SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT 3 



spectrum ; Volt a discovered the electric pile. It is 

 true that these epoch-making discoveries were on 

 the physical side of science, rather than on the 

 biological. It is also true that it is from the latter 

 rather than from the former, that we are accus- 

 tomed in these days to look for conflicts between 

 religion and science. 



We cannot, however, forget that the one serious 

 conflict with science in which a mistake was made 

 by the then rulers of the Church, was on the physical 

 side, for the dispute with Galileo raged around 

 the geocentric and heliocentric theories of astron- 

 omy. With the merits of this dispute I cannot now 

 afford the time to deal, though there is much that 

 could be said about it. Here I will only note in 

 passing that, as Newman remarked, it is the one 

 and only definite case which can be brought up, 

 and is invariably brought up, as an example when 

 the Church is accused of being the enemy of 

 science. Huxley hated our religion and very 

 foolishly and very ignorantly too rejoiced that 

 evolution " in addition to its truth has the great 

 merit of being in a position of irreconcilable antag- 

 onism to that vigorous enemy of the highest life 

 of mankind the Catholic Church ! "* Yet this 

 same Huxley, having studied the case of Galileo, 

 took up a position which I must confess I myself 

 should find it difficult to defend, that " the Pope 

 and the Cardinals had rather the best of it."t 

 And according to Sir David Brewster, Leibnitz 

 declared that the theory of gravitation was opposed 



* Danviniana, p. 147. 



t Huxley's Life and Letters, vol. ii, p. 113. 



