NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 17 



PART II. 



WE have seen thus far, first, how such men as Eusebius, Lac- 

 taiitius, and their compeers, discouraged scientific investi- 

 gation as futile; next, how such men as Albert the Great, St. 

 Thomas Aquinas, and the multitude who followed them, turned 

 the main current of mediaeval thought from science to theology ; 

 and, finally, how such Church authorities as Popes John XXII 

 and Innocent VIII, and the heads of the great religious orders, 

 endeavored to crush what was left of scientific research as dan- 

 gerous. 



Yet, injurious as all this was to the evolution of science, there 

 was developed something far more destructive ; and this was the 

 influence of mystic theology, penetrating, permeating, sterilizing 

 nearly every branch of science for hundreds of years. Among the 

 forms taken by this development in the earlier middle ages we 

 find a mixture of physical science with a pseudo-science obtained 

 from texts of Scripture. In compounding this mixture, Jews and 

 Christians vied with each other. In this process the sacred books 

 were used as a fetich ; every word, every letter, being considered to 

 have a divine and hidden meaning. By combining various script- 

 ural letters in various abstruse ways, new words of prodigious sig- 

 nificance in magic were obtained, and among them the great word 

 embracing the seventy-two mystical names of God the mighty 

 word " Schemhamphoras." Why should men seek knowledge by 

 observation and experiment in the book of Nature, when the book 

 of Revelation opened such treasures to the ingenious believer? 



So, too, we have ancient mystical theories of number which 

 the theological spirit had made Christian, usurping an enormous 

 place in mediaeval science. The sacred power of the number three 

 was seen in the Trinity ; in the three main divisions of the uni- 

 verse the empyrean, the heavens, and the earth;, in the three 

 angelic hierarchies; in the three choirs of seraphim, cherubim, 

 and thrones; in the three of dominions, virtues, and powers; in 

 the three of principalities, archangels, and angels; in the three 

 orders in th.e Church bishops, priests, and deacons ; in the three 

 classes the baptized, the communicants, and the monks ; in the 

 three degrees of attainment light, purity, and knowledge ; in the 

 three theological virtues faith, hope, and charity and in much 

 else. All this was brought into a theologico-scientific relation, 

 then and afterward, with the three dimensions of space ; with the 

 three divisions of time past, present, and future ; with the three 

 realms of the visible world sky, earth, and sea ; with the three 

 constituents of man body, soul, and spirit; with the threefold 

 enemies of man the flesh, the world, and the devil ; with the 

 2 



