NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 9 



image thus addresses him : " Thomas, thou hast written well con- 

 cerning me; what price wilt thou receive for thy labor?" The 

 myth-making faculty of the people at large was also brought into 

 play. According to a wide-spread and circumstantial legend, Al- 

 bert, by magical means, created an android an artificial man. liv- 

 ing, speaking, and answering all questions with such subtlety that 

 St. Thomas, unable to answer its reasoning, broke it to pieces with 

 his staff. 



To this day historians of the Roman Church like Rohrbacher, 

 and historians of science like Pouchet, find it convenient to pro- 

 pitiate the Church by dilating upon the glories of St. Thomas 

 Aquinas in thus making an alliance between religious and scien- 

 tific thought, and laying the foundations for a " sanctified science " ; 

 but the unprejudiced historian can not indulge in this enthusiastic 

 view : the results both for the Church and for science have been 

 most unfortunate. It was a wretched delay in the evolution of 

 fruitful thought ; for the first result of this great man's great 

 com promise was to close for ages that path' in science which above 

 all others leads to discoveries of value the experimental method 

 and to reopen that old path of mixed theology and science 

 which, as Hallam declares, "after three or four hundred years 

 had not untied a single knot or added one unequivocal truth to 

 the domain of philosophy " the path which, as all modern his- 

 tory proves, has ever since led only to delusion and evil.* 



The theological path thus opened by these strong men became 

 the main path for science during ages, and it led the world ever 

 further and further from any fruitful fact or useful method. 



* For the work of Aquinas, see his Liber de Coelo et Mundo, section xx ; also, Life and 

 Labors of St. Thomas of Aquin, by Archbishop Vaughan, pp. 459 et seq. For his labors in 

 natural science, see Hoefer, Histoire de la Chimie, Paris, 1843, vol. i, p. 381. For theological 

 views of science in the middle ages, and rejoicing thereat, see Pouchet, Hist, des Sci. Nat 

 au Moyen Age, ubi supra. Pouchet says : " En general an milieu du moyen age les sciences 

 sont essentiellement chretiennes, leur but est tout-a-fait religieux, et elles semblent beaucoup 

 moins s'inquieter de 1'avancement intellectual de Phomme que de son salut eternel." Pouchet 

 calls this " conciliation " into a " harmonieux ensemble " " la plus glorieuse des conqufi tes 

 intellectuelles du moyen age." Pouchet belongs to Rouen, and the shadow of Rouen 

 Cathedral seems thrown over all his history. See, also, 1'Abbe" Rohrbacher, Hist de 

 1'Eglise Catholique, Paris, 1858, vol. xviii, pp. 421 et seq. The abbe" dilates upon the fact 

 that " the Church organizes the agreement of all the sciences by the labors of St. Thomas 

 of Aquin and his contemporaries." For the complete subordination of science to theology 

 by St. Thomas, see Eicken, chap. vi. For the theological character of science in the middle 

 ages, recognized by a Protestant philosophic historian, see the well-known passage in Guizot, 

 History of Civilization in Europe ; and by a noted Protestant ecclesiastic, see Bishop Hamp- 

 den's Life of Thomas Aquinas, chaps, xxxvi, xxxvii ; see also Hallam, Middle Ages, chap, 

 ix. For dealings of Pope John XXII, of the Kings of France and England, and of the Re- 

 public of Venice, see Figuier, L'Alchimie et les Alchimistes, pp. 140, 141, where, in a note, 

 the text of the bull Spondent Pariter is given. For popular legends regarding Albert and 

 St. Thomas, see Elephas Levi, Hist, de la Magie, chap. v. 



