188 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



tor who seems to have caught sight of cheruhs and seraphs 

 should suddenly revel in the creation of devils, imps, and animals, 

 real and imaginary. The whole seems an incongruous jumble. 

 This jumble, and much else. Prof. Evans interprets to us, and 

 shows us how all grew naturally out of human thought and 

 aspiration. 



The key which he furnishes us to these strange problems pre- 

 sented by mediaeval art is mainly the old dogmatic relation be- 

 tween Nature and Scripture. In the early Church the science of 

 Aristotle and his successors was speedily turned into a channel of 

 which they never dreamed. Scientific truth ceased to be studied 

 for truth's sake, but was used to ascertain and illustrate the 

 meanings of the Bible, and to establish the dogmas of the Church. 

 The book of Nature was held more and more to be the counter- 

 part, and therefore the interpreter, of the book of Revelation. 

 The visible creation was held to be a mirror of the spiritual 

 realm. Hence a new and most extraordinary growth, which, 

 while it has been supplanted in our time by the blooming forth of 

 modern science, still shows some lingering blossoms. 



Very early in the history of the Church appeared the treatise 

 known as the Physiologus. In this, various objects in Nature 

 were made to interpret and to be interpreted by various passages 

 in Scripture. So successful was this work that there grew out of 

 it great encyclopaedias of sacred science, and the historical student 

 still finds in all properly furnished university libraries works of 

 such vast scope as those of Vincent de Beauvais, Thomas de Can- 

 timprd, and Gregory Reysch. 



Most important among the early sources of this stream of 

 mediaeval thought was Origen. Early in the third century that 

 eminent biblical scholar, profound and prolific, laid down a great 

 doctrine, as follows : " The visible world teaches us concerning the 

 invisible ; the earth contains images of heavenly things, in order 

 that by means of these lower objects we may mount up to that 

 which is above. . . . As God made man in his own image and 

 after his own likeness, so he created the lower animals after the 

 likeness of heavenly prototypes." * 



The main biblical basis for this great statement was found in 

 two passages, one from the Old Testament, the other from the 

 New. The first was the text from Job, as follows: "Ask now 

 the beasts, and they shall teach thee ; and the fowls of the air, and 

 they shall tell thee." This outburst of poetry, from perhaps the 

 most profound poem in human history, was taken as a prosaic 

 statement of truth. The other text was the statement of St. 

 Paul, that "the invisible things of Him from the creation of 



* See Evans's work cited, p. 28. 



