JANUAEY 10, 1902.] 



SCIENCE. 



45 



ing his splendid discoveries on the move- 

 ments of the heavenly bodies and the helio- 

 centric theory, for fear of ecclesiastical 

 interference, and when soon after Galileo, 

 more bold, promulgated the truth that 

 Copernicus had hesitated to pronounce, 

 both he and his discoveries fell under the 

 severest ecclesiastical condemnation ever 

 visited upon any man of science for the 

 truth alone. 



In our own time we have too often heard 

 of sects which place the propaganda of a 

 special faith before either science or educa- 

 tion, and inquire more carefully into the 

 orthodoxy of professors and pupils than 

 into their scientific or educational attain- 

 ments. However much we may regret such 

 action Ave cannot legitimately complain 

 so long as the sectarians in question con- 

 fine their actions to sectarian schools, col- 

 leges and universities, supported exclu- 

 sively by private means, for the right to 

 regulate education within the home, the 

 family, the private school or the private 

 college or university, is a fundamental and 

 inalienable right of a well-regulated de- 

 mocracy. 



The century just closed has witnessed 

 a remarkable liberation of natural science 

 and education from dogma. Geology 

 was first set free by Lyell and his school, 

 and then biology, by the discoveries 

 of fossil man, and the splendid inductions 

 of Darwin. Slowly but surely the teaching 

 of natural science, which, like all teaching, 

 follows closely in the footsteps of discovery, 

 has also cast o& its chains and freed itself 

 from the subjection of theology. But as the 

 church has declined in temporal power the 

 state has become supreme, and with the 

 i-ecognition of its power has come the be- 

 lief in its sufficieney, — even its sufficiency 

 to remedy all ills, real or imaginary,— and 

 scarcely had science and education freed 

 themselves from the bonds of the church 

 before they began to be threatened with 



subjection by the state, a subjection sought 

 for not by theologians but by philan- 

 thropists and philozoists. 



The first in the field were the philozoists, 

 commonlyknown as anti-vivisectionists. In 

 former times charges of cruelty brought 

 against scientific men would have been re- 

 ferred to an inquisition when such an insti- 

 tution existed but now, the church being 

 powerless in such matters, appeal must be 

 had to the state. Accordingly, a prop- 

 aganda was started, first, so far as I am 

 aware, in England but afterwards spread- 

 ing to this country, which by 1875 had 

 succeeded in bringing into complete subjec- 

 tion in Great Britain animal physiology, 

 then the princiijal experimental biological 

 science. Since that time a new biological 

 science, bacteriology, has sprung up and 

 foixnd itself hampered also in some of its 

 most important and most humane investi- 

 gations by the same British statute, enacted 

 on demand of the philozoic propaganda. 



Anyone may read in the 29th chapter of 

 the admirable Life and Letters of Profess- 

 or Huxley, edited by his son, how, in 1870, 

 when president of the British Association, 

 Huxley had been violently attacked for 

 speaking in defence of Bro^vn-Sequard, the 

 French physiologist, and how in the same 

 year a committee had been appointed by 

 the Bi-itish Association, and reported vipon 

 the conditions under Avhich they considered 

 experiments on living animals justifiable. 

 When legislation 'seemed imminent Hux- 

 ley, in concert with other men of science, 

 interested himself in drawing up a peti- 

 tion to Parliament to direct opinion on the 

 subject and provide a fair basis for future 

 legislation. A Royal Commission was 

 finally appointed, with Huxley as one of 

 its members. Early in 1876 the Commis- 

 sion reported and a few months later Lord 

 Carnarvon introduced a bill entitled ' An 

 Act to amend the Law relating to Cruelty 

 to Animals. ' "It was, ' ' says Mr. Leonard 



