i8 NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 



three kingdoms in Nature mineral, vegetable, and animal ; with 

 " the three colors " red, yellow, and blue ; with " the three eyes of 

 the honey-bee " and with a multitude of other analogues equally 

 precious. The sacred power of the number seven was seen in the 

 seven golden candlesticks and the seven churches in the Apoca- 

 lypse ; in the seven cardinal virtues and the seven deadly sins ; 

 in the seven liberal arts and the seven devilish arts, and, above 

 all, in the seven sacraments. And as this proved in astrology 

 that there could be only seven planets, so it proved in alchemy 

 that there must be exactly seven metals in the electrum magicum. 

 The twelve apostles were connected with the twelve signs in the 

 zodiac, and with much in physical science. The seventy-two dis- 

 ciples, the seventy-two interpreters of the Old Testament, the 

 seventy-two mystical names of God, were connected with the sup- 

 posed fact in anatomy that there were seventy- two joints in the 

 human frame. 



Then, too, there were revived such theologic and metaphysical 

 substitutes for scientific thought as the declaration that the per- 

 fect line is a circle, and hence that the planets must move in abso- 

 lute circles a statement which led astronomy astray even when 

 the great truths of the Copernican theory were well in sight ; also, 

 the declaration that Nature abhors a vacuum, a statement which 

 led physics astray until Torricelli made his experiments. 



In chemistry we have the same theologic tendency to magic, 

 and as a result a muddle of science and theology, which from one 

 point of view seems blasphemous, and from another idiotic, but 

 which none the less sterilized the field of physical investigation 

 for ages. That debased Platonism which had been such an im- 

 portant factor in the evolution of Christian theology from the 

 earliest days of the Church continued its work. As everything in 

 inorganic Nature was supposed to have spiritual significance, the 

 doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation were turned into an argu- 

 ment in behalf of the philosophers stone : arguments for the 

 scheme of redemption and for transubstantiation suggested others 

 of similar construction to prove the transmutation of metals ; the 

 doctrine of the resurrection of the human body was by similar 

 mystic jugglery connected with the processes of distillation and 

 sublimation. Even after the middle ages were past strong men 

 seem unable to break away from such reasoning as this ; among 

 them such leaders as Basil Valentine in the fifteenth century, 

 Agricola in the sixteenth, and Van Helmont in the seventeenth. 



The greatest theologians aided in developing the fetichism in 

 which much of this pseudo-science was grounded. One question 

 largely discussed was, whether at the redemption it was necessary 

 for God to take the human form. Thomas Aquinas answered 

 that it was necessary, but William Occam and Duns Scotus an- 



