n an open letter, he
had fought the "materialism" of science at Paris, and especially were
his attacks levelled at Profs. Vulpian and See and the Minister of
Public instruction, Duruy, a man of great merit, whose only crime was
devotion to the improvement of education and to the promotion of the
highest research in science.(284)

(284) For the exertions of the restored Bourbons to crush the
universities of Spain, see Hubbard, Hist. Contemporaine de l'Espagne,
Paris, 1878, chaps. i and ii. For Dupanloup, Lettre a un Cardinal, see
the Revue de Therapeutique of 1868, p. 221.

The main attack was made rather upon biological science than upon
physics and chemistry, yet it was clear that all were involved together.

The first onslaught was made in the French Senate, and the storming
party in that body was led by a venerable and conscientious prelate,
Cardinal de Bonnechose, Archbishop of Rouen. It was charged by him and
his party that the tendencies of the higher scientific teaching at Paris
were fatal to religion and morality. Heavy missiles were hurled--such
phrases as "sapping the foundations," "breaking down the bulwarks,"
and the like; and, withal, a new missile was used with much effect--the
epithet "materialist."

The results can be easily guessed: crowds came to the lecture-rooms of
the attacked professors, and the lecture-room of Prof. See, the chief
offender, was crowded to suffocation.

A siege was begun in due form. A young physician was sent by the
cardinal's party into the heterodox camp as a spy. Having heard one
lecture of Prof. See, he returned with information that seemed to
promise easy victory to the besieging party: he brought a terrible
statement--one that seemed enough to overwhelm See, Vulpian, Duruy, and
the whole hated system of public instruction in France--the statement
that See had denied the existence of the human soul.

Cardinal Bonnechose seized the tremendous weapon at once. Rising in his
place in the Senate, he launched a most eloquent invective against the
Minister of State who could protect such a fortress of impiety as the
College of Medicine; and, as a climax, he asserted, on the evidence
of his spy fresh from Prof. See's lecture-room, that the professor had
declared, in his lecture of the day before, that so long as he had the
honour to hold his professorship he would combat the false idea of the
existence of the soul. The weapon seemed resistless and the wound fatal,
but