History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom | Page 5

of approval and
cheer was my revered instructor, the Rev. Dr. Theodore Dwight
Woolsey, at that time President of Yale College.
My lecture grew--first into a couple of magazine articles, and then into
a little book called The Warfare of Science, for which, when
republished in England, Prof. John Tyndall wrote a preface.
Sundry translations of this little book were published, but the most
curious thing in its history is the fact that a very friendly introduction to
the Swedish translation was written by a Lutheran bishop.
Meanwhile Prof. John W. Draper published his book on The Conflict
between Science and Religion, a work of great ability, which, as I then
thought, ended the matter, so far as my giving it further attention was
concerned.
But two things led me to keep on developing my own work in this field:
First, I had become deeply interested in it, and could not refrain from
directing my observation and study to it; secondly, much as I admired
Draper's treatment of the questions involved, his point of view and
mode of looking at history were different from mine.
He regarded the struggle as one between Science and Religion. I
believed then, and am convinced now, that it was a struggle between
Science and Dogmatic Theology.
More and more I saw that it was the conflict between two epochs in the
evolution of human thought--the theological and the scientific.
So I kept on, and from time to time published New Chapters in the
Warfare of Science as magazine articles in The Popular Science
Monthly. This was done under many difficulties. For twenty years, as

President of Cornell University and Professor of History in that
institution, I was immersed in the work of its early development.
Besides this, I could not hold myself entirely aloof from public affairs,
and was three times sent by the Government of the United States to do
public duty abroad: first as a commissioner to Santo Domingo, in 1870;
afterward as minister to Germany, in 1879; finally, as minister to
Russia, in 1892; and was also called upon by the State of New York to
do considerable labor in connection with international exhibitions at
Philadelphia and at Paris. I was also obliged from time to time to throw
off by travel the effects of overwork.
The variety of residence and occupation arising from these causes may
perhaps explain some peculiarities in this book which might otherwise
puzzle my reader.
While these journeyings have enabled me to collect materials over a
very wide range--in the New World, from Quebec to Santo Domingo
and from Boston to Mexico, San Francisco, and Seattle, and in the Old
World from Trondhjem to Cairo and from St. Petersburg to Palermo--
they have often obliged me to write under circumstances not very
favorable: sometimes on an Atlantic steamer, sometimes on a Nile boat,
and not only in my own library at Cornell, but in those of Berlin,
Helsingfors, Munich, Florence, and the British Museum. This fact will
explain to the benevolent reader not only the citation of different
editions of the same authority in different chapters, but some iterations
which in the steady quiet of my own library would not have been made.
It has been my constant endeavour to write for the general reader,
avoiding scholastic and technical terms as much as possible and stating
the truth simply as it presents itself to me.
That errors of omission and commission will be found here and there is
probable--nay, certain; but the substance of the book will, I believe, be
found fully true. I am encouraged in this belief by the fact that, of the
three bitter attacks which this work in its earlier form has already
encountered, one was purely declamatory, objurgatory, and hortatory,
and the others based upon ignorance of facts easily pointed out.
And here I must express my thanks to those who have aided me. First
and above all to my former student and dear friend, Prof. George
Lincoln Burr, of Cornell University, to whose contributions,
suggestions, criticisms, and cautions I am most deeply indebted; also to

my friends U. G. Weatherly, formerly Travelling Fellow of Cornell,
and now Assistant Professor in the University of Indiana,--Prof. and
Mrs. Earl Barnes and Prof. William H. Hudson, of Stanford
University,--and Prof. E. P Evans, formerly of the University of
Michigan, but now of Munich, for extensive aid in researches upon the
lines I have indicated to them, but which I could never have prosecuted
without their co-operation. In libraries at home and abroad they have all
worked for me most effectively, and I am deeply grateful to them.
This book is presented as a sort of Festschrift--a tribute to Cornell
University as it enters the second quarter-century of its existence, and
probably my last tribute.
The