Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 13.djvu/663

 SCIENCE

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SCIENCE

themselves that the claims of Christ are unfounded. For, besides those who either reject His claims through inherited or acquired prejudices, or treat them with indifference, a large number of men try to strengthen their anti-Christian position by scienti- fic forms. Knowing that Christ's Divinity can be proved from the miracles to which He appealed as testimonies of His Father, they formulate the axiom : "Miracles are impossible". Seeing, however, the in- consistency of the formula as long as there is a Ma- ker of the world, they are driven to the next postu- late: "There is no Creator". Seeing again, that the existence of the Creator can be proved from the ex- istence of the world, and convincingly so by a num- ber of arguments, they require new axioms. First they treat the origin of matter as too remote for its cause to be ascertained, and plead that: "Matter is eternal". For a similar reason the origin of life is ex- plained by the arbitrary postulate of "spontaneous generation". Then the wisdom and order displayed in the starry heavens and in the flora and fauna of the earth must be disposed of. To say in plain words "All order in the world is casual" would be offensive to common sense. The axiom is then vested in more scientific language, thus: "From eternity the world has passed through an infinite number of forms, and only the fittest was able to survive".

The substructure of anti-Christian science has still one weak point: the human soul is not from eternity and its spiritual faculties point to a spiritual maker. The fabrication of axioms, once begun, has to be concluded: "The human soul is not essentially differ- ent from the vital principle of the animal". This con- clusion recoininciuls itself as especially strong against what the will dreads: the animal is not immortal, and hence neither is the human soul; consequently what- ever judgment may follow, it will have no effect. The end of the fabrication is bitter. Man is a highly devel- oped orang-outang. There is still one stumbling-block in the Sacred Scriptures, old and new. The Old Testa- ment narrates the creation of man, his fall, the promise of a Redeemer ; it contains prophecicr of a Messias which seem to be fulfilled in Christ and His Church. The New Testament proves the fulfilment of the promises, and presents a superhuman Being, who offered His life for the expiation of sin and attested His Divinity by His own Resurrection ; it gives the constitution and early history of His Church, and promises her existence to the consummation of the world. This could not be allowed to stand in the fac(> of anti-Christian science. A few postulates more or less will do no harm to science as it stiinds. The Hebrew literature is put on a par with that of Persia or China, the history of Paradise is relegated to the realm of legends, the authenticity of the books is denied, contradictions in the contents are pointed out, and the obvious sense is distorted. The axioms used for the annihilation of the Sacred Scriptures have the advantage of plausibility over those used against the Creator. They are draped in a mass of erudition taken from the linguistic and the historical sciences.

But we have not seen all of them yet. The greatest obstacle to anti-Christian science is the Church, which claims Divine origin, authority to teach infallible truth, maintains the inspiration of Scripture, and is confident of her own existence to the end of the world. With her, science cannot play as with philosophy or literature. She is a living institution wielding her sceptre over all the peoples of the world. She has all the weapons of science at her disposal, and members devoted to her, heart and soul. To grant to her equal rights on scientific grounds would be disastrous to the "science without presuppositions". The mere creat- ing of new axioms woukl not seem to be efficient against a living organization. The axioms have to be proclaimed loudly, and kept alive, and finally en- forced by organized opposition, even in some cases by

government power. Books and journals and lecture halls announce the one text, sung in every key, the great axiom: that the Church is essentially unscien- tific as resting on unwarranted presuppositions, and that her scientists can never be true men of science. Mommsen's cry of degradation on the appointment of a Catholic historian in Strasburg (1901) re-echoed loudly from most German universities. And yet, there was question of only a fifth Catholic among seventy-two professors; and this at a university in Alsace-Lorraine, a territory almost entirely Cathohc. Similar propor- tions prevail in most universities. All the axioms of anti-Christian science mentioned above are entirely arbitrary and false. Not one of them can be sup- ported by solid reasons; on the contrary, every one of them has been proved to be false. Thus anti- Christian science has surrounded itself by a number of boundary stakes driven into scientific ground, and has thus limited its own freedom of progress; the "science without presuppositions" is entangled in its own axioms, for no other reason than its aversion to Christ. On the other hand, the scientist who ac- cepts the teaching of Christ need not fall back on a single arbitrary postulate. If he is a philosopher, he starts from the premises dictated by reason. In the world around him he recognizes the natural revelation of a Creator, and by logical deductions concludes from the contingency of things created to the Being Un- created. The same reasoning makes him understand the spirituality and immortahty of the soul. From both results combined he concludes further to moral obligations and the existence of a natural law. Thus prepared he can start into any scientific research with- out the necessity of erecting boundary stakes for the purpose of justifying his prejudices. If he wants to go further and put his faith upon a scientific basis, he may take the books, called the Sacred Scriptures, as a starting-point, apply methodical criticism to their authenticity, and find them just as reliable as any other historical record. Their contents, proph- ecies, and miracles convince him of the Divinity of Christ, and from the testimony of Christ he accepts the entire supernatural Revelation. He has con- structed the science of his faith without any other than scientific premises. Thus the science of the Christian is the only one that gives freedom of research and progress; its boundaries are none but the pale of truth. Anti-Christian science, on the contrary, is the slave of its own preconceived ethics.

III. Unlimited Freedom. — The demand for un- limited freedom in science is unreasonable and unjust, because it leads to licence and rebellion. (1) There is no unlimited freedom in the world, and liberty over- stepping its boundaries always leads to evil. Man himself is neither absolutely free, nor would he desire unbounded freedom. Freedom is not the greatest boon nor the final end of man; it is given to him as a means to reach his end. Within his own mind, man feels bound to truth. Around himself, he sees all nature bound to laws and even dreads disturbances in their regular course. In all his activity he gets along best by remaining within the laws set for him. Those judgments are the best which are formed in accordance with the rules of logic. Those machines and insfi-uments are the finest which are allowed the smallest amount of freedom. Social intercourse is easiest within the rules of propriety. Widening these boundaries does not lead to higher perfection. Opin- ions are free only where certainty cannot be reached ; scientific theories are free as long as they rest on prob- abilities. The freest of all in their thinking are the ignorant. In short, the more freedom of opinion, the less science. Similarly, a railway train with free- dom in more than one line is disastrous, a ship not under the control of the helm is doomed. A nation that depreciates its code of law, that relaxes the ad- ministration of justice, that sets aside the strict rules