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Chapter I. Free From The Yoke Of The Supernatural

Ignoramus, We Ignore

The liberal principle of research rests on the basis of the humanitarian view of the world, which makes man autonomous, and causes him to turn his eyes from above and downward, and to fix them upon his earthly existence. To remain true to its own idea, this liberal science will feel the necessity to sever itself gradually from the restraining powers of the world beyond, and to shun the thought of God and of His divine influence and supremacy over the world and human life. It must resent such truths as a burdensome yoke that oppresses human freedom.

And to this thought it remains faithful, if not in all its representatives, then at any rate in a good many of them. With unremitting persistency it enforces in all its domains the demand: Science must not reckon with supernatural factors. Ignoramus is its watchword, “we do not know it” in the sense of its usual agnosticism, but “we ignore it” in the spirit of the impulse which dreads the loss of its freedom through higher powers. Creation and miracles, divine revelation and the God-imposed duty of belief, it does not know. A moral law, as given by God, does not exist for this science. It wants nothing to do with a religion that worships a personal God, much less with a supernatural religion, with mysteries, miracles, and grace. It praises all the higher that modern religion of sentiment, without dogmas and religious duties, which sovereign man creates for himself, a poetical adornment of his individuality, a religion he need not ask what he owes it, but rather what it offers him. All connection with the world beyond is cut off. Man is now free in his own house. We shall show this in detail, by the testimony chiefly of men generally accepted as foremost representatives of modern science. We do not assert, however, that all representatives of modern science belong here. Far be it from us to sit in judgment as to the good intentions of the champions of liberal science. We know very well that an education indifferent to religion, early habitual association with the ideas of a sceptical, naturalistic philosophy, the acquisition of prejudices and unsolved difficulties, a continuous stay in an intellectual atmosphere foreign and inimical to religious belief – all this, we well understand, will gradually rob the mind of all inclination and unbiassed judgment for religious truth, and thus make for apostasy from religion. Nor do we assert that the idea of God and Christianity are extinct in the hearts of the representatives of liberal science, but we do assert that their science no longer wants to know God and His true religion, that only too often it is in the grip of a Theophobia, which slinks past God and His works, with its eyes designedly averted.

At the same time the unprepossession of this science will be made clear. “A feeling of degradation pervades the German university circles,” so the learned Mommsen expressed himself some years ago when Strassburg was to get a Catholic chair of history; therefore a Catholic who takes his Catholic view of the world as his guide cannot be unprepossessed, hence cannot be a true scientist. We have become used to this reproach; nevertheless it is very painful to a Catholic, especially when he devotes his life to scientific work. The other side claims very emphatically to have a monopoly on unprepossession and truthfulness; it gives most solemn assurances of not desiring anything but the truth, of serving the truth alone, with persevering unselfishness, unaffected by disposition and party interest, and that it has its unbiassed spiritual eye turned only to the chaste sunlight of truth. Hence, we may be permitted to inquire whether these assurances square with the facts. As they demand belief, we may also demand proofs; and if those assurances are accompanied by sharp accusations, the accused will have even a greater right to examine the deeds and records of this assertive science.

What about the unprepossession of liberal science, especially in the province of philosophy and religion? It cannot be our intention to explore the whole territory in every direction. We shall keep to the central and main road, the road to which chiefly lead all other roads of life, we mean the attitude of this school of research towards the world beyond. We find this attitude to be one of persistent ignoring! Science cannot acknowledge the supernatural; this presumption, unproved and impossible of proof, it never loses sight of, it is even made a scientific principle, which is called:

The Principle of Exclusive Natural Causation

This principle demands that everything belonging to nature in its widest sense, consequently all objects and events of irrational nature and of human life, must be explained by natural causes only; supernatural factors must not be brought in. To assume an interposition by God, in the form of creation, miracle, or revelation, is unscientific; he who does so is not a true scientist. A presumption, a mandate of truly stupendous enormity! How can it be proved that there is no God, that creation, miracles, the supernatural origin of religion, are impossible things? And if they are possible, why should it be forbidden to make use of them in explaining facts which cannot otherwise be explained?

However, it is readily admitted that the principle is merely a postulate, an unproved presumption.

“The postulate of exclusive natural causation tells us that natural events can have their causes only in other natural events, and not in conditions lying outside of the continuity of natural causality”; so W. Wundt. This is a “postulate, accepted by modern natural science partly tacitly, partly by open profession.” “Even where an exact deduction is not possible, natural science nevertheless acts under this supposition. It never will consider a natural event to be causally explained, if it is attempted to derive that event from other conditions than preceding natural events.”

Professor Jodl protests against alliance with the Catholic Church, for the reason that the latter does not acknowledge the fundamental presumption of all scientific research, namely, the uninterrupted natural causation, and because the Church is essentially founded on supernatural presumptions. Prof. A. Messer thinks he has proved sufficiently the untenableness of the Catholic faith by the simple appeal to this presumption: “Natural sciences rest upon the presumption that everything is causally determined. This means, that the same causes must be followed by the same effects, and all natural events take their course according to invariable laws. It is against this presumption that the Church exacts a belief in miracles, in immediate divine manifestations, not explainable by natural causes. God is not a causal factor in the eyes of natural science, because everything, and for that very reason, nothing, could be explained through Him.” We see that the principle is expressly admitted to be a mere presumption. “I concede readily,” says Paulsen, “that the law of natural causation is not a proven fact, but a demand or presumption with which reason approaches the task of explaining natural phenomena. But this postulate … is the hard-fought victory of long scientific effort… Gradually there were eliminated from the course of nature demoniacal influence and the miraculous intervention of God, and in their stead the idea of natural causation was installed.”

It is merely another expression for the same thing if one calls, with Paulsen, the unbroken causal connection “the fundamental presumption of all our natural research”; or concludes, with A. Drews, that the assumption of a transcendental God, beyond the visible, and in causal relation to the world, destroys the universal conformity to laws in the world, the self-evident presumption of all scientific knowledge; or one may say, with F. Steudel, “The theory of unbroken causal connection has become the fundamental presupposition of all philosophical explanation of world happenings. This finally disposes of a transcendental God, together with his empiric correlative, the miracle, as a philosophical explanation of the world.” The same result is achieved by declaring evolution from natural factors as the universal world-law.

“I Know not God the Father, Almighty Creator of Heaven and of Earth”

With inexorable persistency this principle is now applied wherever science meets with God and the world beyond. Hence, let us proceed on our way and halt at some points to watch this science at work.

The unbiassed reasoning of the mind shows that this world, limited and finite, in all its phenomena accidental and perishable, cannot have in itself the cause of its existence, hence, that it demands a supernatural creative cause. This solution of the question is by no means demonstrated by liberal science as untenable, it is simply declined.

“Natural science, once for all, has not the least occasion to assume a supernatural act of creation”; this we are told by the famous historian of materialism, F. A. Lange. “To fall back upon explanations of this sort amounts always to straying from scientific grounds, which not only is not permissible in a scientific investigation, but should never enter into consideration.” And L. Plate states: “A creation of matter we cannot assume, nor would such an assumption be any explanation at all; at most, it would be tantamount to exchanging one question mark for another. We natural scientists are modest enough, as matters now stand, to forego a further solution of the question.”They will subscribe to Du Bois-Reymond's “ignoramus” rather than assume the only solution of the question, an act of creation. This scientist, asking himself the question, from where the world-matter received its first impulse, argues: “Let us try to imagine a primordial condition, where matter had not yet been influenced by any cause, and we arrive at the conclusion that matter an infinite time ago was inactive, and equally distributed in infinite space. Since a supernatural impulse does not fit into our theory of the universe, an adequate cause for the first action is lacking.”

Thus they frankly violate the scientific method that demands acceptance of the explanation demonstrated as necessary, and violate it only for the reason to dodge the acknowledgment of a Creator. This is not science, but politics.

But let us ask, Why should it be against science to reckon with supernatural factors? Is it because we cannot disclose with certainty the other world? Are they not aware that such a principle is opposed by the conviction of all mankind, that always held these conceptions to be the highest, and therefore not to be considered illusions? Do they not see, moreover, how they involve themselves in flagrant contradictions? Does not science by means of its laws of reasoning, especially on the principle of causality, constantly infer invisible causes from visible facts? From physical-chemical facts ether and physical atoms, which no man has ever seen, are deduced: from falling stones and the movement of astral bodies is inferred a universal gravitation, undemonstrable by experience; from an anonymous letter is deduced an author. The astronomer deduces from certain facts that fixed stars must have dark companions, visible to no one; from disturbances in the movements of Uranus Leverrier found by calculation the existence and location of Neptune, then not as yet discovered. Hence, what does it mean: “to fall back upon explanations of this sort always amounts to straying away from scientific ground”? Let us imagine a noble vessel on the high seas to have become the victim of a catastrophe. It lies now at the bottom of the sea. Fishes come from all sides and stop musingly before the strange visitor. Whence did this come? Was it made out of water? Impossible! Did it creep up from the bottom of the sea? No! At last a fish reasons: “What we see here has undoubtedly come down to us from a higher world, far above us, and invisible to us.” The speech meets with approval. But another fish objects: “Nonsense! To fall back upon explanations of this sort always amounts to straying away from the scientific grounds on which we fish must stand. We cannot assume such a world to exist, because this would offend against the first principle of our science, the principle of the exclusive natural causation of sea and water.” With these words the speaker departs, wagging his tail, his speech having been received with stupefaction rather than with understanding.

To this philosophy may be applied the word of the Apostle: “Beware lest any man cheat you by philosophy and vain deceit” (Col. ii. 8). No, it is not the spirit of true science that opposes the belief in supernatural factors, but it is the desertion of the traditions and the spirit of a better science. To the representatives of paganism, to Plato and others, the highest goal of human quest of truth was to find God and to worship Him. For the great leaders in recent natural science, Copernicus, Kepler, Newton, Linné, Boyle, Volta, Faraday, and Maxwell, the highest achievement was to point to God's wisdom in the wonderful works of nature; their science ended in prayer. A principle of unbroken natural causation, as a boycott of the Deity, was to them not a postulate of science but an abomination. They were carried by a conviction expressed by a later scientist, W. Thomson, in the following words: “Fear not to be independent thinkers! If you think vigorously enough, you will be forced by science to believe in a God, Who is the basis of all religion”; and expressed by R. Mayer in the following words: “True philosophy must not and cannot be anything else but the propædeutics of the Christian religion.”

But let us proceed. We have before us an astonishing order, we behold uncounted wonders of well-designed purpose in the world. The question suggests itself: Whence this Order? The watch originates from the intelligence of a maker, an accident could not have produced it; hence also the great world-machine must have had an intelligent maker. This is the logic of unbiassed reason. But the principles of liberal research object to the acceptance of this explanation. What is theirs?

There have been some scientists endeavouring to discover the purposeless in nature, and they have gleaned various things. Haeckel invented for them the name Dysteleologists; and this is now the name they go by. Why the destruction of so many living embryos? What is the purpose of pain, of the vermiform appendix? “To what purpose is the immense belt of desert extending through both large continents of the Old World? Could the Sahara not have been avoided?.. Indeed, numerous forms of life we cannot look at but with repugnance and horror; for instance, the parasitical beings.” … (F. Paulsen). Hence the order claimed for the world does not exist, on the contrary, “it is beyond doubt that the most essential means of nature is of a kind which can only be put on a level with the blindest accident” (F. A. Lange). But they do not feel satisfied with this. They feel that even if all these things were actually purposeless, they would amount only to a few drops in the immense ocean of order which still has to be explained. At most, they would form but a few typographical errors in an otherwise ingenious book, – errors that evidently are no proof that the whole book is a mass of nonsense and not dictated by reason.

There appears to them, like a rescuing plank in a shipwreck, Darwin's Natural Selection. The artistic forms in the kingdom of plants and animals arose, says Darwin, by the fact that, among numerous seemingly tentative formations, there were some useful organs or their rudiments which survived in the struggle for existence and became hereditary in the offspring, while others disappeared. It was seen very soon, and it is even better understood to-day, that this enormous feat of “natural selection” is contrary to the facts, and would be, above all, an incredible accident. Nevertheless Darwin has become the rescuing knight for many who became alarmed about the threatening Supernaturalism.

Du Bois-Reymond speaks very frankly: “Albeit, in holding to this theory we may feel like a man kept from drowning only by holding firmly to a plank just strong enough to keep him afloat. But when we have to choose between a plank and death, the preference will decidedly be with the plank.” The same idea is expressed somewhat more gracefully by W. Ostwald: “That the quite complicated problem concerning the purposiveness of organism loses its character of a riddle, at least in principle, and assumes the aspect of a scientific task, all by virtue of this simple thought … is a gain that cannot be sufficiently appreciated.” With vehement plainness H. Spitzer maintains: “Purposiveness in nature, which was feared by positive research like a ghost, because it really seemed only to be due to the intervention of ghosts in the course of the world, has now been traced by Darwin to its origin from natural causes, and he thereby made it a fit object for the science that is at home only in the sphere of natural causes.” “To the height of this point of view,” D. F. Strauss boasts, “we have been led by modern natural research in Darwin.”⁸

At any rate one thing is settled: “The theological explanation must be rejected,” as Plate puts it. “It sees in adaptation the proof for the love and kindness of a Creator, who has ordered all organisms most conformable to their purpose. Natural Science cannot accept such an explanation.”

Is this the boasted spirit of truthfulness, which desires only the truth, – but is evading it persistently? Is this that unbiassed eye that seeks only the truth? Truly, it seems to be unsound, since it cannot bear the rays of truth. Let us go to another workshop of liberal science. It is known now that our earth has once been a ball of glowing fluid, with a temperature in which no living being could exist. Consequently the latter must have appeared at a later stage of evolution. As a fact, palæontology does not show any remnants of organisms in the lower strata of the earth. Now again a question suggests itself to the scientist, Whence did the first life come from? We have the choice of only two explanations: either it has risen by itself, out of unorganic, dead matter, or it was produced by the hand of a Creator: either by generatio aequivoca or the act of creation. Now there has never been observed a generatio aequivoca, as is testified to by natural science itself, and never has it been accomplished in the laboratory. Therefore, inasmuch as the natural laws of olden times cannot have been any different from those of the present, there has never been a primordial genesis. Do they perhaps give the Creator his due here, where the case is so obvious? Let us see.

The noted zoölogist, R. Hertwig, writes: “Inasmuch as there has doubtless been a time when the prevailing temperature of our globe made any life impossible, there must have been a time when life on it arose either by an act of creation or by primordial genesis. If, conformable to the spirit of natural sciences, we are relying only on natural forces for an explanation of natural phenomena, then we are necessarily led to the hypothesis of primordial genesis,” although it contradicts all experience. But the deduction is only brought forth as a “logical postulate”: there “must” be such genesis after creation is eliminated. “We natural scientists say,” states Plate, “that all living beings must have originated some time in former geological periods … from dead, unorganic matter; to assume a creation would be no explanation at all, exactly as it would be no explanation to assume the creation of matter.” Which philosophy teaches that it is not an explanation of a fact to assume for it the only reasonable cause? But just this cause they do not want. Virchow says in this respect: “If I do not wish to assume a creative act, if I desire to explain the matter in my way, then it is clear that I must resort to generatio aequivoca. Tertium non datur. There is nothing else left, if one once has said: ‘I do not accept creation, but I want an explanation of it.’ If this is the first thesis, the second thesis is, ergo, I accept the generatio aequivoca. But we have no actual proof of it.” Hence Haeckel only follows the lead of others when he writes: “We admit that this process (primordial genesis) must remain a pure hypothesis, as long as it is not directly observed or duplicated by experiment. But I repeat that this hypothesis is indispensable for the entire coherence of the history of natural creation. Unless you accept the hypothesis of primordial genesis at this one point in the theory of evolution, you must take refuge in the miracle of a supernatural creation.”

Is this science, or is it not rather Theophobia? Does the freedom of science consist, first of all, in the privilege of emancipating one's self from truth, whenever truth is not to one's taste? True, liberal science will then be free from distasteful truths, but all the more shackled by its irreligious prejudices.

In modern times, the theory of evolution is in high favour. On earth we do not only see life, but life in a great variety of forms, from plant to man. The question, whence this variety, admits in its turn only of the alternative: either it was immediately created by God's hand, or it is the result of a slow evolution from common original forms. Whether there has been an evolution within the vegetable and animal kingdom is a problem for natural science. But it is a philosophical question, whether the essentially superior human soul, endowed with spirituality and reason, could have evolved from the inferior animal soul. Philosophy must answer: No, just as impossible as to evolve ten from two, or a whole book from a single proofsheet. Faith says the human soul is created by God. We do not intend to discuss the problem here any further, but shall only point out how science here, too, expressly or tacitly, is determined very energetically by the presumption of the exclusive natural causation; this is applied to the entire theory of evolution, but especially in regard to man.

“The notion of the evolution of the living world on earth,” thus states Weismann quite significantly, “extends far beyond the provinces of individual sciences, and it influences our entire range of thoughts. This notion means nothing less than the elimination of miracle from our knowledge of nature, and the classification of the phenomena of life on an equal footing with the rest of natural events.”The guiding motive is plainly in evidence.

The aim to eliminate the “miracle of creation” is manifested even more conspicuously in the question about the origin of man: man with his entire equipment, intellectual as well as cultural, must have evolved upward from the most imperfect rudiments; this is regarded as a self-evident proposition.

M. Hoernes, for instance, writes: “The Cosmogonies, i. e., the theories of creation, of all nations ascribe the origin of man to a supernatural act of creation, whereby the Creator is imagined as a human being, because at the intellectual stage corresponding to these notions something created could only be conceived as something formed, something constructed.” Thus the theory of creation, and the Christian doctrine of the genesis of man, is disposed of as a notion of the lower intellect. “On the contrary, we are taught by science to look upon the highest mammals as our nearest blood-relatives.” This “we are taught by science,” although it is confessed: “We know the fact of the existence of the man of the fourth, or glacial, period, but we have not a solitary fact that would throw light upon his origin and his previous existence.”

“The theory of miracles can be given up only when we shall cease to contemplate man as a creature apart from the rest of creation, and look upon him as a being developed within creation to what he is now. Then, however, reason and language, as well as man himself, are the products of a continuous evolution,” says Wundt in his “Psychology of Nations.” Fr. Müller, in a text-book on the science of language, argues: “According to Darwin and to modern natural science, man was not created but has evolved from a lower organism during a process of thousands and thousands of years… For this reason, we must (?) assume that the first language of primitive man could not have ranked above the speech by which animals living in families communicate with each other.”

On the basis of this truly dogmatical presumption, that the “miracle theory” of creation must not be accepted, they proceed then to construe one hypothesis upon another, of the origin of language, of thought, of conscience, of religion, according to the method of Darwin and Spencer, hypotheses of utmost arbitrariness, and frequently most fantastic. “Ethnographical researches,” so we are told by E. Lehmann, “made by travellers, representatives of science and of practical life, in all parts of the globe, … are starting to-day, almost without exception, from the tacit presumption that the civilization of peoples living in the primitive state represent an early and low stage in a historical chain of evolution.”

All these are suitable commentaries upon the trite proposition that natural science, or more generally science, is incompatible with religious belief. Of course research, like that described above, does not agree with Faith. But the fault lies in its unscientific method, rather than in its scientific character, in its latent atheistic presumption which prevents an unbiassed conception of truth.

In February, 1907, the well-known biologist and priest of the Jesuit order, E. Wasmann, gave three lectures in Berlin on the theory of evolution, before a large audience; they were followed on the fourth evening by a discussion, in the course of which eleven opponents voiced for nearly three hours their objections and attacks, to which Wasmannreplied briefly at midnight, but little time having been allotted to him for this purpose. Wasmann, as well as his chief opponent, Prof. Plateof Berlin, have published the arguments on both sides with notes, comments, and supplements. The report of Prof. Plate lays stress upon the assertion, which had also formed the refrain of all opposing speeches, viz., “the discussion has shown, in the first place, that true research in natural science is impossible for those taking the position of the Roman Catholic Church; secondly, the glaring and irreconcilable opposition of the scientific theory of the world to the Orthodox-Christian view was sharply manifested.” In examining how this was demonstrated by this particular natural science, one meets with a painful surprise.

Even the facts concerning the arrangements for the discussion make an unpleasant impression. It is true, Plate accused Wasmann of calumny on account of the latter's complaint. However, upon comparing closely the statements of both, the following facts remain undisputed. Wasmann notified Plate that he desired to speak twice during the discussion, and that the entire discussion should not last much over two hours. Plate promised to arrange matters accordingly. But on the forenoon of February 18th, the opponents held a meeting, Plate presiding, and they resolved, without the least notification to Wasmann, that there should be eleven speakers against Wasmann, and that the latter should reply but once, at the end. Only just before the beginning of the discussion, the same evening, Plate informed Wasmann of the arrangement, making it practically impossible for the latter to change the situation. Furthermore, upon Plate's proposal, an intermission of five minutes before the appearance of the tenth speaker was decided upon, “in order to give those in the audience, who might find the session too exhausting, a chance to leave.” Thus the audience was to be subjected for three long hours to the influence of heated attacks on Theism, Christianity, and the Church, and without hearing the reply unless they held out from half-past eight in the evening to half-past twelve in the morning.

Plate's Monism rejects principally everything metaphysical: “Monism is the short term for the natural science view of the world, that rejects all preternatural and supernatural ideas.” Solutions, not given by the natural sciences, simply do not exist for him; for him the sun sets on the horizon of his natural science. “Natural laws comprise all that we are able to fathom: what is behind them, or what is living in them and operates in them, is the ultimate question for philosophy, and there one thinks this way, another that way” (Plate). Nevertheless, he knows that “Out of nothing can come nothing: hence matter is eternal,” and he is certain that there is no personal God, no angel nor devil, no beyond nor immortality. Whoever fails to think the same way is no scientist, he is not even a man of sound reason: because “he who has grasped even the elements of natural science, the unity and strict conformity to law of the natural forces, and has a head for sound reasoning, will become a monist all by himself, while the rest are past help, anyhow.”

“The Polytheism of the orthodox Church,” he says further, referring to the mystery of the Trinity, “is irrational”; for “Common Sense says that 3 is not equal to 1, nor 1 to 3,” and this is sufficient for Plate. “Trinity, the Incarnation of the Son of God, Christ's Ascension and His descent into hell, Original Sin, Redemption from sin by Christ's sacrifice, Angels and Devils, the Immaculate Conception, the Infallibility of the Pope, all these and many other doctrines of the orthodox Church are thrown to the winds by anybody convinced of the permanence and imperviousness of the natural laws.” This again is sufficient for him. “The question whether God is personal or impersonal,”says he, in another place, “should never be raised: it is just as preposterous as the question whether God has eyes or not.”Another of his arguments reads: “If the body after death can become dust by natural means, then there must have been conditions under which the dust became by natural means a body.” An analogous argument would be: “If a book can of itself finally wear away into withered and loosened leaves, then there must be conditions under which the perfect book could originate all by itself, and without Prof. Plate, out of withered, loose leaves.”

Plate assures us: “I do not know anything about metaphysics.”We do not want to dispute that. It is regrettable that so many scientists of our times are betraying a pitiable lack of philosophical training, a lack which becomes a social danger if they, nevertheless, yield to the temptation to invade the domain of Philosophy. Even the Protestant scientist G. Wobbermin in referring to the above-mentioned discussion remarked: “Wasmann's opponents on that evening have betrayed without exception a really amazing lack of philosophical training.” In glaring contrast with this ignorance stands their intolerance for any different theory of the world. Because he thinks as a Christian, Wasmann is peremptorily expelled from the ranks of natural scientists. “Father Wasmann is not a true natural scientist, he is not a true scholar.” With this crushing verdict Prof. Plate concluded his speech. He repeats this finding on the last page of his book in conspicuous type: “Father Wasmann, S. J., no true natural scientist, no true scholar.” That his opponent, in answer to questions that go beyond mere natural science, is giving philosophical replies, in accord with the doctrine of Christianity, is explained by “his voluntary or involuntary submission to the Church,” “natural science bows to Theology.” He therefore lacks “the freedom of thought and of deduction.” Sophistical stunts in the service of intolerance! But let us proceed on our way.

The compulsory dogma of the inadmissibility of a supernatural order of the world, and of its operation in the visible world, becomes most manifest when liberal science comes in contact with the miracle. Forsooth, it shirks this contact. But time and again, now and in the past, it is confronted by clearly attested facts and it cannot avoid noticing them. However, it is determined from the outset that miracles are impossible. Of course, this cannot be proved except by the presumption that there is no supermundane God. Even the agnostic Stuart Mill admits that if the existence of God is conceded, an effect produced by His will, which in every instance owes its origin to its creator, appears no longer as a purely arbitrary hypothesis, but must be considered a serious possibility (Essays, 1874). Generally, however, liberal science does not try hard to demonstrate in a scientific way the impossibility.