here in America with much more vitality even than in Europe.

The consequence was the bringing up of a series of generations, who,
if not actually believing as so many absurdly did, that the Pope of
Rome was the Scarlet Woman and the Church the Babylon of the
Apocalypse, were quite sure at least that no good could possibly have
come out of the Nazareth of pre-Reformation times. It is only in
recent years that we have come to recognize that all the talk about
the Dark Ages is, as John Fiske said, simply due to ignorance of the
time and its accomplishment. The later medieval period might well be
called the "Bright Ages" for its art and architecture, its magnificent
literature, its interest in education and {501} in scholarship, its
development of democracy and its formulation of the great laws and
constitutions by which the rights of men were guaranteed in
practically every country in Europe. Just as soon as this true state
of affairs with regard to the medieval period is recognized, then all
question of any policy of Church opposition to education and science
disappears.

I have illustrated the lack of knowledge of the true history of
science as the basis of the arguments for the thesis of Church
opposition to science in the present volume by impugning what
President White advances as facts. It can be illustrated still better,
however, from another book written twenty years before President
White's, even a little consideration of which shows how the whole
status of the arguments with regard to the relations of Church and
science has changed during a single generation. Our growing knowledge
of history has literally taken away all the ground on which the older
controversialists used to stand. This is the "History of the Conflict
Between Religion and Science" by Professor John W. Draper, which was
issued in 1874, just forty years ago, and already in 1875 had entered
its third edition, so that the book sold almost as a popular novel at
that time and evidently attracted wide attention. The volume was
accorded the privilege of publication in the International Scientific
Series, and as this set is among the recognized serious books of the
time, some of them classics in science and most of them representing
important contributions to knowledge, no wonder most readers never
thought of doubting its authority or above all questioning its
"facts."

Some of Dr. Draper's work made him deservedly one of the best-known
biological sc