356 Science Religion and Reality 



were, from the point of view of secular culture, a retrogression. 

 The Humanism of the fifteenth century was more literary and 

 artistic than scientific, but it was ready to welcome scientific 

 research, and would in a short time have freed itself from the 

 ecclesiastical shackles which hampered its development. But the 

 outbreak of fierce religious war in the sixteenth century destroyed 

 the hopes of the humanists. It is useless to ask whether the 

 Catholics or the Protestants were the most guilty of this set-back 

 to civilisation. It was not Catholicism or Protestantism, but the 

 state of war between them, which had this evil consequence. 

 Christianity, when unmenaced, is no enemy to culture ; but as 

 soon as war is declared, every nation or institution must subordinate 

 all other considerations to the necessity of victory. It must curtail 

 liberty of action, speech, and thought. It must devise and publish 

 a fighting propaganda, in which the claims of truth and fairness are 

 cynically disregarded. It must rest its claims on very clear and 

 simple issues, which all can understand. When two religions are 

 at war, there is no call for deep philosophers or subtle theologians. 

 Both sides will rest their case on some external authority ; their 

 dogmas will be coarsened and materialised ; they will both, 

 while the struggle lasts, become religions of a narrow and brutal 



type. 



It was, I believe, the terrible Wars of Religion that made the 

 fatal rift between religion and science which we are now trying 

 to close. It was a really disastrous accident that the greatest 

 problem which the Christian Church has ever had to face was thrust 

 upon it when it was distracted by an internecine conflict. That 

 problem was the destruction of the geocentric view of the universe 

 by the discoveries of Copernicus and Galileo. The momentous 

 consequences of these discoveries were not at first apparent. 

 Copernicus had no wish to provoke a battle with the Church, and 

 his writings were not published till after his death ; Galileo was 

 intimidated and persecuted. This was only to be expected ; but 

 the Church of the Roman Renaissance would probably have with- 

 drawn from an untenable position. Not so the Church of the 

 Spanish Inquisition, of Luther and Calvin. Catholic and Protes- 

 tant vied with each other in denouncing the new theories. Nor 

 has this disaster ever been retrieved. By degrees the Copernican 

 astronomy has passed into the region of common knowledge ; and 

 though Rome put it under the ban, the devout Romanist is no 



