28 NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 



fortress of impiety as the College of Medicine ; and, as a climax, 

 he asserted, on the evidence of his spy fresh from Prof. See's 

 lecture-room, that the professor had declared, in his lecture of the 

 day before, that so long as he had the honor to hold his professor- 

 ship he would combat the false idea of the existence of the soul. 

 The weapon seemed resistless, and the wound fatal ; but M. Duruy 

 rose and asked to be heard. 



His statement was simply that he held in his hand docu- 

 mentary proofs that Prof. Se*e never made such a declaration. 

 He held the notes used by Prof. Sde in his lecture. Prof. S^e, it 

 appeared, belonged to a school in medical science which combated 

 certain ideas regarding medicine as an art. The inflamed im- 

 agination of the cardinal's heresy-hunting emissary had, as the 

 lecture notes proved, led him to mistake the word "art" for 

 " dine " and to exhibit Prof. Se"e as treating a theological when he 

 was discussing a purely scientific question. Of the existence of 

 the soul the professor had said nothing. 



The forces of the enemy were immediately turned ; they re- 

 treated in confusion, amid the laughter of all France ; and a 

 quiet, dignified statement as to the rights of scientific instructors 

 by Wurtz, Dean of the Faculty, completed their discomfiture. 

 Thus a well-meant attempt to check science simply ended in 

 bringing ridicule on religion, and thrusting still deeper into the 

 minds of thousands of men that most mistaken of all mistaken 

 ideas the conviction that religion and science are enemies.* 



But justice forbids raising an outcry against Roman Cathol- 

 icism alone for this. In 1864 a number of excellent men in Eng- 

 land drew up a declaration to be signed by students in the natural 

 sciences, expressing " sincere regret that researches into scientific 

 truth are perverted by some in our time into occasion for casting 

 doubt upon the truth and authenticity of the Holy Scriptures." 

 Nine tenths of the leading scientific men of England refused to 

 sign it ; nor was this all : Sir John Herschel, Sir John Bowring, 

 and Sir W. R. Hamilton administered, through the press, castiga- 

 tions which roused general indignation against the proposers of 

 the circular, and Prof. De Morgan, by a parody, covered memorial 

 and memorialists with ridicule. It was the old mistake, and the 

 old result followed in the minds of multitudes of thoughtful 

 young men.f 



* For a general account of the Vulpian and S6e matter, see Revue des Deux Mondes, 31 

 mai, 1868 ; Chronique de la Quinzaine, pp. 763-765. As to the result on popular thought, 

 may be noted the following comment on the affair by the Revue, which is as free a? possible 

 from anything like rabid anti-ecclesiastical ideas : " Elle a ete vraiment curieuse, instruc- 

 tive, assez triste et meme un peu amusante." For Wurtz's statement, see Revue de Thera- 

 peutique for 1868, p. 303. 



f De Morgan, Paradoxes, pp. 421-428 ; also, Daubeny's Essays. 



