History Of The Conflict Between Religion And Science Part 2

3. For the diffusion of knowledge. In the Museum was given, by lectures, conversation, or other appropriate methods instruction in all the various departments of human knowledge. There flocked to this great intellectual centre, students from all countries. It is said that at one time not fewer than fourteen thousand were in attendance. Subsequently even the Christian church received from it some of the most eminent of its Fathers, as Clemens Alexandrinus, Origen, Athanasius.

The library in the Museum was burnt during the siege of Alexandria by Julius Caesar. To make amends for this great loss, that collected by Eumenes, King of Pergamus, was presented by Mark Antony to Queen Cleopatra. Originally it was founded as a rival to that of the Ptolemies. It was added to the collection in the Serapion.

SCIENTIFIC SCHOOL OF THE MUSEUM. It remains now to describe briefly the philosophical basis of the Museum, and some of its contributions to the stock of human knowledge.

In memory of the ill.u.s.trious founder of this most n.o.ble inst.i.tution--an inst.i.tution which antiquity delighted to call "The divine school of Alexandria"--we must mention in the first rank his "History of the Campaigns of Alexander." Great as a soldier and as a sovereign, Ptolemy Soter added to his glory by being an author. Time, which has not been able to destroy the memory of our obligations to him, has dealt unjustly by his work. It is not now extant.

As might be expected from the friendship that existed between Alexander, Ptolemy, and Aristotle, the Aristotelian philosophy was the intellectual corner-stone on which the Museum rested. King Philip had committed the education of Alexander to Aristotle, and during the Persian campaigns the conqueror contributed materially, not only in money, but otherwise, toward the "Natural History" then in preparation.

The essential principle of the Aristotelian philosophy was, to rise from the study of particulars to a knowledge of general principles or universals, advancing to them by induction. The induction is the more certain as the facts on which it is based are more numerous; its correctness is established if it should enable us to predict other facts until then unknown. This system implies endless toil in the collection of facts, both by experiment and observation; it implies also a close meditation on them. It is, therefore, essentially a method of labor and of reason, not a method of imagination. The failures that Aristotle himself so often exhibits are no proof of its unreliability, but rather of its trustworthiness. They are failures arising from want of a sufficiency of facts.

ETHICAL SCHOOL OF THE MUSEUM. Some of the general results at which Aristotle arrived are very grand. Thus, he concluded that every thing is ready to burst into life, and that the various organic forms presented to us by Nature are those which existing conditions permit. Should the conditions change, the forms will also change. Hence there is an unbroken chain from the simple element through plants and animals up to man, the different groups merging by insensible shades into each other.

The inductive philosophy thus established by Aristotle is a method of great power. To it all the modern advances in science are due. In its most improved form it rises by inductions from phenomena to their causes, and then, imitating the method of the Academy, it descends by deductions from those causes to the detail of phenomena.

While thus the Scientific School of Alexandria was founded on the maxims of one great Athenian philosopher, the Ethical School was founded on the maxims of another, for Zeno, though a Cypriote or Phoenician, had for many years been established at Athens. His disciples took the name of Stoics. His doctrines long survived him, and, in times when there was no other consolation for man, offered a support in the hour of trial, and an unwavering guide in the vicissitudes of life, not only to ill.u.s.trious Greeks, but also to many of the great philosophers, statesmen, generals, and emperors of Rome.

THE PRINCIPLES OF STOICISM. The aim of Zeno was, to furnish a guide for the daily practice of life, to make men virtuous. He insisted that education is the true foundation of virtue, for, if we know what is good, we shall incline to do it. We must trust to sense, to furnish the data of knowledge, and reason will suitably combine them. In this the affinity of Zeno to Aristotle is plainly seen. Every appet.i.te, l.u.s.t, desire, springs from imperfect knowledge. Our nature is imposed upon us by Fate, but we must learn to control our pa.s.sions, and live free, intelligent, virtuous, in all things in accordance with reason. Our existence should be intellectual, we should survey with equanimity all pleasures and all pains. We should never forget that we are freemen, not the slaves of society. "I possess," said the Stoic, "a treasure which not all the world can rob me of--no one can deprive me of death." We should remember that Nature in her operations aims at the universal, and never spares individuals, but uses them as means for the accomplishment of her ends. It is, therefore, for us to submit to Destiny, cultivating, as the things necessary to virtue, knowledge, temperance, fort.i.tude, justice. We must remember that every thing around us is in mutation; decay follows reproduction, and reproduction decay, and that it is useless to repine at death in a world where every thing is dying. As a cataract shows from year to year an invariable shape, though the water composing it is perpetually changing, so the aspect of Nature is nothing more than a flow of matter presenting an impermanent form. The universe, considered as a whole, is unchangeable. Nothing is eternal but s.p.a.ce, atoms, force. The forms of Nature that we see are essentially transitory, they must all pa.s.s away.

STOICISM IN THE MUSEUM. We must bear in mind that the majority of men are imperfectly educated, and hence we must not needlessly offend the religious ideas of our age. It is enough for us ourselves to know that, though there is a Supreme Power, there is no Supreme Being. There is an invisible principle, but not a personal G.o.d, to whom it would be not so much blasphemy as absurdity to impute the form, the sentiments, the pa.s.sions of man. All revelation is, necessarily, a mere fiction. That which men call chance is only the effect of an unknown cause. Even of chances there is a law. There is no such thing as Providence, for Nature proceeds under irresistible laws, and in this respect the universe is only a vast automatic engine. The vital force which pervades the world is what the illiterate call G.o.d. The modifications through which all things are running take place in an irresistible way, and hence it may be said that the progress of the world is, under Destiny, like a seed, it can evolve only in a predetermined mode.

The soul of man is a spark of the vital flame, the general vital principle. Like heat, it pa.s.ses from one to another, and is finally reabsorbed or reunited in the universal principle from which it came.

Hence we must not expect annihilation, but reunion; and, as the tired man looks forward to the insensibility of sleep, so the philosopher, weary of the world, should look forward to the tranquillity of extinction. Of these things, however, we should think doubtingly, since the mind can produce no certain knowledge from its internal resources alone. It is unphilosophical to inquire into first causes; we must deal only with phenomena. Above all, we must never forget that man cannot ascertain absolute truth, and that the final result of human inquiry into the matter is, that we are incapable of perfect knowledge; that, even if the truth be in our possession, we cannot be sure of it.

What, then, remains for us? Is it not this--the acquisition of knowledge, the cultivation of virtue and of friendship, the observance of faith and truth, an unrepining submission to whatever befalls us, a life led in accordance with reason?

PLATONISM IN THE MUSEUM. But, though the Alexandrian Museum was especially intended for the cultivation of the Aristotelian philosophy, it must not be supposed that other systems were excluded. Platonism was not only carried to its full development, but in the end it supplanted Peripateticism, and through the New Academy left a permanent impress on Christianity. The philosophical method of Plato was the inverse of that of Aristotle. Its starting-point was universals, the very existence of which was a matter of faith, and from these it descended to particulars, or details. Aristotle, on the contrary, rose from particulars to universals, advancing to them by inductions.

Plato, therefore, trusted to the imagination, Aristotle to reason.

The former descended from the decomposition of a primitive idea into particulars, the latter united particulars into a general conception.

Hence the method of Plato was capable of quickly producing what seemed to be splendid, though in reality unsubstantial results; that of Aristotle was more tardy in its operation, but much more solid. It implied endless labor in the collection of facts, a tedious resort to experiment and observation, the application of demonstration. The philosophy of Plato is a gorgeous castle in the air; that of Aristotle a solid structure, laboriously, and with many failures, founded on the solid rock.

An appeal to the imagination is much more alluring than the employment of reason. In the intellectual decline of Alexandria, indolent methods were preferred to laborious observation and severe mental exercise. The schools of Neo-Platonism were crowded with speculative mystics, such as Ammonius Saccas and Plotinus. These took the place of the severe geometers of the old Museum.

PHYSICAL SCIENCE IN THE MUSEUM. The Alexandrian school offers the first example of that system which, in the hands of modern physicists, has led to such wonderful results. It rejected imagination, and made its theories the expression of facts obtained by experiment and observation, aided by mathematical discussion. It enforced the principle that the true method of studying Nature is by experimental interrogation. The researches of Archimedes in specific gravity, and the works of Ptolemy on optics, resemble our present investigations in experimental philosophy, and stand in striking contrast with the speculative vagaries of the older writers. Laplace says that the only observation which the history of astronomy offers us, made by the Greeks before the school of Alexandria, is that of the summer solstice of the year B.C. 432.

by Meton and Euctemon. We have, for the first time, in that school, a combined system of observations made with instruments for the measurement of angles, and calculated by trigonometrical methods.

Astronomy then took a form which subsequent ages could only perfect.

It does not accord with the compa.s.s or the intention of this work to give a detailed account of the contributions of the Alexandrian Museum to the stock of human knowledge. It is sufficient that the reader should obtain a general impression of their character. For particulars, I may refer him to the sixth chapter of my "History of the Intellectual Development of Europe."

EUCLID--ARCHIMEDES. It has just been remarked that the Stoical philosophy doubted whether the mind can ascertain absolute truth. While Zeno was indulging in such doubts, Euclid was preparing his great work, destined to challenge contradiction from the whole human race. After more than twenty-two centuries it still survives, a model of accuracy, perspicuity, and a standard of exact demonstration. This great geometer not only wrote on other mathematical topics, such as Conic Sections and Prisms, but there are imputed to him treatises on Harmonics and Optics, the latter subject being discussed on the hypothesis of rays issuing from the eye to the object.

With the Alexandrian mathematicians and physicists must be cla.s.sed Archimedes, though he eventually resided in Sicily. Among his mathematical works were two books on the Sphere and Cylinder, in which he gave the demonstration that the solid content of a sphere is two-thirds that of its circ.u.mscribing cylinder. So highly did he esteem this, that he directed the diagram to be engraved on his tombstone. He also treated of the quadrature of the circle and of the parabola; he wrote on Conoids and Spheroids, and on the spiral that bears his name, the genesis of which was suggested to him by his friend Conon the Alexandrian. As a mathematician, Europe produced no equal to him for nearly two thousand years. In physical science he laid the foundation of hydrostatics; invented a method for the determination of specific gravities; discussed the equilibrium of floating bodies; discovered the true theory of the lever, and invented a screw, which still bears his name, for raising the water of the Nile. To him also are to be attributed the endless screw, and a peculiar form of burning-mirror, by which, at the siege of Syracuse, it is said that he set the Roman fleet on fire.

ERATOSTHENES--APOLLONIUS--HIPPARCHUS. Eratosthenes, who at one time had charge of the library, was the author of many important works. Among them may be mentioned his determination of the interval between the tropics, and an attempt to ascertain the size of the earth. He considered the articulation and expansion of continents, the position of mountain-chains, the action of clouds, the geological submersion of lands, the elevation of ancient sea-beds, the opening of the Dardanelles and the straits of Gibraltar, and the relations of the Euxine Sea.

He composed a complete system of the earth, in three books--physical, mathematical, historical--accompanied by a map of all the parts then known. It is only of late years that the fragments remaining of his "Chronicles of the Theban Kings" have been justly appreciated. For many centuries they were thrown into discredit by the authority of our existing absurd theological chronology.

It is unnecessary to adduce the arguments relied upon by the Alexandrians to prove the globular form of the earth. They had correct ideas respecting the doctrine of the sphere, its poles, axis, equator, arctic and antarctic circles, equinoctial points, solstices, the distribution of climates, etc. I cannot do more than merely allude to the treatises on Conic Sections and on Maxima and Minima by Apollonius, who is said to have been the first to introduce the words ellipse and hyperbola. In like manner I must pa.s.s the astronomical observations of Alistyllus and Timocharis. It was to those of the latter on Spica Virginis that Hipparchus was indebted for his great discovery of the precession of the eqninoxes. Hipparchus also determined the first inequality of the moon, the equation of the centre. He adopted the theory of epicycles and eccentrics, a geometrical conception for the purpose of resolving the apparent motions of the heavenly bodies on the principle of circular movement. He also undertook to make a catalogue of the stars by the method of alineations--that is, by indicating those that are in the same apparent straight line. The number of stars so catalogued was 1,080. If he thus attempted to depict the aspect of the sky, he endeavored to do the same for the surface of the earth, by marking the position of towns and other places by lines of lat.i.tude and longitude. He was the first to construct tables of the sun and moon.

THE SYNTAXIS OF PTOLEMY. In the midst of such a brilliant constellation of geometers, astronomers, physicists, conspicuously shines forth Ptolemy, the author of the great work, "Syntaxis," "a Treatise on the Mathematical Construction of the Heavens." It maintained its ground for nearly fifteen hundred years, and indeed was only displaced by the immortal "Principia" of Newton. It commences with the doctrine that the earth is globular and fixed in s.p.a.ce, it describes the construction of a table of chords, and instruments for observing the solstices, it deduces the obliquity of the ecliptic, it finds terrestrial lat.i.tudes by the gnomon, describes climates, shows how ordinary may be converted into sidereal time, gives reasons for preferring the tropical to the sidereal year, furnishes the solar theory on the principle of the sun's...o...b..t being a simple eccentric, explains the equation of time, advances to the discussion of the motions of the moon, treats of the first inequality, of her eclipses, and the motion of her nodes. It then gives Ptolemy's own great discovery--that which has made his name immortal--the discovery of the moon's evection or second inequality, reducing it to the epicyclic theory. It attempts the determination of the distances of the sun and moon from the earth--with, however, only partial success. It considers the precession of the equinoxes, the discovery of Hipparchus, the full period of which is twenty-five thousand years. It gives a catalogue of 1,022 stars, treats of the nature of the milky-way, and discusses in the most masterly manner the motions of the planets. This point const.i.tutes another of Ptolemy's claims to scientific fame. His determination of the planetary orbits was accomplished by comparing his own observations with those of former astronomers, among them the observations of Timocharis on the planet Venus.

INVENTION OF THE STEAM-ENGINE. In the Museum of Alexandria, Ctesibius invented the fire-engine. His pupil, Hero, improved it by giving it two cylinders. There, too, the first steam-engine worked. This also was the invention of Hero, and was a reaction engine, on the principle of the eolipile. The silence of the halls of Serapis was broken by the water-clocks of Ctesibius and Apollonius, which drop by drop measured time. When the Roman calendar had fallen into such confusion that it had become absolutely necessary to rectify it, Julius Caesar brought Sosigenes the astronomer from Alexandria. By his advice the lunar year was abolished, the civil year regulated entirely by the sun, and the Julian calendar introduced.

The Macedonian rulers of Egypt have been blamed for the manner in which they dealt with the religious sentiment of their time. They prost.i.tuted it to the purpose of state-craft, finding in it a means of governing their lower cla.s.ses. To the intelligent they gave philosophy.

POLICY OF THE PTOLEMIES. But doubtless they defended this policy by the experience gathered in those great campaigns which had made the Greeks the foremost nation of the world. They had seen the mythological conceptions of their ancestral country dwindle into fables; the wonders with which the old poets adorned the Mediterranean had been discovered to be baseless illusions. From Olympus its divinities had disappeared; indeed, Olympus itself had proved to be a phantom of the imagination.

Hades had lost its terrors; no place could be found for it.

From the woods and grottoes and rivers of Asia Minor the local G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses had departed; even their devotees began to doubt whether they had ever been there. If still the Syrian damsels lamented, in their amorous ditties, the fate of Adonis, it was only as a recollection, not as a reality. Again and again had Persia changed her national faith. For the revelation of Zoroaster she had subst.i.tuted Dualism; then under new political influences she had adopted Magianism. She had worshiped fire, and kept her altars burning on mountain-tops. She had adored the sun.

When Alexander came, she was fast falling into pantheism.

On a country to which in its political extremity the indigenous G.o.ds have been found unable to give any protection, a change of faith is impending. The venerable divinities of Egypt, to whose glory obelisks had been raised and temples dedicated, had again and again submitted to the sword of a foreign conqueror. In the land of the Pyramids, the Colossi, the Sphinx, the images of the G.o.ds had ceased to represent living realities. They had ceased to be objects of faith. Others of more recent birth were needful, and Serapis confronted Osiris. In the shops and streets of Alexandria there were thousands of Jews who had forgotten the G.o.d that had made his habitation behind the veil of the temple.

Tradition, revelation, time, all had lost their influence. The traditions of European mythology, the revelations of Asia, the time-consecrated dogmas of Egypt, all had pa.s.sed or were fast pa.s.sing away. And the Ptolemies recognized how ephemeral are forms of faith.

But the Ptolemies also recognized that there is something more durable than forms of faith, which, like the organic forms of geological ages, once gone, are clean gone forever, and have no restoration, no return.

They recognized that within this world of transient delusions and unrealities there is a world of eternal truth.

That world is not to be discovered through the vain traditions that have brought down to us the opinions of men who lived in the morning of civilization, nor in the dreams of mystics who thought that they were inspired. It is to be discovered by the investigations of geometry, and by the practical interrogation of Nature. These confer on humanity solid, and innumerable, and inestimable blessings.

The day will never come when any one of the propositions of Euclid will be denied; no one henceforth will call in question the globular shape of the earth, as recognized by Eratosthenes; the world will not permit the great physical inventions and discoveries made in Alexandria and Syracuse to be forgotten. The names of Hipparchus, of Apollonius, of Ptolemy, of Archimedes, will be mentioned with reverence by men of every religious profession, as long as there are men to speak.

THE MUSEUM AND MODERN SCIENCE. The Museum of Alexandria was thus the birthplace of modern science. It is true that, long before its establishment, astronomical observations had been made in China and Mesopotamia; the mathematics also had been cultivated with a certain degree of success in India. But in none of these countries had investigation a.s.sumed a connected and consistent form; in none was physical experimentation resorted to. The characteristic feature of Alexandrian, as of modern science, is, that it did not restrict itself to observation, but relied on a practical interrogation of Nature.

CHAPTER II.

THE ORIGIN OF CHRISTIANITY.--ITS TRANSFORMATION ON ATTAINING IMPERIAL POWER.--ITS RELATIONS TO SCIENCE.

Religious condition of the Roman Republic.--The adoption of imperialism leads to monotheism.--Christianity spreads over the Roman Empire.--The circ.u.mstances under which it attained imperial power make its union with Paganism a political necessity.--Tertullian's description of its doctrines and practices.--Debasing effect of the policy of Constantine on it.--Its alliance with the civil power.--Its incompatibility with science.--Destruction of the Alexandrian Library and prohibition of philosophy.-- Exposition of the Augustinian philosophy and Patristic science generally.--The Scriptures made the standard of science.

IN a political sense, Christianity is the bequest of the Roman Empire to the world.

At the epoch of the transition of Rome from the republican to the imperial form of government, all the independent nationalities around the Mediterranean Sea had been brought under the control of that central power. The conquest that had befallen them in succession had been by no means a disaster. The perpetual wars they had maintained with each other came to an end; the miseries their conflicts had engendered were exchanged for universal peace.

Not only as a token of the conquest she had made but also as a gratification to her pride, the conquering republic brought the G.o.ds of the vanquished peoples to Rome. With disdainful toleration, she permitted the worship of them all. That paramount authority exercised by each divinity in his original seat disappeared at once in the crowd of G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses among whom he had been brought. Already, as we have seen, through geographical discoveries and philosophical criticism, faith in the religion of the old days had been profoundly shaken. It was, by this policy of Rome, brought to an end.

MONOTHEISM IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE. The kings of all the conquered provinces had vanished; in their stead one emperor had come. The G.o.ds also had disappeared. Considering the connection which in all ages has existed between political and religious ideas, it was then not at all strange that polytheism should manifest a tendency to pa.s.s into monotheism.

Accordingly, divine honors were paid at first to the deceased and at length to the living emperor.

The facility with which G.o.ds were thus called into existence had a powerful moral effect. The manufacture of a new one cast ridicule on the origin of the old Incarnation in the East and apotheosis in the West were fast filling Olympus with divinities. In the East, G.o.ds descended from heaven, and were made incarnate in men; in the West, men ascended from earth, and took their seat among the G.o.ds. It was not the importation of Greek skepticism that made Rome skeptical. The excesses of religion itself sapped the foundations of faith.

Not with equal rapidity did all cla.s.ses of the population adopt monotheistic views. The merchants and lawyers and soldiers, who by the nature of their pursuits are more familiar with the vicissitudes of life, and have larger intellectual views, were the first to be affected, the land laborers and farmers the last.

THE RISE OF CHRISTIANITY When the empire in a military and political sense had reached its culmination, in a religious and social aspect it had attained its height of immorality. It had become thoroughly epicurean; its maxim was, that life should be made a feast, that virtue is only the seasoning of pleasure, and temperance the means of prolonging it. Dining-rooms glittering with gold and incrusted with gems, slaves in superb apparel, the fascinations of female society where all the women were dissolute, magnificent baths, theatres, gladiators, such were the objects of Roman desire. The conquerors of the world had discovered that the only thing worth worshiping is Force. By it all things might be secured, all that toil and trade had laboriously obtained. The confiscation of goods and lands, the taxation of provinces, were the reward of successful warfare; and the emperor was the symbol of force. There was a social splendor, but it was the phosph.o.r.escent corruption of the ancient Mediterranean world.