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THE NEW 
 ORDER OF SAINTHOOD 
 
THE NEW 
 ORDER OF SAINTHOOD 
 
 BY 
 HENRY FAIRFIELD OSBORN 
 
 LL.D., Hon. D.Sc, Camb. 
 
 RESEARCH PROFESSOR OF ZOOLOGY, 
 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 
 
 NEW YORK, MCMXIII 
 
KxjiJu^ 
 
 PRINTED AND COPYRIGHTED 
 
 BY 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 OCTOBER, I913 
 
 5 n .pit 
 0v\ 
 
THE NEW 
 ORDER OF SAINTHOOD 
 
 IN a very beautiful address 1 before 
 the students of the University of 
 Edinburgh Sir William Osier opens 
 with the words: "To man there has 
 been published a triple gospel — of his 
 soul, of his goods, of his body." 
 
 What is and what shall be the atti- 
 tude of the Church toward the gospel 
 of the body, toward the men who have 
 given us this gospel? The question 
 turns our thoughts at once to the lead- 
 ing and greatest exponent of this gos- 
 pel, and backward to the early cen- 
 turies of the Church before there had 
 arisen any divorce between the study 
 of nature and the matters of the spirit. 
 
 1 Osier, Sir Wm. "Man's Redemption of Man." 
 l2mo. (Paul B. Hoeber, New York.) 
 
 I 
 
THE NEW ORDER 
 
 Among all the great scientific men 
 whom the nineteenth century produced 
 Pasteur ranks supreme as a benefactor 
 of mankind. He played the original 
 and creative part in the movement for 
 the prevention and relief of human suf- 
 fering which Sir William Osier has 
 aptly termed "Man's Redemption of 
 Man." It is far under the truth to 
 say that he has saved more lives than 
 Napoleon destroyed. In Nature he 
 found the causes of a very large part of 
 human suffering; in Nature he also 
 found the means of controlling or avert- 
 ing suffering. His attitude toward his 
 fellow men was one of noble compas- 
 sion. His first trial of the hydro- 
 phobia serum with a young sufferer 
 brought to him, his agony of mind lest 
 the remedy itself might be the means 
 of causing death, his joy as the child 
 was restored in perfect health to its 
 
OF SAINTHOOD 
 
 parents, is one of the most beautiful 
 episodes in human history. As recited 
 by Radot: 
 
 "Pasteur was going through a suc- 
 cession of hopes, fears, anguish, and an 
 ardent yearning to snatch little Meister 
 from death; he could no longer work. 
 At nights feverish visions came to him 
 of this child, whom he had seen playing 
 in the garden, suffocating in the mad 
 struggles of hydrophobia, like the dying 
 child he had seen at the Hopital Trous- 
 seau in 1880. Vainly his experimental 
 genius assured him that the virus of 
 that most terrible of diseases was about 
 to be vanquished, that humanity was 
 about to be delivered from this dread 
 horror — his human tenderness was 
 stronger than all, his accustomed ready 
 sympathy for the sufferings and anxie- 
 ties of others was for the nonce cen- 
 tred in 'the dear lad/ . . ." 
 
 3 
 
THE NEW ORDER 
 
 "Cured from his wounds, delighted 
 with all he saw, gayly running about 
 as if he had been in his own Alsatian 
 farm, little Meister, whose blue eyes 
 now showed neither fear nor shyness, 
 merrily received the last inoculation; in 
 the evening, after claiming a kiss from 
 'Dear Monsieur Pasteur/ as he called 
 him, he went to bed and slept peace- 
 fully/' 1 
 
 The life of Pasteur is typical of that 
 of many students of Nature, of less 
 genius, perhaps, but of equal devotion 
 and self-sacrifice. It is interesting to 
 imagine what tributes might have been 
 rendered to Pasteur if he had lived in 
 the period of the early saints of the 
 Church, and had won the love of his 
 generation and the reverence of suc- 
 
 1 Vallery-Radot, Rene. "The Life of Pasteur." 
 Translation of Mrs. R. L. Devonshire. (London, 
 Archibald Constable & Co., Ltd., 1906, pp. 416, 417.) 
 
 4 
 
OF SAINTHOOD 
 
 ceeding generations by his mighty 
 works. It is interesting to surmise 
 what would have been the attitude of 
 the early Church toward such a bene- 
 factor of mankind. Our belief to-day 
 is that Pasteur should stand as a sym- 
 bol of the profound and intimate rela- 
 tion which must develop between the 
 study of Nature and the religious life 
 of man, between our present and future 
 knowledge of Nature and the develop- 
 ment of our religious conceptions and 
 beliefs. 
 
 We are now in a process of readjust- 
 ment between the issues of two lines of 
 thought, which are almost as old as hu- 
 man history; between laws derived 
 from Nature which were discovered in 
 the middle of the nineteenth century as 
 to the origin of man, and traditional 
 laws which when traced to their very 
 beginnings we find to have been purely 
 
 s 
 
THE NEW ORDER 
 
 of human conception. Let us imagine 
 our descendants three or four hundred 
 years hence looking back on the spir- 
 itual and intellectual history of man; 
 with larger perspective they will sepa- 
 rate these two grand thought move- 
 ments. 
 
 First, the Oriental movement, 
 marked by Oriental lack of curiosity 
 about natural law, a great moral and 
 spiritual movement developing three 
 thousand years before Christ along the 
 Nile, the Tigris, and Euphrates, out of 
 five thousand years of hard human ex- 
 perience, and expressed in Judea in the 
 faith that Nature is the continuous 
 handiwork of God, in a supreme stand- 
 ard of righteousness, the moral duty 
 being finally summed in the simple 
 phrase, "Thou shalt love thy neigh- 
 bor as thyself." This was the spir- 
 itual redemption of man, which left 
 
 6 
 
OF SAINTHOOD 
 
 the laws of his physical welfare un- 
 known and uncared for. 
 
 The second movement begins six 
 centuries before Christ in the inquiring 
 mind of the West, which is always char- 
 acterized by intense curiosity about 
 Nature. This movement is the search 
 for natural law. Its rapid progress 
 among the Greeks terminates with the 
 fall of Greece. It is expressed in Ca- 
 to's reply to Scipio: "My wisdom con- 
 sists in the fact that I follow Nature, 
 the best of guides, as I would a God and 
 am loyal to her commands/' After 
 nineteen centuries it revives with Co- 
 pernicus and Galileo and culminates 
 in Darwin. Man is again perceived as 
 a part of Nature: in the study of Na- 
 ture man finds intellectual delight; in 
 the laws of Nature man finds his physi- 
 cal well-being; man through Nature 
 becomes the redeemer of physical man. 
 
 7 
 
THE NEW ORDER 
 
 The Augustinian theology was im- 
 bued with a deeply theistic view of Na- 
 ture, a view which the modern Church 
 professes but does not profoundly be- 
 lieve nor live by. As shown by Aubrey 
 Moore, Augustine was entirely sound 
 in counselling the entire separation of 
 these two great lines of thought, the 
 natural and the spiritual: 
 
 "It very often happens," says Au- 
 gustine, "that there is some question 
 as to the earth or the sky, or the other 
 elements of this world . . . respecting 
 which one who is not a Christian has 
 knowledge derived from most certain 
 reasoning or observation" [that is, a 
 natural philosopher], "and it is very 
 disgraceful and mischievous and of all 
 things to be carefully avoided, that a 
 Christian, speaking of such matters as 
 being according to the Christian Scrip- 
 tures, should be heard by an unbeliever 
 
 8 
 
OF SAINTHOOD 
 
 talking such nonsense that the unbe- 
 liever, perceiving him to be as wide 
 from the mark as east from west, can 
 hardly restrain himself from laughing." 
 
 Augustine held what may be re- 
 garded as a pristine faith in Nature as 
 a manifestation of the divine. 
 
 This pristine theistic view is founded 
 on passages in Genesis, especially Gen- 
 esis 2 : 15 and Genesis 3 : 19. These 
 passages show that Nature, typified by 
 the Garden, gives man his sustenance, 
 and yet, as it has to be won by the 
 sweat of the brow, man's energy or art 
 must work with Nature. These pas- 
 sages, as Bishop Boyd-Carpenter ob- 
 serves in his inspiring studies of Dante, 
 are also the foundation of the famous 
 lines in the "Divine Comedy" in which 
 the poet expresses the relation between 
 the theistic view of Nature and scien- 
 tific or philosophical inquiry. 
 
 9 
 
THE NEW ORDER 
 
 "... He thus made reply: 
 'Philosophy, to an attentive ear, 
 Clearly points out, not in one part alone, 
 How imitative Nature takes her course 
 From the celestial Mind, and from its art: 
 And where her laws 1 the Stagirite unfolds, 
 Not many leaves scann'd o'er, observing well 
 Thou shalt discover, that your art on her 
 Obsequious follows, as the learner treads 
 In his instructor's step; so that your art 
 Deserves the name of second in descent 
 From God. These two, if thou recall to mind 
 Creation's holy book, 2 from the beginning 
 Were the right source of life and excellence 
 To human kind. . . / " 
 
 The preceding is Cary's version. 8 
 Another version of this passage is that 
 of Longfellow. 4 
 
 Aristotle ("Physics," ii, 2). "Art mimics na- 
 ture." 
 
 2 Gen. 2:15; 3 fig. 
 
 3 " The Vision of Dante Alighieri." Translated by 
 the Rev. H. F. Cary for Everyman's Library. 
 Canto XI, Hell, p. 47. "Dante's Divine Comedy," 
 with an Introduction and Notes by Edmund G. 
 Gardner, M.A. (London, J. M. Dent & Sons, Ltd. 
 New York, E. P. Dutton & Co.) 
 
 * Longfellow's Translation, Inf., Vol. XI, pp. 97- 
 108. 
 
 10 
 
OF SAINTHOOD 
 
 "'Philosophy,' he said, f to him who needs it, 
 Noteth, not only in one place alone, 
 After what manner Nature takes her course 
 From Intellect Divine and from its art; 
 And if thy Physics carefully thou notest, 
 After not many pages shalt thou find, 
 That this your art as far as possible 
 Follows, as the disciple doth the master, 
 So that your art is, as it were, God's grandchild, 
 From these two, if thou bringest to thy mind 
 Genesis at the beginning, it behooves 
 Mankind to gain their life, and to advance/ " 
 
 As Bishop Boyd-Carpenter remarks, 
 Virgil's answer to Dante is to this ef- 
 fect: We learn from philosophy that 
 the operations of Nature proceed di- 
 rectly from God, and those of art in- 
 directly, because art consists in the 
 imitation of Nature. ("Inferno/' xi, 
 pp. 97-105, Longfellow's translation.) 
 Again the Bible teaches us that it is by 
 these two principles, Nature and art, 
 that the system of man's life should be 
 
 ordered. ("Inferno," xi, pp. 106-108.) 
 
 11 
 
THE NEW ORDER 
 
 If wc are guided by the spirit of Au- 
 gustine and of Dante we cannot fail to 
 see that the Church has passed through 
 a very critical period of scepticism as 
 regards Nature. This is perhaps an 
 original view of scepticism, but there 
 is no way of evading its application; 
 if Nature represents the wisdom and 
 goodness of God, to be blind to its 
 interpretation is a form of scepticism 
 — devout and well-intentioned though 
 it may be. Especially the Roman 
 Church has been led away from its 
 pristine faith in Nature as a mani- 
 festation of the divine, while the Prot- 
 estant Church, in consequence of this 
 loss of faith during the nineteenth cen- 
 tury, has suffered a loss of influence in 
 the world which it will require a long 
 period to regain. If the laws of Na- 
 ture are manifestations of the divine 
 power and wisdom, as we proclaim in 
 
 12 
 
OF SAINTHOOD 
 
 our services, the attitude of the Church 
 toward these laws should not be hesi- 
 tant, defensive, or apologetic, but act- 
 ive, receptive, and aggressive. 
 
 Considered in this way the great sci- 
 entific inquiry of the latter half of the 
 nineteenth century, so far from being 
 regarded as destructive, is a construct- 
 ive, purifying, and regenerating move- 
 ment; it takes us back to the lost faith 
 of our fathers, a faith which spiritu- 
 alized the Old Testament, a faith which 
 finds in Nature a manifestation of the 
 divine order of things. If Newton 
 opened to us the new heavens, Darwin 
 showed us the new earth, Pasteur 
 showed the way to the physical re- 
 demption of man. If we were to re- 
 write the Litany in the twentieth cen- 
 tury, for the passage, "From plague, 
 pestilence, and famine, good Lord, 
 deliver us," we should read, "From 
 
 13 
 
THE NEW ORDER 
 
 ignorance of Thy Laws and disobedi- 
 ence of Thy Commands, good Lord, 
 deliver us." 
 
 From the standpoint of this older 
 teaching of Augustine and Dante the 
 life-work of Louis Pasteur was more 
 than humanitarian, it was more than 
 scientific, it was religious. He regarded 
 natural processes which in their su- 
 perficial view appear relentless, cruel, 
 wholly inexplicable, as part of a possi- 
 bly beneficent order of things; he again 
 revealed through his profound insight, 
 through his unparalleled toil, discour- 
 agement, and even scorn on the part of 
 his contemporaries, deeper laws, which 
 are beneficent, protective, and restora- 
 tive in action. He was the evangelist 
 of Osier's "third gospel 5 ': 
 
 "And the third gospel, the gospel of 
 his body, which brings man into rela- 
 tion with Nature — -a true evangelion, 
 
 14 
 
OF SAINTHOOD 
 
 the glad tidings of a conquest beside 
 which all others sink into insignificance 
 — is the final conquest of Nature, out of 
 which has come man's redemption of 
 
 man. . . . 
 
 t< 
 
 If in the memorable phrase of the 
 Greek philosopher, Prodicus, 'That 
 which benefits human life is God,' we 
 may see in this new gospel a link be- 
 twixt us and the crowning race of those 
 who eye to eye shall look on knowledge, 
 and in whose hand Nature shall be an 
 open book, an approach to the glorious 
 day of which Shelley sings so gloriously: 
 
 'Happiness 
 And Science dawn though late upon the earth; 
 Peace cheers the mind, health renovates the 
 
 frame; 
 Disease and pleasure cease to mingle here, 
 Reason and passion cease to combat there, 
 Whilst mind unfettered o'er the earth extends 
 Its all-subduing energies, and wields 
 The sceptre of a vast dominion there/ " 
 
 15 
 
THE NEW ORDER 
 
 Should we not institute a new order 
 of sainthood for men like Pasteur? 
 Could we find one more eminent for 
 consecration, piety, and service in life 
 and character than this devout investi- 
 gator? Entrance to this order would 
 be granted to those who through the 
 study of Nature have extended the 
 bounds of human knowledge, have be- 
 stowed incomparable blessings on the 
 human race, have relieved human suf- 
 fering, have saved or prolonged human 
 life. Would not a statue of Louis 
 Pasteur in the Cathedral of St. John 
 the Divine proclaim the faith of the 
 modern Church that the two great his- 
 toric movements of Love and of Knowl- 
 edge, of the spiritual and intellectual 
 and the physical well-being of man, are 
 harmonious parts of a single and eternal 
 truth? On the base of such a statue 
 
 might be inscribed the words written 
 
 16 
 
OF SAINTHOOD 
 
 by Pasteur in the most perplexing 
 period of his life: 
 
 "God grant that by my persever- 
 ing LABORS I MAY BRING A LITTLE 
 STONE TO THE FRAIL AND ILL-ASSURED 
 EDIFICE OF OUR KNOWLEDGE OF THOSE 
 DEEP MYSTERIES OF LlFE AND DEATH 
 WHERE ALL OUR INTELLECTS HAVE 
 SO LAMENTABLY FAILED." 
 
 17 
 
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