Andrew Dickson White

“ History is full of interferences which have cost the earth dear. Strangest of all, some of the direst of them have been made by the best of men, actuated by the purest motives, and seeking the noblest results. These interferences, and the struggle against them, make up the warfare of science.
One statement more, to clear the ground. You will not understand me at all to say that religion has done nothing for science. It has done much for it. The work of Christianity, despite the clamps which men have riveted about it, has been mighty indeed. ”

“ The more we study man, the more does it appear that pride is his ruling passion, and that he affects grandeur even in his misery. Mean and perishable creature that he is, he has been able to persuade men that he can not die without disturbing the whole of nature and obliging the heavens to put themselves to fresh expense in order to light his funeral pomp. Foolish and ridiculous vanity! If we had a just idea of the universe, we should soon comprehend that the death or birth of a prince is too insignificant a matter to stir the heavens. ”

“ While the windows of the Senate-house were rattling with the enemy's cannon, those men had such faith in the destiny of the nation, and such trust in the arts of peace, that they quietly and firmly legislated into being this great, comprehensive system of industrial and scientific education. In all human annals I know of no more noble utterance of faith in national destiny out from the midst of national calamity. ”

“ Perhaps the most unfortunate thing that has ever been done for Christianity is the tying it to forms of science which are doomed and gradually sinking. Just as in the time of Roger Bacon, excellent but mistaken men devoted all their energies to binding Christianity to Aristotle; just as in the time of Reuchlin and Erasmus, they insisted on binding Christianity to Thomas Aquinas—so in the time of Vesalius, such men made every effort to link Christianity to Galen. ”

“ To-day it is a church-floor which gives way, and a multitude of children are taken from the ruins mangled and dead; to-morrow it is a whole city quarter swept away by fire, because some half-taught architects knew no other way of producing architectural effect than by piling up combustible ornaments on inaccessible roofs.
Nor is that all. Our people are laying out millions on millions in buildings which within thirty years—in the advance of taste and knowledge—will be eye-sores and must come down. A building erected by a true architect will grow more beautiful for hundreds of years. ”

“ I name freedom of choice between various courses of study. The old way in the more venerable colleges and universities was, to force all students through one single classical course—the same for all. This system the "new education" discards. General courses in literature, science, and arts, are presented, as well as special courses having reference to the great industries; and the student, with the advice of friends and instructors, takes that which best suits the bent of his mind. We believe that the results are already better than those of the old system. ”

“ Fettered though he was by the absurd methods of his time, led astray as he was by the scholastic spirit, he has conceived ideas of better methods and aims. His eye pierces the mists of scholasticism, he sees the light and draws the world toward it. He stands among the great pioneers of modern physical and natural science. He gives foundations to botany and chemistry, and Humboldt finds in his works the germ of the comprehensive science of physical geography. [66]
The conscience of the time, acting as it supposed in defense of religion, brought out a missile which it hurled with deadly effect. ”

“ Is there any one so senseless as to believe that there are men whose footsteps are higher than their heads?—that the crops and trees grow downward? that the rains and snow and hail fall upward toward the earth?... But if you inquire from those who defend these marvelous fictions, why all things do not fall into that lower part of the heaven, they reply that such is the nature of things, that heavy bodies are borne toward the middle, like the spokes of a wheel; while light bodies, such as clouds, smoke, and fire, tend from the centre toward the heavens on all sides. ”

“ May we not, then, hope that the greatest and best men in the Church, the men standing at centres of thought, will insist with power, more and more, that religion be no longer tied to so injurious a policy as that which this warfare reveals; that searchers for truth, whether in theology or natural science, work on as friends, sure that, no matter how much at variance they may at times seem to be, the truths they reach shall finally be fused into each other? ”

“ In all modern history, interference with science in the supposed interest of religion, no matter how conscientious such interference may have been, has resulted in the direst evils both to religion and to science, and invariably. And, on the other hand, all untrammeled scientific investigation, no matter how dangerous to religion some of its stages may have seemed, for the time, to be, has invariably resisted in the highest good of religion and of science. ”

“ The reverence for scientific achievement, the revelation of the high honors which are in store for those who seek for truth in science—the inevitable comparison between a life devoted to that great pure search, on one hand, and a life devoted to place-hunting or self-grasping on the other—all these shall come to the minds of thoughtful men in lonely garrets of our cities, in remote cabins on our prairies, and thereby shall come strength and hope for higher endeavor. ”

“ Dean Cockburn declared the new science of Geology a study invented by the devil, and unlawful for Christians. When John Reuchlin and his compeers urged the substitution of studies in the classics for studies in the mediæval scholastic philosophy, their books were burned, and they themselves narrowly escaped the same fate.
No, my friends; every study which tends to improve the industry of mankind makes a man nobler and better. Every study which gives man to know more of the history of his race, gives him to see more and more clearly the finger of Providence in history ”

“ Now, sir, I maintain that the true spirit of scientific research—incarnate before us in our honored guest—embracing as it does zeal in search for truth, devotion to duty which such a search imposes, faith in good as the normal and necessary result of such a search that such a spirit is, at this moment, one of the most needed elements in the political progress of our country. ”

“ Worse than that, the well-meaning defenders of the faith had wrought into the very fibre of the European heart that most unfortunate of all ideas, the idea that there is a necessary antagonism between science and religion. Like the landsman who lashes himself to the anchor of the sinking ship, they had attached the great fundamental doctrines of Christianity, by the strongest cords of logic which they could spin, to these mistaken ideas in science, and the advance of knowledge had wellnigh engulfed them. ”

“ No matter whether Science shall complete her demonstration that man has been on the earth not merely six thousand years, or six millions of years; no matter whether she reveals new ideas of the Creator or startling relations between his creatures; no matter how many more gyves and clamps upon the spirit of Christianity she destroys, the result, when fully thought out, will serve and strengthen religion not less than science. ”

“ Justice compels me to say that the founders of Protestantism were no less zealous against the new scientific doctrine. Said Martin Luther: "People gave ear to an upstart astrologer, who strove to show that the earth revolves, not the heavens or the firmament, the sun and the moon. Whoever wishes to appear clever must devise some new system which of all systems is, of course, the very best. This fool wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy. But Sacred Scripture tells us that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and not the earth." ”

“ Here is a great Republic, dependent, as all confess, upon the knowledge of those who live beneath its sway. And yet you may go from one end of the country to the other and hardly find the slightest provision for any real instruction in Political Science, whether it be in political economy or political history. ”

“ Joseph de Maistre, uttering his hatred of physical sciences, declaring that man has paid too dearly for them, asserting that they must be subjected to theology, likening them to fire—good when confined but fearful when scattered about this brilliant thinker has been the centre of a great opposing camp in our own time—an army of good men who cannot relinquish the idea that the Bible is a text-book of science. ”

“ But it is said that scientific and industrial education does not better agriculture. Does it not? Of all assertions this is the most fearful indictment against the most extended field of human thought and work. If this be true, then is agriculture the only industrial pursuit unworthy of a human being; for this assertion would not be made against any other branch of human industry. But it is not true. The whole history of agriculture shows exactly the reverse of this. ”

“ You have noted already that there are, generally, two sorts of attack on a new science. First, there is the attack by pitting against science some great doctrine in theology. You saw this in astronomy, when Bellarmin and others insisted that the doctrine of the earth revolving about the sun is contrary to the doctrine of the incarnation. So now, against geology, it was urged that the scientific doctrine that the fossils represented animals which died before Adam, was contrary to the doctrine of Adam's fall and that "death entered the world by sin." ”

“ The gain is not simply that mankind has arrived at a clearer conception of law in the universe; not merely that thinking men see more clearly that we are part of a system not requiring constant patching and arbitrary interference; but perhaps best of all is the fact that science has cleared away one more series of dogmas which tend to debase rather than to develop man's whole moral and religious nature. ”

“ Simply because there generally are in the foreign product a skill, a beauty, a taste in design, that appeal to that sense of beauty which God has implanted in the rudest of our race.
Other nations in this warfare of industry see this. England is devoting millions to art education, in order to keep up her manufactures, and it has established in the Privy Council a science and art section to direct this expenditure wisely; Germany is doing even more; France has been doing it for generations, and it has given her the supremacy thus far in a multitude of branches of manufacture. ”

“ But suppose that no young men came forward to take agricultural studies, the new education would still tell powerfully on agriculture. Think you that we can send out year after year—as we did last year—a hundred graduates from all our various departments, whose powers of observation have been trained and whose real knowledge of subjects bearing on agriculture has been extended by close study in Botany, Animal Physiology, Geology, and Chemistry, without its telling ultimately on the progress of agriculture? ”

“ There is a legend well known to most of us—and which has an advantage over most legends in that it is substantially true—that a very distinguished man of science in this country was once approached by an eminent practical man, and urged to turn his great powers in scientific investigation and exposition to effect in making a fortune.
And, to the great surprise of that man of business, the man of science responded, "But, my dear sir, I have no time to waste in making money." ”

“ They retreated in confusion amid the laughter of all France; and a well-meant attempt to check what was feared might be dangerous in science simply ended in bringing ridicule on religion, and thrusting still deeper into the minds of thousands of men that most mistaken of all mistaken ideas—the conviction that religion and science are enemies. ”

“ But for that interference with science, this nineteenth century would, without doubt, be enjoying discoveries which will not be reached before the twentieth century. Thousands of precious lives shall be lost in this century, tens of thousands shall suffer discomfort, privation, sickness, poverty, ignorance, for lack of discoveries and methods which, but for this mistaken religious fight against Bacon and his compeers, would now be blessing the earth. ”

“ And what, then, must the Great Author of all things think of one who thus comes into his presence, extols his works in all moods and tenses, the Great Author knowing that this flatterer has never studied out a line in the great book of Nature—nay, that he has discouraged others from studying it? I come now to certain guiding ideas—necessary in carrying out any worthy system of scientific and industrial education. ”

“ The national institutions for education should, indeed, have farms and workshops; but the foremost object of these should be, not to afford simple employment to young men, but to give them, in connection with their studies in the sciences, what may be called laboratories, where they can see science applied in as practical a manner as possible—laboratories, whether field or shop, where they can see sciences limited by the necessities of practice. ”

“ I maintain that, in the studies I now urge, there comes a culture of high purpose, a culture of thought for our fellow-men, a culture involving the idea of duty, which certainly is worth any other sort of culture.
And, if any one objects that these studies are based upon Physiology, which has led man into dangerous paths, that it is, in fact, an unsafe study, I would simply point to these words, uttered so long ago, and from which, certainly, these objectors will make no appeal: "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." ”

“ The processes of mathematics were constantly improved, the heavenly bodies were steadily though silently observed, and at length appeared, afar off from the centres of thought, on the borders of Poland, a plain, simple-minded scholar, who first fairly uttered to the world the truth, now so commonplace, then so astounding, that the sun and planets do not revolve about the earth, but that the earth and planets revolve about the sun, and that man was Nicholas Kopernik. ”

“ Darwinism, whether Darwin knows it or not, whether the clergy, who are half prepared to accept it in blind fright as 'science,' know it or not, is a denial of every article of the Christian faith. It is supreme folly to talk as some do about accommodating Christianity to Darwinism. Either those who so talk do not understand Christianity, or they do not understand Darwinism. ”