M. Duruy rose and asked to be heard.

His statement was simply that he held in his hand documentary proofs
that Prof. See never made such a declaration. He held the notes used by
Prof. See in his lecture. Prof. See, it appeared, belonged to a school
in medical science which combated certain ideas regarding medicine as an
ART. The inflamed imagination of the cardinal's heresy-hunting emissary
had, as the lecture-notes proved, led him to mistake the word "art" for
"ame," and to exhibit Prof. See as treating a theological when he was
discussing a purely scientific question. Of the existence of the soul
the professor had said nothing.

The forces of the enemy were immediately turned; they retreated in
confusion, amid the laughter of all France; and a quiet, dignified
statement as to the rights of scientific instructors by Wurtz, dean of
the faculty, completed their discomfiture. Thus a well-meant attempt
to check science simply ended in bringing ridicule on religion, and
in thrusting still deeper into the minds of thousands of men that most
mistaken of all mistaken ideas: the conviction that religion and science
are enemies.(285)

(285) For a general account of the Vulpian and See matter, see Revue des
Deux Mondes, 31 mai, 1868, "Chronique de la Quinzaine," pp. 763-765. As
to the result on popular thought, may be noted the following comment on
the affair by the Revue, which is as free as possible from anything
like rabid anti-ecclesiastical ideas: "Elle a ete vraiment curieuse,
instructive, assez triste et meme un peu amusante." For Wurtz's
statement, see Revue de Therapeutique for 1868, p. 303.

But justice forbids raising an outcry against Roman Catholicism for
this. In 1864 a number of excellent men in England drew up a declaration
to be signed by students in the natural sciences, expressing "sincere
regret that researches into scientific truth are perverted by some in
our time into occasion for casting doubt upon the truth and authenticity
of the Holy Scriptures." Nine tenths of the leading scientific men of
England refused to sign it; nor was this all: Sir John Herschel, Sir
John Bowring, and Sir W. R. Hamilton administered, through the press,
castigations which roused general indignation against the proposers of
the circular, and Prof. De Morgan, by a parody, covered memorial and
memorialists with ridicule. It was the old mistake, and the old result
followed in the minds of multitudes of thoughtful young