Kitabı oku: «The Freedom of Science», sayfa 10
The great Fénelon, proceeding to his pulpit in the cathedral of Cambrai, on Annunciation day in 1699, was handed by his brother the Roman brief condemning twenty-three propositions of Fénelon's “Maximes des Saints.” The Bishop took the writing, calmly ascended the pulpit and announced it forthwith, and preached a sermon on the submission due to ecclesiastical superiors, at which the whole congregation was greatly moved. A few days later he announced in an episcopal letter to his diocese his submission, “simple, absolute, and without a shadow of reservation.”By this deed, an heroic act of obedience, Fénelon is placed higher in history than by his brilliant works, than by the honour of having been the illustrious tutor of the Dauphin of France.
Antonio Rosmini-Serbati in August, 1849, received official notice of the condemnation of two of his works by the Congregation of the Index. He immediately sent in his submission: “With the sentiments of a true and obedient son of the Apostolic See, that I have always been by the grace of God and wish ever to be, and have ever acknowledged myself, I now declare clearly and sincerely, without reservation, my submission, in the most complete manner, to the condemnation of my writings.” Both the condemnation and the submission were soon made the target of attack by the Liberal press. Rosmini replied in an admirable open letter: “To my great sorrow I have seen several articles in different newspapers which dare criticize the Holy Congregation of the Index for condemning my writings. Inasmuch as I have submitted to the decree of the said Congregation with all sincerity, and with full interior and exterior obedience as becomes a true son of the Church, every one will easily understand how much I regret these articles and disapprove of them. Yet I deem it not superfluous to declare expressly that I reject those articles entirely and that I do not accept the praise for me which they offer. With regard to other newspaper writers, who are censuring me and even insulting me for having done what it was my duty to do, in submitting to the condemnation, as though I had committed a crime, I can only say that I greatly pity them, and that they would fill me with contempt could I deem it permissible to despise any one” (apud J. Hilgers, Der Index der verbotenen Buecher, 1904, 413).
A Fénelon or a Rosmini, bowing with the humility of the Christian savant to the judgment of their Church, have thereby forfeited nothing of their intellectual fame in the eyes of earnest critics, but, on the contrary, have greatly increased the respect for their noble character.
Even should the future prove as scientifically correct that which the believing scientist does not as yet clearly see, that he was scientifically in the right, no considerable damage would result to science. Providence, which guides human affairs, will protect science for its noble modesty in submitting meanwhile to an authority appointed by God. As a matter of fact, science cannot be shown ever to have suffered any real loss by such submission, not even in the Galileo case, as we shall see further on. On the other hand, countless are the errors and injuries which have befallen human thought and belief, and which the Church has warded off from those who yielded to her guidance. Of course the submission may become difficult if a man clings to his views, or has already publicly proclaimed them. Then, indeed, a bitter struggle may ensue. A number of scientists have failed to stand the test and have left to posterity the ill-fated name of apostates. The Church regrets such cases; but the deposit of faith is too precious to be endangered for the sake of any individual.
For this reason the Church is and must be conservative; for this reason she may have to warn against the dissemination of propositions which may not in themselves be false, but fraught with danger for the time being. She cannot take part in any hasty effort to make experiments, risking everything inherited in order to try something new.
During the nineteenth century the United States was repeatedly the scene of communistic experiments. Daring adventurers assembled people and founded settlements on communistic principles, private property being abolished. In 1824 Robert Owen founded a colony in Indiana, which soon grew to nine hundred members, living in the fashion of atheistic communism. In 1825 the colony adopted its first constitution, which within the following year suffered six complete revisions. In June of the second year the last members of the colony ate their farewell dinner together. The experiment had come to a speedy termination. A Frenchman, Etienne Cabet, founded, in 1848, a new colony in Texas, called Icaria. Soon it numbered 500 members. Each family had its small homestead. Children were educated by the community. Amusement was provided for by a band and a theatre; a library supplied more intellectual wants. But soon it all fell into decay. Cabet departed and died. In 1895 the newspapers reported the dissolution of the last remnant of the colony. Such is the fate of experiments.
Daring adventurers may undertake them. The lecturer at college, too, will be readily pardoned for his eagerness to take up the cudgel in defence of what is new in his profane science: he may easily correct himself. But the Teacher of the Centuries and of the Nations, in the sphere of religion and morals, has not the right to experiment. Here, where mistakes may entail the direst consequences, the rule must be: slowly onward, to keep the whole from ruin. Cardinal Benedict Gaetani, later Pope Boniface VIII., once praised Rome for having pedes non plumeos sed plumbeos– not winged feet, but leaden heels.
Sentiments of the kind just set forth are of course possible only in conjunction with the belief in a revelation and in the supernatural character of the Church, where the interests of faith come first, and must be unconditionally preserved. He who lacks this conviction, he to whom the Church is but a human institution, founded in the course of time, tending perhaps to oppose truth and science for fear they might endanger the submission of minds – to such a one the Catholic's confident devotion to his Church, and consciousness of unimpaired freedom at the same time, will be unintelligible; and the inflexibility of the Church in defending the faith will pass his comprehension. And woe to the Church when her position toward science is being tried before this court: only harsh denunciations are to be expected where the judge does not understand the matter he undertakes to decide.
Nor do we attempt to bridge the chasm that separates the two views of the world which we here again encounter, the one, which rejects the supernatural world, the other, the view of the believing Christian. We have but endeavoured to show that faith does not restrain the mental freedom of one who is convinced of the truth of his faith. Submission to the authority of faith is the consequence of his conviction. This is the question to be decided: Either there is a revelation and a Church founded by God, or there is not. If such there be, or if it is only possible, then modern freedom of thought, with its demand of exemption from all authority, is against reason and morality. If there is not, then this should be proved. It can be done consistently only by acknowledging atheism. For if there is a personal God, then He can give a revelation and found a Church, and demand submission from all. Since the days of Celsus to this day the attempt to demonstrate that the convictions of a faithful Christian are unjustifiable has proved futile.
Obedience of Faith and Injury to Science
While all this is true, yet one may not share this conviction, nor rise to the certainty that there is a supernatural world whence the Son of God descended to teach man and to found an infallible Church. Still, to be fair, he must admit that no real danger to freedom of research and progress of science results from submission to faith, as shown above.
In the first place it must be admitted that the assertion is still unproved, that a positive result of research has ever come in hopeless conflict with a dogma of faith; hence that science has been prevented from accepting this result. No such case can be found. The condemnation of the Copernican view of the world will be considered presently; we pass over the fact that at the time of its condemnation it was not a positive result of science: the main point is that the condemnation was not an irrevocable dogma of faith, but only the decision of a Congregation, which was withdrawn as soon as the truth was clearly demonstrated. Besides, science has suffered no injury from that decision.
In general, where there is real contradiction between science and faith, the matters in question are invariably hypotheses. Is it more than an hypothesis, and a very doubtful hypothesis at that, that the world and God are identical, that there is an eternal, uncreated course of the world, that miracles are impossible? That what is said about the natural origin of Christianity, the origin of the Jewish religion from Babylonian myths, the origin of all religions from fear, fancy, or deception, is it anything more than hypothetical? The false systems of knowledge, subjectivism, and agnosticism – are they more than hypotheses? Ask their originators and champions; they will admit it themselves; and if they will not admit it, others will tell them that their propositions are not only hypotheses, but often quite untenable. There is hardly a single hypothesis which has not its vehement opponents. That the serious conflict between dogma and science is waged only in this field could be proved by abundant examples. Besides, is it not the philosophical axiom of modern freedom of thought, that in the sphere of philosophy and religion there is no certain knowledge, but only supposition?
Can hypotheses claim to rank as assured results of research which should be universally accepted? Why should it not be allowed to contradict them, to oppose them with other suppositions? Is it not in the interest of science that this be done, that they be subjected to sharp criticism, lest they gradually be given out for positive results? Is it not a shameful trifling with the truth, when a Haeckel deceives wide circles by pretending that most frivolous hypotheses are established results of science? Is it not misleading when modern science treats the rejection of a supernatural order as an established principle?
And how often the hypotheses of profane sciences change! “Laymen are astonished,” says H. Poincaré, “that so many scientific theories are perishable. They see them thrive for a few years, to be abandoned one after the other; they see wrecks heaped upon wrecks; they foresee that theories now fashionable will after a short while be forgotten, and they conclude that these theories are absolute fallacy. They call it the bankruptcy of science” (Wissenschaft u. Hypothese, German by F. Lindemann, 2d ed., 1906, 161). The conclusion is certainly unjustified, but the fact itself remains. Is it then a loss to science when faith opposes in the field of religion these variations of opinion with fixed dogmas?
Or are these perhaps of less worth, or less certain than their contraries? Is the dogma of the existence of God of less value than atheism? Is the conviction of the existence of a world of spirits less substantial than the philosophy of materialistic monism? Is the doctrine of the origin of the human soul from the creating hand of God found inferior to the notion that the soul has developed from the lower stages of animal life? Should the holy teaching of Christianity, doctrines believed by the best periods in the world's history, believed in and professed by minds like those of an Augustine, a Thomas, and a Leibnitz; doctrines that since their appearance on earth have always attracted the noble and good, and repelled chiefly the base and immoral; doctrines that still wait for their first unobjectionable refutation – should such doctrines be less sure than the innumerable, ever-changing suggestions of unregulated thought, apparently directed by an aversion to everything supernatural?
Erravimus
Yet another fact may be pointed out. It is an undeniable fact that science, after straying for some time, is not unfrequently compelled to return to what is taught by faith and the Church, thus confirming the truth of the faith. Frequently the new theory has come on like a tornado, sweeping all minds before it. But the tempest was soon spent, the minds recovered their balance and the hasty misjudgment was recognized.
Not long ago, when materialism revelled in its orgies, especially in Germany, when Vogt, Buechner, and Moleschott were writing their books, and science with Du Bois-Reymond was hunting Laplace's theory in the evolution of the world, the Syllabus, undaunted, put its anathema upon the (58.) proposition: “No other forces are acknowledged but those of matter.” The summer-night's dream came to an end, and people rubbed their eyes and saw the reality they had lost a while. The materialism of the 60's and 70's has been discarded by the scientific world, and finds a shelter only in the circles of unschooled infidelity. J. Reinke, in the name of biology, bears testimony in the words: “In my opinion materialism has been disposed of in biology; if, nevertheless, a number of biologists still stand by its colours, this tenacity may be explained psychologically; for, in the apt words of Du Bois-Reymond, in the domain of ideas a man does not willingly and easily forsake the highway of thought which his entire mental training has opened up” (Einleitung in die theoretische Biologie, 1901, 52).
A few decades ago a number of scientists declared it impossible that the different races could have descended from one pair of ancestors, as taught by faith: the difference between the various families being too great and radical, it was said; the difference being rather of species than of race. Moreover, there was announced the discovery of people without religion, without notions of morality and family life; of tribes incapable of civilization and culture; it was asserted in the early days of Darwin enthusiasm that there had been discovered a race of men that clearly belonged to the species ape. Assertions of this kind have gradually ceased. Now the different human races are considered to belong to the same species, and their common parentage is considered possible from the view-point of the theory of evolution. The anthropologist Ranke expresses his opinion thus: “We find the bodily differences perfectly connected by intermediate forms, graded to a nicety, and the summary of the differences appears to point to but one species… This is the prevalent opinion of all independent research of anatomically schooled anthropologists” (Der Mensch, 2d ed., II, 1894, 261). Ethnology denies the existence of nations or tribes without religion (Ratzel, Voelkerkunde, I, 1885, 31). Peschel says: “The statement that any nation or tribe has ever been found anywhere on earth without notions and suggestions of religion can be denied emphatically”(O. Peschel, Voelkerkunde, 6th ed., 1885, 273). “The more recent ethnology knows of no tribes without morality, nor does history record any” (W. Schneider, Die Naturvoelker, 1886, II, 348).
Until a short time ago it was believed that the derivation of man's life from inferior stages of animal life would not be difficult to prove; but at present, while many still adhere to the theory that man has developed from the brute, the conviction is steadily gaining ground that it cannot be scientifically proved and that it becomes more and more difficult to disprove man's higher origin. Unable to withstand the force of facts, one hypothesis gives place to another: what had to be found could not be found, living or extinct links between the brute and man refused to appear anywhere, and those which people thought they had found, turned out to be unsuitable. Kohlbrugge concludes his criticism of the recent theories of the evolution of the body of man from lower animals with the confession: “The above summary is enough to convince everybody that we do not know anything distinct about the great problem of evolution; we have not yet seen its face. All must be done over again” (Die Morpholog. Abstammung des Menschen, 1908, 88). Virchow said at the anthropological congress of Vienna, 1889: “When we met at Innsbruck twenty years ago Darwinism had just finished its first triumphal march through the world, and my friend Vogt became its ardent champion. We have searched in vain for the missing link connecting man directly with the ape.”
What has become of those anatomic-morphologic links between man and beast, the pithecanthropus erectus, the man dug out at Neandertal, Spy, Schipka, La Naulette, and Krapina, and shown with great confidence to the world? What has become of the prehistoric man, said to belong to the glacial period of Europe, and to have ranked far below the present man? J. Kohlmann writes: “I wish to state that I thoroughly adhere to the theory of evolution, but my own experience has led me to the result that man has not changed his racial characteristics since the glacial period. He appears on the soil of Europe physically complete, and there is no ape-man to be found” (apud Ranke, Ibid. 480). Prof. Branco, director of the Palæontological Institute of Berlin, says: “Palæontology tells us nothing about the missing link. This science knows of no ancestors of man” (at the 5th international Zoological Congress, 1901, Wasmann, Die mod. Biolog. 3, p. 488). And the palæontologist Zittel says: “The missing link between man and ape, though a postulate of the theory of evolution, has not been found”(Ranke, l. c. 504). E. Grosse concludes his studies on evolution with the significant words: “I began this book with the intention of writing a history of the evolution of the family, and I finish it convinced that at present the writing of that history is impossible for me or for anybody else” (Die Formen der Familie, 1896, Vorwort). Ranke is perfectly right in saying that “it behoves the dignity of science to confess that it knows nothing of the origin of man” (Thuermer V, 1902, I. Heft).
A century ago or so, ridicule was heaped in the name of science on the description in the Bible of the last day: “The stars shall fall,” “and the powers of heaven shall be moved,” “the elements shall be melted with heat, and the earth shall be burnt up” (Matt. xxiv. 29 seq.; Luke xxi. 25 seq.; Mark xiii. 24 seq.; 2 Pet. iii. 10). Then the assertion that stones could fall from the skies caused a smile, but now science has come to the general knowledge that this is not only possible, but perhaps really will be the end of all things, if once our earth on its journey through unknown spaces of the universe should collide with a comet or get into a cosmic cloud of large meteors. (Cf. the graphic description in K. Braun, Ueber Kosmogonie, 3d ed., 1905, p. 381 seq.)
An example of another kind: It is not so long since Protestant, liberal Bible-criticism and its history of early Christian literature, in the endeavour to remove everything supernatural from the beginning of Christianity, regarded the New Testament and the oldest Christian documents as unreliable testimony, even forgeries, and for this reason placed the date of their origin as late as possible. But now they have to retrace their steps.
A. Harnack writes: “There was a period – the general public is still living in it – when the New Testament and the oldest Christian literature were thought to be but a tissue of lies and forgeries. This time has passed. For science it was an episode in which much was learned of which much must be forgotten. The result of subsequent research over-reaches in a ‘reactionary’ effect what might be termed the central position of modern criticism. The oldest literature of the Church is in the main and in most details true and reliable, that is, from the literary and historical point of view… I am not afraid to use the word ‘retrogressive’ – for we should call a spade a spade – the criticism of the sources of the earliest Christianity is beyond doubt moving retrogressively towards tradition” (Chronologie der Alt-Christ. Literatur I, 1897, VIII). In a more recent work the same savant writes: “During the years from 30 to 70 all originated in Palestine, or, better, in Jerusalem, what later on was developed. This knowledge is steadily gaining and replacing the former ‘critical’ opinion that the fundamental development had extended over a period of about a hundred years”(Lukas der Arzt, 1906, Vorwort). This retrogression is continued still farther in his later work, “Neue Untersuchungen zur Apostolgesch. u. zur Abfassungszeit der synopt. Evang., 1911,” in which Harnack draws very near to the Catholic view regarding the date of writing of the Acts of the Apostles, as also regarding St. Paul's attitude towards Judaism and Christian-Judaism, and departs from the modern Protestant view (cf. pp. 28-47, 79 seq., 86, 93 seq.). “Protestant authorities on church-history,” he says elsewhere, “no longer take offence at the proposition that the main elements of Catholicism go back to the Apostolic era, and not only peripherically” (Theol. Literar. Zeitung, 1905, 52).
In a speech, much commented on, which he made at his university January 12, 1907, Prof. Harnack, discussing the religious question in Germany, called attention to the fact that there has been quite a marked return to the Catholic standpoint: “From the study of Church history we find that we all have become different from what our fathers were, whether we may like it or not. Study has shown that we are separated from our fathers by a long course of development; that we do not understand their ideas and words at all, much less do we use them in the sense they used them.” He then draws out the comparison more particularly: “Flacius and the older Protestants denied that Peter had ever been in Rome at all. Now we know that his having been there is a fact well evidenced in history.” The motto of the older Protestants was that the Scriptures are the sole source of revelation. “But now, and for a long time past, Protestant savants have realized that the Scriptures could not be separated from tradition, and that the collecting of the New Testament Scriptures was a part of tradition.” “Protestants of the sixteenth century taught justification by faith alone, without works. In the absence of confessional controversy, no evangelical Christian would now find fault with the teaching which declares only such faith to be of any worth which shows itself by the love of God and of the neighbour” (Protestantismus u. Katholizismus in Deutschland, Preussisch. Jahrbücher 127. Bd., 1907, 301 seq.).
Many similar instances of science confessing Erravimus in regard to the Christian or Catholic position could be cited. They are an admonition to be modest, not to overrate the value of a scientific proposition, and not, with supreme confidence and infallibility, to brand it as an offence against the human intellect to let one's self be guided by the principles of faith.
Moreover, it has often happened that science emphatically and sneeringly rejected propositions, and called them false and absurd, which to-day are considered elementary.
Newton, in 1687, had correctly explained the revolution of the moon around the earth, and of the planets around the sun, as the co-operation of gravitation and inertia, and thence concluded also the elliptic form of the orbits of planets previously discovered by Kepler. Leibnitz rejected this theory, Huygens called it absurd, and the Academy of Paris as late as 1730 still favoured the theory of revolution of Descartes; it was only about the year 1740 that it was generally accepted. Huygens, himself, had formed in 1690 his theory about light-waves. For a long time it was misunderstood. Only in 1800, or somewhat later, it received its merited acknowledgment, but noted physicists like Biot and Brewster rejected it still for some time and held to the theory of emission. “Even in the intellectual world the law of inertia holds good” (Rosenberger, Gesch. der Physik, III, 1887, 139).
The great discoverer Galvani complained of being attacked from two opposite sides, by the scientists and by the ignorant: “Both make fun of me. They call me the dancing master of frogs. Yet I know I have discovered one of the greatest forces of nature.”
When Benjamin Franklin explained the lightning-rod to the Royal Academy of Sciences, he was ridiculed as a dreamer. The same happened to Young with his theory of the undulation of light. “The Edinburgh Review” proposed to the public to put Thomas Grey in a strait-jacket when he presented his plan for railroads. Sir Humphry Davy laughed at the idea of illuminating the city of London by gas. The French Academy of Sciences actually sneered at the physicist Arago when he proposed a resolution to merely open a discussion of the idea of an electric telegraph (Wallace, Die wissensch. Ansicht des Uebernatuerlichen, 102 seq.).
Until about a hundred years ago scientists almost universally thought it impossible for a stone to fall from the skies – not to mention a rain of stones. Of the big meteor that fell at Agram in 1751 the learned Vienna professor, Stuetz, wrote in 1790 as follows: “That iron had fallen from the skies may have been believed in Germany in 1751 even by its enlightened minds, owing to the uncertainty then prevailing in regard to physics and natural history. In our times, however, it were unpardonable to consider similar fairy tales even probable.”Some museums threw away their collections of meteors, fearing they would appear ridiculous by keeping them. In that very year, 1790, a meteor fell near the city of Juillac in France, and the mayor of the town sent a report of it to the French Academy of Sciences, signed by three hundred eye-witnesses. But the wise men of the academy knew better. Referee Bertholon said: “It is a pity for a town to have so foolish a mayor,” and added: “It is sad to see the whole municipality certifying by affidavit to a folk-saga that can only be pitied. What more can I say of an affidavit like that? Comment is self-evident to a philosophically trained mind who reads this authentic testimonial about an evidently false fact, about a physically impossible phenomenon.” A. Deluc, in other respects a sober-minded man, and a scientist, even remarked that should a stone like that fall before his feet, then he would have to admit that he had seen it, but nevertheless would not believe it. Vaudin remarked: “Better to deny such incredible things than to have to try to explain them.” Thus taught the French Academy of that time (apud Braun, Ueber Kosmogonie, 3d ed., 1905, 378 seq.). And now science is teaching the contrary. Everybody knows that such falling meteors are not only possible, but that they fall about seven hundred times a year on our earth.
Do not these examples bear a striking resemblance to the attitude of many of the representatives of modern science towards facts and truths of our faith?
This has not been said with a view of detracting from the reputation of science. Not at all. It has fallen to the lot of man to be subject to error. The above was said to recall that fact. Science is not so infallible as to be able to claim the right to ignore, in religious and ethical questions, faith and the Church, and even to usurp the place of the faith given by God, in order to lead its disciples upon the new paths of a delivered mankind.
