History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science

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new aspects of Natu

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more solemn, more mournful, than that of the dying of an ancient relig

ivinities of Olympus. Her historians, considering the orderly course of political affairs, the manifest uniformity in the acts of men, and that there was no event occurring before their eyes for which they could not find an obvious cause in some preceding event, b

inous countries with supernatural wonders-enchantresses, sorcerers, giants, ogres, harpies, gorgons, centaurs, cyclops. The azure vault was the floor of heaven; there Zeu

l over the Black and Mediterranean Seas. The time-honored wonders that had been glorified in the "Odyssey," and sacred in public faith, were found to have no existence. As a better knowledge of Nature was obtained, the sky was shown

imes, and had stood the test of ages, must necessarily be true. Then, as the opposing evidence became irresistible, they were content to admit that these marvels were allegories under which the wisdom of the ancients had concealed many sacred and mysterious things. They tried to reconcile, what now in their misgivings they feared might be myth

y escaped being stoned to death for blasphemy. But the frantic efforts of those who are interested in supporting delusions must always e

om their contradictions that man has no criterion of truth; that, since his ideas of what is good and what is evil differ according to the country in which he lives, they can have no foundation in Nature, but must be altogether the result of education; that right and wrong are nothin

omestic wars between the rival states checked her advancement. She was poor, her leading men had become corrupt. They were ever ready to barter patriotic considerations for foreign gold, to sell themselves for Persian

, the Black, the Caspian, the Indian, the Persian, the Red Seas. Through its territories there flowed six of the grandest rivers in the world-the Euphrates, the Tigris, the Indus, the Jaxartes, the Oxus, the Nile, each more than a thousand miles in length. Its surface reached from thirteen hundre

he very best of her troops. She did not hesitate sometimes to give the command of her armies to Greek generals, of her fleets to Greek captains. In the political convulsions through which she had passed, Greek soldiers had often been used by her contending chiefs. These military operations were attended by a momentous result. They revea

s, Platea, Mycale. To plunder rich Persian provinces had become an irresistible temptation. Such was the expedition of Agesilaus, the Spartan king, whose brilliant successes were, however, checked by the Persian government resorting to its time-proved

dynasty in the very centre of its power. Assassinated while his preparations were incomplete, he was succeeded by his son Alexander, then a youth. A general assembly of Greeks at Corinth had unanimously elected him in his father's stead. There were some disturbances in Illyria; Alexander had to march his army as far north as the Danube to quell th

s treasures, was the fruit of the victory. The remainder of that year he spent in the military organization of the conquered provinces. Meantime Darius, the Persian king, had advanced an army of six hundred thousand men to prevent the passage of the Macedonians into Syria. In a battle that ensued among the mountain-defiles at Issus, the Persians were again overthrown. So great was the slaughter that Alexander, and Ptolemy, one

y necessary for him to be sovereign at sea. With Cyprus and Egypt in his possession he felt no solicitude about Greece. The siege of Tyre cost him more than half a year. In revenge for this delay, he crucified, it is said, two thousand of his prisoners. Jerusalem voluntarily surrendered, and therefore was treated leniently: but the passage of the Macedonian army into Egypt being obstructed at Gaza, the Persian governor of which, Betis, made a most obstinate defense, that place, after a siege of two months

to an accidental meeting of the god Mars with the virgin Rhea Sylvia, as she went with her pitcher for water to the spring. The Egyptian disciples of Plato would have looked with anger on those who rejected the legend that Perictione, the mother of that great philosopher, a pure virgin, had suffered an immaculate conception through the influences of Apollo, and that the god had declared to Ariston, to whom she was betrothed, the parentage of the child. When Alexander issued his letters, orders, and decrees, styling himself "King Alexander, the son of Jupiter Ammon," they came to the inhabitants of Egypt and Syria with an authority that now

e more southerly Mesopotamian plains; more abundant forage could also thus be procured for the cavalry. On the left bank of the Tigris, near Arbela, he encountered the great army of eleven hundred thousand men brought up by Darius from Babylon. The death of the Persian monarch, which soon

Greece; the absolute exclusion of her navy from the Mediterranean; the check on all her attempts at intriguing with or bribing Athenians or Spartans, heretofore so often resorted to with success; the submission of Egypt; another winter spent in the political organization of that venerable country; the convergence of the whole army from the Black and Red Seas toward the nitre-covered plains of Mesopotamia in the ensuing spring; the passage of

the morning of the world. In the halls of Esar-haddon they had stood before the thrones of grim old Assyrian kings, guarded by winged bulls. In Babylon there still remained its walls, once more than sixty miles in compass, and, after the ravages of three centuries and three conquerors, still more than eighty feet in height; there were still the ruins of the temple of cloud encompassed Bel, on its top was planted the observatory wherein the weird Chaldean astronomers had held nocturnal communion with th

obelisks, sphinxes, colossal bulls. Ecbatana, the cool summer retreat of the Persian kings, was defended by seven encircling walls of hewn and polished blocks, the interior ones in succession of increasing height, and of different colors, in astrological accordance with the seven planets. The palace was roofed w

e lost above the clouds. In the deserts were mirages, on the hill-sides shadows of fleeting clouds sweeping over the forests. They were in a land of amber-colored date-palms and cypresses, of tamarisks, green myrtles, and oleanders. At Arbela they had fought against Indian elephants; in the thickets of the Caspian they had roused from his lair the lurking royal tiger. They had seen animals which, compared with those of Europe, were not only strange, but colossal-the rhinoceros, the hippopotamus, the camel, the crocodiles of the Nile and the Ganges. They had encountered men of many complexions and many costumes: the swarthy Syrian, the olive-colored Persian, the black African. Even of Alexander himself

covered by modern research in the clay libraries of the Assyrian kings. Ptolemy, the Egyptian astronomer, possessed a Babylonian record of eclipses, going back 747 years before our era. Long-continued and close observations were necessary, before some of these astronomical results that have reached our times could have been ascertained. Thus the Babylonians had fixed the length of a tropica

derable perfection. These old observers had made a catalogue of the stars, had divided the zodiac into twelve signs; they had parted the day into twelve hours, the night into twelve. They had, as Aristotle says, for a long time devoted

nto blocks, produced ineffaceable proofs. From their tile-libraries we are still to reap a literary and historical harvest. They were not without some knowledge of optics. The convex lens found at Nim

time, had neither experimented nor observed! They had conten

ic faith. But now the worshiper of the vile Olympian divinities, whose obscene lives must have been shocking to every pious man, was brought in contact with a grand, a solemn, a consistent religious system having its foundation on a philosophical basis. Persia, as is the case with all empires of long duration, had passed through many changes of religion. She had followed the Monotheism of Zoroaster; had then accepted Dualism, and exchanged that for Magianism. At the time of the Macedonian expediti

a serpent to ruin the paradise which the Good Spirit had made. Thes

il in a world, the maker and ruler of which is supremely good. Each of the personified principles of light and darkness, Ormuzd and Ahriman, had his subordinate angels, his counselors, his armies. It is the duty of a good

e was considered as the most worthy representative of the Supreme Being. On altars erected, not in temples, but under the blue canopy of the sky, perpetual fires were kept burning, and the ri

imate friends lived in continual dread. Clitus, one of the latter, he in a moment of fury had stabbed to the heart. Callisthenes, the intermedium between himself and Aristotle, he had caused to be hanged, or, as was positively asserted by some who knew the facts, had had him put upon the rack and then cr

nt mainly claims our attention. Ptolemy, who was a son of King Philip by Arsinoe, a beautiful concubine, and who in his boyhood had been driven into exile with Alexander,

hat in gratitude they paid divine honors to him, and saluted him with the title of Soter (the Savior). By

ny Jews from Palestine to people the city, and not only did Ptolemy Soter bring one hundred thousand more after his siege of Jerusalem, but Philadelphus, his successor, redeemed from slavery one hundred and ninety-eight thousand of that people, paying their Egyptian owners a just money equivalent for each. To all these Jews the same privileges were accorded as to the Macedonians. In consequence of thi

ationalities: 1. Native Egyptians 2. Greeks; 3. Jews-a fact th

manner of the Egyptians, rested the body of Alexander. In a funereal journey of two years it had been brought with great pomp from Babylon. At first the coffin was of pure gold, but this having led to a violation of the tomb, it was replaced by one of alabaster. But not these, not even the great light-house, Pharos, built of blocks of white marble and so high that t

nd converse together. Its sculptured apartments contained the Philadelphian library, and were crowded with the choicest statues and pictures. This library eventually comprised four hundred thousand volumes. In the course of time, probably on account of inadequate accommodation for so many books, an additional libr

ast met the Genius of the West, and this Paris of antiquity became a focus of fashionable dissipation and universal skepticism. In the allu

adelphus had three objects in view: 1. The perpetuation of such kn

transcript was given to the owner, and the original placed in the library. Often a very large pecuniary indemnity was paid. Thus it is said of Ptolemy Euergetes that, having obtained from Athens the works of Euripides, Sophocles, and Aeschylus, he sent to their owners transcripts, together with about fifteen thousand dollars, as an indemnity. On his return from the Syrian expedition he carried back in

the original organization of the Museum the residents were divided into four faculties-literature; mathematics, astronomy, medicine. Minor branches were appropriately classified under one of these general heads; thus natural history was considered to be a branch of medicine. An officer of very great distinction presided over the e

ents being into degrees and sixths. On the floor of this observatory a meridian line was drawn. The want of correct means of measuring time and temperature was severely felt; the clepsydra of Ctesibius answered very imperfectly for the former, the hydrometer floating in a cup of water for the latter; it measured variations of temperature by variations of density. Philadelphus, who toward the close of his life was haunted

of human knowledge. There flocked to this great intellectual centre, students from all countries. It is said that at one time not fewer than fourteen thousand

great loss, that collected by Eumenes, King of Pergamus, was presented by Mark Antony to Queen Cleopatra. O

ibe briefly the philosophical basis of the Museum, and s

we must mention in the first rank his "History of the Campaigns of Alexander." Great as a soldier and as a sovereign, Ptolemy Soter added to his glory

ellectual corner-stone on which the Museum rested. King Philip had committed the education of Alexander to Aristotle, and during the Per

merous; its correctness is established if it should enable us to predict other facts until then unknown. This system implies endless toil in the collection of facts, both by experiment and observation; it implies also a close meditation on them. It is, therefor

e, and that the various organic forms presented to us by Nature are those which existing conditions permit. Should the conditions change, the forms will also chang

es in science are due. In its most improved form it rises by inductions from phenomena to their causes, and th

enician, had for many years been established at Athens. His disciples took the name of Stoics. His doctrines long survived him, and, in times when there was no other consolation for man, offered a su

n accordance with reason. Our existence should be intellectual, we should survey with equanimity all pleasures and all pains. We should never forget that we are freemen, not the slaves of society. "I possess," said the Stoic, "a treasure which not all the world can rob me of-no one can deprive me of death." We should remember that Nature in her operations aims at the universal, and never spares individuals, but uses them as means for the accomplishment of her ends. It is, therefore, for us to submit to Destiny, cultivating, as the things necessary to virtue, knowledge, temperance, fortitu

d be not so much blasphemy as absurdity to impute the form, the sentiments, the passions of man. All revelation is, necessarily, a mere fiction. That which men call chance is only the effect of an unknown cause. Even of chances there is a law. There is no such thing as Providence, for Nature proceeds under irresistible laws, and in this respe

insensibility of sleep, so the philosopher, weary of the world, should look forward to the tranquillity of extinction. Of these things, however, we should think doubtingly, since the mind can produce no certain knowledge from its internal resources alone. It is unphilosophical to inquire into fi

ltivation of virtue and of friendship, the observance of faith and truth, an un

to its full development, but in the end it supplanted Peripateticism, and through the New Academy left a permanent impress on Christianity. The philosophical method of Plato was the inverse of that of Aristotle. Its starting-

was capable of quickly producing what seemed to be splendid, though in reality unsubstantial results; that of Aristotle was more tardy in its operation, but much more solid. It implied endless labor in the collection of facts, a ted

ndolent methods were preferred to laborious observation and severe mental exercise. The schools of Neo-Platonism were crowded

studying Nature is by experimental interrogation. The researches of Archimedes in specific gravity, and the works of Ptolemy on optics, resemble our present investigations in experimental philosophy, and stand in striking contrast with the speculative vagaries of the older writers. Laplace says that the only observation which the history of astronomy offers us, mad

xandrian Museum to the stock of human knowledge. It is sufficient that the reader should obtain a general impression of thei

hallenge contradiction from the whole human race. After more than twenty-two centuries it still survives, a model of accuracy, perspicuity, and a standard of exact demonstration. This great geometer not only wrote on ot

tombstone. He also treated of the quadrature of the circle and of the parabola; he wrote on Conoids and Spheroids, and on the spiral that bears his name, the genesis of which was suggested to him by his friend Conon the Alexandrian. As a mathematician, Europe produced no equal to him for nearly two thousand years. In physical science he laid the foundation of hydrostatics; invented a meth

of continents, the position of mountain-chains, the action of clouds, the geological submersion of lands, the elevation of ancient sea-beds, the opening of the Dardanelles and the straits of Gibraltar, and the relations of the Euxine Sea. He composed a complete system of the earth, in three books-physical, ma

perbola. In like manner I must pass the astronomical observations of Alistyllus and Timocharis. It was to those of the latter on Spica Virginis that Hipparchus was indebted for his great discovery of the precession of the eqninoxes. Hipparchus also determined the first inequality of the moon, the equation of the centre. He adopted the theory of epicycles and eccentrics, a geometrical conception for the purpose of resolving the apparent motions of the heavenly bodies on the prin

des by the gnomon, describes climates, shows how ordinary may be converted into sidereal time, gives reasons for preferring the tropical to the sidereal year, furnishes the solar theory on the principle of the sun's orbit being a simple eccentric, explains the equation of time, advances to the discussion of the motions of the moon, treats of the first inequality, of her eclipses, and the motion of her nodes. It then gives Ptolemy's own great discovery-that which has made his name immortal-the discovery of the moon's evection or second inequality, reducing it to the epicyclic theory. It attempts the determination of

a reaction engine, on the principle of the eolipile. The silence of the halls of Serapis was broken by the water-clocks of Ctesibius and Apollonius, which drop by drop measured time. When the Roman calendar had fallen into such confusion tha

religious sentiment of their time. They prostituted it to the purpose of state-craft, find

ad seen the mythological conceptions of their ancestral country dwindle into fables; the wonders with which the old poets adorned the Mediterranean had been discovered to be baseless

ir amorous ditties, the fate of Adonis, it was only as a recollection, not as a reality. Again and again had Persia changed her national faith. For the revelation of Zoroaster she had substituted Dualism; then

es dedicated, had again and again submitted to the sword of a foreign conqueror. In the land of the Pyramids, the Colossi, the Sphinx, the images of the gods had ceased to represent living realities. They had ceased to be objects of

thology, the revelations of Asia, the time-consecrated dogmas of Egypt, all had passed o

organic forms of geological ages, once gone, are clean gone forever, and have no restoration, no return. The

ing of civilization, nor in the dreams of mystics who thought that they were inspired. It is to be discovered by the investigations o

ecognized by Eratosthenes; the world will not permit the great physical inventions and discoveries made in Alexandria and Syracuse to be forgotten. The names of

esopotamia; the mathematics also had been cultivated with a certain degree of success in India. But in none of these countries had investigation assumed a connected and consistent form; in none was phy