CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY UNDERGRADUATE LIBRARY DATE DUE iuiS^.; _ [ PWR / misit «r WP>«W%«^^j.^_^. , »**Vi.,,.,f^.„j, tf "WWV m!p":2l§ s^. GAYLORD PRINTED rN U..S.A. Cornell University Library Q 141.W221966 Catholic churchmen in science; sicetches o 3 1924 012 057 596 Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924012057596 CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE In §>twntt^ SKETCHES OF THE LIVES OF CATHOLIC ECCLESIASTICS WHO WERE AMONG THE GREAT FOUNDERS IN SCIENCE by JAMES J- WALSH K.C.St.G., Litt.D., Sc.D., M.D., Ph.D., LL.D. Director, School of Sociology and Social Service at Fordham University, and Professor of Physiological Psychology, Cathedral College, New York ; Fellow of the New York Academy of Medicifie ; Life Member of the New York Historical Society ; Member of the American Anthropological Society ; A.M. A.; A.A.A.S.; etc. Essay Index Reprint Series BOOKS FOR LIBRARIES PRESS, INC. FREEPORT, NEW YORK First published 1917 Reprinted 1966 ^ MY UNCLE MR. PATRICK GOLDEN AS A SLIGHT TOKEN OF GRATITUDE FOR MUCH THAT CAN NEVER BE REPAID PREFACE. THE single rule in the choice of scientist churchmen for this third volume of Cath- olic Churchmen in Science is the sjime as for the companion volumes — to present sketches of the lives of distinguished scientific workers from various periods of history. The Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the eighteenth and the twentieth century are here represented by men who in the ecclesiastical state and under special religious obligations found the time to do work in science that has made their names immortal in history. In every case their Church affiliations proved a help, not a hindrance, to their scientific work, in spite of the impression to the contrary that is prevalent in many minds in our time. I have to thank the editor of the Ave Maria for permission to reprint the articles on " Lab- oratories at the Vatican " and " Abbe Spallan- zani, a Precursor of Pasteur " ; the articles on Abbe Breuil and Father Obermaier have ap- peared in The Ecclesiastical Review, and I am indebted to the editor for permission to use them in book form ; that on Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa owes much to the chapter on this distinguished churchman in my Old Time Makers of Medicine and to an article on him in the Archives of Diagnosis. (vii) VIU PREFACE There has recently been question of the foun- dation of an Institute for the Study of the His- tory of Science. Its realization has, alas! been delayed, as have so many other important intel- lectual developments, by the great war which absorbs nearly all energy and attention. I think that very probably the articles contained in this little volume may serve to emphasize how much such an institution is needed. We have been so intent in the past on the history of war and politics that we have sadly neglected the ordered story of man's great constructive achievements. None of these has been more neglected than the history of science, that is, man's thoughtful efforts to penetrate with the human means at his command the meaning of man's life and the uni- verse in which he lives. CONTENTS PACB Preface vii 1. Introduction : Laboratories at the Vatican AND Papal Scientists 3 II. Roger Bacon 29 III. Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa 83 IV. Abb£ Spali.anzani : A Clerical Precursor of Pasteur 115 V. AuBfe Breuil and the Cave-Men Artists . . 147 VI. Rev. Hugo Obermaier : The Time and Place (IF THE Cave-Man in World IIistoky . . . 183 I. INTRODUCTION. TT is hard to find words to express -'- the debt of gratitude which modern civilization owes to the Roman Cath- olic Church.— John Fiske, The Be- ginnings of New England, or The Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty. INTRODUCTION. LABORATORIES AT THE VATICAN AND PAPAL SCIENTISTS. PROFESSOR SARTON, a Belgian scholar of distinction, driven from his home country by war conditions there, has been engaged in organizing in this country an institute for the history of science. He was in Washington for some time, in touch with the Smithsonian and other Government scientific institutions; and more recently has been at Harvard. Strange as it may appear, in the midst of all the interest of our day in science there has been comparatively little interest in the history of science until very recent years. The consequence has been a very general misconception of the place of science in the older time. Indeed, except among those who paid particular attention to the history of science, there has been a notion prevalent that there was practically no development of physical science until our time, and that the development of science represented, as it were, a new phase in the evolution of the human mind. Nothing could well be less true than this ; for at all times men have been interested in science, and at many times they have made very significant observations and drawn important conclusions from it. 3 4 CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE A lack of knowledge of the history of science has made men misunderstand entirely certain phases of the relation of science to education and to religion. There are a great many people who seehi to think that, before the last generation or two, the classics had constantly formed the basis of education practically since the old classic days themselves. Very few realize that the classics were introduced under the name of the Human- ities, or the New Learning, as the basis of edu- cation only in the Renaissance time, and that this phase of education has lasted only some four hundred years. Before that period science was the principal subject of attention at the univer- sities; and indeed practically every topic taken up in university curriculums was studied from the scientific standpoint. This has come to be realized very well by those who understand the significance of what were known as the liberal arts in the older time; for these, in spite of their name, were really seven important phases of education studied as sciences. On the other hand, the failure to recognize the fact that the medieval universities were all scien- tific universities has been the fundamental reason for the erroneous assertions with regard to the attitude of the Church toward science. Just as soon as it is understood that the old medieval in- stitutions (founded under papal charters, fos- tered by churchmen, usually with the chancellor of the cathedral of the university town as the chancellor of the university, with houses of the INTRODUCTION various religious Orders connected with the uni- versity, and most of the professors ecclesiastics) were quite literally scientific universities, then the idea of any inherent opposition between Church and Science at once vanishes. Professor Sarton's work deserves, then, thor- ough encouragement; and an institute for the history of science which would give proper scope for scholarship in this great field would do more than anything else to remove misunder- standings that are almost unpardonable because founded on ignorance. Probably nothing would illustrate better the necessity for an organized knowledge of the history of science for those who are interested in the subject than a passage from Professor Huxley's inaugural address as Lord Rector of the University of Aberdeen, in which he took for his topic " Universities Actual and Ideal." Professor Huxley was usually very careful toi look up his authorities and to scruti- nize the sources of his information, and seldom made a serious slip; and yet on that occasion he made some declarations which, when investigated in the light of knowledge that has accumulated as regards the history of science in more recent years, prove to be absurdly fallacious. The fal- lacy of the remark was all the more striking be- cause there are several passages in that inaugural address which I have often quoted, to show that Professor Huxley was quite willing to acknowl- edge, when he knew it, the good work that was being done by the older universities. 6 CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE It is said that when Professor Huxley began the preparation of his inaugural address he thought that the best treatment of his subject would be a definite comparison between medieval and modern universities — a comparison which would, of course, prove unfavorable to the older educational organizations, and therefore illus- trate clearly and emphasize strongly the neces- sity for modern modifications in university cur- riculums which would prove more advantageous for our age. At that time Oxford and Cam- bridge were still conservatively clinging to the classic curriculum as the essence of education, and presumably were, therefore, still medieval universities in the modern time. To his great surprise, however. Professor Huxley found that the teaching of the old medi- eval universities was very different from what he had imagined. He investigated rather care- fully the significance of their usual curriculum, recognized that the fundamental principles of it were scientific, and then, after devoting some time to the definite meaning of the trivitun and quadrivium, the so-called " seven liberal arts," found that these represented very valuable ele- ments in education. Every one of them was studied from its scientific aspect. Professor Huxley was charmed to find how thoroughly scientific had been the methods of medieval uni- versity teachers, so that he did not hesitate to say that the work of these old institutions of learning, " however imperfect and faulty judged INTRODUCTION by modern lights it may have been, brought them face to face with all the leading aspects of the many-sided mind of man " ; and he added : " I doubt if the curriculum of any modern univer- sity shows so clear and generous a comprehen- sion of what is meant by culture as this old triviimi and quadrivium does." There is, however, another passage in the same address that has always interested me even more than this striking expression of praise from so unexpected a source for the medieval univer- sities. Its interest, however, is due to the fact that in it Huxley's customary caution not to make assertions until he had looked up his authorities deserted him. He was caught by the tradition of Church opposition to science, and allowed himself to make declarations that even a little careful study would have shown him to be quite untrue. His address was published in the Contemporary Review of the year in which it was delivered, and even so glaring a contradic- tion of history as is contained in the passage that I shall presently quote, passed unnoticed, and was considered by many, if not practically all, of the readers to represent the actual truth of the matter. It sums up in a few words what was the impression of Huxley's generation, and what has continued to be the impression of a great many people who think they know some- thing about such matters, or indeed often assume that they know all there is to be known about them ; and are quite unconscious of the fact that 8 CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE they are accepting an old-time historical tradition founded on religious prejudice, but absolutely devoid of any foundation in the history of things as they actually happened. Huxley is talking of the attitude of the Church toward science; that is, of course, toward the physical sciences, and does not hesitate to say with that thoroughgoing completeness of asser- tion always so characteristic of the man who is dilating on a subject of which he is profoundly ignorant : " Physical science, on the other hand, was an irreconcilable enemy to be excluded at all hazards. The College of Cardinals has not distinguished itself in physics or physiology ; and no Pope has as yet set up public laboratories in the Vatican." I feel sure that most of his hearers at Aber- deen, as well as his readers in the Contemporary Review, responded to this sally of Professor Huxley with a good-humored smile over even the bare idea that cardinals should ever have in- terested themselves in physics or physiology, or that any Pope should ever have set up public laboratories in the Vatican. The very notion was a good joke. I am just as sure that a great many people in our time — indeed, I venture to say most of those who are teaching the physical sciences at the universities — would feel the same way even now. And yet the direct contradictory of both these propositions is quite literally demonstrable of proof; for cardinals and even Popes have distinguished themselves in physics INTRODUCTION 9 and physiology, and the Popes during many cen- turies set up public laboratories in the Vatican. It is not in our time alone that such apparently surprising events have occurred, but it was in the long ago ; and there has actually been a defi- nite effort on the part of the Popes not only to keep in touch with physical science, but to foster it, often to endow it liberally, over and over again to honor its great workers, and to encour- age their labors in a great many different ways. To take the second proposition first. The utter absurdity of it in the light of history is susceptible of demonstration without having to appeal to anything more than a modicum of knowledge of history. For there have been Papal astronomers at the Vatican — taking that term, of course, in the generic sense in which Professor Huxley used it of the residence of the Popes — almost continuously for centuries. Pope Leo XIII in his Encyclical Motu Propria, issued some twenty-five years ago, reminded us that " Gregory XIII ordered a tower to be erected in a convenient part of the Vatican gardens, and to be fitted out with the greatest and best instru- ments 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." Gregory XIII's policy in this matter was pur- sued faithfully by his successors, though the ob- servatory founded by him fell shortly afterward 10 CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE into disuse for the purpose originally intended, not at all because of any opposition to science, but because its place was supplied by another Roman institution almost as directly under the patronage of the Popes. This was the Roman College, the great mother school of the Jesuits at Rome. The Jesuits had a special vow to carry out the wishes of the Popes in all regards. As they were the most important teaching Order of the Qiurch, deeply interested in science as well as in the classics — as indeed under Gregory XIII the scientist in control of the correction of the cal- endar, holding the charge of the Vatican Ob- servatory, was Father Christopher Clavius, the well-known Jesuit — it is not surprising that suc- ceeding Popes, in order to avoid duplication of work that would be done much more efficiently in a single institution, allowed the Vatican Ob- servatory to lapse, so as to give all their patron- age to the Observatory of the Roman College, which really, after all, was in many ways the Papal, or at least the Roman, Observatory. The best proof of this is that the Vatican Observa- tory has always been restored whenever, as at present, the Jesuits, for any reason, were not allowed to continue their work at the Roman College. There is a Jesuit at the head of it now. Of course there may be people in our time who do not think of an astronomical observatory as a laboratory, but that is exactly what it is. There are some for whom the word laboratory INTRODUCTION II means only a chemical laboratory, or at most a chemical and physical laboratory. There is no reason at all, however, for such a distinction, for what is meant by a laboratory is a place where actual scientific observations are recorded and their significance worked out. As the Cen- tury Dictionary says, a laboratory is " a room, building or workshop especially fitted with suit- able apparatus for conducting investigations in any department of a science." It is interesting, however, to note that this was not the sole form of laboratory that the Popes not only countenanced but patronized, and often endowed. At the older universities the two forms of laboratory work, that is, opportuni- ties for the making of actual observations, were in astronomy and in anatomy. The old medical schools did their laboratory work in the dissect- ing rooms. It might be thought by many, be- cause of an erroneous tradition in the matter, that surely in this department there would be no likelihood of the Popes having a laboratory; but, then, those who think that the Galileo case demonstrates the utter opposition of the Popes to science would be quite sure that there could have been no astronomical observatory at the Vatican, in spite of the fact that Gregory XIII's observatory just mentioned was established some fifty years before the condemnation of Galileo. There is a very widespread persuasion that the Popes and the Church were opposed to anatomy; but there is no truth in it. On the 12 CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE contrary, it is comparatively easy to show, as I have done in my book, The Popes and Science, that the Popes encouraged the study of anatomy by dissection, and that the Papal University of Rome at the Sapienza did excellent work in this department, and successive Popes for several centuries invited some of the most distinguished anatomists of their time, who were also, by the way, some of the most distinguished anatomists of all time, to become professors of anatomy at the Papal Medical School. This was not situated at the Vatican of course, literally speaking, but it was so closely in touch in every regard with the Pope that it comes, without any far-fetched construction or undue stretching of significance, to represent a definite contradiction of Huxley's expression with regard to the absence of labora- tories under Papal patronage in their capital city. Among those invited to teach and develop anatomy at the Sapienza were such distinguished anatomists as Columbus, to whom we owe the first description of the circulation; Eustachius, after whom the Eustachian tube is named ; Ficco- lomini, one of the great teachers of anatomy in his time, though his name is attached to no special discovery; Csesalpinus, one of the most learned men of his day, who had taught botany at Pisa and brought the Botanic Garden there, the first of its kind, into magnificent condition; Varolius, after whom the Pons Varolii in the brain is named; Malpighi, who with the highest right of discovery, has his name attached to more INTRODUCTION 1 3 Structures in the human body than any other; Lancisi, a great teacher, and a fine original in- vestigator, whose lectures not only attracted stu- dents from all over the world, but even brought some of the most distinguished medical men from every country in Europe to listen to them. All this was done at Rome in the Papal Medical School, under the patronage of the Popes, and the important publications issued by these men while teaching at the Papal Medical School were usually dedicated to the Popes. As to the two forms of laboratory work, then, astronomical and anatomical, that universities took up in the older days, the Popes not only were not in opposition to them, but showed them- selves ready to foster and encourage them in every way. There has been nO' laboratory of chemistry or physics founded at the Vatican, but then circumstances have been different in mod- ern times, and there has been no good reason for the Popes to take such extraordinary steps as such foundations would imply. In the old times their attitude toward science was all-important for its development, and they made their dispo- sition in its regard quite unmistakable by their foundation of laboratories in the two sciences which were studied in„this practical way. When the science of meteorology began to develop, the Popes encouraged that, and did for it very much what they had done for anatomy and astronomy in the older days. During the latter half of the nineteenth century Father Sec- 14 CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE chi was working at Rome. The Popes took great interest in his work, encouraged his development of astronomical instruments, and also of instru- ments of various kinds for the automatic obser- vation of the weather, and enabled him to ac- complish much in this way. All over the world Jesuits have been deeply interested in the development of the science of meteorology, and have installed instruments so that there might be larger numbers of observa- tions to collate. The Jesuits in the Philippine Islands reduced these observations to such terms as gave them definite practical results in their ability to foretell storms probably better than others. The sudden severe storms of the Philip- pine regions had been extremely destructive of life and property, particularly at sea, and the Jesuit developments in meteorology showed that these storms were by no means so sudden as had been thought, but gave due warnings of their coming. Almost needless to say, without the positive encouragement of the Popes such experi- mentation would not have been allowed to con- tinue in the Order which makes its special vow of obedience to the Pope, and whose general policy is made to conform so strictly to Papal wishes. As with regard to meteorology, so, too, seis- mology, the science of the phenomena related to earthquakes and terrestrial tremors of all kinds, has been mainly developed by the Jesuits with the encouragement and even the patronage of the INTRODUCTION IS Popes. Jesuits from distant missionary coun- tries on visits to the Vatican have been asked about their work, stimulated to go on with it; and presents have been made by the Popes them- selves as well as by members of the Curia, especi- ally cardinals who wanted to show their interest in this important subject. Huxley's slurring remark, well calculated to raise a laugh, is really an example of ignorance; though, of course, it is rather a question of failure to estimate prop- erly the significance of the factors of the Papal policy expressed in a number of ways. There is an old English maxim, " Laugh and show your ignorance," that is quite literally exemplified in expressions of this kind. The other expression of Huxley, " The Col- lege of Cardinals has not distinguished itself in physics or physiology," might well be thought to be less susceptible of direct contradiction than the relation of the Vatican to laboratories; and yet I may say at once that only a little knowledge of the actual details of the history of science in the older times is needed to show that that, too, is an absurdly ignorant remark. Of course car- dinals are ecclesiastics; that is, men devoted to Church work, and therefore it cannot be ex- pected that many of them, whose lives are per- force occupied with interests very widely diverse from physical science, and above all from physics and physiology, should make distinguished con- tributions to these sciences. And yet it is not difficult to name some cardinals, and at least one l6 CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE Pope, whose names are associated directly with advances in these sciences. These facts will serve to show clearly that it was not because of any opposition on the part of the Church to physical science that many of its highest digni- taries did not reach distinction in these depart- ments of science, but only because they were occupied with other interests — and even in spite of that preoccupation more than one or two of the cardinals did work that has given them im- perishable distinction in the history of science. Probably the most distinguished contributor to physics and physiology among the cardinals was the great Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, who was so close to the Popes during the fifteenth century and whose works are full of extremely interest- ing original observation with regard to subjects related to both physics and physiology. He has a distinct place in the history of medicine; for, as I pointed out in my Old Time Makers of Medicine, he was the first to suggest exact methods of diagnosis for medicine. The count- ing of the pulse rate, and the noting of its rela- tion to the patient's condition, seem very obvious things now ; but in his day it was a real scientific innovation. Besides, he taught that specific grav- ity as a principle for comparative estimation of the fluids of the body might serve to give a scien- tific basis to diagnosis which it did not possess before. In describing this suggestion of Car- dinal Cusa in medical journals I have called it jrhe earliest allusion to accurate methods for INTRODUCTION 1 7 the diagnosis of disease in the history of medicine, which it is. The whole story is very interesting, and the Cardinal's book De Docta Ignorantia, that is " On Learned Ignorance," in which he points out how many things there are which people think they know, but which they really do not know at all, represents an accurate scientific point of view usually supposed to be modern. Any one who wants to realize how very dif- ferent from the attitude of opposition to science was the position of the Popes and the Church, should read the story of Father Kircher, S.J. It is to be found in the first volume of Catholic Churchmen in Science, and makes very clear how generously scientific activities were encour- aged in Rome. There is scarcely any mode of physical science that Father Kircher did not pursue with enthusiasm, and his great books are marvels both of printing and illustration and landmarks in the history of science. Brother Potamian, in his catalogue of the Latimer Clark Library of the Institute of American Engineers, calls particular attention to the fact that electro- magnetismos is the astonishing title which Father Kircher gave to a chapter of his book Magnes, sive de Arte Magnetica, — " The Magnet; or. On Magnetic Art," which was published in 1641. There is scarcely a phase of ordinary physical science on which Kircher did not wriie a text- book, and these text-books were not little manuals, but huge tomes usually magnificently l8 CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE illustrated, so that they are now among the bib- liographic treasures of the world in the history of science. Besides the book on magnetism already mentioned, three years later there ap- peared a book on light and shade, Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae; and five years later a book on acoustics, Musurgia Universalis, with the sub- title, Ars Harmoniae et Discordiae, " The Uni- versal Science of Music and the Art of Harmony and Discord " ; and later there was a book on astronomy called Iter Celeste, " The Celestial Way " ; and then one on geology, metallurgy and mineralogy called Mundus Suhterraneus, which was often referred to as the author's greatest book, and was translated into a number of mod- ern languages, including English, though in the seventeenth century Englishmen were loath enough to draw their inspiration from Jesuit writers even on such indifferent subjects as science. Curiously enough, one of his books was called Physiologia Experimentalis, which might be translated " Experimental Physiology,'' though it was really a text-book of experimental physics. It contained all the experimental parts, and especially the demonstrations in chemistry, physics, music, magnetism, and mechanics, as well as acoustics and optics drawn from his larger works on these phases of science. This book of Father Kircher's formed the ground- work of most text-books of science for a full century after his time, and it was freely drawn INTRODUCTION I9 upon for matter and illustrations in many coun- tries. All of these books were published not only without opposition on the part of the Pope, but with the greatest possible encouragement. Father Kircher was making Rome a center of interest for the physical science of the world, and was at the same time the personal friend of many successive Popes, often admitted to private audiences, and asked to explain his most recent discoveries and demonstrate his experiments. Above all, Father Kircher was active in an- other field of physical science which I feel sure Professor Huxley would have thoroughly com- mended had he known it, or rather had he thought of it at the moment vyhen he was mak- ing his scoffing observation. Father Kircher is deservedly looked up to as the originator of the modern museum movement. He gathered to- gether a whole host of curios of many kinds in his famous museum, called after him the Museo Kircheriano, or more simply The Kircherianum. He aroused the lively interest of Jesuit mission- aries all over the world, and they sent him curi- ous specimens of many kinds illustrating anthro- pology, ethnology, zoology, folklore, and other phases of natural history and science, usually considered to be much more modern in origin than his time ; and he gathered all these together so as to provide material for study. The Popes, when they received curiosities from distant mis- 20 CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE sionaries, sometimes deposited them with Father Kircher, or willed them to his collection after their death; and this museum is, I think, the pioneer in its line, in the history of the world. Strange as it may seem to some, there is at least one philosopher-physician among the Popes, though there are of course many more great theo- logians (and theology is a science), many distin- guished philosophers, and many illustrious schol- ars. The philosopher-physician was John XXI, who had been known before his election as Pope as Peter of Spain and who had been a professor in several universities before he was made a bishop, and eventually raised to the Papal See. Curiously enough, he is the only Pope whom Dante speaks of as in Paradise, placing him be- side other such distinguished scholars as Saints Bonaventure, Augustine, Chrysostom, Anselm, along with Abbot Joachim and Hugh of St. Vic- tor. The poet calls Pope John XXI him of Spain Who through twelve volumes full of light descants. The fame of this Pope must have been still fresh in the minds of Dante's generation; for Peter of Spain was born, according to the best ascertainable record, in the second decade of the thirteenth century, living to be past 70 years of age; and as Dante himself was born in 1265, they must have been for a time contemporaries. Peter made his medical and scientific studies at the University of Paris, and in a letter in later INTRODUCTION 21 life he confesses that he retains a special affec- tion for Paris, because " within its dwellings he had been brought up from early years and ap- plied himself to various sciences, finding the opportunities provided for education most favor- able. After the deep draughts of knowledge there obtained, as far as the God of majesty, the Giver of true wisdom, permitted him to take its opportunities, he does not think that he will be ever able to forget how much he owes to this mother of study." When he was about thirty-five years of age Peter received an invitation to the chair of physics, as medicine was then called, at the Uni- versity of Siena. While here he wrote a text- book on eye diseases. Thence he returned to his native country, Portugal, where he became the administrative head of the schools which existed there under the Archbishop of Lisbon. His ad- ministrative ability in this position led to his selection, after the death of the incumbent of the See, as Archbishop of Lisbon. A physician arch- bishop was not such an anomaly then as he would be now, for many ecclesiastics of that time prac- tised both medicine and surgery and became dis- tinguished in this profession.^ One of the greatest of the surgeons of the thirteenth century, whose text-book has been preserved for us, was Bishop Theodoric, an Italian. He wrote on the use of anesthetics as 1 See Catholic Churchmen in Science, Series II, for his life. 22 CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE well as on many modes of operation that are sup- posed to be quite modern. Monks, and members of religious Orders generally, were forbidden to practise medicine and surgery, and this prohibi- tion is sometimes asserted, but erroneously, to have applied to all clergymen. There is abun- dant evidence that the secular clergy were quite free, under certain circumstances at least, to con- tinue the practice of both medicine and surgery. John, the physician. Archbishop of Lisbon, rose subsequently to hold other high positions in the Church, becoming a Cardinal and finally Pope. What is interesting for us here, because of Huxley's contemptuous sneer as to physiology at the Vatican, is that his little book on eye dis- eases also discusses the anatomy and the physi- ology of the eye according to the ideas which were prevalent at that time. His work shows that he was familiar with the writings of his age, and it has attracted a good deal of attention from modern ophthalmologists. Pope John XXI was not the only Pope distin- guished in science, for, some two centuries be- fore him, Pope Sylvester H had been the famous physicist and physical scientist of his time. He became well known for his inventions for teach- ing and demonstration purposes. He lectured on astronomy at Rheims ; and in order to make his lectures clearer, he constructed elaborate globes of the terrestrial and celestial spheres, on which the courses of the planets were marked. He in- geniously fitted up an abacus for demonstrations INTRODUCTION 23 in arithmetic and geometrical processes ; and the development of demonstrations in teaching were evidently his forte. His mathematical apparatus is said to have had twenty-seven divisions and a thousand counters of horn. There are some speculations on light from him, and he was very much interested not only in music but the scien- tific aspects of sound. William of Malmesbury has incorporated into his chronicle a description of a great complex musical instrument, which was still to be seen at Rheims in his day and which was attributed to Gerbert's inventive and mechanical ability. A contemporary declares that Gerbert made a clock, or sundial, at Magde- burg which measured the hours exactly, and that it was soon imitated throughout Europe. What particularly takes the point out of Pro- fessor Huxley's passing jest on the supposed utter impossibility of the Popes having ever had laboratories at the Vatican, or the cardinals doing anything for physiology, is the fact that one of the most noteworthy features in the lives of not a few but very many Popes is their friend- Ship for distinguished scientific workers of their generations. I have already mentioned Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, probably the greatest scientific genius of his day, and his intimate relations not alone to one but to three or four Popes of his time. In the thirteenth century the men most highly honored at Rome were Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, and others whose works con- tained many significant references to physical 24 CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE science, who discussed seriously the philosophic problems that underlie scientific principles, and who gathered together all the information that could be secured. In this regard it must not be forgotten that we owe to Roger Bacon great books, the contents of which would have seemed utterly beyond comprehension or imagination as having been compiled in his time, did we not actually possess them. That possession is due to the friendship of Cardinal Foulques, who was afterward Pope Clement, for Roger Bacon. In similar fashion we probably owe most of the precious writing of Constantine Africanus to the persuasion of Abbot Desiderius, who was after- ward Pope Victor III, and who continued while Pope to encourage Constantine in his writing. In the latest edition of my volume on The Popes and Science I have devoted a special Ap- pendix of nearly fifty pages of rather small type to the story of the Papal physicians. There is no set of men whose names are connected to- gether by any bond in the history of medicine who are as distinguished as these Papal physi- cians. Many of them are famous for distin- guished original work. All of them had done some at least of the work to which they owe their fame before being invited to Rome to continue it there. It was because of their reputation as great original scientists that they were invited to Rome to become the Papal physicians. I know nothing in the whole history of science which makes it so clear that, far from opposing science INTRODUCTION 25 in any way, the Popes wanted to encourage and patronize it to the best of their ability, as the fact that when they wished to appoint a Papal physician they chose one who was famous in the scientific world, and gave him the prestige of this position, which assured him a place in the Christian world higher than any that could be secured in any other way. It is easy to remember what confidential rela- tions existed between the Popes and their physi- cians. We can judge of them very well from the relations between educated men and their physicians at the present day. In the older time physicians were even less likely to be narrow in their interest in science than they are at present ; and, as a matter of fact, many of the Papal physicians made important contributions to the sciences related to medicine, and not a few of them were distinguished pioneers in the biolog- ical sciences. Nothing could have been better calculated to maintain a favorable attitude toward science and its advances on the part of the Popes than the presence in so influential a posi- tion close to them, of representative physicians who had been honored by their fellows in many ways and had done distinctly original scientific work. Between the appointment of Papal physicians and the maintenance of Papal astronomers, the Popes certainly did all they could to keep prop- erly in touch with physical science and even to maintain laboratories at least in anatomy and 26 CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE astronomy, and to encourage in every way the development of these tvi^o important sciences Under these sciences in the older days were in- cluded, on the one hand, not a little of physics and mathematics, and on the other a great deal of physiology, and by its medical relations much of chemistry and the related sciences. Only pro- found ignorance of this could possibly have per- mitted Mr. Huxley to indulge his humor, at the expense of the Popes as he thought, though it was really at his own expense ; for his expres- sions make it very clear that this phase of knowl- edge had never come to him, and that he too, like so many others, was being led astray by the Protestant prejudice with regard to the attitude of the Popes toward science. It was Huxley himself who wrote home from Rome to St George Mivart, the English biologist, that he had been looking into the Galileo case and found " that the Pope and the cardinals had rather the best of it." What he meant was that the ordi- nary impression with regard to the Galileo case was founded on a misconception of the real nature of that celebrated case. In spite of this recognition of the role that prejudgment plays in such cases, Huxley, as we have seen, allowed himself to be led astray by a similar misunderstanding with regard to the gen- eral policy of the Church toward science. The Galileo case, even if it were what many people imagine it to have been, an attempt to throttle science — which of course it was not — is the INTRODUCTION 2."] single example of that kind of activity that most people know anything about; and, as Cardinal Newman remarked, if this is the single exception in a policy of 600 years, then it is surely the ex- ception which proves that the very opposite was the rule. Even Huxley, however, in spite of his rather careful investigation of such disputed points in general, did not have available sufficient details of the knowledge of the history of science to ap- preciate the real place of the Popes with regard to it. They were literally patrons of science, just as much as they were of art and education and literature, even to the extent of making founda- tions for astronomical observatories and anatom- ical laboratories in their capital city when there was ever so much more need for patronage than there is at the present time. When these were the only two kinds of laboratories organized in science, both of them were to be found at Rome under Papal patronage, and in both some of the best work of the world was being done. Manifestly, then, there is a place for an insti- tute of the history of science, and its collections and the investigations that it will initiate and encourage cannot fail to do a great deal to re- move erroneous impressions, above all with re- gard to the relations of science to education and religion. What we need is more knowledge, and then prejudice will disappear. Modern scientific history, by replacing vague impressions with ex- act documentary details and altering undocu- 28 CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE merited convictions into reasonable open-minded ness, has done an immense amount already to clear up historical fallacies with regard to the Church. The history of science carefully written would be of enormous weight in removing all sorts of prejudices which have accumulated since the Reformation; for the one idea of the Re- formers and their successors has been to make people believe that until the sixteenth century there was nothing at all worth while being done in the intellectual order, and that, above all, men were not free to think for themselves. II. ROGER BACON. 'TpHE Encyclopedia and Novum Or- ■*■ ganon of the thirteenth century, a work equally wonderful with regard to its general scheme and to the special treatises with which the out- lines of the plans are filled up. — Wheweli,, on Roger Bacon's Opus Majus. 'T'HEN Aquinas summed up in his -*■ profound speculations the sub- stance of Catholic Theology, and while themorning twilight of modern science might be discerned in the treatises of Roger Bacon, while wandering min- strelsy revealed the treasures of mod- ern speech, soon to be wrought under the hands of Dante and Chaucer into forms of exquisite beauty, the sacred fervor of the apostolic ages found itself renewed in the tender and mystic piety of St. Francis of Assisi. It was a wonderful time, but after all less memorable as the culmination of medieval Empire and medieval Church than as the dawning of the new era in which we live to-day. — John Fiske, The Beginnings of New England, or The Puritan The- ocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty. II. ROGER BACON. THE last international function in the acad- emic world to attract the attention of the civilized countries before the great war of 1914 separated civilization into elements so bitterly discordant as to make even the thought of a re- union of university men of the different coun- tries of Europe quite out of the question for years perhaps, was the celebration at Oxford University in England in June, 1914, of the seven hundredth anniversary of the birth of Roger Bacon. According to a reasonably well-founded tradition the Doctor Mirabilis, as he has been called, " the wonderful teacher " (for doctor had not lost its pristine significance), was born in June, 1214. Seven hundred years is a long time for a man to be so remembered that his birthday is celebrated even by his fellow-countrymen, but such a celebration has even greater significance when it attracts international attention. Usually the men whose memory is thus recalled centuries after their death, have made significant achieve- ments in war or politics, achievements that per- manently affect the status of a nation and so readily suggest anniversary celebrations. Very seldom indeed is it that intellectual accomplishments are deemed worthy of recog- nition of this kind hundreds of years afterward. .31 32 CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE It is all the more striking, then, that the name and fame of a medieval scholar should have been thus gloriously honored by the university author- ities of the world seven centuries after his time and that his work should be so emphatically re- called to public attention. It is, above all, an index of that newer, truer knowledge of the medieval period which has been coming to us for the past two or three generations and which has culminated now in the very general recognition, that the later centuries of what used to be called the benighted Middle Ages, or even the Dark Ages, were among the most wonderful in the history of the race and that particularly the thir- teenth century, which Roger Bacon's life so largely represents for us (for he was born in the first part of its second decade and lived into its last), is one of the supreme periods in the history of humanity. Lest it should seem a subject for special sur- prise that a medieval scholar, a university man of that thirteenth century, should have been the subject of such a celebration in our time, it prob- ably deserves to be recalled here that the only scholar in all history with whose name the ad- jective " great " has come to be so associated now that it is the ordinary impression that it is a part of his name, was a contemporary of Roger Bacon's. This was, of course, Albertus Magnus, whose family name, Albert of Bollstadt, has been lost sight of entirely in the appellation magnus conferred on him by the generation that imme- ROGER BACON 33 diately followed him. Albert and Roger Bacon met on more than one occasion and knew each other's works very well, though mainly to dis- agree on many important questions. They were quite as much opposed in habit of mind and philosophic viewpoint as any two schools of rival thought in our time. In spite of this difference of opinion, both of them are deservedly in honor, for both had certain ways of looking at things that will ever attract human attention. Probably the greatest surprise with regard to the recent celebration of the anniversary of the birth of Roger Bacon is that it was arranged by the Royal Society of England, an organization strictly scientific in its aims, and that it attracted the particular attention almost entirely of the scientists of the world. It is because Roger Bacon anticipated many things in what we are pleased to call modern physical science that his septicentenary was enthusiastically celebrated. We have become very much interested in science during the past three generations, but until quite recently in our own generation there was a very prevalent impression that no development of science worth while talking about had taken place before the last century or two, and above all that no scientific thinkers or workers worth while recalling had lived until almost our own time. At last, however, we are waking up to the realities of the history of science and have come to recognize the fact that a great many of the underlying fundamental and most significant 34 CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE ideas in it were in the minds of men generations before our time. This was indeed the real mean- ing of the international celebration of the seven hundredth anniversary of the birth of Roger Bacon. The same ignoring of other modes of achieve- ment in mankind before our time has been very common in the last few generations, and it is as a ground for hope that there may be further awakening to our ignorance of many wonderful things in the past, that the celebration of the Bacon centenary has its most promising interest. The fact of the matter is that it is only as our own interests develop that we come to recog- nize the significance of interest in the older time. When we had no architecture, no arts, no crafts to speak of, and when our books were cheap and vile (vile in Latin means for sale), we could not appreciate many of their interests in the Middle Ages, when they were devoting them- selves to the making of beautiful buildings, charming arts and crafts work and handsome books. When we had no agricultural schools, we could not appreciate that the monasteries were agricultural schools and were doing fine work for drainage, irrigation, and the improvement of agriculture in every way. Our knowledge of the Middle Ages is growing, but above all our own development in other ways is gradually coming back to the level of the medieval period, and so we are coming to appreciate better the work of its scholars. ROGER BACON 35 So it is with these medieval scholars like Roger Bacon. The last three or four generations of mankind have wakened up to the scientific ideas that occupied the generation to which Roger Bacon, Albertus Magnus, and Thomas Aquinas belonged, after a long period during which there was a stagnation of scientific ideas. A great many people seem inclined to think that all higher education before our time was founded on the classics. But they forget that the classics as the basis of education came in only with the New Learning in the Renaissance time, and that the old medieval universities were really scientific universities. It was no less a protagonist of modern science than Thomas Huxley who in his address as the Rector of Aberdeen University some thirty years ago, reviewing early days of university teaching at Aberdeen, did not hesitate to declare that the so-called seven liberal arts as taught in the old universities were viewed really from a scientific standpoint and that they pro- vided " a better instrument for the development of the many-sided mind of man than the curric- ulum of any modern university." ' Bacon's Eclipse. Perhaps the most interesting feature with re- gard to the present-day reawakening of high estimation for Roger Bacon is to be found in the 1 See Chapter on Laboratories at the Vatican, for quotation. 36 CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE fact that while there are many references to Bacon in our English literature, practically all of them after the end of the Middle Ages are in a spirit of supreme depreciation. Oxford, which now turns to honor her son, was the leader in these. Bacon's name became a byword. The brazen nose of Brasenose College was said to be Bacon's head. Many the joke there was about it. It was much worse than what we could call a " bone head " ; it was a head of bronze into which no idea could be made to penetrate. Even as late as 1818 Lord Byron has some contemp- tuous references to Friar Bacon's brazen head, though these were probably only a reecho of the literary traditions of the Elizabethan time when Bacon was looked upon as a conceited ass or else an impudent imposter. All this only proves now to have been just a question of a genius misunderstood. It is a dan- gerous thing for a man to be ahead of his time, though what is usually forgotten is that it is just as dangerous for a man to be behind his time. The truth of the matter is that at moments when ideas are taken seriously and mankind is in the midst of a critical period, it is dangerous to dis- agree with one's fellows. We thought that men had outlived this, or had been educated beyond it, until this war showed us that men reason no more now than at any other time. They adopt certain views and then are prone to assume that anyone who disagrees with them cannot be quite sincere. Roger Bacon was a genius and thought ROGER BACON 37 for himself, and disagreed with a great many in his own generation, so that it was no wonder that he proved an excellent exemplification of one of Dean Swift's famous expressions. The satiric Dean of St. Patrick's said, " When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign — that all the asses are in confederacy against him." The confederacy against Bacon was not so much noted in his own time as in the centuries after the Middle Ages, and it con- tinued until the world caught up with the ideas which the medieval friar had advanced and by which he had anticipated modern thought. It is not really a source of surprise then, or should not be, that the modern scientific world should go back seven hundred years to celebrate the birthday of a great man of the medieval period, but what is surprising is that it should have taken so long for the modern world to wake up to the fact that these old-time scholars were working at the same problems as the most mod- ern of scientists, and were occupied even with the practical application of scientific principles to human utilities quite as we are. Bacon, for in- stance, discussing gunpowder and explosives generally, very calmly suggested that a time would come when carriages would run over the land without horses or men pulling them, and boats over the sea without oars or sails. His idea was that sometime man would harness ex- plosives; and when it is recalled that the two great sources of energy for locomotion on land 38 CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE and sea, steam and gasoline, are both of explo- sive nature, it would be easy to understand how acute was Bacon's provision. He also suggested that men might make flying machines, and was quite sure that the problem of aviation would some time be solved and would not prove very difficult. As a matter of fact, as he so clearly anticipated, just as soon as we had harnessed explosives, locomotion on sea and land and in the air became an easy problem. For us here in America the story of Roger Bacon must ever be of special interest because of the fact that it was a passage from one of Bacon's works, the Opus Majus, which above all influenced Columbus to come to the conclusion that land could be reached by sailing westward. Cardinal Pierre d'Ailly made a quotation from Bacon's chapter on Geography in the Opus Majus in his work, the Imago Mundi. Columbus was so impressed by these expressions from Bacon that, after making a commentary on them, he quoted them in a letter that he wrote to Ferdi- nand and Isabella, making clear to them the fact that his notion of sailing westward was not a novel chimeric scheme, but that some at least of the best scientific thought of the world for two or three centuries had been converging on this westward exploration ; and he urged this as an ad- ditional motive for them to patronize it. Bacon's Opus Majus, therefore, as the source of inspira- tion for Columbus was an important factor for the discovery of America, and if Columbus is to ROGER BACON 39 be considered, as of course he ought to be, as the father of the great idea that led to the discovery of America, then Roger Bacon must be looked up to as a direct progenitor of that same genial idea. A good many historians of education have been very much inclined to laugh at the high- sounding titles, given in almost absurd flattery it would seem, which the medieval scholars con- ferred on their masters. Doctor angelicus, miri- ficus, subtilis, accuratissimus, and so on, repre- sent for them only refined flattery and lofty com- pliment, doing much more credit to the heart of the students of the Middle Ages than to their minds. Not a few presumably well-informed people might be of the opinion that the ignorance of the students was so profound that anything more than ordinary knowledge on the part of their masters must have seemed wonderful to them. After recalling even a little of the influ- ence that Bacon had on the greatest minds of the subsequent centuries, and then the highly com- plimentary renewal of interest in him which has taken place in our own time, one comes to appre- ciate more and more how eminently suitable for him was the name Doctor Mirabilis, under which he was known and which he surely merited highly, if any teacher ever did. If his case is to be taken as evidence for others, then these titles of the Middle Ages so far from being idle flat- tery given to favorite professors must have been amply deserved, 40 CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE The story of the man of this prophetic vision, who on strictly intellectual grounds foresaw long subsequent scientific interests, and his career as a scholar of the most varied liberal interests, are among the very precious chapters in the history of the human intellect. It is quite impossible to tell it all in the limitations of our space, but at least some of the most important headings may be discussed briefly, especially in their relation to present-day life and thought. An Old-Time Academic Career. Roger Bacon was probably born near Ilchester, though not in Somersetshire, in which Ilchester is located, but across the line in neighboring Dor- setshire. He was a younger son of a noble family of which there was a number of branches in England and Normandy. His elder brother, whom he describes as " my rich brother," suc- ceeded to the estates. There was another brother whom Bacon describes as " a scholar." There was a famous Robert Bacon, a well-known teacher among the Dominicans, who died in 1245 and who is said to have been Bacon's uncle. Bacon went to Oxford about 1226, when he was twelve years of age, and continued to live either at Oxford or at Paris for the next forty years. In 1267 Bacon declared, " I have always been studious, and except for two of those (past) forty years I have always been in studio." This last phrase probably does not mean merely en- gaged at study but " at a university," for the ROGER BACON 4I usual title in the thirteenth century for what we call a university was studium generate. His university life for these forty years was passed between study and lecturing. He lectured both at Oxford and at Paris, and attracted great attention and made many favorite pupils. He wrote a number of elementary treatises for stu- dents, so that, as he says himself, " men used to wonder before I became a friar that I lived, owing to my excessive labors." They could not understand where he got the time, but above all they were sure that he would break down his health by his constant application. In the light of this it is rather interesting to realize that in spite of a life of the most strenuous intellectual activity he probably lived to be over eighty years of age, intellectually capable and active until the very end. Undoubtedly he owed the maintenance of his intellectual vigor to the breadth and variety of his mental interests. Probably no one in his time in the west of Europe knew so many lan- guages and knew them so well ; he was the great- est mathematical thinker of his time ; he was a tireless experimenter in what we call physics and chemistry; he was a writer on many subjects, in- cluding philosophy and theology, as well as Hebrew and Greek grammar; and with all, he was a professor whose students valued him highly. All this intense occupation of mind, far from shortening his life, left him vigorous men- tally and physically until the very end. We have 42 CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE had many similar examples in recent years of men of extremely varied intellectual interests so intensely busied that all their friends were sure that they would shorten their lives, yet living on to four-score years or more of the most precious activity. This academic career of Bacon's for forty years gives a better idea of medieval university life than many a volume of the history of educa- tion can furnish. There are many reasonably well-informed people who seem to think that the development of graduate or so-called post- graduate work at our universities in the modern time represents a new phase of evolution in edu- cation. As a matter of fact, as was emphatically pointed out by Mark Pattison, when as the rector of Lincoln College he made his " Sugges- tions for Academical Organization with Especial Reference to Oxford," the colleges of the medi- eval universities were " in their origin, endow- ments, not for the elements of a general liberal education, but for the prolonged study of special and professional faculties by men of riper age. The universities as a whole embraced both these objects. The colleges, while they incidentally aided in elementary education, were specially de- voted to the highest learning." He says further : " Unfortunately the colleges no longer promote the researches of science or direct professional study. Elementary teaching of youth under twenty is now the only function performed by ROGER BACON 43 the university and almost the only object of col- lege endowments." It is easy to understand from Bacon's career how true it is that, as Mr. Pattison said, the col- leges of the Middle Ages " were homes for the life study of the highest and most abstruse parts of knowledge. They have become boarding schools in which the elements of the learned lan- guages are taught to youths." No wonder that the commissioners who reported on the Univer- sity of Oxford in 1850 wrote: "It is generally acknowledged that both Oxford and the country at large suffer greatly from the absence of a body of learned men, devoting their lives to the cultivation of science and to the direction of academical education. " The fact that so few books of profound research emanate from the University of Oxford materially impairs its character as a seat of learning and consequently its hold on the respect of the nation." Things were very different in the Oxford of the middle of the thirteenth century from this mid-nineteenth century condition; and it is a curious reflection on modern progress in educa- tion that just in proportion as Oxford and our modern universities generally have improved, they have approached more nearly to the ideals and methods of the medieval century. At Oxford in his younger years Bacon was very deeply influenced by his masters there, and it is not surprising that this was so as soon as we know the name of the masters, Among them 44 CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE were such men as Edmund Rich, subsequently Archbishop of Canterbury, and Robert Grosse- teste, afterward the Bishop of Lincohi. Robert, whose other name, as we know him, was only a nickname " great head " because of the size of his head, with an innuendo as to how much it contained, was the Chancellor of Oxford and the first Rector of the Franciscan College there in Bacon's student days. Though born of poor parents and without any advantages of birth or person, Robert became unquestionably " the first English scholar of the age ". Two other distin- guished members of the faculty at Oxford of this time, also teachers of Bacon, were only less well .known, Richard Fitzacre and Adam Marsh. The latter, known also as Adam de Marisco, bore the title, " the illustrious doctor". Bacon, by no means prone to overpraise, and certainly never guilty of flattering the members of his own Order, to which Adam belonged, declared him " a man perfect in knowledge, divine and human ". The Franciscan Friar. After great success as a teacher. Bacon at the rather mature age of thirty-five, or perhaps even older, joined the Franciscans. Modern writers have expressed surprise that Bacon should thus bury himself in a religious order; but surely, if anyone knew what he was doing, it was this uni- versity man who for twenty years had been in contact with all the great scholars of the time. ROGER BACON 45 The more one knows of the intellectual life of the period the easier it is to understand how men deeply interested in the life of the spirit, whether purely mental or strictly spiritual, turned very naturally to the religious orders. Here was peace and freedom from the strenuous life of the time — just as strenuous and busy as the world has been at any time ; and above all, here was the opportunity for association with distin- guished scholars who as teachers and students brought emulation and inspiration and stimula- tion into life. The distinguished Franciscans among his teachers serve to make it quite clear why Bacon should have joined that order at the height of his reputation as a university lecturer. His entrance into the Franciscan friary seems not to have interfered with Bacon's university life, and apparently he was afforded abundant opportunities for the pursuit of knowledge. In the Opus Tertium in 1267 he said : " During the twenty years in which I have labored, speci- ally in the study of wisdom, after abandoning the usual methods, I have spent more than 2000 librae on books not easily to be secured and vari- ous experiments and languages and instruments and mathematical tables." A libra parisien- sium was, according to Bacon himself, only equivalent to a third of a pound sterling. This would amount to some $3,500 in our money; but according to the value of money at that time would probably be ten times that amount. This is a very large sum of money to spend on 46 CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE investigation and research, and it probably in- cludes Bacon's private means before he became a Franciscan and then various sums given to him afterward by enthusiastic students and their relatives vjfhich he was allowed to expend for academic purposes. Probably nothing shows better the deep interest of the time in scholar- ship and intellectual development than this lib- eral expenditure for it. The prophecies of his friends that he would break down under the strain of the immense amount of labor he was undertaking were ful- filled, though the breakdown is sometimes said to have been due as much to the privations and mortifications of his religious life as to his devo- tion to intellectual labor. For some ten years, from about 1256 to 1266, he had, " owing to many infirmities ", to withdraw from taking any public part in university aiifairs. Biographers, anxious to find evidence for the intolerance of the Church authorities at this time, have declared that Bacon was imprisoned during this period, or that he was forbidden to teach at the univer- sities. There is not the slightest foundation for any such declaration. So far from being out of touch with the intel- lectual life of the time during his illness, he seems to have had, if possible, even a wider in- terest than before. Professor Little, Lecturer on Palaeography in the University of Manches- ter, England, who wrote the Introduction to the Commemoration Essays for the celebration of ROGER BACON 47 the seventh centenary of Bacon's birth/ has a para,graph with regard to Bacon's activities dur- ing this period of withdrawal from university duties because of his health, which shows better than anything else how busy a man Bacon could be. We have a glimpse of him in Paris during this period listening to a tale of magic. He seems to have been in the habit of supplying new masters of arts at their in- ception or inaugural disputation with problems in geo- metry which none of their hearers could solve. He was mainly occupied in investigations and experiments in physics, especially optics, in making lenses, in con- structing astronomical tables, and elaborating his theory of the propagation of force. He devoted his leisure to instructing boys in mathematics, sciences, and lan- guages : one of them, John, who came to him poor and eager to learn, about 1260, at the age of fifteen, he sup- ported through alms begged from friends and instructed gratis for the love of Cod and afterward employed as his messenger to the pope. He kept himself thoroughly informed on what, was going on in the world, and uses contemporary political and social events to illustrate his points. The Children's Crusade and the Revolt of the Pastoureaux afford him instances of " fascination " The quarrels between Henry HI and the barons in England, the relations of the EngUsh and French kings, the struggle between Empire and Papacy and final overthrow of the Hohenstaufen by Charles of Anjou, the Crusades of St. Louis, the agitation of Wil- liam of St, Amour in the University of Paris, are 2 Roger Bacon, Essays Contributed by Various Writ- ers on the occasion of the Commemoration of the Seventh Centenary of his Birth; collected and edited by A. G. Little, Oxford, at the Clarendon Press, 1914. 48 CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE among the subjects he alludes to. He draws attention to the cruelties of the Teutonic knights ■and points out how fatal these were to the efiforts of the friars to con- vert the heathen Slavs to Christianity. He knew of the great German Friar Berthold of Regensburg. The magnificent work he is doing in preaching is of more value than that of almost all the other friars together. He was profoundly interested in the discoveries of the great travelers of the time, especially William de Rubruk. " I have perused his book dihgently and con- ferred with the author, and with many others who have investigated the geography of the East and South.'' In speaking of mechanical discoveries : " I have not seen a flying machine," he says in one place, " and I do not know anyone who has seen one ; but I know a wise man who has thought out the principle of the thing." Bacon the Writer. It was just at the end of this period of retire- ment that, fortunately for posterity, Bacon's great opportunity to write his books came. In 1265 Guy de Foulques, Archbishop of Narbonne, was elected Pope and took the title of Clement IV. He probably had met Bacon in Paris. There is some question whether they had not also met in England. In March, 1266, the Pope heard from Sir William Boncquor, a special envoy sent by Henry III, of some of the won- derful work that Bacon was engaged at. In June of that year the Pope wrote to Bacon bid- ding him send a fair copy of the works of which he had heard, for Papal perusal. Apparently his Holiness was not quite sure whether he wouli be able to approve everything in them, and so he advised their being sent " secretly but without ROGER BACON 49 delay ", and added that they were to be sent " notwithstanding any constitution of the Fran- ciscan Order to the contrary ". Apparently the Pope thought the works were already written. Bacon thought this was an op- portunity to set forth his ideas as to the whole realm of knowledge; but, finding his first project too elaborate, he settled down to write the Opus Majus, which was later supplemented by the Opus Minus and the Opus Tertium. In the meantime he explained to the Pope the reasons for the delay. Besides his poor health, there was the want of money, for parchment was not cheap, and his vow of poverty was in the way; also there was lack of assistance, and it was very difficult to find competent and trust- worthy copyists. A matter a little difficult to understand was that his superiors were putting obstacles in the way, though of course the Pope had asked that the work be done secretly, doubt- less so as to avoid the appearance of approbation for everything that was written before it had actually been read by the authorities. One reason for the delay is extremely interesting, because it tells us of Bacon's habits of composition. He said, "Anything difficult I have to write four or five times before I get what I want ". We hear much of uncritical ways in the medieval period, but manifestly Bacon might be compared to our own Cardinal Newman in his striving after the exact word and the supreme mode of expressing his ideas. Eventually the books were finished 50 CATHOLIC CPIURCHMEN IN SCIENCE and dispatched to the Pope. That is how we come to have any authentic account of a great deal of Bacon's thinking. Physical Science. Bacon's most important contribution to science in his time was undoubtedly his cultivation of the science of optics. The fifth part of the Opus Ma jus is entirely devoted to this subject. As Little says in the Introduction to the Bacon Essays, " One can readily understand how this should be for Bacon the very type of physical science. It is exactly conformed to mathematical law. In fact, one may say that his grand idea of all physical science as mathematical in nature was simply an inference from what was so pal- pable in optics." This contains a discussion not only of the theory of lenses, to which is added a treatise on burning glasses and of the construc- tion and properties of mirrors, but also an attempt to explain the psychology of perception and something of the anatomy and physiology of the eye. Bacon was never less than complete in his outlook upon the subject, though there might be imperfections in his knowledge of details. What interested him particularly were the laws of reflection and refraction. When laws could be deduced, then the great scientific mind of Bacon was satisfied. Undoubtedly Bacon's greatest scientific dis- covery is his declaration that light travels with an appreciable velocity. In his Opus Majus he ROGER BACON 5 1 declared that all the authors, including Aristotle, hold that the propagation of light is instantan- eous. This is not a surprising opinion, seeing that light travels at the rate of 185,000 miles a second, and that therefore with our human limi- tations of vision this is practically instantaneous. It was not until Romer pointed out that the sun's light, after an eclipse, takes an appreciable time to reach us, that we had the demonstration that light travels with a definite velocity. In spite of the difficulty of the determination, which amounted almost to an impossibility in his time, Roger Bacon set it down very definitely that light propagation takes a short but measurable interval of time. Humboldt in his Cosmos has attributed to Francis Bacon this discovery, but the English Chancellor in this, as in many other ideas, was long anticipated by his namesake of the thirteenth century. Usually it is thought that, while some of the principles of physics were anticipated in the later Middle Ages, chemistry was as yet lost in the mists of alchemy. Mr. Patterson Muir, in his essay " Roger Bacon : His Relations to Al- chemy and Chemistry ", published in the volume of Commemoration Essays, does not hesitate to say that it is only just to class Roger Bacon as a chemist rather than as an alchemist. The reason for this is that Bacon insisted on the knowledge that could be secured of the substances all round us by direct experimental methods and analytical observations. He dwells on the necessity to the 52 CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE alchemist of a practical acquaintance with the methods of distilling, calcining, separating, and the like. He unhesitatingly recommended the employment of these methods as the only way to accurate and fruitful knowledge of the changes of material things. Instead of discussing theo- retically matter and form, he thought that the way to know something about matter was to analyze it as far as possible and note the changes that took place in it. While much of what Bacon has to say with regard to what we now know as chemistry in his De arte chymiae cannot but seem quite absurd to the reader of our time familiar with modern chemistry, one very curious fact deserves to be noted. Many of his ideas would have seemed ever so much more absurd a generation ago than they do at the present time. Bacon regarded silver, for instance, as a kind of lead burdened by imperfections. He thought that it would be quite possible to obtain gold from other metals by removing the infirmities, that is, curing the sicknesses of certain other metals. Some of our physical chemists have come to think it very possible that silver may be only a development of lead in some as yet not comprehended radiant energy process and that gold may bear the same relation to copper. An American chemist said not long since that he would like very much to have the opportunity, after having removed all the silver from a quantity of lead ore, to come back years afterward in order to determine ROGER BACON 53 whether in the meantime some further silver had not developed in what had been argentiferous material. With that idea Bacon would have been entirely in sympathy. The Invention of Gunpowder. The question as to whether Bacon was the discoverer of gunpowder or not, about which there has been so much dispute, was discussed in the volume of Commemoration Essays by Lieu- tenant Colonel H. W. L. Hime, an English authority on the history of military afifairs. He is quite sure that gunpowder was a discovery of Bacon's. He would prefer not to call it an in- vention, for he thinks that it was " discovered accidentally by Bacon; just as the structure of crystals was discovered accidentally by Haiiy, the polarization of light by Malus, galvanism by Galvani, and the decomposition of water by Nicholson ". He dismisses supposed anticipa- tions of this discovery of Bacon's as follows : The famous Greek fire was not an explosive, but an incendiary mixture. The claims to the invention of gunpowder which have been made for the Arabs and Hindus collapse when critically examined. The inven- tion has always been disavowed on the part of their countrymen by sober Chinese historians, though in despite of them a claim was raised in the eighteenth century by some Jesuit missionaries who unwittingly confounded explosives and incendiary mixtures. One of the most important ingredients of gun- powder, saltpeter, was unknown until shortly be- 54 CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE fore the middle of the thirteenth century; but many of its explosive qualities attracted attention about that time. While Bacon was experiment- ing with some incendiary composition containing saltpeter, charcoal, and sulphur, the mixture sud- denly exploded, shattering the glass and scatter- ing the brazen apparatus that lay near. Bacon's description of the material of his compound is very cryptic. There seems to be no doubt that he used a cipher in giving in his writings the de- tails of it. Colonel Hime thinks that he did this because he was afraid that, if it became known, he would be accused of magic, and has much to say about the Inquisition. The dear Colonel evidently has a bugaboo about the Inquisition, though there is no reason at all for thinking that that ecclesiastical institution interfered in such matters. What is much more in accordance with Bacon's well-known reticence is that, having be- come accidentally possessed of a dangerous secret and wanting to record it, he did so in a manner that would prevent those who might use such a secret for wrong purposes from taking advantage of it, yet in such a way as to make a permanent record of his own experiences. Experimental Science. Bacon has many expressions which indicate that in science authority can mean very little and experiment must be the source of knowledge. In the chapter of the Opus Majus entitled " Scientia Experimentalis ", Bacon insists that, ROGER BACON 55 " without experiment nothing can be adequately known. An argument proves theoretically but it does not give the certitude necessary to remove all doubt; nor will the mind repose in the clear view of truth unless it finds it by way of experi- ment.'' In his Opus Tertium he went even far- ther and suggested emphatically that "the strong- est arguments prove nothing so long as the con- clusions are not verified by experience. Experi- mental science is the queen of sciences and the goal of all speculation." Usually these expres- sions are set down as absolutely peculiar to Bacon at this time, and above all as not being held by the great teachers of the period. They are supposed to be portions of Bacon's own con- clusions, for which indeed it is sometimes said that he eventually came into disfavor and even had to spend years in prison toward the end of his life. As a matter of fact, however, the other great university teachers of the thirteenth century had reached similar conclusions. Even Albertus Magnus, whom Bacon so bitterly criticized and to whom the great scholar had once replied that some people wrote nothing themselves but criti- cized others much, an expression that is often used in the modern time without any thought of the necessity for using quotation marks for it, and referring it to a thirteenth century teacher, often used expressions very similar to these of Bacon. In Albert's tenth book, wherein he cata- logues and describes all the trees, plants, and 56 CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE herbs known in his time, he observes: "All that is here set down is the result of our own experi- ence or has been borrowed from authors whom we know to have written what their personal experience has confirmed; for in these matters experience alone can bring certainty — experi- mentum solum certificat in talibus ". Albertus Magnus was a thoroughgoing experimentalist in the best modern sense of the term. He says in the second book of his treatise On Minerals, " The aim of natural science is not simply to accept the statements of others, but to investi- gate the causes that were at work in nature for themselves." In like manner much is now made, especially in connexion with the celebration of the septi- centenary, of Bacon's deprecation of appeals to Aristotle, as if the ipse dixit of any master could settle scientific questions. Albert in his treatise On Physics was quite as absolute as Bacon ever was, for he said, " Whoever believes that Aris- totle was a God, must also believe that he never erred; but if one believe that Aristotle was a man, then doubtless he was liable to err just as we are." ^ In fact, as is pointed out by the Cath- olic Encyclopedia in the article on Albertus Magnus, Albert devotes a lengthy chapter in his Summa Theologiae to what he calls " the errors of Aristotle ". 5 Physica, lib. viii, tr. i, xiv. ROGER BACON 57 This does not lessen the merit of Bacon's in- dependence of thought, but it serves to show how grievously modern commentators err who insist that Bacon was either the first to throw off the shackles of authority or the only one to do so, and that his persecution must be referred to this. Saint Thomas x\quinas was quite as ready to seek truth for itself apart from author- ity as either Albert or Roger Bacon, and so are other great teachers of this period. Indeed it has been well said that there probably never was a time when, within the Christian Church and the schools under its immediate authority, there was so much liberty of thought and even of spec- ulation as well as of teaching, as during the thirteenth century. Bacon was not the first, but was more com- plete in his exposition of the reasons for human ignorance, as being largely dependent on trust in authority, than his contemporaries. His fam- ous four grounds for the failure of progress in genuine knowledge among the Latins are true not only for his own time, but for all time. These offendicula or stumbling-blocks on the road to knowledge, as Bacon so aptly calls them, are (i) dependence on authority, (2) yielding to established custom, (3) allowing weight to popular feeling, and (4) concealment of real ignorance with pretence of knowledge. It is worth while having them in the original Latin, for they provide an excellent example of Bacon's discriminating use of words : " I f ragilis et in- 58 CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE dignae auctoritatis exemplum; II consuetudinis diuturnitas; III vulgi sensus imperiti; IV pro- priae ignorantiae occultatio cum ostentatione sapientiae apparentis ". While Bacon thoroughly despised the opinion of the crowd, even going to the extent of declar- ing that " whatever seems true to the many must necessarily be false ", he did not hesitate to em- phasize the fact that many of their teachers de- served even more of contempt. He said em- phatically that " the common people are not guilty of the fourth fault, concealment of ignor- ance and assumption of knowledge; that is the peculiar property of the learned professors ". He suggests in a very striking expression that authority may compel belief, but cannot enlighten the understanding ; in his own words, " credimus auctoritati, sed non propter eam intelligimus ". He even ventured to add that, while all honor should be paid to the ancients, those who come later in time having the advantage of the studies of those who went before them, are really often in a position to see more clearly than their prede- cessors. He has put the thought into the sum- marized Latin form, " Quanto juniores, tanto perspicaciores — the younger men are, the more acute they are ". By younger he meant the more recent in time they are. Friar Bacon and Mathematics. I suppose that almost the last thing that could possibly be imagined by most people with regard ROGER BACON 59 to a medieval friar, no matter how scholarly he might be, would be that he should set up mathe- matics as the great criterion and absolutely in- dispensable auxiliary of science. This was, how- ever, exactly what Roger Bacon did. He did not hesitate to say in the Opus Majus: " For he who knows not mathematics cannot know any other sciences ; what is more, he cannot discover his own ignorance or find its proper remedies ". He constantly extolls mathematics as the key to all the other sciences. Bacon even went so far as to insist on the value of mathematics as a sub- ject for education eminently developmental of the mind. He dwelt on it as a culture subject, in our phrase, and insisted that no educated man ought to be unfamiliar with the basic principles of mathematical science, in order that he might be able to understand the accuracy of scientific work. Even though there might be no particular use for it in life, the subject ought to be studied. In our time it has come to be realized more and more that Bacon's expressions with regard to mathematics being so necessary for any true development of science, are quite literally true. Without mathematics many of our great ad- vances in modern science would have been lost. Poincare, the great French mathematician who died prematurely during that seven-hundredth anniversary of Bacon's birth in 1914, once de- clared : " If we had not cultivated the exact sciences for themselves, we should not have cre- ated mathematics the instrument, and the day 6o CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE the call came from the physicist we should have been helpless." More than fifteen years ago the English mathematician and physical scientist, Professor Kingdon Clifford, did not hesitate to say : " No advance seems likely in molecular physics until more mathematics is invented." It is only after reading expressions of this kind from the mouths of our greatest modern mathe- maticians that the prophetic wisdom of Bacon's opinions to the same effect, proclaimed nearly seven hundred years ago, can be properly appre- ciated. The one tangible result of Bacon's own work in mathematics is his extremely close approxi- mation to the actual correction needed in the Julian calendar. In the Opus Majus in 1267 he tried to make it clear to Pope Clement IV that the length of the year of the Julian calendar is too great by one day in 125 years. This is a very startling declaration at that time, for the best known calculations of a few years before, the Tables of Alphonso, asserted that the error was one day in a little over 134 years. We do not know how Roger Bacon reached his much closer approximation to the actual error than any known to have been suggested before his time. The fact, however, that he did so is the best possible tribute to his personal powers as a mathematician. He not only recognized their value in theory, but he was capable of practising them to a more accurate degree on the most im- ROGER BACON 6l portant problem then before mathematicians than any man up to his time. As to Roger Bacon's place in mathematical history, the only way to give an authoritative opinion on it is to quote Professor David Eugene Smith's (of Columbia) concluding paragraph on the subject in the Commemoration Essays, in which he answers the question as to whether Bacon deserved the title sometimes given him of doctissimus mathematicus or not. As Professor Smith is a recognized authority on the history of mathematics, his opinion has compelling weight. No one in his generation, few men in any generation, certainly no man in medieval England, showed such sympathy with mathematics, such familiarity with the standard authors available, such clear perception of the possible applications of the science, and such con- viction of the value of the subject in a liberal education. Jordanus was his superior in detail, but was relatrvely a pigmy in general power; Albertus Magnus seemed to accomplish more in physics and chemistry, but Roger Bacon gave a formula which freed intellect from brute force — the formula for gunpowder. Alexandre de Villedieu and Bartolomeo de Parma were better known in astronomy; but it was Bacon's computations which gave to the Middle Ages the best calendar as yet devised, and which led him to set forth with perfect assurance the possibility of circumnavigating the globe. It is not for his treatises nor for his discoveries in the realm of pure mathematics, but for his appreciation of the science, for his knowledge of what the world had done, and for his vision of what the future had in store, that for seven centuries he has borne with justice the title of doctissimus mathematicus, a title 62 CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE by which he may rightly be known even in our own time and in the centuries to come. Medical Excursions. Bacon's writings with regard to medicine are very interesting to our generation, because his passion for exactness, the same that made him so devoted to mathematics, led him to try to make physicians see that they should reduce their treatment of patients to an exact science. In a fragment of his De Graduacione Medicinarum he insists, practically in Plato's words in the Philebus, that " Arithmetic, mensuration, and weighing being taken from any art, the rest will be only conjecture ". Bacon realized that the dependence on the patient's feelings, to which the physician was subjected, made accurate diagnosis and still more accurate treatment extremely diffi- cult ; but he indicated that this was the line along which real scientific advance in medicine might be expected. Two centuries later, as I have pointed out in my Old Time Makers of Medi- cine, Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa not only em- phatically made the same suggestion, but he went further and indicated just how something might be done in a practical way. His basic idea in the matter, as may be seen from the sketch of him in this present volume, was that the comparative weights of blood and other fluids in the body at various times in life and under varying condi- tions of health would furnish significant infor- mation to physicians, as of course they have. ROGER BACON 6^ Physicians are slow to give up theories that seem to explain so much, for minutiae of infor- mation which at all times seem at first to mean so little. The medical profession has always been conservative, and necessarily so, since human lives are the subjects of their experiences. It is not surprising, however, that Bacon, looking over the field of medicine in his time and recog- nizing its lack of foundation on experiment, should have been tempted to write his De erroribus medicoruni, On the Errors of Physi- cians. Dr. Withington, the English authority on the history of medicine, who wrote the article on Roger Bacon and Medicine for the Oxford Com- memoration Essays volume, declares this to be " perhaps the most interesting originally typical and Baconian of the Friar's Medical Treatises ". Bacon criticizes rather severely the physicians of his time for not basing their practice on ex- perience. He begins by saying that there are thirty-six great and radical defects in the medi- cine of the time, but with infinite ramifications. After describing seven of these defects, however, he confesses his inability to go on because he has not the experience that would enable him to ob- tain certitude. Curiously enough, while insisting so much on experience, he himself depends very much on the Arabs, and probably nothing shows so well how little the Arabs brought either to science or to medicine than the fact that Bacon's dependence on them, because the great Greek authors whom the Arabs were supposed to rep- 64 CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE resent were not available for him, led him into many rather serious fallacies. Above all, he spoke of Avicenna as dux et princeps philoso- phorum, makes him his chief guide in medical matters, quoting him as frequently as all other authors combined. When the history of medi- cine began to develop under Haller in the eighteenth century, Haller did not hesitate to characterize the great Arab philosopher's work, in so far as it touched medicine, as " methodica inanitas ", which I suppose might be translated as " inanity with a method in it ". The expres- sion is perhaps too strong, but it is ever so much nearer truth than Bacon's inordinate praise. By the irony of fate Bacon allowed himself to be carried away by the very human tendency of respect for authority into over-dependence on this Arab master in medicine. Sometimes even here, however, his genius of intuition leads him right. He has emphasized from Avicenna the description of the patient who was cured of con- sumption by using large amounts of sugar. Sugar is one of the dietetic elements which we have come to recognize in modern time as val- uable for the increased nutrition, which is the most important part of the treatment of tuber- culosis. The favorite idea of Bacon's was that health was quite as contagious as disease. This is some- times thought to be a very modern suggestion. Bacon seems to have believed quite literally in it. He actually thought that the old received new ROGER BACON 65 stores of health and strength by associating inti- mately with the young. He describes a fumus juventutis, that is, a certain exhalation of youth, as it were, which, entering into the bodies of the old, by its very contact puts new life in them. Curiously enough, as pointed out by Withington in the Commemoration Essays, Sydenham, who in the late seventeenth century wrote so well on medicine that he has been given the title of the English Hippocrates, emphasized the same idea, though evidently rather hesitant as to its prac- tical applications. A good many physicians in our time have pointed out that there is nothing which so serves to keep the old young as inti- mate association with young folks. There is a sort of instinct in the matter which often makes the grandfather a more sympathetic companion to the growing boy than his own father. Bacon was as much interested in the question of the retardation of old age as any of the mod- ern scientists. There is a monograph from him, De retardandis senectutis accidentibus, " On the Putting Off of the Accidents of Old Age" which is written quite in the temper of Metchni- koff's book of a similar character in our time. Of course most people would be quite sure that anything that Bacon might have to say on the matter would be of very little significance, while Metchnikoff's ideas would be worthy of deep consideratiton. However that may be, for there are some skeptical spirits in our time who are not quite sure that Metchnikoflf's ideas, especi- 66 CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE ally those with regard to sour milk, though given such wide publicity by moneyed interests en- gaged in the manufacture of a particular brand of sour milk, are of any very great value, one thing is certain, namely, that Bacon very prob- ably lived to be well beyond eighty years of age, while Metchnikoff died before he was seventy. At least, Bacon's practice of the rules necessary to secure long life would seem to have been more successful than his modern scientific colleague, who presumably knew so much more about it. Bacon probably outlived also most of those who so sedulously, under Metchnikoff's direction, swallowed the bacillus hulgaricus of the only genuine Balkan sour milk and its products in our time for the purpose of reaching old age. The thirteenth-century scholar appreciated cor- dially the influence of the mind on the body and even states very clearly his conclusions, evidently obtained from personal observations of various kinds in this matter. It is so often presumed that it is only in comparatively recent years that men have come properly to appreciate the signifi- cance of mental influence in the cure of disease, that a paragraph from Bacon on the subject be- comes very interesting reading. Fiarures and charmes * may sometimes be used by phy.=iciaTis with good effects ; not from any prevalency * Bv Peiire. Bacon meant an astrological calculation of any kind and by charme he meant anything popu- larly supposed to have magical influence. ROGER BACON 67 in them, hut that the raising of the soul is of great efficacy in the curing of the body, and raising it from infirmity to health by joy and confidence may be done by charmes ; for they make the patient receive the medicine wth greater confidence and desire, in exciting courage, more liberal belief, hope and pleasure. Even the most fervid of psychotherapeutists in the modern time would be quite satisfied with that expression. Utility in Education. How little human ways of looking at things change even in what may seem comparatively so long a period as seven hundred years, can be readily seen from some quotations from Roger Bacon on the subject of education. If there is any subject in which men should be making defi- nite intellectual progress, surely it is that in which they are consciously occupying themselves with the problem of making the rising generation more intelligent than its predecessor, and yet we have been treated in recent years to arguments pro and con about education, strangely reminis- cent of Bacon's expressions on the subject. In our time there has been a recrudescence of the view that the great underlying question is the utilitarian element in educational systems. Of what use is a particular subject or phase or method of education? What is it worth for life, and for the making of a living? In the fourth chapter of his Opus Tertium, Bacon has a series of expressions with regard to education along 68 CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE these lines which make it very clear that what a great many people say at the present time, quite confident while they say it that they are expressing a new idea that has come to the world as a consequence of our noteworthy prog- ress in recent years, is after all only a repetition of some of the oldest phrases that we know in educational controversy. Bacon, for instance, says : " But because men are ignorant of the primal utilities of philosophy, therefore they despise many magnificent and most beautiful forms of knowledge, and ask, ' What is this or that science worth ?' ridiculing it and insisting that they shall not learn it." There is another expression, which makes Pro- fessor David Smith in his article on " The Place of Roger Bacon in the History of Mathematics ", in the Bacon Commemoration Essays, say : " How history repeats itself !" Bacon wrote : " For students in these days when it is said to them that they ought to know optics or geometry or languages or a number of other things, ask in derision, 'What arc all these worth?' They assert that they are quite useless, and they do not wish to hear any discourse as to the true mean- ing of utility, and as a consequence they neglect and despise sciences of which they know noth- ing." We are in the midst of a renewal of the con- troversy over the value of the classics and the sciences as basic elements in education, and some of those in favor of science who arc loudest in ROGER BACON 69 their public expressions seem to think that in utility they have discovered a new touchstone of values in education. It might be worth their while to go back and read the fourth book of Roger Bacon's Opus Tertium, so as to help their historic background. Roger Bacon and Francis Bacon. Inevitably, even though comparisons may be odious, a comparison between Roger Bacon and his namesake, Francis Bacon, suggests itself. The fate of the two men was very different in the generations that succeeded them. Francis Bacon came to be looked upon by many as one of the greatest intellectual geniuses that the world has ever known, and not a few hailed him as the father of modern inductive science. Roger Bacon, on the other hand, came, within a few generations after his death, into the bitterest of contempt and was looked upon as a typical ex- ample of the supremely foolish conceit of knowl- edge without any real basis for it which was at least supposed to be characteristic of the Middle Ages. His name became a popular subject of satire, a favorite symbol of utter pretentiousness and lack of true knowledge. This continued for nearly six centuries before the whirligig of time began to bring in its revenge. Now for some generations Francis Bacon has been gradually losing in prestige until it is rather generally considered that he was a much-over- rated man, who came at a period of transition in 70 CATHOLIC CHURCHMEK IN SCIENCE the world's history and who formulated certain ideas that had been expressed by geniuses of the time just before his own, especially such men as Bernardino Telesio, the Italian philosopher, of whom it has been said that his work " marks the fundamental revolution in scientific thought by which we pass over from the ancient to the mod- ern methods ". His work was done nearly lOO years before that of Francis Bacon. Perhaps the best evidence for the limitations of Francis Bacon's mind is to be found in the fact that he refused to accept the Copernican theory nearly a century after Copernicus's death, because he thought that the old Ptolemaic theory solved the difficulties better. While Francis Bacon's sun has been setting, Roger Bacon's fame has been growing ever more and more. Indeed it was only the lack of knowl- edge of the work done on the Continent that gave Francis Bacon the place he holds in English literature. In all that concerns the inductive method in science he had long been anticipated by the medieval Roger Bacon. Even English authorities in the history of science began to acknowledge this rather freely a generation ago, and now it is very generally recognized by all who know whereof they speak. Huxley once said, " To hear people talk about the great Chancellor — and a very great man he certainly was- — one would think that it was he who had invented science and that there was no such thing as sound reasoning before the time of ROGER BACON 7 1 Queen Elizabeth." Even Professor Draper here in America, so often utterly ignorant of the his- tory of science before our time as he showed himself, could not find anything good to say of Francis Bacon. " The more closely we examine the writings of Lord Bacon," he said in his In- tellectual Development of Europe, " the more unworthy does he seem to have been of the great reputation that has been awarded to him. . . . This boasted founder of a new philosophy could not comprehend and would not accept the great- est of all scientific discoveries when it was plainly set before his eyes." Draper refers, of course, to Francis Bacon's rejection of Copernicanism, though he might have referred also to his con- temptuous depreciation of the work of Gilbert of Colchester, the great physician-founder in elec- trical science who was elected the President of the Royal College of Physicians in England for the year 1600, and whose work De magnete is one of the most significant early contributions to modern experimental science. In the memorial volume of Essays on Roger Bacon there is a story of one of the eminent edi- tors of the works of Francis Bacon over half a century ago in England being attracted to the works of the medieval namesake of the more modern English scientist and Lord Chancellor by the name. To his surprise he found the older Bacon of the Middle Ages so interesting for him- self that he went on and read his works for their own sake. After doing so, he said to Dr. Whe- y2 CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE well who was just then writing his work on The Philosophy of Discovery, " I have - lately been reading some of Roger Bacon's writings and I am inclined to think that he may have been even a greater man than our Francis Bacon." Whe- well's own opinion of Bacon, as expressed in his History of the Inductive Sciences, though he con- fessed that he knew him from the Opus Majus alone, is summed up in his description of that work as " the Encyclopedia and the Novum Or- ganon of the thirteenth century ". He felt that the modern Bacon had been anticipated by his medieval namesake. Bridges, the learned English editor of Bacon's works, has suggested a contrast between Roger Bacon and Francis Bacon that is very striking and all the more significant for us because in all that is solid and serious in intellectual values it favors the medieval rather than the modern scientist. Between the fiery Franciscan doubly pledged by science and by religion to a life of poverty, impatient of prejudce, intolerant of dulness, reckless of personal fame or advancement, and the wise man of the world, richly endowed with every literary gift, hampered in his philosophic activity by a throng of dubious ambi- tions, there is but little in common. In wealth of werds, in brilliancy of imagination Francis Bacon was immeasurably superior, but Roger Bacon had the sounder estimate and the firmer grasp of that com- bination of deductive with inductive method which marks the scientific discipline. Finally, Francis Bacon ROGER BACON was of his time; with Roger Bacon it was far otherwise. Modern Appreciation. Undoubtedly the most interesting phase of the recent renewal of interest in Roger Bacon lies in the fact that men of so many different kinds of scholarship and culture, Jew and Gentile and Christian, philosopher and scientist, physician and philologist, have found so much to admire in him. For the better part of a century now he has been coming back into his own proper meed of appreciation. It is quite easy to find tributes to him in every language in Europe, and the volume of Commemoration Essays was actually printed in three languages — French, German, and English. A collection of books on Roger Bacon written during the past two generations would now probably occupy even more than " a five- foot shelf ". Victor Cousin, about the middle of the nine- teenth century came to appreciate very thor- oughly something at least of Bacon's wonderful genius. He suggested that it would be a worthy work of scholarship for an English fellow- countryman of Oxford or Cambridge to write a sketch of Bacon giving his place in relation to his time. England was not interested in the Middle Ages at that moment. Her scholars were mainly occupied with the early centuries of Chris- tianity, and the Oxford Movement was under way. It was a French pupil of Cousin himself, 74 CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE who took Up the suggestion of his master and gave us the first important modern account of the great medieval philosopher-scientist. '■ Cousin's suggestion to English scholarship did not bear fruit until well on toward the end of the nineteenth century, when Dr. Bridges wrote his sketch of Bacon's life and edited the Opus Majus. The motive that prompted him to do so is clearly stated at the beginning of the Introduc- tion. The paragraph serves to emphasize how much the thirteenth-century philosophy had an- ticipated the viewpoint of nineteenth-century thinkers. Dr. Bridges, himself a Positivist and close disciple of Comte, felt that Bacon had an- ticipated even his master. The Opus Majus when published in its entirety appears to me to present to the world a scheme of culture, contrasting strongly with any that was offered in Bacon's time or in the centuries that followed, combining as it does the comparative study of language with a comprehensive grasp of physical science, con- ceiving these studies as progressive and yet holding them subordinate to a supreme ethical purpose. Dr. Bridges does not hesitate to say that it was not until the time of Comte that anyone came to give the world a philosophic and scientific pre- sentation of the meaning of life, such as we have from Bacon. Comte, I need scarcely say, would be for Dr. Bridges, as for so many others 5 Roger Bacon, Sa Vie, Ses Ouvrages, Ses Doctrines, d'apres des texts inedits, Paris, thesis 1851, fimile Qiarles. ROGER BACON 75 of his devoted followers, the very last word in applied philosophy. Bacon's appreciation broadened with the years after this. S. A. Hirsch, whose volume, A Book of Essays, published under the patronage of the Jewish Historical Society of England, contains a study of English Hebraists a>nd other Hebrew scholars throughout Europe, felt constrained to add his words of appreciation of Roger Bacon's knowledge of Hebrew at a time when that lan- guage was little known in the West. " I am of the opinion," he says, " that the direct evidences of Bacon's knowledge of Hebrew contained in his works do less than justice to him. His own testimony as to his proficiency in that language cannot be lightly set aside. He describes himself as a zealous student of Hebrew who had studied the subject for a number of years. He declares that, although he referred elsewhere to his knowledge of Arabic, yet he did not write it like Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. Bacon was not an idle boaster, and full credence is due to asser- tions of that kind." Dr. Hirsch, whose book of essays contains articles on Pfeffercorn, Reuchlin, and others which show very clearly how competent he is in this matter of early Hebraists, feels sure that Bacon wrote a Hebrew grammar just as he did a Greek Grammar, though unfortunately only the Greek Grammar has been preserved. This study of Hebrew at that time when the language was of comparatively little interest to scholars gener- 76 CATHOLIC CmiRCHMEN IN SCIENCE ally, shows at once the breadth of Bacon's inter- ests and at the same tmie his unappeasible desire to get at sources, as well as his readiness to take any amount of trouble in order to do so. On the other hand, the breadth of Bacon's human sympathies can be very well appreciated from a passage in his writings quoted by Hirsch, in which Bacon expresses his feelings with re- gard to the existence of many good Jews at the time of the Crucifixion who rejected Christ. For Bacon declared that he felt that there were at the time of the Crucifixion many holy and good men among the Jews ; and nevertheless they all rejected the Lord, except His Mother and John and the Marys : nay, it is even said that nobody really believed in flim except His Mother. His expressions show at once his own tolerance, which went to an extent quite unusual at that time, though the feeling toward the Jews voiced by Innocent IH, the great Pope who was in the pontifical chair when Bacon was born, had done much to foster a new liberality of spirit toward the Jew. What is more significant for us is that Bacon's words reveal that feeling toward the Blessed Virgin and her position in relation to her Son which was so profoundly reverent at this time and is noteworthy in the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas and of Duns Scotus, the great English Franciscan scholar of the next genera- tion, whose conclusions with regard to the Im- maculate Conception have since proved to be the mind of the Church. ROGER BACON J'] Every phase of Bacon's work has come to be appreciated in our time. In the Commemoration volume there is an essay by Cardinal Gasquet on " Roger Bacon and the Latin Vulgate", in which that great historian does not hesitate to say: " Bacon's proposal to Pope Clement IV was to appoint a commission of capable men with the avowed object of restoring the text of St. Jerome. The methods he suggests are the scien- tific methods employed to-day in the production of a critical text." His concluding sentence is: " What must strike any reader of Roger Bacon's works in regard to the Holy Scripture is the grasp the learned doctor had in the thirteenth century of the whole subject of Biblical revision, and how true and clear were the critical prin- ciples he laid down so many centuries ago." Bacon's " Imprisonment ". Like many other genius, Roger Bacon was not very amenable to discipline nor prudent in the control of his pen and tongue. He was typi- cally one of those who in religious Orders, where individuality must to a great extent be submerged in the community, is likely to make himself and others uncomfortable. This, of course, supplies opportunities for both parties to make progress in sanctity, though that phase of the problem is only properly appreciated afterward and at the moment often has no special appeal. Above all, Bacon was, as we have seen, too much inclined to indulge in personalities sometimes at the ex- 78 CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE pense of members of his own Order, for he never for a moment hesitated to criticize severely Franciscans v^rith whom he disagreed, and occa- sionally even his own superiors came in for a thrust from his biting tongue. What was rather more serious, he permitted himself to say and write the bitterest things with regard to mem- bers of the brother religious Order, the Domin- icans. This caused a good deal of scandal, and the Franciscans who seem to have borne with Bacon's bitterness when it concerned only them- selves felt compelled to take condign notice of it. It was these unfortunate personal elements in Bacon's disposition that prevented him to a great extent from having the full amount of influence in his own time that he might otherwise have had. What Professor Smith says of Bacon's judgment of the mathematics of his day, as "one of profound and vociferous contempt ", might very well be repeated with regard to nearly every subject in which Bacon had done special work until he felt the consciousness of knowing more about it than those around him. There is no doubt at all that much of the mathematical teaching deserved his profound contempt, but there was no need of his vociferousness in con- demning it so scornfully. This bitterness only aroused opposition and hardened men into the maintenance of their opinions. This is always the fault of the destructive rather than the con- structive criticism. ROGER BACON 79 Professor Smith's paragraph as to Bacon's opinion of the mathematics of his contemporaries can be applied to practically every feature of Bacon's mode of regarding his university col- leagues. He said : " Indeed, it is in the expres- sion of this contempt that we find one cause of his failure to influence the education of his time as much as might have been expected from his learning and undoubted ability. Instead of soberly going about the work of construction, he raves about the shortcomings of most of his contemporaries. For a follower of the lovable St. Francis of Assisi, he was filled with a bitter- ness that is hard to explain, and that militated against his success, not merely among his con- temporaries but for at least three centuries after his death." Bacon's acerbity of character, often so typical of genius, was sure to get him into trouble sooner or later. He was impulsive and quite sure that all the world was wrong except himself, and the world does not accept that sort of judgment very readily. He was a man far in advance of his time, which gave cause enough of itself for lack of sympathy from his fellows, but besides he was utterly impatient of others and, as can be seen from his writings, rather petulant and prone to indulge in personalities when an expo- sition of the subject in hand would have been much better and might have been even irenic. When his petulance involved the Dominican=;. his superiors had to take notice of it, The members 80 CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE of the two great religious Orders, which had been founded about the same time in the preced- ing generation, were brought into intimate con- tact at the Universities of Oxford and Paris. They had sometimes allowed themselves a liberty of criticism in intellectual matters that degener- ated into personal bitterness, until secular stu- dents and pupils had been disturbed and even serious scandals occasioned. What Voltaire called in his cynical way la jalousie du convent, has not infrequently had a tendency to degenerate into unfortunate and even scandalously strained relations between members of different Orders, because after all even religious are only men, and humanity is envious and jealous by nature and the old Adam dies hard. This fact only makes it all the more incumbent on religious superiors to discipline even severely, at least the most serious offenders in this important matter involving in- fractions of Christian charity, among those sup- posed to be most devoted to its practice. It is no wonder that when a reaction came in the Franciscan Order, Bacon was put in en- forced retirement. It is doubtful whether any- thing more than this can be said of what has been called his " imprisonment ", and that some people have been inclined to think of as twenty or thirty years of confinement to a dungeon. It is like Galileo's imprisonment. The good Flor- entine mathematician and astronomer was never in prison for an hour. He was confined to the home of a Cardinal friend, but that was one of ROGER BACON 8 I the palaces of Rome where any of us would be quite willing to be entertained while at the Papal Capital. The main portion of Galileo's punish- ment, poor fellow! was to say the Seven Peni- tential Psalms every day for three years. He was placed in charge of a Jesuit friend in his own house, and later his guardian, that is, his " jailor ", to use the word of Protestant contro- versy, — selected for him by the Roman authori- ties, — was his own son. Roger Bacon was imprisoned, not by the com- mand of the Church, but the " Minister General of the Order of the Franciscans ", Jerome of Ascoli, who was afterward Pope Nicholas IV We know his career as a Pope very well, and his character was the farthest possible removed from the type of intolerant medieval churchman he would have to have been if ordinary Protestant traditions with regard to Bacon's imprisonment at his command were true. Jerome of Ascoli was the first of the Franciscans to be chosen as Pope and declined the honor, being finally forced to accept it under obedience after a second elec- tion. He was one of the gentlest of men. As a matter of fact, the records show that it was only " on the advice of many of the Franciscan brethren that the doctrines of the English Brother Roger Bacon were condemned and rejected." According to the Chronica, Roger was " im- prisoned " Just what this imprisonment ^ con- 8 This whole question of imprisonment for religious, ^nd just what it consisted of, has not as yet been 82 CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE sisted of for members of religious Orders is not very clear. There is no question at all that they were thrown into an ordinary prison. Some por- tion of the monastery in which they had been living or some special monastery was assigned as their living quarters. They were expected to say Mass every day, if they were priests, or to hear Mass daily, if they were not priests. Their freedom was restricted, and perhaps they were not allowed to leave a small garden near the house. Very probably the diet of the " im- prisoned" was quite limited, but then in the early fervor of the Franciscans a very restricted diet was a very usual thing. Certainly, Bacon's health does not seem to have been hurt in any way. The assertion of many modern writers that Bacon was imprisoned fourteen or fifteen years is quite gratuitous, and has no foundation worked out. Th^re are frequent references in the old religious chronicles to the imprisonment of religious for violation of their rules contumaciously, and above all for repeated violations of charity. How far this went as actual punishment beyond the stigma that for a moment was placed on a religious among his Brothers of the Order, is not clear. As a rule religious Orders are careful not to injure a man's usefulness among seculars by allowing any Order punishments to be generally known. They were rather careful of the reputation of their members. It is indeed sometimes said that their esprit de corps made them over-careful. Whatever imprisonment Roger Bacon suffered was entirely within his Order and does not seem to have created in him, so far as we know, any feeling of resentment ROGER BACON 83 in ancient sources. Its frequent repetition is due entirely to over-zeal in proving the Church's per- secuting tendencies, though the Church as such had nothing at all to do with the matter. At the end, all we can say is that here was a great man of genius. He was, however, a man, as well as a genius, which is as much as to say that necessarily he had his faults — and indeed in geniuses these are usually emphasized. Bacon's wonderful power of penetration enabled him to see far below the surface of things to truths that were to be revealed with assurance only to schol- ars long after his time. Men of his type are the demonstration that at any time men who " have the mind to ", in both senses of the expression, are capable of facing the problems of humanity and the universe and at any time seeing the an- swers as clearly, though not in as much detail, as the progress of knowledge may later permit, as at any other time. It is the man, not his time, that counts; his intellect, not the extent of his knowledge. Fortunately for him. Bacon's lot fell in happy conditions, where for forty years he could devote himself to study almost without distraction. The difficulties that came to him at the end of his life were largely of his own mak- ing, and they must not have disturbed him very seriously, since he probably lived on to be nearly four-score of years and perhaps more. III. CARDINAL NICHOLAS OF CUSA. npHE Roman Catholic Church then, ■*■ as now, was a great democracy. There was no peasant so humble that he might not become a priest, and no priest so obscure that he might not become Pope of Christendom, and every chancellery in Europe was ruled by those learned, trained and accomplished men — the priesthood of that great and then dominant Church; and so, what kept government alive in the Middle Ages was this constant rise of the sap from the bottom, from the rank and file of the great body of the people through the open channels of the Roman Catholic priesthood. — President Woodrow Wii^on, The New Freedom. ' I *HERE has always, in generous ■*■ souls who have some tincture of philosophy, subsisted a curious kind of sympathy and yearning over the work of these generations of mainly disinterested scholars who, whatever they were, were thorough and, what- ever they could not do, could think. — Saintsbury, The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory. In necessariis uniias, in non neces- sariis libertas, in omnibus caritas. T III. CARDINAL NICHOLAS OF CUSA. HE career of Roger Bacon presents a most interesting but very striking contrast to that of Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, whom we have chosen to follow him in this volume. Both lived their lives in the Middle Ages, the Cardinal dying just about ten years after the fall of Con- stantinople, which is usually set down as the end of the medieval period. Roger Bacon in the thirteenth century was assuredly possessed of a greater scientific mind than the distinguished Cardinal of the fifteenth century, and yet the Cardinal was undoubtedly a man of profound learning and science in his time, and had he lived out his four-score years as Bacon did, might have left behind him works that would have at- tracted scarcely less attention. As it is, Nicholas of Cusa represents one of the important links in that chain from the thirteenth-century scientists to the Renaissance time which culminated in Copernicus's revolutionary theory and the begin- ning of modern astronomy; and he is himself a great pioneer in that Renaissance of science as well as of art that occurred in the fifteenth cen- tury. The difference in the fate of these two men. Bacon and Nicholas of Cusa, is extremely inter- esting. Bacon toward the end of his long life 88 CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE had just been released from an imprisonment of some kind, which was perhaps not very strict, but which deprived him of bis liberty and repre- sented his condemnation by his ecclesiastical superiors; while Nicholas of Cusa was the Bishop of Brixen, a Cardinal of the Holy Roman Catholic Church who had been very frequently sent as the Papal legate to various portions of Europe. Cusanus, as he was called after the fashion of the day in Latinizing names, was one of the most highly honored of ecclesiastics of his time, and while he too had been in prison for a period, this was not due to any effort on the part of ecclesiastical authority to suppress his very liberal scientific speculations, but to Duke Sig- mund, his civil ruler, who hoped thus to obtain from the Cardinal Bishop of Brixen the abroga- tion of certain Church rights and privileges. The secret of the difference in the life histories of the two men is undoubtedly one of personal- ity. Roger Bacon was by no means an easy man to get along with, critical to the highest degree and perfectly certain that those who did not agree with him and his opinions must be either foolish or insincere. He bitterly aljused distin- guished scholars of his own time, some of them belonging to the Franciscans, but more of them to the Dominicans ; and this was looked upon as an abuse of charity that must be prevented at all hazards. Nicholas of Cusa was a man of gentle and kindly character, diplomatic in his relations with others, sagacious and firm in his recognition CARDINAL NICHOLAS OF CUSA 89 and correction of abuses, but with an endless fund of sympathy for human nature a"nd above all for those who did not happen to see things as he saw them. While the one found himself in dishonor, the other added honors to honors, until the very end of his life. It is this personal element that has been only too often forgotten in the stories of the careers of men of science who supposedly have been per- secuted by Church authorities, but who really owed their persecution to personal character- istics that made it extremely difficult for anyone to get along with them. This applies very well to other cases than Roger Bacon's, as, for in- stance, to that of Giordano Bruno, whose life follows that of Cusanus in the next century. Now that we are having serious troubles with anarchists ourselves, we are beginning to be able to understand how disturbers of social order may find themselves outside the pale of the law mainly because they ofifend the sense of a time. Our experience with cranks of many kinds dur- ing the war has been an illuminating lamp of his- tory, if we will but use it as such. The story of the life of Nicholas of Cusa, or as he was called, following the custom of the Re- naissance time which took the Latin name of a man's native place and made an adjective of it, Cardinal Cusanus (so characteristically exempli- fied in the case of Regiomontanus, about the same time), is interesting not only for his personality, however, but because he was one of the great 90 CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE men of a great time in close touch with his dis- tinguished contemporaries. He was a particular friend of Toscanelli, the well-known physician and scientist whose writings so deeply influenced our own Columbus. But it must not be thought for a moment that Nicholas was a narrow stu- dent of physical science. On the contrary, he was rather famous as a scholar in a scholarly time, knowing Latin and Greek and Hebrew well, and in later years Arabic; and he was a particular friend of ^Eneas Sylvius Piccolomini, that distinguished pioneer in the New Learning who afterward became Pope Pius IL Probably no churchman of the fifteenth century is more thoroughly representative of the Church before the Reformation came to disturb Europe than this son of a German tradesman who rose to be one of the most important characters in the civi- lized world of his time. Nicholas of Cusa is a striking example of that acute expression of President Wilson in one of the addresses of his book The New Freedom, in which, recognizing sympathetically the great sav- ing element of democracy in the Middle Ages and the chance that this afforded many a man to rise in life, he pays worthy tribute to it. The only reason why government did not suffer dry rot in the Middle Ages, under the aristocratic systems which then prevailed, was that the men who were efficient instruments of government were drawn from the Church, from that great Church, that body which we now distinguish from other Church bodies as the CARDINAL NICHOLAS OF CUSA 9I Roman Catholic Church. The Roman Catholic Church then, as now, was a great democracy. There was no peasant so humble that he might not become a priest, and no priest so obscure that he might not become Pope of Christendom, and every chancellery in Europe was ruled by those learned, trained and accomplished men — the priesthood of that great and then dominant Church ; and so, what kept government alive in the Middle Ages was this constant rise of the sap from the bottom, from the rank and file of the great body of the people through the open channels of the Roman Cathohc priesthood. Early Life and Education. Nicholas, who was destined to become one of the most prominent men in Europe before his comparatively early death at sixty-four, was born in an obscure little town of the Rhineland called Cues, and it is the Latin form of this name of his native town, Cusa, that now designates Nicholas in history. His father was a trades- man, probably a boatman by the name of Krebs, reasonably well-to-do, perhaps even wealthy for the community in which he lived, but for some reason, perhaps miserliness, making life at home very uncomfortable for his son. According to a tradition, which however is not well substan- tiated, Nicholas fled from the ill-treatment of his father to Count Ulrich of Manderscheid, to whose good-will he owed his opportunities for the higher education. That is a point of history that will probably never be decided now. His father seems to have provided for his early edu- cation with the Brothers of the Common Life at 92 CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE Deventer, and this of itself was quite sufficient to give him an excellent opportunity in life. Many another distinguished thinker of the fif- teenth and sixteenth centuries received his intro- duction into the intellectual life from these good Brothers of the Common Life. Among them, besides the immortal Thomas a Kempis, were such men as Desiderius Erasmus, the great clas- sical scholar of the Renaissance, whose influence was felt everywhere throughout Europe from England to Italy, Jacob Wimpheling, who has often been hailed as the schoolmaster of Ger- many, "Preceptor Germaniae," Agricola and Alex- ander Hegius, the humanists, John of Dalberg, and many others. Deventer, where Nicholas of Cusa studied in his earlier years, counted some 2,000 students, it is said, about the time of the discovery of America. I have told the story of the Brethren briefly in a chapter in The Century of Columbus under the title, " The Scholarship of the Teutonic Countries ". So far from Nich- olas of Cusa being a solitary phenomenon of genius among their pupils, he is only one of nearly a dozen men who attained distinction dur- ing the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries and who owed their youthful training, for which they remained forever grateful, to the humble simple Brothers of the Common Life. To rub out what their students accomplished from the intellectual life of Europe at this time would be to leave a very sad and wide lacuna in the his- tory of European mentality. The late Hamilton CARDINAL NICHOLAS OF CUSA 93 Mabie in his series of essays, My Study Fire, has a paragraph with regard to the education given by these Brothers of the Common Life which will perhaps make clearer than anything that I could say the meaning of their educational institutions. It will give the best idea of the in- fluences that surround Nicholas's school days. I confess that I can never read quite unmoved the story of the Brethren of the Common Life, those humble-minded patient teachers and thinkers whose devotion and fire of soul for a century and a half made the choice treasures of ItaHan palaces and con- vents and universities a common possession along the low-lying shores of the Netherlands. The asceticism of this noble brotherhood was no morbid and divisive fanaticism ; it was a denial of themselves that they might have the more to give. The visions which touched at times the bare walls of their cells with supernal beauty only made them the more eager to share their heaven of privilege with the sorely bur- dened world without. Surely Virgil and Horace and the other masters of classic form were never more honored than when these noble-minded lovers of learn- ing and of their kind made their sounding lines familiar in peasant homes. The schools of the Brothers of the Common Life afford the most striking evidence in contra- diction of the often-asserted neglect of education in Germany before the Reformation. All through the Rhineland and in the Low Countries these simple, devoted scholars gave themselves to the education of the middle and lower classes of the population with wonderful success. They repre- 94 CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE sented preparatory schools for the universities of the time, and the profound interest in even the highest education in Germany at this time will be best appreciated from the fact that altogether some seven new universities were founded in Germany during a little more than half a century before the beginning of the Lutheran movement. This is all the more interesting because at most two or three new universities were founded dur- ing the hundred years after the Reformation, and Professor Paulsen of the University of Berlin did not hesitate to quote with approval Eras- mus's expression with regard to the influence of the Lutheran movement on education that, " wherever Lutheranism reigned there was an end of good letters ". How deeply Nicholas was influenced by his teachers at Deventer, so that his whole mode of thought was tinged by their teaching, will per- haps be best recognized from the remark of a critical reader of his popular treatises on theo- logical subjects as they were written late in life. Scharpff calls the theology of Nicholas of Cusa, as it is to be found in books of his written for the faithful on such subjects as De quaerendo Deum, " The Quest for God ", De filiatione Dei, " The Sonship of God ", and De visione Dei, " The Vision of God ", Thomas a Kempis in philosophical language. As Thomas a Kempis probably represents more completely the deep religious feeling of the Brethren of the Common Life than any other, the enduring direction CARDINAL NICHOLAS OF CUSA 95 given to the great pupil's thought will be readily appreciated. At the same time the kinship of his writings with a Kempis is the best possible demonstration of their orthodoxy, though some- times it has been suggested that there were cer- tain pantheistic tendencies in Nicholas's phil- osophy. After his studies with the Brethren of the Common Life, at about sixteen years of age he was matriculated in the University of Heidel- berg. His ambitions were high, however, and so in the following year, 141 7, he transferred his university work to Padua. It was rather easy to do this at that time, because all the universities were under Papal charters and the exchange of professors and students for the benefit of broader scholarship was greatly facilitated. He grad- uated as Doctor of Canon Law at Padua in 1423. What probably influenced his life, that is, at least his intellectual life, more than anything else was his meeting at Padua with Paolo Toscanelli, who was afterward to become so well known as a physician and a scientist, and whose influence over Columbus made him famous in the modern time. While he studied as a clerical student at Padua, he does not seem to have determined absolutely to take priestly orders until somewhat later. He had studied Civil Law as well as Canon Law, and his knowledge of civics was so well known that some years later Bologna gave him the Doc- torate in Civil Law. He seems indeed at first to 96 CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE have thought of practising law as a profession, but was turned from that idea by some experi- ence in an actual lawsuit in which he recognized the pitfalls of legal procedure and the difficulty of securing justice, sometimes at least, without putting forth efforts that to him seemed of ques- tionable integrity. He lost a lawsuit in Mainz shortly after his return from Padua, and then under the patronage of the Archbishop of Trier he matriculated in the University of Cologne for the degree of Doctor of Divinity. He received his doctorate, and the Archbishop recognizing his ability gave him commissions of different kinds at various places in Germany, mainly for the correction of religious abuses. He came prominently before the Catholic world when, only a little more than thirty years old, at the Council of Basel, and though he pleaded two losing causes there — one of them that of Count Ulrich of Manderscheid, the adop- tive father of his youth, to whom he felt he owed a great deal, and the other that of the German nation against the Bohemians — he at- tracted wide attention for his scholarship and legal ability. The Council was under the presi- dency of Giuliano Cesarini, the celebrated Italian authority of the time on jurisprudence, who had been Cusa's professor of jurisprudence at the University of Padua. One may be reasonably sure that under these circumstances every oppwr tunity for the display of his abilities was afforded a favorite pupil. cardinal nicholas of cusa 97 Ecclesiastical Career. The attention he attracted at Basel led to his selection as the Papal representative at the Diets of Mainz in 1441, of Frankfurt in 1442, of Nuremberg in 1444, and of a second Diet at Frankfurt in 1446, so that probably no eccle- siastic in Europe was better known to the hier- archy of his native country than Nicholas. Suc- cessive Popes came to have the highest confidence in him, and he was sent as legate to many places not only in Germany but also in France and Switzerland and other countries. He refused the Cardinalate when it was first offered to him, and it required a special order of Pope Nicholas V to make him assume this honor later. He was made Bishop of Brixen because that diocese was considered to need a firm hand and yet a diplo- matic heart and a sympathetic humanity to bring about the obliteration of abuses that had been allowed to creep into the diocesan institutions. It is not too much to say that probably no one was so close to the Popes or so thoroughly incar- nated the policy of the Church of his time as Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, and yet after Roger Bacon himself there is almost no one in whose works are found so many anticipations of mod- ern science as in those of Cusanus. It might well have been expected that his rise in the hierarchy would have made him cautious, and that he would have felt that his ecclesiastical duties made it advisable for him to avoid scien- 98 CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE tific speculations. So far from this being the fact, however, it was mainly while he was in the midst of his busy life as a high ecclesiastic that his scientific works were written. There was not only no hesitancy on his part as to the advisa- bility of his continuing his writing on extraneous scientific subjects, but quite as evidently there was no feeling on the part of his colleagues in the hierarchy that it would be better for him to confine himself to religious subjects. In recent years our growing knowledge of the Middle Ages has led a number of people to rec- ognize that in the despised Middle Ages there was a liberality toward philosophic thought, especially in the great university centers, which afterward came to be narrowed. Indeed it has been often suggested that the shackles of eccle- siastical authority were put on tighter over the human mind during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries than they had been earlier. For some it constitutes the reason why the Reformation, with its definite break for liberty, had come. Of any such ideas as these, however, the life of Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa is an open contradic- tion. Nothing that I know shows so well how perfectly free the churchman might be to follow out speculations of all kinds, not only without danger to his personal liberty, but even without detriment to his ecclesiastical career in any way, and indeed his broad liberality of mind seems to have been one of the reasons that aided rather than hampered his successful career. cardinal nicholas of cusa 99 Independence of Thought. There is abundant evidence in Nicholas of Cusa's writings of his thoroughgoing independ- ence of thought and his power to think for him- self. Writing about him in an essay in Old Time Makers of Medicine, so as to explain to physi- cians how it was that he was the first to make a suggestion of laboratory methods in diagnosis, I said of him : " There are many interesting ex- pressions in Cusanus's writings which contradict most of the impressions commonly entertained with regard to the scholars of the Middle Ages. It is usually assumed that they did not think seriously, but speculatively; that they feared to think for themselves, neglected the study of nature around them, considered authority the important source of knowledge, and were as far as possible from the standpoint of modern scien- tific students and investigators. Here is a pas- sage from Nicholas, on writing and thinking, that might well have been written by a great in- tellectual man at any time in the world's history, and that could only emanate from a profound scholar at any time." It runs : To know and to think, to see the truth with the eye of the mind, is always a joy. The older a man grows, the greater is the pleasure which it affords him; and the more he devotes himself to the search after truth, the stronger grows his desire of possessing it. As love is the life of the heart, so is the endeavor after knowl- edge and truth the life of the mind. In the midst of the movements of time, of the daily work of life, of 100 CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE its perplexities and contradictions, we should lift our gaze fearlessly to the clear vault of heaven, and seek ever to obtain a firmer grasp of ajid a keener insight into the origin of all goodness and beauty, the capacities of our own hearts and minds, the intellectual fruits of mankind throughout the centuries, and the won- drous works of nature around us; at the same time remembering always that in humility alone Ues true greatness, and that knowledge and wisdom are alone profitable in so far as our lives are governed by them. What Nicholas succeeded in thinking out for himself in astronomy is probably the most strik- ing testimony to his individuality of intellect and power to see things for himself. Father Hagan, who is the Papal Astronomer in charge of the Observatory in the Vatican, has summed it up in a paragraph of his sketch of Cardinal Nich- olas in the Catholic Encyclopedia. The astronomical views of the Cardinal are scattered through his philosophical treatises. They evince com- plete independence of traditional doctrines, though they are based on symbolism of numbers, on combina- tions of letters, and on abstract speculations rather than observation. The earth is a star like other stars, is not the centre of the universe, is not at rest, nor are its poles fixed. The celestial bodies are not strictly spherical, nor are their orbits circular. The difference between theory and appearance is explained by relative motion. Had Copernicus been aware of these assertions, he would probably have been encour- aged by them to publish his own monumental work. Like Roger Bacon, Nicholas of Cusa recog- nized very clearly how much that was accepted CARDINAL NICHOLAS OF CUSA 1 01 in his generation, often even by men supposed to be learned, was not true. His best known book is called De Docta Ignorantia, that is, " About Learned Ignorance ". I wonder if there ever was a time in the world's history when one could not write about learned ignorance. Even the educated people of any period are always ready to accept a large number of theories that prove after a while to have been utterly mis- taken. Often the wiser men of their generation see very clearly, though there is no hope of their convincing their fellows, how utterly insignifi- cant, especially to any such extent as their con- temporaries believe them, are the current the- ories of the day. We are still intent on passing theories, fairly slaves to them, while they last, and then dropping them for others. The thera- peutics of any generation has always been absurd to the second succeeding generation, but so have the current theories in any department of science. Up-to-date thinking is in a few years scarcely recognizable in the lumber room of cast-off hy- potheses. One of our greatest American humorists has said in our time : "It is not so much the ignor- ance of mankind that makes them ridiculous, as the knowing so many things that ain't so." We are just getting to recognize that what in our ignorance — to quote John Fiske, surely an authority not likely to be suspected of partiality to the Middle Ages — we used to call the Dark Ages ought to be called the Bright Ages. When I02 CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE we had no architecture, no beautiful buildings inside and outside, no arts and crafts worth while speaking of, we could not understand the Middle Ages and so forsooth called them "dark". Now when we are imitating their architecture, taking the models of their wrought iron and carved stone and woodwork for our developing arts and crafts, when we are going back to study their great poets, Dante, the Cid, the Troubadours, the Meistersingers and the Minnesingers, we are beginning to realize what a wonderful time it was. There is a fine opportunity in our time for another book with the title " On Learned Ignor- ance ". The surprise is — but only for those who do not know their Middle Ages — to find that the first book bearing that title was written before the close of the Middle Ages. It is stated in his book De Docta Ignorantia that the Great Cardinal set forth a theory with regard to the constitution of the sun. How clearly he anticipated some modern views, which it would seem almost impossible for a medieval scholar and above all a churchman to have had any hint of, may be seen particularly in this solar theory. It is all the more surprising that he should, by some form of intuition as it were, reach the conclusions he did, for the usual sources of information with regard to the sun in his time could not possibly have brought him to such a theory, and it was only his own genius far out- running the knowledge of his time that enabled him to do it. The Cardinal said : CARDINAL NICHOLAS OF CUSA I03 To a spectator on the surface of the sun the splendor which appears to us would b.e invisible, since it con- tains, as it were, an earth for its central mass, with a circumferential envelope of hght and heat, and between the two an atmosphere of water ^xld clouds and of ambient air. After reading that bit of precious astronomical science announced nearly five centuries ago, it is easy to understand how Cusanus anticipated other phases of our knowledge, as he did in his declarations that the figure of the earth is not a sphere, but is somewhat irregular, and that the orbit of the earth is not circular. Perhaps in our time it will be most interesting to find that in the field of politics, too, Nicholas of Cusa was capable not only of original think- ing, but in this as in so many other fields of thought he anticipated some of the greatest con- clusions of the modern time. As the result of his careful studies of conditions in Germany, he realized very clearly how much of unfortunate influence the political status at that time of the German people, with their many petty rulers and the hampering of development consequent upon the trivial rivalries, the constant bickerings, and the inordinate jealousies of these numerous princelings, had upon his native country. Ac- cordingly, toward the end of his life he sketched what he considered would be the ideal political status for the German people. As in everything that he wrote, he went straight to the heart of the matter and, without mincing words, stated 104 CATHOLIC CHURCHMEK IN SCIENCE just exactly what he thought ought to be done. Recalling that this scheme of Cusanus for the prosperity and right government of the German people was not accomplished until more than four centuries after his death, it is interesting, indeed, to realize how this clergyman of the middle of the fifteenth century should have come to any such thought. Nothing, however, makes it clearer than this, that it is not the progress of time that fosters thinking, but that great men at any time come to great thoughts. Cusanus wrote : The law and the kingdom should be placed under the protection of a single ruler of authority. The small separate governments of princes and counts con- sume a disproportionately large amount of revenue without furnishing any real security. For this reason we must have a single government, and for its sup- port we must have a definite amount of the income from taxes and revenues yearly set aside by a repre- sentative parliament, and before this parliament (reichstag) must be given every year a definite ac- count of the money that was spent during the preceding year. A Pioneer in Accurate Medical Science Our modern advance in medicine, in so far as it is real and enduring and not merely sensa- tional and apparent, is dependent more on the de- velopment of accurate methods of diagnosis than any other single factor. Very few people realize that, in spite of all that has been said with regard to supposed advances in the treatment of dis- ease, the dozen drugs that doctors use most and CARDINAL NICHOLAS OF CUSA I05 which they consider absolutely indispensable in the treatment of their patients, are all more than a century old, and some of them many hundreds of years, and a few of them some thousands of years old. It is in diagnosis that significant sci- entific advances have been made. The more we have been able to use mechanical means of vari- ous kinds and scientific instruments and mathe- matical formulae, the more valuable has been the accumulation of data with regard to diseases and the differentiation of disease conditions so as best to assure their rational treatment. Now I suppose that the last place in the world that one might expect to find the first hint toward the employment of accurate methods of diag- nosis in modern times would be before the end of the Middle Ages. Very probably the last per- son who would be expected to give such a hint would be a medieval churchman trained by the knowledge of the classics in early life, with his degree in canon law, not in medicine. If to this be added the fact that the author was a Cardinal of the Church, valued by his ecclesiastical con- temporaries for his knowledge of theology, it cannot but seem almost impossible that it should be in his works that is to be found one of the earliest valuable suggestions for the application of a thoroughly scientific method to medicine. In spite of this apparent impossibility, it is, as I have shown in my Old Time Makers of Medi- cine, to Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa that we owe the first hint of accurate diagnostic methods in I06 CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE clinical medicine, and his work has now become a well-recognized chapter in the history of medi- cine. In an article on " An Early Allusion to Accurate Methods in Diagnosis " which was published in the Archives of Diagnosis,^ I re- viewed the place of Cardinal Nicholas's sugges- tion in our history of clinical medicine and pointed out its definite significance. That story is worth while repeating here because it is such a surprising revelation of the way that genius, when apparently wandering far afield from its own special interest and intruding on others' work, is able to give hints that may prove ex- tremely valuable, though for the moment they may be so far ahead of current scientific thought as to be unavailable. Some years ago Professor Ernst von Leyden, at that time the Director of the First Medical Clinic of the Charite Hospital, Berlin, and one of the best known of the teachers of medicine at the University of Berlin, in sketching the his- tory of the taking of the pulse as an important aid to diagnostics in medicine, said that John Floyer, an English clinician, is usually named as the man who about the beginning of the eighteenth century introduced the practice of determining the pulse rate by means of the watch. He suggested, however, that William Harvey, the English physiologist to whom we owe the discovery of the circulation of the blood, ^New York, April, 1909. CARDINAL NICHOLAS OP CUSA IO7 had before Floyer suggested the use of the watch in counting the pulse and the value of the pulse in medical diagnosis. Professor Carl Binz of the University of Bonn, commenting on these remarks of von Ley- den, called attention to the fact that two cen- turies before either of these men, to whom the careful measurement of the pulse rate is attrib- uted as a discovery, were born, a distinguished German churchman, who died shortly after the middle of the fifteenth century, had suggested a method of accurate estimation of the pulse that deserves a place in medical history. This suggestion is so much in accord with modern demands for greater accuracy in diagnosis that it seems not inappropriate to talk of it as the first definite attempt at laboratory methods in the department of medicine. The pioneer of this important subject of accurate diagnosis was Car- dinal Nicholas of Cusa. The Cardinal suggested that in various forms of disease and at various times of life, as in childhood, boyhood, manhood, and old age, the pulse was very different. It would be extremely valuable to have some method, then, of accurately estimating, measuring, and re- cording these differences for medical purposes. At that time watches had not yet been invented, and it would have been very difficult to have estimated the time by the clocks, for almost the only clocks in existence were those in the towers of the cathedrals and of the public buildings. The first watches, " Nuremberg eggs ", as they ro8 CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE were called, were not made by Peter Henlein until well on in the next century. The only method of measuring time with any accuracy in private houses was the clepsydra or water-clock, and Cardinal Nicholas suggested that this should be employed for estimating the pulse frequency. His idea was that the amount of water which flowed while a hundred beats of the pulse oc- curred should be weighed and this weight com- pared with that of the water which flowed while a hundred beats of the normal pulse of a num- ber of average individuals of the same age were being counted. Cusanus was an extremely practical man, he was constantly looking for and devising methods of applying practically principles of science to ordinary life. As we shall see in discussing his plan for the estimation of the pulse rate later on, he made many other suggestions for diagnostic purposes in medicine and suggested other appli- cations of mathematics and mechanics to his gen- eration. The book in which the suggestion as to the accurate estimation of the pulse rate was made is of special interest to physicians. It is his Dia- logue On Static Experiments, which he wrote in 1450 and which contains the following passages : Since the weight of the blood and the urine of a healthy and of a diseased man, of a young man and an old man, of a German and an African, is different for each individual, why would it not be a great benefit to the physician to have all these various differences CARDINAL NICHOLAS OF CUSA IO9 classified? For I think that a physician would make a truer judgment from the weight of the urine viewed in connection with its color than he could make from its color alone, which might be fallacious. So also weight might be used as a means of identifying the roots, the stems, the leaves, the fruits, the seeds, and the juice of plants, if the various weights of all the plants were properly noted together with their variety according to locality. In this way the physician would appreciate their nature better by means of their weight than if he judged them by their taste alone. He might know then from a comparison of the weights of the plants and their various parts when compared with the weight of the blood and the urine, how to make an application and a dosage of drugs from the con- cordances an-d differences of the medicaments and even might be able to make an excellent prognosis in the same way. Thus, from static experiments he would approach by a more precise knowledge to every kind of information. Do you not think, if you would permit the water from the narrow opening of a clepsydra (water-clock) to flow into a basin for as long as was necessary to count the pulse a hundred times in a healthy young man, and then do the same thing for an ailing young man, that there would be a noticeable difference be- tween the weights of the water that would flow during the period? From the weight of the water, therefore, one would arrive at a better knowledge of the differ- ences in the pulse of the young and the old, the healthy and the unhealthy, and so also as to information with regard to various diseases, since there would be one weight and therefore one pulse in one disease, and another weight and another pulse in another disease. In this way a better judgment of the differences in the pulse could be obtained than from the touch of the vein, just as more can be known from the urine about its weight than from its color alone, no CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE Just in the same way would it not be possible to make a more accurate judgment with regard to the breathing if the inspirations and expirations were studied according to the weight of the water that passed during a certain interval? If while water was flowing from a clepsydra, one were to count a hundred expirations in a boy, and then in an old man, of course there would not be the same amount of water at the end of the enumeration. Then this same thing might be done for other ages and states of the body. As a consequence, when the physician once knew the weight of water that represented the number of ex- pirations of a healthy boy or youth and then of an individual of the same age ill of some infirmity or other, there is no doubt that by this observation he will come to a knowledge of the health or illness and something about the case, and perhaps also with more certainty would be able to choose the remedy and the dose required. If he found in a healthy young man apparently the same weight as in an old and decrepit individual, he might readily be brought to the conclu- sion that the young man would surely die and in this way have some evidence for his prognosis in the case. Besides, if in fevers in the same way careful studies were made of the differences in the weight of water for pulse and respiration in the warm and the cold paroxysms, would it not be possible thus to know the disease better and perhaps also get a more efficacious remedy? As will be seen from this passage, Cusanus had many more ideas than merely the accurate estimation of the pulse frequency when he sug- gested the use of the water-clock. Evidently the thought had come to him that the specific gravity of the substances, that is, their weight in com- parison to the weight of water, might be valuable CARDINAL NICHOLAS OF CUSA III information. Before his time physicians had depended only on the color and the taste of the urine for diagnostic purposes. He proposed that they should weigh it, and even suggested that they should weigh also the blood, I suppose in case of venesection for comparison's sake. He also thought that the comparative weight of various roots, stems, leaves, juices of plants might give hints for the therapeutic uses of these substances. This is the sort of idea that we are apt to think of as typically modern. Specific gravities and atomic weights have been more than once supposed to represent laws in thera- peutics that so far we have not succeeded in find- ing, but it is interesting to realize that it is nearly five hundred years since the first thought in this line was clearly expressed by a distin- guished thinker and scientific writer. Charity and Loyalty. On the death of his father considerable prop- erty reverted to Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, and by mutual agreement with his sister Clare and his brother John his entire inheritance was con- verted to a foundation for the benefit of the poor. During the five years from 145 1 to 1456 extensive buildings were erected in his native town with chapel, cloister, and refectory at- tached. These were to serve as home for thirty- three old men in honor of the thirty-three years of Christ's earthly life. This institution is still standing and would remind one of the Grey 112 CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE Friars in which in Thackeray's The Newcomes. Colonel Newcome takes his refuge at the end of his life. Cardinal Nicholas by his last will left his altar service, his manuscript library, and his scientific instruments, to this hospital, as it was called, for at that time the word hospital meant only a guest house and had not become restricted in significance to a place where only ailing folk were given shelter. These bequests would seem to indicate that the institution founded by Car- dinal Nicholas was meant to be something more than a refuge for the old, and that he intended it to provide instruction also for the young. This was a feature of the English Grey Friars, for the famous " blue coat boys " went to school there ; and it is typical of the spirit of the Middle Ages thus to bring together youth and age for the sake of the mutual beneficent influence that they exercise on each other. Even more significant for our appreciation of the Cardinal's interests in life is the fact that, though his body rests in his own titular church in Rome beneath the sculptured efifigy of him in relief provided by the Renaissance spirit, he arranged that his heart should be deposited be- fore the altar in the hospital of Cues. ?Ie wanted his heart to be where his treasure was, and in life he had often exhibited the feeling that the real treasure of the Church is the poor. He did not forget his Alma Mater at Deventer when he became a Cardinal, for he founded there a residence called after him the Bursa Cusana, CARDINAL NICHOLAS OF CUSA II3 where twenty poor students were to be sup- ported. In a word, this scholarly scientist and distinguished ecclesiastical diplomat, who might be expected to be immersed in important eccle- siastical matters to the exclusion of interest in the needs of his native town and his first school, turned to accomplish concrete good by solving the social problems that he had been brought in- timately in contact with during his early years. Best of all, he did not wait till after his death to make the foundations, but arranged for them during his life and saw to their organization according to his plans for them. It is, above all, significant that a man of these broad intellectual interests and profound ability should have been selected by successive Popes as the person to whom the reforms of various abuses in German dioceses should be committed. The reform of abuses in any institution com- posed of human beings will always have to be made. They had crept in in many places in Ger- many and needed correction. To Nicholas of Cusa their reformation was committed, and while he made many enemies, almost necessarily, while engaged in such work, the friends he made far outnumbered these. Indeed the Abbot Trithe- mius, himself one of the most distinguished scholars and churchmen of that time, did not hesitate to say that everywhere Nicholas had ap- peared as an angel of light and of peace. So much of what we have heard of pre-Reformation history, especially as regards Germany, is so ri4 CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE very different from this that it is worth while noting both the character of the man and his work, whom Rome selected for the delicate mis- sion of reformation. Certainly, as we look back at it now, no wiser selection than this, looked at from every standpoint, could, humanly speaking, have been made. Cusanus's career is in itself an epitome of the times, full of the most signifi- cant historical meaning. IV. ABBE.SPALLANZANI: A CLERICAL PRECURSOR OF PASTEUR. WHO loves not knowledge ? Who shall rail Against her beauty? May she mix With men and prosper! Who shall fix Her pillars ? Let her work prevail. — Tennyson, In Memoriam, CXIV. TXTHILST mind unfettered o'er * ' the earth extends Its all-subduing energies, and wields The sceptre of a vast dominion there. —Shelley, The Demon of the World. IV. ABBE SPALLANZANl: A CLERICAL PRECURSOR OF PASTEUR. UNDOUBTEDLY one of the most interest- ing problems of biology, and one that has deservedly attracted a great deal of attention in recent years — indeed it is now declared to be a key factor as regards certain phases of the theory of evolution — is what is known as regen- eration. All of us know from experience that we have certain powers of regeneration, so that injuries, cuts, and even rather serious wounds are repaired by regenerative processes, which in a great many cases restore almost, if not quite completely, the original appearance of the skin surface. Imagine what battered bodies most human beings would present if every injury that went through the skin made a permanent scar or even left some definite trace. Not only it does not, but even rather deep injuries, if not fol- lowed by suppuration, are repaired so well that absolutely all trace of them may be lost, or at least only very slight marks of them left. This is due to the power of regeneration in the living being. Some of the lower animals possess this power of regeneration to a marvelous degree. For in- stance, there are certain salamanders or lizards that regenerate whole limbs when they are lost. Il8 CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE When we recall that the limb of an animal con- tains bones, muscles, nerves, arteries, tendons, as well as various layers of connective tissue, usu- ally spoken of as fascus because they bind cer- tain tissues together in a way to facilitate their activity, it is easy to understand what a complex problem is here presented. How is this restora- tion accomplished? When the limb of the sala- mander is removed, all that is left is the jagged remnant of a limb with a superficial series of more or less injured cells, practically all of which will disappear before the true process of repair begins. The next row of cells behind these, the first healthy cellular layer, proceeds to grow, and then the cells lay themselves down in regular order until they have recreated the limb as it was originally. Perhaps the fulness of the mystery that is thus briefly outlined will be better appreciated from an illustration. Suppose that a cyclone should blow off a wing of a brick building, as storms have sometimes been known to do, leav- ing the main portion standing. A jagged edge of bricks— many of them broken, some of them displaced, not a few of them torn from their original location, yet still hanging on — would represent the outer surface of what was left. All these injured and dislocated bricks have to be removed before men can begin the repair. Suppose now the first row of uninjured bricks that were still in place after having pushed the displaced broken bricks out of the way, should ABBE SPALLANZANI II9 begin to double, and then double again, and so on, laying themselves down in order on top of each other, until there would be a complete wing where the former one was. That is a picture on a large scale of what happens on a small scale when an animal's limb is torn away and then re- generated by a process of nature. It must not be forgotten, however, that in order to restore the wing of the building not only must the bricks be laid in regular order, but there are floors and partitions and stairs and corridors and doors and windows and wainscot- in,gs and plaster, and all the other contents of the building, to be put in place. These must be built up by degrees ; but the work is no more complex than the making of bone, muscle, sinew, tendon, joints, joint capsules, arteries, veins, nerves — these three latter corresponding to the plumbing, the water supply, the drainage, and the electric bells or the telephones in the build- ings. How is so wonderful a work accomplished? Of course it is no more wonderful than the orig- inal growth of the limbs ; but, then, somehow we do not think so much of that. Where is the memory which recalls all the details of the limb that was lost, and where is the force that directs all the energies that accomplish the work? We call in an architect to plan the building, and then employ a contractor to direct the workmen how to do it — the architect controlling the contrac- tor's work. But where is all this mechanism in I20 CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE the little lizard, which, having lost a limb, pro- ceeds to develop a new one just exactly like its predecessor ? It is easy to understand what an interesting biological problem is here involved. Now, the first man to study this problem from the serious scientific standpoint was Lazaro Spallanzani, a clergyman of the eighteenth century. But even the fact that he was a clergyman is not so sur- prising, perhaps, as the further information with regard to him- — that his taste for scientific studies was aroused by a distinguished woman professor of the University of Bologna, Laura Bassi, who was a cousin of his. And, then, there is another surprise awaiting this generation — that a great deal of his work was facilitated by his sister Marianna, who became interested in the natural sciences (or, as they were then called in general terms, natural philosophy), in order to be of help to her brother. She is one of the many " Little Known Sisters of Well Known Men ", as runs the title of a recent American book — which does not, however, contain her name; nor, for that matter, the name of Caroline Herschel, who a little later was to be of so much assistance in his work to her brother, the famous Herschel the astronomer. We forget sometimes that sisters have often been deeply affectionate toward brothers of scientific genius, and that some of them, even long before our generation, have had the intelligence to reinforce their aflfec- ABBE SPALLANZANI 121 tion and accomplish excellent results as their auxiliaries.^ It is because of the many contradictions of ordinary impressions as regards the history of science that the life of Lazaro Spallanzani seems to deserve recall for our generation, because it is a keynote of actualities in history that are not well understood. For indeed the Abbe Spallan- zani, as he is usually called, was famous. He was offered chairs in literally more than half a dozen universities before he reached middle life ; and later on he was made a member of acad- emies and learned societies in many of the cities of Europe — not alone in his native Italy, but in ^ Marianna Spallanzani's distinguished services to her famous brother are all the more interesting be- cause such feminine developments in' Italy are usually not thought (at least in English-speaking countries in our time) ever to have been possible. Even Dr. Mozans, in his book, Women in Science, always so thorough, and usually so exhaustive, has missed Mari- anna Spallanzani's story. The arrangement of the cabinet of Natural History which came to be the focus of the scientific attention of Europe at Pavia was largely in' her hands. .Spallanzani often confessed that she knew more about it than he did. During his ab- sence, distinguished visitors were taken through the cabinet by Marianna; and, as one of Spallanzani's biog- raphers (Senebier) says naively enough, " she knew the properties of all the specimens contained in it, and was capable of reasoning upon them." He adds, more- over, the secret of her successful cultivation of natural science; for "her mind was molded upon that very illustrious brother, whom it was pleasure to her to study and imitate." 122 CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE Berlin, London, Paris, Madrid, and in distant Stockholm, Upsala, and other places. He was one of the most distinguished scientists of the eighteenth century, known throughout all Europe, and particularly well known because of his con- troversies on spontaneous generation. Spallan- zani had the modern idea in the matter, and in- sisted that there was no such thing as spontan- eous generation, but that life was always the re- sult of preceding life. Though his dictum in the matter was disputed by Needham and Buffon, he came off victorious in controversies with them. He had similar good fortune also in a controversy with John Hunter on a topic relating to digestion, though at the time Hunter was rightly looked up to as one of the most distin- guished authorities in Europe on questions of anatomy and physiology. What is even more to Spallanzani's credit, however, than his success in the controversies in question is the fact that, notwithstanding that the temper of controversy in the eighteenth cen- tury was, almost as a rule, very bitter (though not so bitter as it had been in the seventeenth), and readily became personal, Spallanzani never stooped to anything of that kind. He was noted for the gentleness of his ways and the suavity of his manners. He probably did more than any one else of the period to set the example, general in our time, according to which scientists or grammarians or mathematicians may disagree without acrimony. ABBE SPALLANZANI 1 23 When, at the beginning of the twentieth cen- tury, Dr. Thomas Hunt Morgan, Professor of Biology at Bryn Mawr College, gave the series of lectures on regeneration at Columbia Univer- sity, wrhich were published in the Columbia Uni- versity Biological Series,^ he reviewed in his in- troductory lecture Spallanzani's work, regretting that, unfortunately, the complete account of the Italian clergyman's experiments had never been published. As Professor Morgan has since come to be looked upon as the authority on regenera- tion not only in this country but in the scientific world generally, his epitomization of Spallan- zani's work is thoroughly authoritative. Here, for instance, is a brief resume of the Spallan- zani observations on earthworms : He made a large number of experiments with earth- worms of several kinds, and found that a worm cut in two pieces may produce two new worms, or, at least, that the anterior piece produces a new tail, which in- creases in length, and may ultimately represent the posterior part of the body. The posterior piece, how- ever, produces only a short head at its anterior end, but never makes good the rest of the part that was lost. A short piece of the anterior end fails to re- generate; but in one species of earthworm, that differs from all the others in this respect, a short anterior piece or head can make a new tail at its posterior end. Spallanzani found also that if much of the anterior end is cut off, the development of a new head by the posterior piece is delayed, and, in some species, does not take place at all. If a new head is cut off, another 2 Macmillan Co., 1901. 124 CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE is regenerated ; and this occurred in one case five times. If, after a new head has developed, a portion is only cut off, the part removed is replaced; and if a portion of this new part is cut off, it is also regenerated. If a worm is split longitudinally into two pieces, the pieces die. If only a part of the worm is split longi- tudinally and one part removed, the latter will be re- generated from the remaining part. Spallanzani's experiments on other crawling creatures, especially the tadpole and the sala- mander, were not less interesting or less signifi- cant; and these two have been epitomized by Professor Morgan in such a way as to make it clear that Spallanzani's observations were care- fully made, and that practically no phase of the problems was neglected. Any one who thinks that biologic experimentation is in any sense modern or recent, or that the older scientists depended too much on theory and did not ask direct questions of nature, or diversify the terms of their experiment in such a way as to search out the definite significance of the phenomena in which they were interested, needs only to read this epitomization of Spallanzani's work on re- generation to have all such false notions oblit- erated. Professor Morgan says : Spallanzani found that a tadpole can regenerate its tail; and if a part of the new tail is cut off, the re- maining part will regenerate as much as is lost. Older tadpoles regenerate more slowly than younger ones. If a tadpole is not fed, it ceases to grow larger, but it will still regenerate its tail if the tail is cut off. Salamanders also regenerate a new tail, producing even ABBE SPALLANZANI 125 new vertebrae. If a leg is cut off, it is regenerated; if all four legs are cut off, either at the same time or in succession they are renewed. If the leg is cut off near the body, an imperfectly regenerated part is formed. Regeneration of the legs was found to take place in all species of salamanders that were known to Spallanzani, but best in young stages. In full-grown salamanders regeneration takes place more promptly in smaller species than in larger ones. Curiously enough, it was found that if the fingers or toes are cut off, they re- generate very slowly. If the fingers of one side and the whole leg of the opposite side are cut off at the same time, the leg may be regenerated as soon as the fingers of the other side. A year is, however, often insufficient in some forms for a leg to become fully formed. If an animal is kept without food for two months after a leg has been cut off, the new leg will regenerate as rapidly as in another salamander that has been kept fed during this time. If the animal is kept longer without food, it will decrease in size, but never- theless the new leg continues to grow larger. Oc- casionally more toes or fewer toes than the normal number are regenerated; but as a rule the fore leg renews its four toes, and the hind leg its five toes. In one experiment, all four legs and the tail were cut off six times during the three summer months, and were regenerated. Spallanzani calculated that (in this process in a single animal) 647 new bones must have been made in the new parts. The regeneration of the new limbs was as quickly carried out the last time as the first. Spallanzani also found that the upper and lower jaws of salamanders can regenerate. Professor Morgan has also touched upon Spallanzani's experiments on the snail and slug. If the tentacles are removed, they are renewed ; and, to quote Professor Morgan, " Spallanzani 126 CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE found that even if the entire head is' cut off a new one is regenerated. Also other parts of the snail, as the foot and the collar, may be regen- erated. The head of the slug, it was found, re- generates with more difficulty than that of the snail." No wonder that Professor Morgan did not hesitate to say that the justly celebrated ex- periments of Spallanzani and his contemporaries furnish the basis of all later work, and that many of the important facts in regard to regen- eration were made known by their investigations. Abbe Spallanzani's experiments on regenera- tion, then, as can readily be understood, were not merely superficial investigations of a curious phenomenon, but very definite and searching questions put to nature with regard to this im- portant function of tissues. Spallanzani actually showed that not only the tails and limbs of many creatures, like tadpoles, salamanders, and snails, could be regenerated on removal, but that some of these creatures could regenerate their heads; though it was afterward found that, in these cases, what had been called the head of the animal did not contain the essential part of the central nervous system. In the course of these experiments, he brought out very clearly how important was the spinal cord as a portion of the central nervous system. Up to this time the spinal cord has been considered as merely a sort of bundle of nerves running together through the canal in the spinal vertebrse, somewhat as the elements of an electrical cable run through ABBE SPALLANZANI 127 a tube or tunnel. Spallanzani's experiments show, however, that the spinal cord contains a number of important reflex centers, which bring about reflex movements and functions of various kinds quite independently of the brain, and almost entirely without reference to it. His experimental removal of the head of the land snail, followed by its regeneration, was doubted until a series of observers had controlled and confirmed his conclusions. It was afterward shown that this does not contain the brain ; but it does contain the eyes, the mouth, the tongue, the teeth, and most of the sense organs of the animal, and these are all regenerated. In a word, the whole subject of regeneration was gone into so thoroughly as to make it a special chapter in biological science. In the midst of preoccupa- tions with other developments, and particularly the cell doctrine, this subject was neglected in the nineteenth century, until, during the last two decades of that period, Roux, Driesch, and others in Germany, as well as Thomas Hunt Morgan, Loeb, and other American biological in- vestigators, took it up again and showed its sig- nificance. Practically, all that they have accom- plished has added little to our knowledge of the details of it, though they have succeeded in pointing out how much the possession of the faculty of regeneration tells against Darwinism. While Spallanzani's studies in regeneration have attracted attention to him, particularly in our time, it was his work on so-called spontan- 128 CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE eous generation that gave him his reputation in the eighteenth century. The question of the possibility of the spontaneous origin of life (abiogenesis, as it is called scientifically — that is, of the occurrence of life as the result of non- living forces and without any necessary relation to preceding life) has often occupied men's minds, and, above all, in the nineteenth century was the subject of not a little thought and a great deal of experimentation. Even distin- guished scientists have lent themselves to the conclusion that life could thus originate of itself, as, for instance, in the moist, hot climate of a tropical country, or in the slime at the bottom of the ocean. Huxley rather brought himself into ridicule by his acceptance of bathybius — a low order of life, as its Greek name implies, which was supposed to be intermediate between non living or non-organic material and living or organic material. In some minds the problem is not yet settled; for all those who refuse to accept creation as the origin of life, consider that life must have come into existence originally by some chance disposition of merely physical factors. In centuries preceding the nineteenth, all sorts of curious notions with regard to the spontan- eous origin of life were accepted even by scien- tific minds. The old Greeks were quite sure that insects and even other highly organized forms of life sprang into existence as the result of merely favorable physical conditions. Putrefy- ABBE SPALLANZANI 1 29 ing material, for instance, was supposed actually to generate little living things. The Romans adopted this set of ideas from the Greeks; and everyone will recall Virgil's very curious de- scription of the way to obtain a swarm of bees, by allowing a carcass to rot on a hillside in the sun. He had evidently mistaken the buzzing flies, so often with curiously brilliant wings and bodies, which are seen under such circumstances, for young bees ; though perhaps he had never seen the phenomenon, but merely adopted it, as he did most of the biological and agricultural hints in his Georgics from writers of curious things in the world around him. One of the well-known names at the begin- ning of modern science was Van Helmont, to whom we owe the word " gas ", and who is looked upon as one of the most distinguished medical scientists of the seventeenth century. His ideas, therefore, would be reasonably repre- sentative of the science of his time. He was in- deed the founder of the iatrochemical school in medicine, which did so much to suggest the chemistry of the human body as the basis of pathology and the scientific foundation for thera- peutics. We owe to him the physiological im- portance of ferments and gases, particularly of carbonic acid ; and his knowledge of the bile, the gastric juice, and the acids of the stomach was considerable.^ 3 Garrison, History of Medicine. 130 CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE In spite of all this knowledge of chemistry in general and the chemism of the body in partic- ular, in which he was practical enough to intro duce the gravimetric idea in the analysis of urine, which has since been of so much importance, Van Helmont had what would seem to us the most absurd notions with regard to the subject of the origin of even highly organized life, and of spontaneous generation in general. He sug- gested, for instance, that even living beings so high in the scale of life as mice might be ob- tained by spontaneous generation. The terms of the experiment were that some meal should be taken, placed in an earthenware jar in a dark corner of a cellar, covered with dirty linen (this latter seemed to be an important factor in the experiment) ; and he said that in the course of a few weeks mice would be found making a home in the meal. This occurrence of life he considered to be due to spontaneous generation ; and, as he had tried the experiment a number of times, he was quite convinced that his conclusion in the matter was scientific. In the eighteenth century they had gone far beyond these crude notions at least, though many scientists were still inclined to think that in- sects were produced spontaneously in decaying or rapidly changing organic matter ; and that surely the smaller living things (the animalcules, as they called them — the micro-organisms or microbes, to use the familiar name of the modern time) arose spontaneously ABBE SPALLANZANI I3I Curiously enough, about the middle of the eighteenth century, the controversy over spon- taneous generation was between two Catholic clergymen — one of them Father Walter Need- ham, an Irish priest whom the Penal Laws made an exile on the Continent, and who devoted a good deal of his leisure time to biological experi- ments ; the other, our Abbe Spallanzani. In 1748 Father Needham published the account of cer- tain experiments on boiled meat juices, which were enclosed in glass phials and sealed, so that apparently whatever developed in them must come from their contents and not in any way from without. As the boiling was presumed to have killed all life in the organic materials, the subsequent presence of micro-organisms in these liquids seemed to demonstrate that these must have been produced by spontaneous generation. The same controversy, almost in the same form, was destined to come up in the nineteenth cen- tury, when Pasteur's crucial experiments once more refuted the idea of spontaneous generation. Spallanzani anticipated Pasteur by repeating Father Needham's experiments under conditions which showed conclusively that whenever, after thorough boiling, the air was completely excluded from the flasks, no life ever developed in them. He used glass flasks which could be hermetically sealed in flame, immersing them in boiling water prior to the test. When Father Needham ob- jected that the real reason for the failure of sub- sequent occurrence of micro-organisms in the 132 CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE organic fluids was that their exposure to the flame had killed the " vegetative force " in them which would have enabled them to support life, Spallanzani extended this experiment so as to show that just as soon as the sealed fluids were exposed to the air once more, they were thor- oughly capable of supporting organic life, only that life must be introduced into them from without. This work, almost needless to say, at- tracted a great deal of attention; and Spallan- zani's triumphant demonstration of his ideas gave him great scientific prestige throughout Europe, and created as well a new point of view which was to form a firm fundamental principle in modern science. Regeneration and spontaneous generation were only two out of many subjects that Spallanzani treated in the field of what we now call biology. There were many others. Digestion, generation, fertilization, respiration, circulation, were all taken up, and all of them illuminated by his genius; for there is no other word for his mar- velous power of observation, his infinite patience in diversifying his experiments, his ingenuity of device for his questions to nature, and his perti- nacity in following up hints to definite conclu- sions. Probably the most interesting discovery made by Spallanzani was that of the digestive power of the saliva. Ordinarily it was assumed up to that time (and the idea is still prevalent enough) that the purpose of saliva was mainly to moisten ABBE SPALLANZANI I33 the food and make it easier to swallow ; and, as a matter of fact, this is one of its important functions. So far from this being the all- important function, however, it is now well un derstood that, if saliva does not become mixed properly with starchy food, its digestion is not a little interfered with, or at least hampered. If the starches are always presented in such form that very little chewing is needed — as, for in- stance, when potatoes are mashed, and peas and beans are pureed, and only the soft portions of bread eaten, or bread always soaked in some fluid before being eaten — the digestion of the starch is rendered difficult. On the other hand, if a piece of bread be chewed faithfully, and especially a crust of bread chewed until it is ready to swallow without any fluid being taken, the substance becomes sweet in the mouth, show- ing that the saliva is already bringing about a change of the starch of the bread into sugar. Something of this change ought always to take place in the mastication of starchy foods. We owe the knowledge of this important func- tion: of the saliva to Spallanzani, who also ex- tended the knowledge of the gastric juice as a solvent of food in the stomach. This fact had been known before, and the function of the gas- tric juice had been scientifically determined ; but Abbe Spallanzani showed that the gastric juice acts outside the body, and somehow contains in itself apart from the stomach, once it has been secreted, the digestive power. This led later to 134 CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE the preparation of pepsin from animals' stom- achs as an adjuvant to human digestion. Spal- lanzani also showed that the gastric juice pre- vented the putrefaction of even the most highly organized materials, and that it had the power of stopping putrefaction even after it had once begun. As a matter of fact, his thoroughness of investigation of the subject set stomach diges- tion on a scientific plane that was little raised until well on toward the end of the nineteenth century. Regeneration and digestion are two very im- portant subjects to have illuminated so well as Spallanzani illuminated them ; but after this he took up the subject of respiration, and left it as much his debtor as that of digestion. He studied not only the respiration of warm but also of cold- blooded animals. By experiments, he demon- strated that animals that hibernate — that is, pass the winter in a sort of comatose condition — con- sume only an almost infinitesimal amount of oxygen. Indeed, he demonstrated that they can live comfortably for a considerable time in an atmosphere of carbon dioxide, in which ordinary warm-blooded animals will perish in the course of a few minutes. Abbe Spallanzani went still further, however, and showed that living tissues excised from a freshly killed animal will take up oxygen and give off carbon dioxide for a time, quite as if they were directly connected with the blood stream which brought them oxygen and carried ABBE SPALLANZANI 135 off the carbon dioxide. In this he anticipated, in certain fundamental aspects, the series of ex- periments which have been made in recent years to demonstrate that tissues retain vitality for a definite and sometimes rather prolonged period after their detachment from the living being to which they belonged originally. When I add that he was very much interested in the subject of artificial fecundation, which, like regeneration and spontaneous generation was to occupy biology so much in the last century, it is quite easy to understand how far ahead of his time he was. He was undoubtedly the most important pioneer in experimental morphology, that de- partment of biology which came to attract so much attention in the last quarter of the nine- teenth century; though his work on this subject began a full hundred years before that time. Spallanzani's early education and his youthful intellectual interests were not such as might nat- urally lead him into experimental science. In- deed, his thoroughly classical education was such that, to believe certain modern theorists in edu- cation, it might have been expected that he could not have developed that interest in the things of nature around him and the marvelous power of observation which characterized his subsequent career. For, as Senebier says in his sketch of him prefixed to the Memoirs on Respiration, " he confined himself to the study of grammar, the importance of which in general is not suffi- ciently felt, informing the mind so as to seize 136 CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE those relations which are adapted to confer on it distinction or at least happiness." Spallanzani was born 10 January, 1729, at Scandiano, in Modena, which, with Parma, was then an independent Duchy in North Italy. His college education was obtained with the Jesuits at Reggio; and, after the completion of his studies of rhetoric and philosophy, he went for his university work to Bologna. At that time one of the most distinguished professors at the University of Bologna was that celebrated woman teacher of the natural sciences and mathematics, Laura Bassi. She was a cousin of Spallanzani, and deeply influenced his intellec- tual development. This mother of twelve chil- dren, " who never permitted her scientific and literary work to conflict with her domestic duties, or to detract in the least from a singular affection which so closely united her to her hus- band and children ", was a focus of attention in Bologna that attracted visitors from every- where.* In spite of this interest in the natural sciences aroused by his distinguished cousin, Spallanzani devoted himself to the classics and especially to * This same century saw no less than three other distinguished women professors at the University of Bologna : Madame Manzolini, professor of anatomy, a colleague of Galvani ; Maria dalle Donne, for whom Napoleon established a chair of obstetrics at the Uni- versity; and Clotilda Tambroni, the famous professor of Greek, of whom it was said " only three persons in Europe are able to read Greek as well as she does.'' ABBE SPALLANZANI 1 37 Greek. His favorite authors were Homer, De- mosthenes, and St. Basil; and the first work from his pen was a critique of Salvini's transla- tion of Homer, which had been considered up to that time as one of the best translations of the old Greek poet ever published. Spallanzani showed, however, in how many ways the trans- lator had failed to reproduce in Italian the spirit and vigor and sometimes even the sense of a very great number of Flomer's expressions. In doing so he entered into the most erudite details respecting the etymology of a variety of words, pointing out their exact import and restoring the true sense of the Greek text. His letters on the subject constitute a real monograph, and were printed in the works of the distinguished scholar, Conte Algarotti, to whom they were written. Besides his work in literature and the natural sciences, Spallanzani, conforming to the wishes of his father, whom he dearly loved, took up the study of jurisprudence, so as to follow out the custom of Italy of the son's embracing his father's profession. He was in the midst of his course in jurisprudence when he confided to the well-known Vallisnieri, professor of natural his- tory at Padua, his lack of serious interest in law ; and Vallisnieri, who was also a native of Scan- diano, and was well acquainted with the Spallan- zani family, promised to secure his father's per- mission to give up law. Deeply affected with the proof of obedience to his will, Spallanzani's father readily consented that his son should I3>*^ CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE henceforth be left at liberty to follow the bent of his own inclinations. F"rom this time on Spallanzani's life was almost entirely devoted to the study of natural history — what we now call physical and biological science. At the conclusion of his years with the Jesuits, Spallanzani passed some time with the Domini- cans at Reggio, and received Minor Orders there. I have been able to find no record of his ever receiving Major Orders, though he was in- variably known as Abbe Spallanzani in all that was written about him in English and French literature; and he seems always to have consid- ered himself as devoted to the Church. He was only twenty-five years of age when, in 1754, he was chosen professor of Greek, logic, and mathe- matics at the University of Reggio. Such a combination of studies and teaching would seem absurd in our day, and would lead one to think that the poor fellow who had to undertake so various a duty would surely not be able to find any satisfactory self-development. Before five years had passed, however, Spallanzani's work had attracted widespread attention ; and the University of Coimbra in Portugal and the Acad- emy of Petersburg in Russia, as well as the Uni- versities of Parma and Cesena in Italy, offered him chairs. Fie preferred the call of the Uni- versity of Modena, in his own North Italy, and continued his good work there. In 1768 the Empress Maria Theresa suggested to her minister of education that Spallanzani ABBE SPALLANZANI 1 39 should be secured for the chair of natural his- tory in the University of Pavia, which the great Empress, in her policy of conciliating the Italians who were under Austrian rule, was engaged in reorganizing. Spallanzani hesitated about ac- cepting the offer until he was assured that a most liberal policy was to be instituted as re- gards the University of Pavia, and that he would be given large opportunities to develop its de- partment of natural history, as well as liberal allowances in order to make the museum at Pavia one of the best known not only in Italy but throughout the world. During his occu- pancy of the chair at Pavia, Spallanzani, in ac- cordance with this prearrangement, spent a great deal of his time in Switzerland and along the Mediterranean coast, also in Asia Minor and Turkey and Greece, gathering collections of scientific material for the museum at Pavia, which made that a center of interest for Europe and the biological sciences at that time. Pavia, after having been a very distinguished university, had been allowed to run down under the Austrian domination until it was scarcely more than a shadow of its former greatness. The administrative ability of Maria Theresa made it clear to her that a continuance of the previous neglect would surely create disaffection among the Italians, and foster revolution. Hence the issuance of the invitation to Spallanzani, with the offer of such special opportunities in his line as would surely secure his acceptance. Some 140 CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE idea of her success in gathering a hand of dis- tinguished professors at the reawakened Univer- sity of Pavia may be gathered from the group of men who came there in Spallanzani's Hfe- time — including Boscovich, the great mathema- tician; Fontana, the naturalist; as well as Bur- serius and Moscati. Vallisnieri, professor of natural history at the University of Padua, who was considered the most prominent teacher of the biological sciences throughout Europe, having died, his chair was offered to Spallanzani — a compliment which im- plied that the faculty regarded the professor of Pavia as the legitimate successor of his great compatriot. Spallanzani was tempted to accept the position, because of the prestige that went with it ; but the Empress of Austria wished to retain him, and the Austrian authorities doubled his salary, and offered him a long leave of ab- sence for a scientific expedition to Turkey, knowing well that this latter stipulation would carry far greater weight with Spallanzani than any monetary consideration. He remained at Pavia, then, and accomplished a long scientific tour throughout Turkey, his re- turn being made the occasion of a magnificent university ovation. After this at regular inter- vals he continued to make scientific journeys, always with definite investigation purposes. He made a series of special studies, for instance, of Vesuvius and of the volcanoes of Sicily and of the Lipari Islands; for he was interested not ABBE SPALLANZANI I4I only in the biological sciences, but in all the physical sciences. Abbe Spallanzani's most important work in his time was the collection of specimens for the museum of the University of Pavia. In this task he anticipated what was to be a particular fea- ture of university scientific life at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. As there was practically none of the natural sciences in which Spallanzani was not interested, the specimens he collected illustrated every phase of natural history at that period. He made a great natural history museum in the broadest sense of the word ; and the surprise is that a man so deeply interested in collection, comparison, and classification of the objects for a museum, should at the same time have been so indefatigable an experimenter, and so ingenious an organizer of experimental methods of all kinds. There is scarcely a biological question that has deeply interested scientists during the past generation which, apparently, did not occur to Spallanzani, and which he did not make some attempt to answer. Even when his attempts are failures, because of the state of science at the time, almost without exception his methods are suggestive. There was a very large group of Italian scien- tists doing magnificent work in the latter half of the eighteenth century. We have been so little accustomed to consider Italy as the pioneer in nearly all great scientific achievements that we 142 CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE are not likely to appreciate this phase of the his- tory of science. Among those whose work was attracting world-wide attention among his fel- low-countrymen in Spallanzani's lifetime were Galvani, after whom galvanism is named ; Volta, whose name has been chosen, and meritedly, as one of the basic terms in electricity ; Morgagni, the father of modern pathology ; Scarpa, the greatest anatomist of his day; Vallisnieri, the naturalist; Mascagni, and others. It was in a generation of this kind that Spallanzani was properly appreciated, and looked up to as, if not the most distinguished among them, certainly the one with the greatest breadth of knowledge and probably the widest reputation in his own time. Dr. Tourdes, of the University of Montpellier, who knew Abbe Spallanzani personally, and who translated a number of his works into French, in his sketch of the literary productions of Spal- lanzani which precedes his translation of the Abbe's experiments upon the circulation of the blood, has a series of paragraphs which demon- strate Spallanzani's contemporary reputation." 5 This work, with a number of others, including most of the important books published by Spallanzani, as well as some of his unpubli.shed manuscripts which were edited after his death, can be obtained in English translation. Indeed, there is scarcely any language in Europe — that is, of the more important countries — into which most of Spallanzani's works were not trans- laled. It is no surprise to find them in English; for during the later seventeenth and eighteenth centuries English and Italian science were rather closely in touch ABBE SPALLANZANI I43 Italians were certainly among the first to do justice to their fellow-countryman. They had the highest opinion of his merit, and the writers of that country participated in the general admiration of Spallanzani. It was impossible that the greater part of them should not be conscious of their inferiority; and such men as Volta, Scarpa, Moscati, Fontana, and Mascagni, could have no reason to envy his glory. Foreign naturalists likewise paid him the most honor- able tribute of praise. Haller dedicated to him one of the volumes of his immortal work. The founder of the most magnificent edifice that has ever been erected to the science of man owed, doubtless, some mark of acknowledgment to one who had furnished him with such a number of materials. " You have discovered to us," said Bonnet in a letter to him, " more truths in a few years than whole academies have done in half a century.'' This observation, too, was made before Spallanzani had pubhshed his mineralogical productions, his chemical essays, or his various papers in natural history. Spallanzani was intimately connected with Trembley, Saussure, Tissot, and the French scientists of his time. Everyone knows the esteem and attachment enter- tained for him by Senebier, the illustrious librarian of Geneva. The familiar friend of Spallanzani, and an enHghtened judge of his merit, he incessantly cele- brated his discoveries, extolled his talent in the ex- perimental art, and enriched with the most instructive notes the translations which he gave of almost the whole of his works. The Germans and English have done equal justice with each other; though, it must be confessed, with the obligation entirely on the part of the English toward the Italians, who honored themselves by honor- ing such men as Malpighi, Morgagni, Galvani, and Spallanzani. 144 CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE to the Professor of Pavia. The former have confirmed by experiments almost all his discoveries; the latter, notwithstanding their prejudice against the inquiries of foreigners, have been compelled to acknowledge the importance of his observations on organic reproduction, digestion, generation, etc. ; and they have translated his works upon these subjects into their own language. But France, beyond every other country, claims the merit of having assigned to this celebrated man the honorable rank which he will occupy in the annals of history. No sooner were his works known to this nation, than it appropriated them by translations exe- cuted with elegance and fidelity. His discoveries were never mentioned but in terms of admiration, and they were adopted almost with implicit belief. His name resounded in all our schools, and it was everywhere heard with enthusiasm. One of the theses (No. 59) for the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Paris, written for the Doctorate in Medicine in 1912, had for its subject " Spallanzani the Biologist ". In a com- paratively short space this thesis reviews partic- ularly Spallanzani's contributions to the sciences related to medicine. It enumerates no less than four opuscules of Spallanzani on the circulation of the blood published between 1768 and 1775. His special work on digestion I have already noticed; and it was illuminated by his experi- mental methods, which included the inclosure in tubes, closed by wire netting, of digestive mate- rials, which were thus exposed to the action of the gastric juice of the animal, and might after- ward be recovered for the study of the com- parative effect of digestive secretions on these ABBE SPALLANZANI I45 materials. His experiments on respiration were not less ingenious, and always brought concrete knowledge. Indeed, it is the ingenuity of his experiments that attracts attention at the present time. One of Spallanzani's very dear friends and admirers was Senebier, who was the librarian at Geneva, a corresponding member of the National Institute of France, and member of a number of academies. We owe to him a sketch of the liter- ary life of Spallanzani, and he has summed up the great scientist's influence on his time : If we are to judge Spallanzani by the number of his works, he is phenomenal. If we turn to the sub- jects which have occupied him, they are the most important and the most difficult that could be; for he has added to our knowledge of the generation of animals and of plants and the circulation of the blood, digestion, animal reproduction, spermatic fluids, mi- crobes, mineralogy, volcanoes, combustion. He has described a number of animals hitherto unknown, and a large number of crustaceans and testaceans, besides providing the solution of many physical and chemical problems hitherto misunderstood. If we are to judge him by his method, that is at once the most ingenious, the easiest, and yet the most severe. He never leaves any doubt behind, and his explanations are always solidly founded. It is only in the universality of his labors that we can see his vast conceptions, which are always the happy develop- ment of a great idea which flows naturally from some of the great principles of natural history. One might well be persuaded that, somehow or other, he possessed the plan of the univeise, from which he detached parts here and there in order to put them under the 146 CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE eyes of ordinary people. Finally, if we are to judge of Spallanzani by his style, we have here another characteristic trait of genius ; for the man who can see clearly expresses himself well, and his style is pure and clear, yet colored and melodious. His compatriots place his works beside those of the best writers in Italian. The writer of the thesis at the University of Paris, Dr. Jean Rosenwald, says in conclusion as to Spallanzani : " If genius, as Buffon said, is the power of continuous attention, or if, as Thiers declared, genius has no specialty, Spallan- zani fulfils these definitions better than any one else. He cannot but appeal to us, and there is no eulogium which is more correct or more de- served than that which styles him the precursor of Pasteur as well by the depth of his researches, the precision of his experiments, and the sagacity of his deductions, which leave very little for criticism or for sincere controversy. It seems too bad, then, that Lazaro Spallanzani .should have been in the penumbra in which modern his- tory has left him ; for a place in the full light is due to this illustrious man and giant pioneer of human progress." V. ABBE BREUIL AND THE CAVE- MEN ARTISTS. AIN was the chief's, the sage's ■yAIN 1 ^ pride ! They had no poet and they died. — Pope. They had an artist and they lived. "VTEQUE solum vivi, atque prae- -'- ' sentes studiosos discendi eru- diunt, atque docent : sed hoc idem etiam post mortem monumentis litterarum assequuntur. — CicBRO. Learned men not only instruct and educate those who are desirous to learn, during their life, and while they are present among us, but they continue to do the same after death by the monuments of their learning which they leave behind them. T V. ABBE BREUIL AND THE CAVE-MEN ARTISTS. HERE has been a very surprising — one might well say almost astounding — development of science intimately concerning man, during the last few years, which comparatively few even of educated people have realized. A good many of the publications with regard to it came shortly before the war and unfortunately the war has so occupied men's minds all over the civilized world that almost nothing else has had any proper chance for consideration. Besides blockades of various kinds, the high cost of living and the high prices of many things have prevented the diffusion of the literature of the subject. Shortly after the war, however, I feel sure that this will prove one of the most startling revolutionary scientific developments that have come to us for many generations, if not indeed for many cen- turies. It consists of what we have learned with regard to the earliest ancestor of man in Europe, that is, the dweller in caves, whose mode of life and something even of his mode of thought have been brought home to us by the wonderful dis- coveries made in the Dordogne in Western France, as well as in Northern Spain and in cer- tain parts of the South of France. That from the very beginning it may be clear that I am not exaggerating the significance of ISO CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE this set of discoveries, it seems well to quote a recognized authority in the matter, a man who, though himself not engaged in this particular field of archeology, is eminently in a position to estimate the significance of the discoveries made. I suppose that it would be generally acknowl- edged that the address of the President of the' British Association for the Advancement of Science each year is looked upon, in the English- speaking world at least, as the paramount scien- tific message of the year. The position is occu- pied in rotation by the men who have distin- guished themselves in the various scientific bodies that constitute the membership of the Associa- tion, so that about once every dozen years or so there is a review of each important department of science. The President in his annual address brings up to date all the significant knowledge in his department and presents a forecast, from the standpoint of a leader in the science, of the out- look of that special mode of human knowledge. The well-known conservatism of the English mind makes these recurring reviews of very great value for those who from outside the par- ticular science desire to know exactly what the meaning of the previous decade's work in it is. The President of the British Association for 1916 was Sir Arthur Evans, the archeologist, and his address had for title, " New Archeo- logical Lights on the Origins of Civilization in Europe " Almost needless to say, if, as we are all pretty well agreed, " the proper study of man- ABBE BREUlL 151 kind is man", this review of the earliest positive knowledge that we have with regard to man in Europe, from the actual remains that are to be found, can scarcely help but be of the greatest possible interest. Sir Arthur Evans is himself a man who by his excavations in Crete has addeJ many precious centuries, even a millennium or more, to the history of mankind. For Crete has proved to be a veritable gold mine of archeo- logical information. On that island was found the connecting link between Egyptian and Grecian civilization, and many Greek problems hitherto insoluble become ever so much simpler in the light of the illumination from Cretan discoveries. He is therefore, as I have said, in a partic- ularly favorable position to judge critically and yet sympathetically of the other investigations made by archeologists throughout Europe, and he accords the palm for significance in the entire round of the science, whole-heartedly to the work that is being done in the caves of the Dor- dogne and of North Spain, in the discovery of the remains of the earliest man that we know in Europe, and to the bringing out of the meaning of the objects and conditions found in these caves. Sir Arthur Evans does not hesitate to say that these remains indicate " a high level of artistic attainment in Southwestern Europe at a modest estimate some 10,000 years earlier than the most ancient monuments of Egypt or Chal- dea ". The President of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in his formal 152 CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE annual address does not hesitate to add that not only were there men in Western Europe who lived 10,000 years earlier than the earliest date ascertainable with any degree of assurance in Egypt or Chaldea, but these men were artists bent on making their homes beautiful, and, be- sides, " one by one characteristics, both spiritual and material, that had been formerly thought to be the special marks of later ages of mankind, have been shown to go back to that earlier world ". Here indeed is the greatest surprise of modern science. Whatever is to be thought of the dates suggested (for they remain to be determined by further investigation, and dates in archeology have a definite tendency to come nearer to us rather than to go farther away from us as we know more about the history that they mark), one thing is sure, namely, that the men who lived in the caves of Western France and North- ern Spain were the contemporaries of many ex- tinct animals — the mammoth, the cave bear, the sabre-toothed tiger — and during a time when an animal very close to them in the Pyrenees was the reindeer which has long since abandoned a habitat so far South as this anywhere in the world. Now it is extremely interesting to find that the two men to whom we owe by far the greatest part of our knowledge of these cave men — Abbe Breuil and Father Hugo Obermaier — are both priests; the one a Frenchman, and the other a ABBE BREUIL 1 53 German. The story of what they have done in adding to our knowledge of man's existence in Europe is one of the romances of modern science. Nothing has been a greater shock to preconceived notions than the discovery that so far from the ordinary accepted view of the cave- dweller of the olden time being true, it is sep- arated toto coelo from realities. Instead of hav- ing been only a bit higher than the animals, this earliest man we know by his remains was as a matter of fact an artist and in every sense of the word as highly developed a human being as we are ourselves. His cave homes were discovered to be decor- ated with beautiful pictures and figures of ani- mals and occasionally of men and women as well as of the natural objects that surrounded the cave man in his life. These pictures are not crude and childish, though they are primitive; but, then, the primitives in art have come back into favor and critical appreciation so strikingly in recent years that it is much easier to under- stand than it was a generation ago that primitive painting may be great painting, and there is now universal agreement on the part of the artists and critics that the cave man did great painting. A distinguished artist said not long since that there is no animal painter alive to-day who can paint animals more vividly, more true to the life, more artistically in any genuine sense of that term, than the cave-man artist. 154 CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE The artist is the flower of our civihzation such as it is, and we are quite willing to acknowledge that a man who is Capable of seeing the beautiful things of the world around him and reproducing them so as to give pleasure to others is a leader among men.. He may be the son of a little pio- neer farmer who secures his first colors from the Indians dwelHng near him, whose portraits he makes, as our own Benjamin West did; or he may be brought up in a stone mason's family as Michelangelo was and learn his first use of the chisel and mallet for the crudest mechanical pur- poses; or he may be the son of peasant farmers who remains a peasant at heart and never gets out of sympathy — thank God ! — with his peasant relatives, like Francois Millet, the great French artist of the end of the nineteenth century. But whatever he is and no matter what his education or refinement, we look upon the genuine artist as much more than an ordinary man, as one of the highly gifted beings of his genefation. Now there is no doubt at all that the cave man was, or at least the artists of his time were, just such superior individuals. Before he was a carpenter and built himself houses, before he was a farmer and planted seeds instead of gathering the natural produce of the woods, before he was a tailor and fashioned his garments to fit his body, merely dressing himself in the skins of the beasts that he hunted, man was an artist, a lover of the beautiful, a decorator of his home, a man among men for all time. ABBi BREUIL 155 Is it any wonder that this new appreciation of the earliest ancestors of man that we know any- thing about is considered to be the most revolu- tionary development in modern science. Just consider for a moment how different are the realities from the theories that had been woven for us and that had been so widely and fre- quently published that practically everybody was inclined to think that they must represent quite serious scientific truth. The cave man had been pictured to us as the first stage in the evolution of human beings from the beasts. Some large- sized monkey who had acquired the habit of walking on his hind legs, developed cunning enough to displace the other wild animals from their lairs in the caves of the hillside and thus begin domestic life and an upward career toward civilization. He was a little better able, because of his recently achieved cunning, to care for himself and his family than were the other beasts; but he was at best a very pitiable object. His wife, doubtless a conquest of his club, he had probably dragged home to his cave by the hair of her head to keep her there in the most abso- lute subjection and drudgery in order that she might be the mother and caretaker of his chil- dren. Popularizers of science are still telling us stories of the cave man quite as if they were truths and not fables. The very same people would laugh at the myths of savages (though so many of those myths contain a kernel of mar- velous beauty), but they are quite unconscious 156 CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE that they are myth-making and that their myths are quite sordid and unworthy of humanity's striving. Above all, we have heard a great deal about the cave man and how far humanity has ad- vanced since his day. He was supposed to be ready to quarrel on the slightest provocation and to be always in readiness to get the other man first so that he might not get him. Of course it was clear on these assumptions that the cave man was quite without the ethics which charac- terize civilized man and which are so confidently asserted to be the gradual development of man's recognition, as his evolution progresses, of his duties toward other men. We have a nice long name for it in our time adopted and adapted from the Greek, so as to make a very simple old- fashioned idea appear important and novel. We call it altruism. Of course the cave man is sup- posed to have had none of it. He was merely selfish, as the animals are; for all that the ani- mals think of is themselves and those separated parts of themselves, their offspring. The cave man was a slightly better beast. Now we have changed all that, as the French say ; at least we ought to proceed to change it at once, for the archeologists have shown us very clearly that the cave man was just a man like ourselves, only, if anything, somewhat more cul- tured in his interests. For his devotion to art and the beautiful things round him, and his de- sire to reproduce the living things of nature ABBE BREUIL I 57 round him, in which he rejoiced so much that, even in the winter time when the weather made the chase impossible and on rainy days when con- fined at home, he wanted to see them on the walls of his cave, stamp him as a superior being. We owe most of our knowledge of this new set of ideas, founded on actual observation with regard to the cave man, above all to two great scientists, both of whom, as I have said, are priests. In the divided state of feeling that sep- arates cultured humanity at the present time, superinduced by a war that contradicts so strik- ingly the ideal progress of which we hear so much, it is of more than passing interest to find that one of these is a Frenchman, a representa- tive as it were of the Allies, Abbe Breuil, and the other a Bavarian, quite as sincerely represen- tative of the Central Powers, Father Hugo Ober- maier. When shall we be able to have such co- ordination and cooperation in the great scientific work after the war once more? Manifestly this revolution in our knowledge of man deserves to be well known, above all by those who have maintained a conservative atti- tude in their philosophic opinions as to the origin of man and have waited patiently for anthro- pology to develop properly, though they were being pushed into premature opinions by so many supposedly authoritative scientists who were urging the most radical notions. Brother priests all over the world should surely know the facts, for not only do they represent one of the 158 CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE greatest triumphs of science in our day, but they confirm traditional opinions that for so long were looked upon as hopelessly backward. Not that it is unusual for priests to be distinguished in science. On the contrary, a knowledge of the world of a half-a-dozen modern priests would give one an encyclopedic knowledge of modern scientific advance. Abbot Mendel, Father Secchi, Father Wasmann are names that make this very clear, and now we must add two more to them — Abbe Breuil and Father Obermaier, who, while following faithfully priestly and ecclesiastical duties, have given the world such ripe fruits of their scientific research. Abbe Breuil and His Work. Abbe Breuil was bom 28 February, 1877, at Mortain, in the Manche, of a family many of whose members of preceding generations had be- longed to the magistracy of Picardy. From his very early years he manifested a marked taste for natural history, and above all took up quite seriously of his own volition the study of ento- mology, to which he later did distinct services by collecting the subterranean fauna of the cav- erns as also of the Spanish territories surround- ing the habitations of the cave men. His college studies were made in the College Libre of St. Vincent at Senlis. He entered the Seminary of St. Sulpice of Paris in 1895 at the age of eighteen. Abbe Guibert noticed very soon his liking for the sciences and gave him special ABBE BREUIL 1 59 opportunities and recommended that he direct his attention toward archeology and the earliest records of human existence. Abbe Guibert was himself the author of a volume on origins {Des Origines), which concerns itself, however, mainly with apologetic problems. During his vacations Abbe Breuil had the op- portunity to associate himself with some of the distinguished men who were doing the best work in archeology in Paris at that time. He came to know and receive the directions of such men as Capitan d'Ault-du-Mesnil, Salomon Reinach, Boule Gaudry, and these associations gave a strong impetus to the interest in archeology which had been aroused by Abbe Guibert. Above all, young Breuil had the magnificent advantage of becoming the intimate friend of Edouard Piette, that great searcher of the Pyrenees cav- erns, who exercised a very special influence over him and indeed adopted him as a student and disciple. Their intimate relations to one another until the death of M. Piette in 1905 directed Abbe Breuil's work, particularly in the line of the artistic archeology of the caverns and to the study of what is known as superior paleolithics, because it concerns itself with art objects rather than merely with the remains of the crafts of the olden time. Abbe Breuil's first scientific publications began in 1898, when he published an article on the chronological status of the Bronze Age. After Tooi all his attention was devoted to the Old l6o CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE Stone Age and especially to the higher art and industry of that time. He was ordained at St. Sulpice in December, 1900, but remained at Paris for the next five years studying for his degrees in science and taking special courses at the Cath- olic Institute. From 1905 to 1909 he was a Privat-docent at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland. His special subjects were Prehis- tory and Ethnography. Since 1901 about one-half of Abbe Breuil's time has been occupied with the actual investiga- tion of caverns, alone and with Capitan and other well-known archeologists. A large number of caverns adorned with designs or paintings have been found, the reproduction of which and the description of their surroundings as well as* the deciphering of their meaning have fallen upon Abbe Breuil almost alone. Cartailhac called Breuil to collaborate with him in the caverns which were found in the French Pyrenees and together they discovered a number of others in the same region. In 1902, with Cartailhac, Abbe Breuil was invited to take up the study of the celebrated cavern of Altamira in Spain. In 1906 he returned to Spain to pursue new researches in other caverns of the Cantabrian Province with Alcalde del Rio, their discoverer. During the following year he was very much occupied with the paintings discovered in large numbers after systematic search of caverns in Aragon, Catalonia, Estremadura, Castile, and Andalusia. In 1909 he was asked by the Prince of Monaco ABBE BREUIL l6l to take a post in the foundation created by that liberal patron of the sciences, the Institute of Human Paleontology. Most of his best work since then has been published under the patron- age and at the expense of the Prince. To him more than anyone else is owed the recognition of the significance and the impor- tance of the Aurignacian level or horizon in cave-man archeology, a period which preceded the Solutrean and followed the Mousterian. He worked out the application of the idea of a cer- tain development of style in the engraved figures on the various objects picked up in the cave. He pointed out a certain development from the re- production of the natural image by the engraver to a schematization of the mode of ornament in the moveable paleolithic art. For the first artists saw things for themselves and reproduced them simply as they saw them. John Ruskin once said that this was the hardest thing in the world to do. Then their successors after several gen- erations refused to follow the difficult path of personal observation, but they looked through the eyes of those who had seen before them, imitated their pictures, took short cuts to get the results, schematized, and of course art degen- erated. This is what men have always done ; so far from being surprising that some of the cave men should have done it, the surprise would have been if they had not done it. We know in our time how tempting it is for men to take such short cuts and then think, because they are get- l62 CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE ting more or less the same results, that they are doing just as good work as their predecessors, though their work is really trivial, cheap copying and easy imitation. Abbe Breuil's work has been very widely rec- ognized and highly complimented. While he has occupied himself almost exclusively with the scientific aspects of paleolithic archeology, a great many other names are much better known because they have devoted themselves to the vulgarization of the newly acquired information. Vulgarization seems a very good word to em- ploy, though we call it popularization in English ; for there is an innuendo in the other word that deserves to be recognized. Practically all the authoritative writers on the subject, however, Dechelette in his Manuel d' Archeologie Prehis- torique, Salomon Reinach in his classical works, and many others, have expressly outlined their obligations to him, and Professor Henry Fair- field Osborn in his Men of the Old Stone Age dedicated that book to " Emile Cartailhac, Henri Breuil, and Hugo Obermaier, his distinguished guides through the upper paleolithic caverns of the Pyrenees, the Dordogne and the Cantabrian Mountains of Spain ". He confesses that his main reliance has been upon the work of Abbe Breuil and Father Obermaier, and his book is full of references to their published books and articles. Abbe Breuil has published much in the jour- nals — L'Anthropologie, La Revue Archeologique, ABBE BREUIL 163 La Revue de I' Anthropologic, as well as in the volumes issued under the patronage of the Prince of Monaco. Much of the material, however, that he has gathered from the caverns is still unpublished. Besides, a good deal of work has appeared in collaboration with others. At the International Congress of Archeology, held at Monaco in 1906 and Geneva 1912 to discuss the whole subject of the archeology of the cave man, his industries, his arts and crafts, his colored paintings, his movable and parietal art, Abbe Breuil was considered by all those present as by far the best informed man on the whole circle of departments of knowledge that have gathered round the subject of this earliest ancestor of man in Europe. He has not only visited prac- tically all of the caves, but he has also studied the collections in the various countries of Europe, not only in France, Switzerland, and Spain, but also in Germany, Austria, Hungary, Italy, and even Russia. No wonder then that he is looked upon as an authority on the subject and that a comprehensive view of the significance of the life of this earliest ancestor of man in Europe is now readily available to all who want to re- place the ridiculous theories foisted upon us by over-confident evolutionists, by actual informa- tion derived from the direct observation of the remains of the cave-dweller. 164 catholic churchmen in science The Caves and Cave-Dwellers. These cave dwellings must not be thought of as shallow holes in the rocks of the mountains, or even as deeper cavities caused by the loosen- ing of a boulder and its fall. The caves in which the cave men dwelt are much more like our famous caverns of Kentucky, the best known of which is the Mammoth Cave, though none of the European caverns can be compared for variety or extent with our American wonder of the world. Many of the caverns, however, pene- trate the rock for a quarter of a mile or a half a mile and even farther. They were the product of the same sort of water activity as produced the caverns of Kentucky, and of course, while the Mammoth Cave is so well known that most people are inclined to think of it as unique, actu- ally a great many caves exist in the State. So it was in the Dordogne and in certain parts of North Spain and in Southern France, where these cave dwellings have been found. There was plenty of room in them, and some of the living-rooms must have been at a consid- erable distance from the entrance. Indeed not a few of the pictures are many hundreds of feet from the entrance of the caves. This makes it easier to understand how they were preserved and are now comparatively so fresh and vivid for the study of our time. This, however, makes it only the more difficult to understand how the painting came to be done. ABBE BREUIL 165 Almost needless to say, at this distance from the entrance the caverns are utterly dark. There is no question of seeing one's hand in front of one's face. How then did the cave men come to make their pictures under such conditions? What sort of light did they employ? Sir Arthur Evans does not hesitate to say that the mystery of the illumination of these caves is astounding. There is no trace of smoke on the wall or ceil- ing, and yet we may be quite sure that any ex- tensive use of the primitive modes of lighting by torches or oil lamps, such as the making of the pictures would require, could scarcely have been secured without leaving its traces. It is even more surprising to think that in this pitch dark- ness men should have cared to take the trouble and the time and exercise the patience needed to make their pictures. The difficulties increase the more we know about the circumstances of the cave man's life. What is very clear from these discoveries, as has been brought out emphatically by Abbe Breuil's studies of the mural art of the caves, is the fact that man, before he was a carpenter so as to be able to build himself a house, or a tailor so as to know how to make himself clothes, was an artist. It is even probable that before he was a farmer in our modern sense of the word he took up the decoration of his home, such as it was. Instead of occupying himself with the domestication of plants or of animals so as to accumulate stores for the morrow and assure l66 CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE himself for the future, he depended on being able to hunt successfully and to find many edible things in the forest without sowing and reaping them. This is indeed a surprising conclusion to be forced to. Man at the beginning of his known history preferred to satisfy his sense of beauty, the intellectual and artistic side of his being, rather than to assure the satisfaction of his lower nature. It has been the rule to think that man first cul- tivated the utilities, or perhaps it would be better to say developed them ; and then, having secured himself in a position where he had leisure, he fol- lowed the first faint glimmerings of the duty of occupying that leisure with art and poetry and other of the confessedly higher things of life. His soul is supposed to have been developing within him, but at first his mind was as yet in- choate and his body was the one thing that he was looking out for, pushed thereto by his nature. What proves to be true, however, is that his nature urged him first toward artistic things, led him to see what was beautiful in the world about him, to try to reproduce it so that he might have the chance to look at it at times when he was necessarily out of the presence of it, and in gen- eral led him to be an intellectual and not an animal being. The evolutionists have emphasized the animal in man because they did not quite believe in the presence of a soul. Here, however, is the dem- onstration that man was at least as far away ABBE BREUIL 167 from the animals as we are, at the very earliest period that we know anything about him in his- tory. As a matter of fact, I think that it must be perfectly clear to anyone who thinks about the conditions under which the cave man developed his art, that he was, if anything, much higher than our generation, for, in spite of urgent neces- sities, he would not occupy himself with mate- rial things to the exclusion of his higher life, though there is a very readily traceable tendency to do so at the present time. Of course it has always been true that it was not the man who had secured leisure for himself and his children from whom we might expect art and poetry and the higher things. Our artists and poets have come to us almost as a rule from among the very poor, and to a great extent necessity has been the mother of art and invention for them. Almost never have they been cradled in luxury, and practically always they have known, in Dante's words, " how bitter it is to eat the bread of others' tables ", and as a rule they have had to struggle with the urgency of material necessities. Almost literally our great poets and painters have been the cave men of the modern times. They have neglected the utilities of life and have cultivated the higher things. They have not cared to make money, or, whenever they have been tempted into that direction, their gift of poesy has usually dropped from them and their art taste has dwindled. They have been bom l68 CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE oftenest in small towns or in country places. They have been scoffed at because of their im- practicalness. They, too, were not carpenters nor tailors nor farmers, because they were artists and poets and preferred to be such even though they had to pay for the privilege of living the higher life by bitter physical suffering. All this, as it seems to me, has been actually brought out by Abbe Breuil's successful investigations of the artistic life of the cave men. When we think of conditions as they are and were, so far as art and poetry are concerned, we realize the kinship and indeed the nearness in every sense of the word to us of this cave man, though we had been taught to think of him as so very dis- tant from us in every way. Phases of Artistic Development. After considerable practice with black and white the cave-men artists became dissatisfied with this as a medium and sought to express themselves also in color, and thus reproduce not only the outlines and the character, but the very look of the objects they saw. At first they used masses of black to express the shadows on the animal, and then occasionally to bring out the fact that the animal was spotted in various ways. After a time they found certain ochres that would give them yellows, and then it was not long before they found a way to produce red, and were evidently very much taken with the color. Indeed it is very curiously interesting to ABBE BREUIL I 69 find that after their discovery of colors there was a period of art in which they neglected the drawing which had been so artistically done be- fore. They fairly revelled in their new-found colors, but now did very weak artistic work. The same thing has often happened again in art almost in the later time whenever some new- fangled notions have come in, and it is not sur- prising that the cave men should have been like subsequent generations in this regard. The sur- prise, I suppose, should rather be that subse- quent generations have not got over the tendency to follow after fads and fancies, very often to the detriment of the art with which they are concerned. Every step in advance in our knowledge of these pictures has simply added to the astound- ing significance of them as historical documents. Incredible almost as it must appear, these paint- ings made by the cave man thousands of years ago are done in oils. The artists, whoever they were, who wished to reproduce as far as possible in their original colors the animals that they saw round them, looked for coloring materials and found that they could obtain the reds and yellows and browns that they desired from the oxides of manganese and of iron. They also found, how- ever, that these materials were not soluble in water. They therefore ground them fine in a mortar — some of the mortars are still preserved for us — and having mixed the powder well with the rendered fat of the animals that they had 170 CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE killed in hunting, they made what are actually oil colors. Having manufactured brushes out of the bristles of the animals, they painted in oils on the walls of their caves, and their colors were so permanent that, in spite of the lapse of time and the vicissitudes of climate to which they have been subjected (though fortunately, of course, they have been rather well protected deep in the interiors of the cave), they made the pictures that are now the evidence of their high place as intellectual beings. An extremely significant phase of this mural art of the cave man is to be found in the fact that, in order to give the appearance of plastic rotundity or solidity to the animals that he painted, occasionally the cave artist took advan- tage of various bosses or rounded projections on the walls of the cave. These were somewhat irregular in outline, though, from their being worn by water, they were rather smooth of con- tour. The cave artist painted his animals on them in such a way as to produce an illusion of high relief, usually only the horns and tail of an animal in the painting projecting beyond the boss or convexity. The animals had to be placed in various lying poses and the positions of their feet and legs carefully accommodated to the cramped space into which they had to be fitted. The hoofs particularly were studied very care- fully, and these pictures show the legs often very well foreshortened. In a word, the cave artist solved both of the most difficult problems of art ABBE BREUIL ITI for these pictures. It has been very well said that the great artist is, above all, one that can accommodate his art to even cramped conditions. The cave artist wanted to take advantage of tlie sense of solidity that would be given by these mural projections, so he made his painting fit into the rather confined space. Vivid Observation. The art of the cave man, as we have seen, did not blossom into full flower all at once. Defi- nite developments of it can be noted. At first animal figures were executed in what we would call black and white, though, owing to the color of the background of the limestone, it was really gray and white. Lines were cut with a flint in the stone and then lampblack was set in so as to emphasize the line. It is easy to understand that such an outline drawing could exercise artistic ability and call for artistic genius, if good work was to be done. The surprise is how firmly and with what confidence the lines were made. Professor Osborn, Director of the American Museum of Natural History in New York and Emeritus Professor of Zoology at Columbia University, made a journey through the cave- dwelling regions of Spain and France during the year just before the war. In his book on The Men of the Old Stone Age, he has emphasized above all the confident sure-handed drawing of the artists. He says : " In the drawings in the large on these curved wall surfaces, only part of which 172 CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE could be seen by the eye at one time, the difficul- ties of maintaining the proportions were extreme, and one is ever impressed by the boldness and confidence with which the long sweeping strokes of the flint were made. For one rarely, if ever, sees any evidence of corrected outline." As a trained zoologist particularly interested in the horse, because the problem of the evolu- tion of the horse has occupied so much space in modern zoology, Professor Osborn has been chiefly struck by the acute and accurate observa- tion of this cave-man artist in picturing horses. He says (p. 407) : " Only a life-long observer of the fine points which distinguish the different prehistoric breeds of the horse could appreciate the extraordinary skill with which the spirited, aristocratic lines of the Celtic horse are exe- cuted, on the one hand, and, on the other, the plebeian and heavy outlines of the steppe horse. In the best examples of Magdalenian engraving, both parietal and on bone or ivory, one can almost immediately detect the specific type of horse which the artist had before him or in mind, also the season of the year, as indicated by the representation of a summer or winter coat of hair " (italics mine). The cave artist was quite complete in his tech- nical equipment, and even artistic in the mate- rials that he adopted as his artistic utensils. A single paragraph of Professor Osborn's book brings this out very well (p. 415) : ABBE BREUIL 173 To prepare the colors, ochre and oxide of manganese were ground down to a fine powder in stone mortars; raw pigment was carried in ornamented cases made from the lower limb bones of reindeer, and such tubes still containing the ochre have been found in the Mag- dalenian hearths; the mingling of the finely ground powder with the animal oils or fats that were used was probably done on the flat side of the shoulder-blade of the reindeer or on some other palette. The pigment was quite permanent, and in the darkness of the Alta- mira grotto it has been so perfectly preserved that the colors are still as brilUant as if they had been appUed yesterday. Plastic Art. The cave artists, however, did not limit their artistic aspirations to engravings and paintings in oil. Their paintings of the animals on the bosses or rounded projections of the walls of their cave show that they had a sense of the plastic in art, and so it is not surprising to find that after a time they attempted to make figures in high relief, and that they succeeded quite as admirably as they did with their painting and engraving. For instance, in the cavern of Tuc d'Audoubert, at the summit of a very narrow ascending passage, where therefore they would be best preserved from breakage or the vicissi- tudes of time, Cartailhac and Abbe Breuil found two superb statuettes of bison in clay, about 60 centimetres (24 inches) in length, absolutely un- broken and showing the high sculptural ability of this particular cave artist. Abbe Breuil was filled with enthusiasm about them, and they ic 174 CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE have been described as of perfect workmanship and of ideal art. Photographs of them have since been reproduced, so that there is no doubt at all of the artistic qualities of them, and the story of the cave man as sculptor is in process of development, just as tv^fenty-five years ago his development as a painter was being traced. There are, besides these, some bone and horn and ivory sculptures that are very beautiful, vividly natural and sometimes very charmingly finished. Osborn says of them : ^ Small human figures jgain appear in the form of sta- tuettes in bone or ivory, representing the renaissance of the spirit of human sculpture. Some of this work is apparently in search of beauty and with altogether different motives from the repellent feminine statuettes of middle and late Aurignacian times, for the subjects are slender and the limbs are modeled with relative skill. As in the earlier works, there is a partial failure to protray the features, which is in striking contrast to the hfelike treatment of animal heads. Very few examples of this work have been found, and most of them have been broken. To this period belong the Venus statuette of Laugerie Bass and the head of a girl carved in ivory found at Brassempouy (Fig. 237), with the features fairly suggested and an elaborate head-dress. A procession of six horses cut in limestone under the sheltering cliff of Cap Blanc, is by far the most imposing work of Magdalenian art that has been discovered. They are thus described by Professor Osborn of Columbia, who saw them » Op. cit., p. 433. ABBE BREUIL I 75 and who reproduced a picture of one of them in his volume on The Men of the Old Stone Age (P- 431) : The sculptures are in high relief and of large size and are in excellent proportion; they appear to repre- sent the high-bred type of desert or Celtic horse, related to the Arabian, so far as we can judge from the long, straight face, the slender nose, the small nostrils, and the massive angle of the lower jaw; the ears are rather long and pointed, and the tail is represented as thin and without hair; they were found partly buried by layers containing implements of middle Magdalenian industry, and they are therefore assigned to an early Magdalenian date in which animal sculpture in the round reached its climax. Some of the ivory carving is particularly beau- tiful. There is a series of statuettes of horses carved on fragments of mammoth tusks that were found in the grotto of Espelugues. These pieces have attracted great attention. Espelugues is near the famous Shrine of Lourdes in France, and therefore a great many visitors have seen copies of these. They represent horses of Celtic type with manes erect. The animals are full of action and life. Authorities have declared that they show such certainty and breadth of treat- ment as sculptures that they must be regarded as the masterpieces of upper paleolithic glyptic art, that is, of the artistic carving of the men of the Old Stone Age at the highest period of de- velopment. One of these pieces of ivory is the head of a young girl. Quite contrary to our custom in the 176 CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE matter, young girls are seldom the subjects of cave-man art. This one is notable for many fea- tures that are reminiscent of what is most mod- ern in our artistic expression of young women. The mouth is not treated at all ; the chin is nar- row and rather pointed, though in the profile it projects somewhat; the eyes are slit-like and narrow, and the head is covered by either a rather elaborate head-dress or a suggestion of some curious arrangement of the hair. It has been suggested that decadence in art had begun or that this was the work of a very young cave- man artist. Some of the bone and ivory statu- ettes show a very thorough appreciation of femi- nine lines of beauty, with very skilful artistic modeling. One model of a trunk has been called the A'enus statuette, and well deserves the name, for the artist who did it evidently viewed the feminine human form exactly in the same way that the great Greek sculptors did, and in ac- cordance with the standards that have interested us ever since. In these small objects of art the artist's power of adaptation of his ideas to the material which he is employing is very admirable and has often been called to attention. Batons, dart-throwers, and poniards are made of bone and tusks in such a way as to use the material to the best advantage by combining utility with beauty, em- ploying the natural form of the material to bring out artistic points and in general exempli fying the same artistic power that was exhibited ABBE BREUIL 177 SO strikingly in making use of the bosses or rounded projections in the caves in order to pro- duce plastic effects in connexion with the colored paintings. Too much cannot be said of this power of adaptation as exhibiting real artistic genius. Discovery of the Mural Paintings. The story of the discovery of these mural pic- tures in the caves is an interesting little romance by itself. A distinguished Spanish archeologist was some twenty-five years ago engaged in look- ing for bone and horn remains and other objects that might be of interest, in the debris on the floor of one of the cave dwellings at Altamira near Santander in Spain. For company he had taken his little girl, aged about ten, with him into the cave, and as she got used to the dark- ness and the light of the torch she ran here and there at play for herself. After a time, however, she went to her father declaring that there were pictures on the walls and asking him to come and look at them. He refused to be disturbed in his investigation of the floor of the cave, and when she insisted concluded that she had been seeing her own shadow on the wall or some other shadows which deceived her with the idea that there were pictures. After a time, however, she succeeded in persuading him to look carefully for himself, and sure enough he found the colored pictures that she described. Some of the most beautiful mural paintings of the cave-man art 178 CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE have been found in this particular cavern, and the little girl as the real discoverer has found a very definite place in the history of archeology. When this discovery was announced, it at- tracted very little attention. First the story was not believed at all. Cave men might scratch rather interesting outlines of animals on horn and bone, but it was too much to ask the world to believe that they had painted pictures on the walls of their cave homes. It was concluded that these were either non-existent, the report of them being due to a heated imagination or desire for a sensation, or that they were modern sophis- tications. It was not until similar wall paintings had been found in caves at other places in Spain and at a number of places in France, so that there are more than a score of caves now known to contain them, that the mural art of the cave man became a definitely accepted department of archeology. The whole story would remind one very much of what was happening just about this same time with regard to brain anatomy, in Spain. A young man, Ramon y Cajal by name, the first who had ever applied a microscope at a Spanish University, discovered in the later 'eighties the endings of the neurons in the brain, a discovery which revolutionized our knowledge of brain anatomy and made it very clear that cells and not fibers were the all-important elements of the brain. When this discovery was first announced it was received with utter incredulity. Biologists ABBE BREUIL 1 79 refused to believe that anything so good as that could come out of Spain. Some of the best bio- logical journals in the world refused to publish Ramon y Cajal's articles, and when finally La Cellule, printed at the University of Louvain, published them, the discoveries announced were received with a great deal of scepticism. It was not until Ramon y Cajal went in person to the International Medical Congress held in Berlin in 1891 and exhibited his specimens that, led by such men as Virchow and Koelliker, to whom the specimens had been demonstrated, the bio- logical world accepted Ramon y Cajal's work. In 1900 he was given the prize of the city of Paris by the International Medical Congress and later received the Nobel Prize. Just as Ramon y Cajal's work was destined to be extended and amplified by others, so the Spanish discovery of cave-man mural art fell into other hands for its development ; and above all, the Abbe Breuil, himself an artist, took up the accumulation of information with regard to it and the working out of its significance for the life of the men and women who created it and for whose delectation manifestly it had been made a part of their homes. Fortunately the Prince of Monaco, who is so nobly using the in- come that accrues from that dubious source of revenue, the Casino at Monte Carlo, in the ex- tension of scientific knowledge, became nearly as much interested in this subterranean science as he is in suboceanic observations, and devoted l8o CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE nearly as much money to archeology as to ocean- ography. As a consequence Abbe Breuil has been able to publish some magnificent volumes containing copies in the exact colors of the orig- inals of literally hundreds of these mural paint- ings as well as other illustrations of the art of the cave men. Distinguished archeologists and scientists of other departments interested also in the antiquity of man have turned not only to Abbe Breuil's books but also to him personally in order to secure first-hand knowledge of these magnificent contributions to modern science. I have had the good fortune to talk with several Americans who met Abbe Breuil in the course of their own special studies on the subject of the cave men, and all are agreed in talking of him as a very charming man, a thoroughly sincere scientist, a very hard worker, a careful, accurate observer — in a word, a thoroughgoing example of the vir- tues that a scientist must have if his work is to secure a permanent place in his favorite science. Abbe Breuil is tireless in his explorations, faith- ful in his reproductions, deeply interested in the diffusion of knowledge with regard to his sub- ject, yet constantly ready to share his knowledge with others and willing to take almost endless trouble in order that foreign scientists may have the opportunities they desire to study the cave man under as favorable circumstances as pos- sible. ABBE BREUIL l8l I have been told, too, by those who met him of his faithfulness as a clergyman and his recog- nition of his priestly duties as the most important part of life. Even when on his exploring expe- ditions he makes it a particular point to arrange if possible to say Mass every morning, and if there are country folk in the neighborhood (for the caves are often situated at a great distance from the towns and even villages) he offers them the opportunity to attend his Mass. Sunday he devotes entirely to his priestly duties among the poor folk of the neighborhood, and his kindliness and zeal win over even men who have been long away from their religious duties. The fact that he should be the head of a scientific expedition of this kind gives him great prestige among the country folk and he uses this in order to influ- ence them for their own good as regards the re- awakening of their faith and above all the taking up again of their religious duties. He is himself almost scrupulously exact with regard to little things relating to his religious duties, as a well-known professor of archeology of one of our great universities in this country. Professor MacCurdy of Yale, told me smilingly. The Professor had spent some time with him one summer. Abbe Breuil said his Mass in the morning, giving Holy Communion to the country folk who may come if they are so minded, and then dons the khaki of his explorer's uniform and proceeds to spend the day in a cave. He comes home at night quite thoroughly tired and l82 CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE hungry, but he is not willing to sit down to his evening meal until he has doffed his khaki and reassumed his cassock so that he may be once more the ecclesiastic. He does this even though at times it would seem to be an over-meticulous regard for ecclesiastical regulations and a fol- lowing of rule from which it would seem that under the circumstances he might dispense him- self. He never seemed to think so. The interesting fact to me when the story was told to me was that, though it was told smilingly, there was evidently a deep-seated feeling of re- spect and reverence for the man who took his sacred obligations so seriously that he would not dispense himself from them even in such slight matters as might easily be j. "ised over without scrupulous regard. And this is the man to whom modern science owes one of tne most remarkable phases of its recent development. VI. THE REV. HUGO OBERMAIER THE TIME AND PLACE OF THE CAVE-MAN IN WORLD HISTORY. w E are deceived by the shadow, we see not the substance of things. For the hills are less solid than thought; [and artj Back of the transient appearance dwells ineffable calm, The utter reality, ultimate truth ; this seems and that is. — Don Marquis, Dreams and Dust. \ UGESCUNT aliae gentes, aliae ^ ^ minuuntur ; Inque brevi spatio mutantur saecla animantum, Et, quasi cursores vitai lampada tradunt. — I