But here I must check myself.  I must remember that my present purpose is not to give the history of mathematics, but to consider what science has done for the advancement of human civilization.  And now, at once, recurs the question, How is it that the Church produced no geometer in her autocratic reign of twelve hundred years?

With respect to pure mathematics this remark may be made:  Its cultivation does not demand appliances that are beyond the reach of most individuals.  Astronomy must have its observatory, chemistry its laboratory; but mathematics asks only personal disposition and a few books.  No great expenditures are called for, nor the services of assistants.  One would think that nothing could be more congenial, nothing more delightful, even in the retirement of monastic life.

Shall we answer with Eusebius, “It is through contempt of such useless labor that we think so little of these matters; we turn our souls to the exercise of better things?” Better things!  What can be better than absolute truth?  Are mysteries, miracles, lying impostures, better?  It was these that stood in the way!

The ecclesiastical authorities had recognized, from the outset of this scientific invasion, that the principles it was disseminating were absolutely irreconcilable with the current theology.  Directly and indirectly, they struggled against it.  So great was their detestation of experimental science, that they thought they had gained a great advantage when the Accademia del Cimento was suppressed.  Nor was the sentiment restricted to Catholicism.  When the Royal Society of London was founded, theological odium was directed against it with so much rancor that, doubtless, it would have been extinguished, had not King Charles ii. given it his open and avowed support.  It was accused of an intention of “destroying the established religion, of injuring the universities, and of upsetting ancient and solid learning.”

The royal society of London.  We have only to turn over the pages of its Transactions to discern how much this society has done for the progress of humanity.  It was incorporated in 1662, and has interested itself in all the great scientific movements and discoveries that have since been made.  It published Newton’s “Principia;” it promoted Halley’s voyage, the first scientific expedition undertaken by any government; it made experiments on the transfusion of blood, and accepted Harvey’s discovery of the circulation.  The encouragement it gave to inoculation led Queen Caroline to beg six condemned criminals for experiment, and then to submit her own children to that operation.  Through its encouragement Bradley accomplished his great discovery, the aberration of the fixed stars, and that of the nutation of the earth’s axis; to these two discoveries, Delambre says, we owe the exactness of modern astronomy.  It promoted the improvement of the thermometer, the