is La Terre Saincte, Paris, 1664,
pp. 89-92, 130, 218, etc.; for Hottinger, see his Historiae
Creatonis Examen theologico-philologicum, Heidelberg, 1659, lib.
vi, quaest lxxxiii; for Kirchmaier, see his Disputationes Zoologicae
(published collectively after his death), Jena, 1736; for Dannhauer, see
his Disputationes Theologicae, Leipsic, 1707, p. 14; for Bochart, see
his Hierozoikon, sive De Animalibus Sacre Scripturae, Leyden, 1712.

The inquiry into Nature having thus been pursued nearly two thousand
years theologically, we find by the middle of the sixteenth century some
promising beginnings of a different method--the method of inquiry into
Nature scientifically--the method which seeks not plausibilities but
facts. At that time Edward Wotton led the way in England and Conrad
Gesner on the Continent, by observations widely extended, carefully
noted, and thoughtfully classified.

This better method of interrogating Nature soon led to the formation of
societies for the same purpose. In 1560 was founded an Academy for the
Study of Nature at Naples, but theologians, becoming alarmed, suppressed
it, and for nearly one hundred years there was no new combined effort
of that sort, until in 1645 began the meetings in London of what was
afterward the Royal Society. Then came the Academy of Sciences in
France, and the Accademia del Cimento in Italy; others followed in all
parts of the world, and a great new movement was begun.

Theologians soon saw a danger in this movement. In Italy, Prince Leopold
de' Medici, a protector of the Florentine Academy, was bribed with a
cardinal's hat to neglect it, and from the days of Urban VIII to Pius
IX a similar spirit was there shown. In France, there were frequent
ecclesiastical interferences, of which Buffon's humiliation for stating
a simple scientific truth was a noted example. In England, Protestantism
was at first hardly more favourable toward the Royal Society, and the
great Dr. South denounced it in his sermons as irreligious.

Fortunately, one thing prevented an open breach between theology and
science: while new investigators had mainly given up the medieval method
so dear to the Church, they had very generally retained the conception
of direct creation and of design throughout creation--a design having
as its main purpose the profit, instruction, enjoyment, and amusement of
man.

On this the naturally opposing tendencies of theology and science were
compromised. Science, w