Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 6.djvu/447

Rh something more remains: "One thing seems certain," say the memorialists, viz., "that if chairs for the physical and natural sciences be not soon founded in the Catholic University, very many young men will have their faith exposed to dangers which the creation of a school of science in the university would defend them from. For our generation of Irish Catholics are writhing under the sense of their inferiority in science, and are determined that such inferiority shall not long continue; and so, if scientific training be unattainable at our university, they will seek it at Trinity, or at the Queen's Colleges, in not one of which is there a Catholic professor of science."

Those who imagined the Catholic University at Kensington to be due to the spontaneous recognition on the part of the Roman hierarchy of the intellectual needs of the age, will derive enlightenment from this, and still more from what follows; for the most formidable threat remains. To the picture of Catholic students seceding to Trinity and the Queen's Colleges, the memorialists add this darkest stroke of all: "They will, in the solitude of their own homes, unaided by any guiding advice, devour the works of Häckel, Darwin, Huxley, Tyndall, and Lyell; works innocuous if studied under a professor who would point out the difference between established facts and erroneous inferences, but which are calculated to sap the faith of a solitary student, deprived of a discriminating judgment to which he could refer for a solution of his difficulties."

In the light of the knowledge given by this courageous memorial, and of similar knowledge otherwise derived, the recent Catholic manifesto did not at all strike me as a chuckle over the mistake of a maladroit adversary, but rather as an evidence of profound uneasiness on the part of the cardinal, the archbishops, and the bishops who signed it. They acted toward it, however, with their accustomed practical wisdom. As one concession to the spirit which it embodied, the Catholic University at Kensington was brought forth, apparently as the effect of spontaneous inward force, and not of outward pressure which was rapidly becoming too formidable to be successfully opposed.

The memorialists point with bitterness to the fact that "the name of no Irish Catholic is known in connection with the physical and natural sciences." But this, they ought to know, is the complaint of free and cultivated minds wherever the priesthood exercises dominant power. Precisely the same complaint has been made with respect to the Catholics of Germany. The great national literature and scientific achievements of that country in modern times are almost wholly the work of Protestants; a vanishingly small fraction of it only being derived from members of the Roman Church, although the number of these in Germany is at least as great as that of the Protestants. "The question arises," says a writer in a German periodical, "what is the cause of a phenomenon so humiliating to the Catholics? It cannot be referred to want of natural endowment due to climate (for the