History of the conflict between religion and science / by John William Draper.

  • Draper, John William, 1811-1882.
Date:
1910
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: History of the conflict between religion and science / by John William Draper. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    its demands are the most pretentions, and partly because it has commonly sought to enforce those demands by the civil power. None of the Protestant Churches has ever occupied a position so imperious—none has ever had such wide-spread political influence. For the most part they have been averse to constraint, and except in very few instances their opposition has not passed be- yond the exciting of theological odium. As to Science, she has never sought to ally herself to civil power. She has never attempted to throw odium or inflict social ruin on any human being. She has never subjected any one to mental torment, physical torture, least of all to death, for the piu’pose of uphold- ing or promoting her ideas. She presents herself un- stained by cruelties and crimes. But in the Vatican— we have only to recall the Inquisition—the hands that are now raised in appeals to the Most Merciful are crimsoned. They have been steeped in blood! There are two modee of historical composition, the artistic and the scientific. The fonner implies that men give origin to events; it therefore selects some promi- nent individual, pictui-es him under a fanciful form, and Ynakes him the hero of a romance. The latter, in- sisting that human affairs present an unbroken chain, in which each fact is the offspring of some preceding fact, and the parent of some subsequent fact, declares that men do not control events, but that events control men. The former gives origin to compositions, which, however much they may interest or delight ns, are but a grade