Page:The Ball and the Cross.djvu/157

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An Interlude of Argument
147

can progress. The first is strictly physical science. The second is the Catholic Church.”

“Physical science and the Catholic Church!” said Turnbull sarcastically; “and no doubt the first owes a great deal to the second.”

“If you pressed that point I might reply that it was very probable,” answered MacIan calmly. “I often fancy that your historical generalisations rest frequently on random instances; I should not be surprised if your vague notions of the Church as the persecutor of science were a generalisation from Galileo. I should not be at all surprised if, when you counted the scientific investigations and discoveries since the fall of Rome, you found that a great mass of them had been made by monks. But the matter is irrelevant to my meaning. I say that if you want an example of anything which has progressed in the moral world by the same method as science in the material world, by continually adding to without unsettling what was there before, then I say that there is only one example of it. And that is Us.”

“With this enormous difference,” said Turnbull, “that however elaborate be the calculations of physical science, their net result can be tested. Granted that it took millions of books I never

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