ory of the foundation of the universities. It will be a source of
wonder to many people how, with all this as a matter of simple
educational history, the traditions with regard to the supposed
opposition of the Church and the Popes to science have grown up. This
is not so difficult to understand, however, as might be thought, {391}
and a few words of explanation will serve to show that there was
opposition to science, but that this was not due to religious
intolerance in any proper sense of the term.

Those who give the religious element a prominent place in this, forget
how much natural opposition to the introduction of new ideas there is
in men's minds, quite apart from their religious convictions. Nearly
two centuries ago Dean Swift said, in his own bitter frame of mind of
course, but still with an approach to truth that has made the
expression one of the oft-quoted passages from his works: "When a true
genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign--that all
the asses are in confederacy against him."

I suppose the Dean himself would have been the first to insist that
some of his colleagues in the ministry eminently deserved the
opprobrious substantive epithet he employed. It would be too much to
expect that there should not be as many foolish ones among the clergy
of the olden times as in any other of the professions. Occasionally
one of these foolish clergymen rose up in opposition to science.
Whenever he did, especially if he belonged to the class mentioned by
Dean Swift, then he surely made his religion the principal reason for
his opposition. That gave an added prestige in his mind and in the
minds of those who accepted his teachings, to whatever he had to say
on the subject. This no more involved the Church itself, nor
ecclesiastics generally, in the condemnation of the particular
scientific doctrine, than does the frequent opposition of peculiar
members of medical societies to real progress in medicine, involve the
organization to which they belong in the old-fogyism which would
prevent advance.

It must not be forgotten that small minds are always prone to find
very respectable reasons for their opposition to something that has
been hitherto unknown to them. While novelty is supposed to attract,
and does when it comes in a form not too unfamiliar, and when men are
not asked to give up old convictions for its sake, real newness always
evokes opposition. Washington Allston once said very well wi