A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom
by ANDREW DICKSON WHITE
LL.D. (Yale), L.H.D. (Columbia), PH.DR. (Jena)
Late President and Professor of History at Cornell University
Two Volumes Combined
New York
D. Appleton and Company
1898
Anaximander, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and, greatest of all, Aristotle, as we have seen, developed them, making their way at times by guesses toward truths since established by observation. Aristotle especially, both by speculation and observation, arrived at some results which, had Greek freedom of thought continued, might have brought the world long since to its present plane of biological knowledge; for he reached something like the modern idea of a succession of higher organizations from lower, and made the fruitful suggestion of ``a perfecting principle'' in Nature.
With the coming in of Christian theology this tendency toward a yet truer theory of evolution was mainly stopped, but the old crude view remained, and as a typical example of it we may note the opinion of St. Basil the Great in the fourth century. Discussing the work of creation, he declares that, at the command of God, ``the waters were gifted with productive power''; ``from slime and muddy places frogs, flies, and gnats came into being''; and he finally declares that the same voice which gave this energy and quality of productiveness to earth and water shall be similarly efficacious until the end of the world. St. Gregory of Nyssa held a similar view.
This idea of these great fathers of the Eastern Church took even stronger hold on the great father of the Western Church. For St. Augustine, so fettered usually by the letter of the sacred text, broke from his own famous doctrine as to the acceptance of Scripture and spurned the generally received belief of a creative process like that by which a toymaker brings into existence a box of playthings. In his great treatise on Genesis he says: ``To suppose that God formed man from the dust with bodily hands is very childish.... God neither formed man with bodily hands nor did he breathe upon him with throat and lips.''
St. Augustine then suggests the adoption of the old emanation or evolution theory, shows that ``certain very small animals may not have been created on the fifth and sixth days, but may have originated later from putrefying matter.'' argues that, even if this be so, God is still their creator, dwells upon such a potential creation as involved in the actual creation, and speaks of animals ``whose numbers the after-time unfolded.''
In his great treatise on the Trinity - the work to which he devoted the best thirty years of his life - we find the full growth of this opinion. He develops at length the view that in the creation of living beings there was something like a growth - that God is the ultimate author, but works through secondary causes; and finally argues that certain substances are endowed by God with the power of producing certain classes of plants and animals.
This idea of a development by secondary causes apart from the original creation was helped in its growth by a theological exigency. More and more, as the organic world was observed, the vast multitude of petty animals, winged creatures, and ``creeping things'' was felt to be a strain upon the sacred narrative. More and more it became difficult to reconcile the dignity of the Almighty with his work in bringing each of these creatures before Adam to be named; or to reconcile the human limitations of Adam with his work in naming ``every living creature''; or to reconcile the dimensions of Noah's ark with the space required for preserving all of them, and the food of all sorts necessary for their sustenance, whether they were admitted by twos, as stated in one scriptural account, or by sevens, as stated in the other.
The inadequate size of the ark gave especial trouble. Origen had dealt with it by suggesting that the cubit was Six times greater than had been supposed. Bede explained Noah's ability to complete so large a vessel by supposing that he worked upon it during a hundred years; and, as to the provision of food taken into it, he declared that there was no need of a supply for more than one day, since God could throw the animals into a deep sleep or otherwise miraculously make one day's supply sufficient; he also lessened the strain on faith still more by diminishing the number of animals taken into the ark - supporting his view upon Augustine's theory of the later development of insects out of carrion.
Doubtless this theological necessity was among the main reasons which led St. Isidore of Seville, in the seventh century, to incorporate this theory, supported by St. Basil and St. Augustine, into his great encyclopedic work which gave materials for thought on God and Nature to so many generations. He familiarized the theological world still further with the doctrine of secondary creation, giving such examples of it as that ``bees are generated from decomposed veal, beetles from horseflesh, grasshoppers from mules, scorpions from crabs,'' and, in order to give still stronger force to the idea of such transformations, he dwells on the biblical account of Nebuchadnezzar, which appears to have taken strong hold upon medieval thought in science, and he declares that other human beings had been changed into animals, especially into swine, wolves, and owls.
This doctrine of after-creations went on gathering strength until, in the twelfth century, Peter Lombard, in his theological summary, The Sentences, so powerful in moulding the thought of the Church, emphasized the distinction between animals which spring from carrion and those which are created from earth and water; the former he holds to have been created ``potentially'' the latter ``actually.''
In the century following, this idea was taken up by St. Thomas Aquinas and virtually received from him its final form. In the Summa, which remains the greatest work of medieval thought, he accepts the idea that certain animals spring from the decaying bodies of plants and animals, and declares that they are produced by the creative word of God either actually or virtually. He develops this view by saying, ``Nothing was made by God, after the six days of creation, absolutely new, but it was in some sense included in the work of the six days''; and that ``even new species, if any appear, have existed before in certain native properties, just as animals are produced from putrefaction.''
