of her scientific 

 competence. When Halley's comet appeared in 1456 it 

 was regarded as the harbinger of God's vengeance, the 

 dispenser of war, pestilence, and famine, and by order of 

 the pope the church bells of Europe were rung to scare 

 the monster away. An additional daily prayer was added 

 to the supplications of the faithful. The comet in due 

 time disappeared, and the faithful were comforted by the 

 assurance that, as in previous instances relating to eclipses, 

 droughts, and mi ns, so also as regards this "nefarious" 

 comet, victory had been vouchsafed to the church. 



Both Pythagoras and Copernicus had taught the 

 heliocentric doctrine that the earth revolves round the 



