Volume - The Clarence Darrow Collection

FINAL BREAKING AWAY OF THE THEOLOGICAL THEORY. 65
that the patients supposed this application of the thermom-
eter-bulb was the cure, finally wrought cures by this application
alone, without any use of the gases whatever. Innumerable
cases of this sort have thrown a flood of light
upon such cures as those wrought by Prince Hohenlohe, by
the " metallic tractors," and by a multitude of other agencies
temporarily in vogue, but, above all, upon the miraculous
cures which in past ages have been so frequent and of which
a few survive.
The second department is that of hypnotism. Within
the last half-century many scattered indications have been
collected and supplemented by thoughtful, patient investigators
of genius, and especially by Braid in England and
Charcot in France. Here, too, great inroads have been made
upon the province hitherto sacred to .
miracle, and in 1888
the cathedral preacher, Steigenberger, of Augsburg, sounded
an alarm. He declared his fears " lest accredited Church
I miracles
lose their hold upon the public," denounced hyp-
notism as a doctrine of demons, and ended with the singular
argument that, inasmuch as hypnotism is avowedly inca-
pable of explaining all the wonders of history, it is idle to
consider it at all. But investigations in hypnotism still go
on, and may do much in the twentieth century to carry the
world yet further from the realm of the miraculous.
I
In a third field science has won a striking series of victories.
Bacteriology, beginning in the
wenhoek in the seventeenth century,
researches of Leeu-
continued by O. F.
Miiller in the eighteenth, and developed or applied with
wonderful skill by Ehrenberg, Cohn, Lister, Pasteur, Koch,
Bering, and their compeers in the nineteenth, has
explained the origin and proposed the prevention or cure of
various diseases widely prevailing, which until recently have
been generally held to be " inscrutable providences." Finally,
the closer study of psychology, especially in its relations to
; Billings,
folklore, has revealed processes involved in the development
of myths and legends: the phenomena of "expectant
attention," the tendency to marvel-mongering, and the feel-
ing of " joy in believing."
In summing up the history of this long struggle between
i science and theology, two main facts are to be noted : First,
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