Science and Morals and Other Essays by Sir Windle Bertram Coghill Alan (e book reading free .TXT) 📖

It may not be waste of time briefly to consider two of the instances commonly brought up as examples when the allegation with which we are dealing is under consideration.

First of all let us consider the case of Gabriel Fallopius, who lived—it is very important to note the date—1523-1562; a Catholic and a churchman. Now it is gravely asserted that Fallopius committed himself to misleading views, views which he knew to be misleading, because he thought that he was thereby serving the interest of the Church. What he said concerned fossils, then beginning to puzzle the scientific world of the day. Confronted with these objects and living, as he did, in an unscientific age, when the seven days of creation were interpreted as periods of twenty-four hours each and the universality of the Noachian deluge was accepted by everybody, it would have been something like a miracle if he had at once fathomed the true meaning of the shark's teeth, elephant's bones, and other fossil remains which came under his notice. His idea was that all these things were mere concretions "generated by fermentation in the spots where they were found," as he very quaintly and even absurdly put it. The accusation, however, is not that Fallopius made a mistake—as many another man has done—but that he deliberately expressed an opinion which he did not hold and did so from religious motives. Of course, this includes the idea that he knew what the real explanation was, for had he not known it, he could not have been guilty of making a false statement. There is no evidence whatever that Fallopius ever had so much as a suspicion of the real explanation, nor, it may be added, had any other man of science for the century which followed his death.

Then there arose another Catholic churchman, Nicolaus Stensen (1631-1686), who, by the way, ended his days as a bishop, who did solve the riddle, giving the answer which we accept to-day as correct, and on whom was conferred by his brethren two hundred years later the title of "The Father of Geology." It is a little difficult to understand how the "unchanging Church" should have welcomed, or at least in no way objected to, Stensen's views when the mere entertainment of them by Fallopius is supposed to have terrified him into silence. But when the story of Fallopius is mistold, as indicated above, it need hardly be said that the story of Stensen is never so much as alluded to.

The real facts of the case are these: Fallopius was one of the most distinguished men of science of his day. Every medical student becomes acquainted with his name because it is attached to two parts of the human body which he first described. He made a mistake about fossils, and that is the plain truth—as we now know, a most absurd mistake, but that is all. As we hinted above, he is very far from being the only scientific man who has made a mistake. Huxley had a very bad fall over Bathybius and was man enough to admit that he was wrong. Curiously enough, what Huxley thought a living thing really was a concretion, just as what Fallopius thought a concretion had been a living thing.

Another extremely curious fact is that another distinguished man of science, who lived three hundred years later than Fallopius and had all the knowledge which had accumulated during that prolific period to assist him, the late Philip Gosse, fell into the same pit as Fallopius. As his son tells us, he wrote a book to prove that when the sudden act of creation took place the world came into existence so constructed as to bear the appearance of a place which had for æons been inhabited by living things, or, as some of his critics unkindly put it, "that God hid the fossils in the rocks in order to tempt geologists into infidelity." Gosse had the real answer under his eyes which Fallopius had not, for the riddle was unread in the latter's days. Yet Gosse's really unpardonable mistake was attributed to himself alone, and "Plymouth Brethrenism," which was the sect to which he belonged, was not saddled with it, nor have the Brethren been called obscurantists because of it.

Of course there is a second string to the accusation we are dealing with. If the scientific man did really express new and perhaps startling opinions, they would have been much newer and much more startling had he not held himself in for fear of the Church and said only about half of what he might have said. It is the half instead of the whole loaf of the former accusation. Thus, in its notice of Stensen, the current issue of the Encyclopædia Britannica says: "Cautiously at first, for fear of offending orthodox opinion, but afterwards more boldly, he proclaimed his opinion that these objects (viz. fossils) had once been parts of living animals."

One may feel quite certain that if Stensen had not been a Catholic ecclesiastic this notice would have run—and far more truthfully—"Cautiously at first, until he felt that the facts at his disposal made his position quite secure, and then more boldly, etc. etc."

What in the ordinary man of science is caution, becomes cowardice in the Catholic. We shall find another example of this in the case of Buffon (1707-1788) often cited as that of a man who believed all that Darwin believed and one hundred years before Darwin, and who yet was afraid to say it because of the Church to which he belonged. This mistake is partly due to that lamentable ignorance of Catholic teaching, not to say that lamentable incapacity for clear thinking, on these matters, which afflicts some non-Catholic writers. Let us take an example from an eminently fairly written book, in which, dealing with Buffon, the author says: "I cannot agree with those who think that Buffon was an out-and-out evolutionist, who concealed his opinions for fear of the Church. No doubt he did trim his sails—the palpably insincere Mais non, il est certain par la révélation que tous les animaux ont également participé à la grâce de la création, following hard upon the too bold hypothesis of the origin of all species from a single one, is proof of it." Of course it is nothing of the kind, for, whatever Buffon may have meant, and none but himself could tell us, it is perfectly clear that whether creation was mediate (as under transformism considered from a Christian point of view it would be) or immediate, every created thing would participate in the grace of creation, which is just the point which the writer from whom the quotation has been made has missed.

The same writer furnishes us with the real explanation of Buffon's attitude when he says that Buffon was "too sane and matter-of-fact a thinker to go much beyond his facts, and his evolution doctrine remained always tentative." Buffon, like many another man, from St. Augustine down to his own times, considered the transformist explanation of living nature. He saw that it unified and simplified the conceptions of species and that there were certain facts which seemed strongly to support it. But he does not seem to have thought that they were sufficient to establish it and he puts forward his views in the tentative manner which has just been suggested.

The fact is that those who father the accusations with which we have been dealing either do not know, or scrupulously conceal their knowledge, that what they proclaim to be scientific cowardice is really scientific caution, a thing to be lauded and not to be decried.

Let us turn to apply the considerations with which we have been concerned to the case of Galileo, to which generally misunderstood affair we must very briefly allude, since it is the standby of anti-Catholic controversialists. Monsignor Benson, in connection with the quotation recently cited, proclaimed himself "a violent defender of the Cardinals against Galileo." Perhaps no one will be surprised at his attitude, but those who are not familiar with his Life and Letters will certainly be surprised to learn that Huxley, after examining into the question, "arrived at the conclusion that the Pope and the College of Cardinals had rather the best of it."[28]

None the less it is the stock argument. Father Hull, S. J., whose admirable, outspoken, and impartial study of the case[29] should be on everybody's bookshelves, freely admits that the Roman Congregations made a mistake in this matter and thus takes up a less favourable position towards them than even the violently anti-Catholic Huxley.

No one will deny that the action of the Congregation was due to a desire to prevent simple persons from having their faith upset by a theory which seemed at the time to contradict the teaching of the Bible. Remember that it was only a theory and that, when it was put forward, and indeed for many years afterwards, it was not only a theory, but one supported by no sufficient evidence. It was not in fact until many years after Galileo's death that final and convincing evidence as to the accuracy of his views was laid before the scientific world. There can be but little doubt that if Galileo had been content to discuss his theory with other men of science, and not to lay it down as a matter of proved fact—which, as we have seen, it was not—he would never have been condemned. Whilst we may admit, with Father Hull, that a mistake was made in this case, we may urge, with Cardinal Newman, that it is the only case in which such a thing has happened—surely a remarkable fact. It is not for want of opportunities. Father Hull very properly cites various cases where a like difficulty might possibly have arisen, but where, as a matter of fact, it has not. For example, the geographical universality of the Deluge was at one time, and that not so very long ago, believed to be asserted by the Bible; while, on the other hand, geologists seemed to be able to show, and in the event did show, that such a view was scientifically untenable. The attention of theologians having been called to this matter, and a further study made of passages which until then had probably attracted but little notice, and quite certainly had never been considered from the new point of view, it became obvious that the meaning which had been attached to the passages in question was not the necessary meaning, but on the contrary, a strained interpretation of the words. No public fuss having arisen about this particular difficulty, the whole matter was gradually and quietly disposed of. As Father Hull says, "the new view gradually filtered down from learned circles to the man in the street, so that nowadays the partiality of the Deluge is a matter of commonplace knowledge among all educated Christians, and is even taught to the rising generation in elementary schools."

In accordance with the wise provisions of the Encyclical Providentissimus Deus, with which all educated Catholics should make themselves familiar, conflicts have been avoided on this, and on other points, such as the general theory of evolution and the various problems connected with it; the antiquity of man upon the earth and other matters as to which science is still uncertain. Some of these points might seem to conflict with the Bible and the teachings of the Church. As Catholics we can rest assured that the true explanation, whenever it emerges, cannot be opposed to the considered teaching of the Church. What the Church does—and surely it must be clear that from her standpoint she could not