Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 42.djvu/312

296 of water, were studied by the right method and with results that enriched the world.

The Academy was a fortress of science, and siege was soon laid to it. The votaries of scholastic learning denounced it as irreligious; quarrels were fomented; Leopold was bribed with a cardinal's hat and drawn away to Rome; and, after ten years of beleaguering, the fortress fell: Borelli was left a beggar; Oliva killed himself in despair.

So, too, the noted Academy of the Lincei at times incurred the ill-will of the papacy by the very fact that it included thoughtful investigators. It was "patronized" by Pope Urban VIII in such manner as to paralyze it, and it was afterward vexed by Pope Gregory XVI; even in our own time sessions of scientific associations were discouraged and thwarted by Pope Pius IX.

Such was the struggle of the physical sciences in general. Let us now look briefly at one special example out of many, which reveals, as well as any, the beginning, continuance, and end of theological interference with the evolution of them.

It will doubtless seem amazing to many that for ages the weight of theological thought in Christendom was thrown against the idea of the suffocating properties of certain gases, and especially of carbonic acid. Although in antiquity we see men forming a right theory of gases in mines, we find that, early in the history of the Church, St. Clement of Alexandria put forth, the theory that these gases are manifestations of diabolic action, and that, throughout Christendom, suffocation in caverns, wells, and cellars was attributed to the direct action of evil spirits. Evidences of this view abound through the mediæval period, and even as late as the Reformation period a great authority,