The Popes and Science Part 26

Toward the end of the sixteenth century the necessity for the correction of the calendar became more urgently manifest and Pope Gregory XIII invited Father Clavius, S.J., to take up the subject. At this time also, as is described by Pope Leo XIII in his _Motu Proprio_ of 1891, "Gregory XIII [nearly half a century before the condemnation of Galileo] ordered a tower to be erected in a convenient part of the Vatican buildings and to be fitted out with {475} the greatest and best instruments of the time. There he held the meetings of the learned men to whom the reform of the calendar had been entrusted. The tower stands to this day a witness to the munificence of its founder.

It contains a meridian line by Ign.a.z.io Danti of Perugia, with a round marble plate in the centre, adorned with scientific designs. When touched by the rays of the sun that are allowed to enter from above, the designs demonstrate the error of the old reckoning and the correctness of the reform." It was evidently the intention of the Pope that there should be, as a permanent inst.i.tution in Rome, an astronomical observatory fully equipped and supported by the revenues of the Holy See and with a prominent scientist at its head. This purpose has been constantly kept in mind by the Popes ever since, though not long after Gregory's time, but not at all because of any opposition to science, the observatory founded by him came for more than a century not to be used for the purpose intended because its place was supplied by another Roman inst.i.tution directly under the patronage of the Popes.

This was the Roman College, the great central school of the Jesuits, in the capital of Christendom. That Order was scarcely fifty years in existence in Pope Gregory XIII's time, yet it was to a member of it that the Pope turned for expert scientific direction in the correction of the calendar. During the next three centuries science as patronized by the Popes in Rome was mainly in the hands of the Jesuits. When it is recalled that this Order is directly under the control of the Pope, the professed members taking a special vow of obedience to him, it will be understood that the Jesuit policy with regard to science must be taken as representing the Papal position in its regard. If it is further recalled that Poggendorff in his Biographical Lexicon of Men Eminent in Science gives the names of some 500 Jesuits, though the Order was not in a position to do any work in science until 1550, it will be readily appreciated that the Popes acted wisely to encourage an inst.i.tute so prolific in _eminent_ scientists in its scientific work at the Roman College, rather than maintain a separate scientific department at the Vatican. The second inst.i.tution would only have been unnecessary duplication of staffs and the connection between teaching and research at the Roman College was better for both functions.

Father Christopher Clavius, to whom more than to any other is due the Gregorian reform of the calendar, a magnificent practical application of astronomy and mathematics, is an excellent example {476} of the men who were near the Popes as counsellors and scientific advisers just before Galileo's time. Indeed Galileo and he were on the most friendly terms until his death in 1612. The circle of his friends included such men as Kepler, Tycho-Brahe and other great scientists of his time and he was called "the Euclid of the sixteenth century." His works were published at Mainz, in five huge folio volumes in a collective edition. The third of these is a commentary upon the _Sphaera_ of John Holywood (Joannes de Sacro Bosco, the great medieval mathematician) and a dissertation upon the Astrolabe. The fourth volume contains a very full discussion of Gnomonics, that is, the art of constructing instruments of all kinds for determining the time by means of the sun.

The fifth volume contains his papers with regard to the reform of the calendar. Most of these books were issued in many editions before and after his death, and their publication over and over again shows very clearly how much the men of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were interested in scientific subjects and how often and quite properly they looked to great clerical teachers as their leaders in science.

Just about the time that the Galileo matter was disturbing scientific and ecclesiastical circles at Rome, Father Scheiner, the Jesuit mathematician and astronomer became Professor of Mathematics in the Roman College. He is the inventor of the pantograph or copying instrument for drawings, and, being of an ingenious inventive disposition, constructed a number of instruments for astronomical investigation. He studied the sun carefully through colored gla.s.ses in a helioscope and then conceived the idea of projecting the sun's image on a screen in order to study its surface. Kepler used this same method, but Scheiner is said to have the right of priority in it. In March, 1611, he discovered by this method spots on the sun and while the priority of discovery was disputed by Galileo, three men, Fabricius, Galileo and Scheiner, seem all to have done their work independently in this matter, Fabricius being probably the first in time. For nearly a score of years Father Scheiner continued his observations on the sun and published his great work, which in the fashion of the day was called by the somewhat fantastic t.i.tle, _Rosa Ursina_. He had the true scientific spirit and devoted himself to other subjects besides astronomy. He made important researches on the eye, showing that the retina is the seat of vision, and devised the optical experiment which bears his name.

One of Clavius' pupils was Father Matteo Ricci, S.J., founder of the Catholic missions of China, who in the midst of his successful {477} studies of mathematics and astronomy at the Roman College asked, at the age of twenty-five, to be sent on the missions in farthest Asia and was allowed to go the following year. He was selected to found missions in China and succeeded in breaking through the Oriental reserve and contempt for everything Occidental of the Chinese, and thus gained a foothold for Christianity in the country. It was Father Ricci's learning, particularly in cosmology, mathematics, astronomy and geography, that attracted the attention of the Chinese. He introduced astronomical studies at Pekin and brought over a series of instruments for an observatory which were so well thought of that they were preserved until our own time and some of them are said to have been taken from the Chinese capital by the allied troops, after the capture of the city following the Boxer Rebellion. He not only taught the Chinese European science, but he sent back to Europe true accounts of China and, above all, encouraged scientific studies among the missionaries. The example he thus set has always been followed and there has scarcely been a generation since when some Christian missionary has not been making original observations in natural history and collecting curious specimens to be sent home to scientists in Europe, while at the same time faithfully pursuing his missionary work.

Early in the seventeenth century, indeed just at the time when the Galileo case was most prominent at Rome, Father Athanasius Kircher was summoned to Rome and began his scientific work there, which included contributions to every department of physical and even some of the biological sciences. For some five years about the middle of the seventeenth century Father Kircher devoted himself to astronomy and the result was the publication, in 1656, of an astronomical treatise called _Iter Celeste_. A second volume on astronomy appeared in 1660.

Anyone who is inclined to think that these contributions of the great professor of science at the Roman College were only reviews of the pa.s.sing scientific opinions of the time, is not fully acquainted with Father Kircher's work. He never failed to illuminate anything that he set himself to study. His book on astronomy is of course a text-book, but it is magnificently ill.u.s.trated; it is a very large work which shows the author's familiarity with the scientific literature of the time, but at the same time reveals his own scientific genius. Father Kircher was encouraged in every way by the Popes and high ecclesiastics of Rome and by his own Order, and his great text-books are among the bibliographic treasures of the history of science. Some idea of {478} his industry may be gathered from the fact that he wrote altogether some forty volumes folio on scientific subjects. He made many original observations, invented a number of valuable scientific instruments that are still in use, among others the vernier and magic lantern, and was productively occupied with nearly every branch of science in his time.

During the eighteenth century, before the suppression of the Jesuits, another distinguished mathematician and astronomer, famous throughout Europe, was working at the Roman College. This was Father Boscovitch, to whom we owe the plans for the erection of an observatory above the great pillars of the Church of the Gesu at Rome, which were not destined to be executed until the middle of the nineteenth century.

Boscovitch is famous for a series of important works in mathematics and astronomy. He wrote books on Sun Spots, the Transit of Mercury, the Aurora Borealis, the Figure of the Earth, the Various Effects of Gravity, the Aberration of the Fixed Stars, and other astronomical problems. Pope Benedict XIV commissioned him and his brother Jesuit, Father Le Maire, to carry out several precise meridian arc measurements. He is the inventor of the rock crystal prismatic micrometer, the ring micrometer. After the suppression of the Jesuits Father Boscovitch was made Director of Optics for the Marine, a post created for him in order to secure his services for France.

During the second period of the history of the Vatican Observatory at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, the upper story of the Gregorian tower was fitted up with meteorological and magnetic instruments with a seismograph, a Dolland telescope, a small transit instrument and a pendulum clock and a series of very careful observations on a number of subjects made. From 1800 to 1821 Gilii made an uninterrupted series of meteorological observations, reading the instruments twice a day, at 6 a.m. and 2 p.m. The observations are published for seven years and the rest are preserved as ma.n.u.scripts in the Vatican Library. There are also deposited astronomical observations of eclipses, comets, Jupiter's satellites and of a transit of Mercury. Gilii laid down the meridian line in front of St. Peter's with the obelisk as a gnomon and the readings of the seasons by the length of the shadow. To him are due also the bronze marks on the floor of St. Peters, giving the comparative lengths of the greatest churches of the world. It was he who placed the first lightning rod on the cupola of St. Peter's. The {479} heavens, the weather, the lightning are supposed often to be set by religiously inclined persons particularly under the care of Providence, to be influenced by prayer, yet these are exactly the three departments of science that were faithfully followed in their detailed scientific aspects during all the centuries by the Papal Astronomers under the patronage and with the approval of the Popes, with the avowed purpose of discovering the natural laws under which they occur.

Two of the distinguished teachers of mathematics and astronomy of the end of the eighteenth century at Rome were Father Thomas Leseur, professor at the Sapienza, and Professor Franz Jacquier, professor at the Roman College, who wrote a commentary on Isaac Newton's _Principia_ which did much to popularize Newton's work.

When, because political influence was brought to bear very strongly on the Pope, the Jesuits were suppressed in 1773, the Roman College pa.s.sed from their hands and the real reason for allowing the Vatican Observatory on the Papal grounds to fall into disuse was manifest, for the Popes at once took up the question of re-establishing their own observatory. Not long after the suppression we find Monsignor Filippo Luigi Gilii placed in charge of the reorganized Roman Observatory by Cardinal Zelada, who had been appointed Vatican Librarian in 1780, and who found the old Gregorian tower available as a centre of astronomical observation and investigation of which Rome had been deprived since the suppression of the Roman College. After the restoration of the Jesuits early in the nineteenth century, the Roman College was opened once more and distinguished Jesuits, some of them with world-wide reputations, did their work there. With the occupation of Rome by the Italian government in 1870 the Jesuits were banished, the Roman College with its observatory was once more deprived of the learned expert direction of the Fathers of the Order, and once more efforts were made for the re-establishment of a Vatican observatory which is now in existence and under the direction of a Jesuit.

Another of the distinguished scientists of the eighteenth century who taught for a time at Rome was Father Beccaria, whose name is well known in the history of electricity. When not yet forty years of age he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of London, always a much envied distinction, and as a consequence of his election some of his important papers relating to electricity and various astronomical subjects were sent to the Royal Society {480} and published by them.

While no great discovery in physical science is attached to his name, few men did as much as he to awaken enthusiasm and experimental investigation into science in his time. He was one of the pioneers of the great scientific movement of the nineteenth century. Priestley called him one of the most eminent of all the workers in electricity on the Continent, and Professor Chrystal, in his article on electricity, in the Encyclopedia Britannica (ninth edition), gives him an important place. He had been trained to be a professor of experimental physics for his Order, and at this time every one of the teaching orders with colleges at Rome had distinguished men among their faculties.

The well-known astronomer, Father Piazzi, whose discovery of Ceres, the first of the planetoids found in the s.p.a.ce between Mars and Jupiter, caused great excitement among astronomers, and whose subsequent work in astronomy brought him membership in many of the scientific academies of Europe, had been for some time a student and a teacher in Rome. While there he was a colleague of Professor Chiaramonti, who later became Pope Pius VII. During all his subsequent brilliant scientific career his special friendship with the Pope continued, and with all his many memberships in scientific bodies he remained a member also of the Theatine religious order which he had entered at a very early age.

After the restoration of the Jesuits the work in the sciences reverted once more to the Jesuits at the Roman College and the Vatican Observatory was discontinued. The interest of the Popes in science, however, was very well ill.u.s.trated by the apostolic letter of Leo XII, _Quod divina sapientia_, which gave instructions to all Catholic educational inst.i.tutions, as to observatories, publications and intercourse with foreign scientists.

The Jesuits at the Roman College reached noteworthy distinction for their astronomical work during the nineteenth century. Father Secchi came to be looked upon as probably one of the most distinguished astronomers in Europe. He received many prizes for his observations, for his invention of instruments and for important discoveries. His work on the sun, published in his book, _Le Soleil_, represents some of the most important contributions ever made to this department. It was translated into most modern languages. His observations on the corona of the sun during eclipses and especially photographs of the corona, place him among the great original contributors to modern astronomical knowledge. He made a critical examination and cla.s.sification of the spectra of four thousand stars entailing an enormous amount of {481} work. He believed firmly that it was no use making observations unless they were thoroughly recorded and made available for others. His literary work in astronomy is almost incredible. He sent nearly 700 communications to 42 scientific journals, over 300 of which appeared in the _Comptes Rendues_ and in the _Astronomische Nachrichten_, the French and German journals of astronomy that are the authoritative records of contemporary scientific work. In this country Newcomb and Langley quote from Secchi frequently and use his ill.u.s.trations. He was the founder of a new branch of astronomy, Stellar Spectroscopy, and Secchi's types of solar spectra will probably ever remain an essential ill.u.s.tration in astronomical text-books.

Another of the astronomers who did excellent work among the Jesuits at the Roman College during the nineteenth century was Father De Vico, whose determination of the rotation period of Venus and the inclination of its axis was considered so exhaustive that it was not questioned for half a century. He also measured the eccentric position of Saturn in his rings and observed the motions of the two inner moons of this planet which had not been seen before this time except by Herschel. Father De Vico also discovered eight comets, one of them being the well-known comet with a period of rotation of five and a half years which bears his name. Father De Vico and Father Secchi were driven from Rome by the Revolution of 1848, but were brought back to continue their work just as soon as it was possible. In the meantime they continued to be personal friends of successive Popes, encouraged in every way, aided in their work and looked upon as ornaments of the Church. They were thoroughly respected by their Order and there was never the slightest question of any possibility of all their studies in science and all their profound investigation of the deepest scientific subjects disturbing their faith in any way.

One of the well-known contributors to astronomy during the nineteenth century was Father Benedict Sestini, who for his mathematical ability was appointed a.s.sistant to Father De Vico of the Roman Observatory. He was banished from Rome with his brother Jesuits by the Revolution of 1848, and taught at Georgetown College, Washington, D. C, for many years. His princ.i.p.al work is his catalogue of star colors, published in the Memoirs of the Roman College, 1845-47. He had very keen vision and fine skill with the brush, so that his catalogue, which embodies the entire B.A.C. Star Catalogue, from the North Pole to thirty degrees south of the equator, will be invaluable for deciding the question {482} whether there are stars variable in color. He made a series of sunspot drawings which were engraved and published as appendix A of the United States Naval Observatory volume for 1847, printed in 1853. He was the teacher of mathematics and astronomy to the American Jesuit students and wrote a series of text-books for that purpose.

As we have said, the Italian government suppressed the Roman College, declaring it State property and this prevented further work in the observatory there, which had been for nearly half a century under Father Secchi and Father De Vico, one of the most important centres in the world of astronomical advance. Beggared by the Roman confiscations which compelled the Popes to cut off all their support of scientific and educational work except what related closely to clerical education, it was not until 1888 that Pope Leo XIII found himself in a position to re-establish a Roman observatory in connection with the Vatican. In 1888 the Italian clergy, for the celebration of the Golden Jubilee of Pope Leo XIII, presented to him, knowing from his interest in science how agreeable such a gift would be to him, a collection of astronomical instruments and the Gregorian tower was selected once more for its former purposes and the Barnabite, Father Denza, the well-known founder of the Italian Meteorological Society, became the official head. Pope Leo XIII ceded to the Vatican Observatory a second tower more than 400 metres distant from the Gregorian. As this was of immense strength, the lower walls being some five yards in thickness, it seemed strong and firm enough to support the thirteen-inch photographic refractor which was ordered from Gauthier. Seven volumes of observations were published during the next fifteen years, four under Father Denza, a fifth under Father Lais and the last two under Father Rodriguez, an Augustinian, who was a specialist in meteorology.

The last Pope, Pius X, encouraged the Vatican Observatory in every way. The Gregorian tower being near the Vatican Library and too distant from the observatory was restored to its original library purpose and given over to the housing of the collection of Historical Archives. The second round tower of the old Leonine Fortress, together with the adjoining summer residence of Leo XIII, was devoted to astronomical work. Father Hagan, S.J., who had been distinguished for mathematical studies in connection with astronomy here in America, was chosen as the director, and there has been a magnificent development of the astronomical work. There is a new sixteen-inch visual telescope in the second tower, {483} called the _Torre Pio X_. There are four rotary domes covering the astrographic refractor in the Leonine Tower, and some excellent work is being accomplished. Every encouragement is given to it as far as the limited means of the Pope will permit, and a fine library is being collected for future workers.

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APPENDIX VII.

THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH AND SCIENCE.

There is a very general impression in many minds in our time that from the very beginning of Christianity the interest of Church men in the other world was so great that human attention was diverted just as far as possible from concerns of all kinds with the stage of existence through which man is pa.s.sing here and now. As a consequence, there has been the feeling that from the earliest time the Church was opposed to science and scientific education, partly because this represented a rather compelling diversion from other-worldly interests, but mainly because it gave men control over natural forces which made life more comfortable, raised men up in their own estimation and was opposed to the spirit of humble faith best suited to the adherents of Christianity. Hence it is concluded that there was always a Church policy of deliberate opposition to science and indeed to all intellectual development. This att.i.tude is often declared to be best represented by the expression attributed to one of the Fathers of the Church, "Heaven lies open to the simple of mind, the little ones of the earth, and the ignorant bear it away better than those who are proud of intellect."

Any such impression with regard to the Fathers of the Church as to the establishment of a policy of opposition to science and education is quite erroneous and entirely contrary to the general trend of their writings, even though it may be apparently substantiated by expressions taken at random from the writings of the Fathers at moments when they were emphasizing the truth that has always been so manifest, that from the knowing ones of earth,--and our use of the word knowing in the phrase is not complimentary,--especially from those who are conceited in their knowingness, many things are concealed that are revealed to those who are simple of heart and mind.

It has seemed worth while, however, to devote an appendix to this subject of the real att.i.tude of the Fathers to science. As Father Leahy, in his "Astronomical Essays," Boston (Washington Press, 1910), has answered Professor White's a.s.sumptions on this subject with a knowledge of the Fathers I could not hope to emulate, I have preferred to avail myself of his permission to quote him at length.

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"By the Fathers we understand in general the Christian writers in the Church's early history. In the West the period may be held to have terminated with Isidore of Seville of the seventh century, and in the East with John of Damascus of the eighth. The important writers of this epoch number between fifty and a hundred, and their works const.i.tute, as may be imagined, a body of literature of vast extent.

Our only present concern is to learn, if possible, what was the general att.i.tude of this army of ecclesiastical writers towards the physical sciences, especially the science of astronomy. Explicit treatises on astronomy we shall not, indeed, expect them to supply.

For their works when ma.s.sed are seen to const.i.tute a library of theology, and in such a collection we should no more look for scientific treatises than in a modern library for law. But inasmuch as the Fathers of the Church have been accused, by Andrew D. White and others, of having stayed and even thwarted the advance of science, it becomes the interest and the duty of the apologist to hunt up their scientific allusions that we may learn to what extent the charges made are true.

_The Standstill of Science_.--It has often been alleged as derogatory to the accomplishments of the Fathers, that they contributed nothing to the progress of scientific knowledge. From our modern standpoint we may be tempted to esteem this failure of theirs as a cardinal sin. But it would be wrong in this instance, as in every other, to render a verdict of guilt too hastily. We of the twentieth century are p.r.o.ne to forget that there are other fields of profitable intellectual exploration besides the physical, and that there may be objects of research and thought worthier of study than the material world.

The Fathers of the Church were philosophers and theologians occupied with the problems of the world's origin and destiny, higher themes, surely, than any with which physical science is concerned. It is the fashion of the day to praise the ancient Greeks at the expense of the patristic and medieval theologians. But the distinction is to a large extent inconsistent, since both bodies of writers were at work upon the selfsame themes. Philosophers like the Greeks, the Fathers were like them moralists as well, engaged in the elaboration of right rules of conduct. Finally, unlike the Greeks, the Fathers were Scriptural scholars, many of them of extensive erudition, in homily and commentary expounding with wonderful a.s.siduity the Sacred Books in which they believed that G.o.d had given His revelation to man.

_a.n.a.logous Examples_.--Should we be surprised, then, if men so occupied failed to add much to the world's store of scientific knowledge? Though it were admitted, as it cannot be in its entirety, that they left physical science just where they found it, could not an explanation be discovered that would exonerate them from all blame? To justify such an apology, we do not even need to transport ourselves in spirit back to their time, a process which, however, strict fairness would demand. But in our own era we can think easily of dozens and hundreds of men of highest respectability and most beneficent accomplishment, men of books and men of affairs, jurists, statesmen, historians and others, who have {486} themselves done little or nothing for the onward march of Science. That the careers of these men are profitless, who shall allege?

Again, the present writer has often thought of the almost parallel example of the ancient Romans. It makes their history but little less ill.u.s.trious to learn that this conquering people did nothing for Science's advance. Till Pliny of the first century after Christ, what Roman was a scientist? They were a nation of soldiers, statesmen, orators and jurists, and for seven hundred years they pursued through such avenues their triumphant course. Yet what writer of to-day rises to charge them with a cardinal sin, because Science remained at a standstill among them for seven full centuries? With these seven centuries can we not properly compare the later seven in which the Christian Fathers were the teachers of the civilized world?

_Heritage from the Greeks_.--Objection will be made, no doubt, that the Fathers began their career with fairer start than the Romans, forasmuch as they were the direct heirs of the astronomy and physics of ancient h.e.l.las. And they will be incriminated with having abused their precious heritage, by not merely letting it lie fallow but by raising every possible obstruction to its further cultivation. Such is the tenor of Andrew D. White's accusations against them.

This well-known writer smiles at the puerilities of patristic science. He cites from among them Cosmas of Egypt as having propounded a perfectly childish theory of the structure of the earth and grafted it on the science of theology. The ready answer to this particular charge is that Cosmas' conception of the universe belonged to cosmogony and not theology, and further that it had no influence on subsequent thought. Returning to the general arraignment, White rebukes the Fathers for having clung so tenaciously to false opinions regarding the shape of the earth, the motion of the heavens, and the nature of the firmament. And, most seriously of all, he charges the Fathers with indifference and even hostility to the study of science itself.

In a few short paragraphs it is impossible to give an adequate rejoinder to these damaging complaints. But they demand some sort of reply, however inadequate it be, as emanating from an American scholar and statesman of high rank, and embodied in a work that has free and wide circulation among our college students.

_Defence of Their Doctrine_.--The first palliation for the reputed offence of the Fathers is that whatever false science they retail, was practically all of it derived from the very sources which it is the fashion of the day to laud in the highest degree. As far as was consistent with their faith, the Christian Fathers were the pupils of the Greeks. It was the latter and not the patristic writers who invented the false theories of a solid firmament and a motionless earth. If Europe and Arabia down to the Renaissance believed in the Geocentric system, it was because they trusted Ptolemy the Greek, till then admittedly the greatest of astronomers. And a similar ancestry could be traced, we venture to say, for all or the major part of their scientific errors as far as these may have extended.

_Restrictions Made by the Fathers_.--But if the Fathers were in {487} general the heirs of the Greeks, they were not guilty of the mistake of accepting the inheritance in its entirety. To a large extent they could discern the chaff from the wheat, and were actually at pains to make the separation. It ought to be known that the scientific literature of the Grecians is teeming with the wildest and vainest of speculations regarding all matters within the scope of astronomical science. Here as elsewhere, the Greeks speculated endlessly, contradictorily, emptily, and almost aimlessly. In unfounded speculation they discoursed on all manner of astronomical subjects, the shape and size and distance of the sun, its nature and that of the moon and stars, and so on almost indefinitely, with scarcely any agreement or concomitance of opinion. There were almost as many diverse opinions as there were men.

To this motley a.s.semblage of groundless and conflicting theories the Fathers had full access through the medium of Plutarch, the Greek compiler. Eusebius, for example, the Father of Church History, quotes Plutarch on just these topics for over thirty pages. If Eusebius and the other Fathers grew impatient with all this ill-a.s.sorted ma.s.s of _soi-disant_ science, shall we charge them as Dr. White does with having been false to the interest of science?

Should we not rather maintain that they helped save science from its enemies?

_Opposition to Science_.--It is only in the light of these indisputable facts that we can understand the sayings of the Fathers in which, as quoted by White, they upbraid science for its inutility. Be it noted in pa.s.sing that White is wont to quote them not literally but freely, and apart from their context. Lactantius, Eusebius, Augustine, and Basil, these are the four whom he selects as representative. They are truly representative, and indeed any one of them might stand for all.

Let Eusebius be our particular choice, for he discusses astronomy more completely than the others. White alleges (_Warfare_, Vol. I, p. 91) that Eusebius endeavored to bring scientific studies into contempt, and quotes him as saying, "It is not through ignorance of the things admired by them [scientific investigators], but through contempt of their useless labor, that we think little of these matters, turning our souls to better things."

Who would guess from this brief epitome of Eusebius' views that the latter had devoted to the subject more than thirty pages? Who could possibly surmise that he had taken pains to write out, under the guidance of Plutarch, all the known opinions of the Greeks on some thirty-nine problems, all but two or three of them astronomical? Let the curious read Eusebius for themselves in the fifteenth book of his _Praelectio Evangelica_. They will there discover what White might have well acknowledged, that on not one of the problems are the Greek philosophers in agreement. On the nature of the sun there are nine opinions, on its size four, on its shape an equal number, on the moon's nature seven. And this discrepancy of judgment continues to the end. Moreover a large proportion of the theories are of the most fantastic sort.

In the face of this chaotic wilderness of diverse, fluctuating and contradictory teachings, what could Eusebius do but turn away in impatience, and take up in their stead the only truth of which he {488} felt certain, the truth of the Gospel? Such was his actual procedure. "Does it not seem to you that we have rightly and deservedly departed from the curiosity of all these men, so idle and so full of error?" He confesses frankly that he can see no fruit or utility for man in the teachings he has quoted. And he appeals for his complete justification to Socrates, the wisest of the Greeks, who in his day had adopted precisely the same stand. This and no other is the argument and spirit of Eusebius.

_No Opposition to True Science_.--This was the temper, also, that actuated the other Fathers named, Lactantius, Basil, and Augustine.

No doubt these men valued spiritual knowledge above material. But it by no means follows from this that they undervalued Science. They were scholars of extensive culture, Basil a graduate of Athens, Augustine of Carthage, and Lactantius styled because of his proficiency the Christian Cicero. They were well acquainted with the learning of the Greeks. That they rebelled against the scientific fantasies of the latter, is not a proof that they were hostile to the advance of Science itself.