744 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



A curious parallel, not un suggestive, is thus displayed. As in 

 Greece the art of bridge-building arose in connection with the 

 national sanctuaries, and as in Rome the building of bridges was 

 the function of a priestly college, the implication appears to be 

 that since in those days building a bridge was one of the most 

 difficult of undertakings, it naturally fell into the hands of those 

 who were reputed to have the greatest knowledge and skill the 

 priests. And, probably, the connection between the priesthood 

 and this piece of applied science was furthered by the apparent 

 supernaturalness of the arch a structure which must have 

 seemed to the people incomprehensible. But alike in science and 

 in philosophy, the Romans were the pupils of the Greeks ; and 

 hence possibly may have arisen the parallelism between a certain 

 function of the philosopher in Greece and one he exercised in 

 Rome. 



The philosopher " was generally to he found in a large mansion acting 

 almost like a private chaplain, instructing in ethics those who wished to 

 learn, and attending the death-beds of members of the family. " 



Most likely, the ethics and the consolations here indicated were 

 more or less tinged with ideas theologically derived ; but even if 

 not, the function described appears semi-priestly. 



During those dark days which followed the fall of the Roman 

 Empire, nothing to be called science existed. But when, along 

 with gradual reorganization, the re-genesis of science began, it 

 began as in earlier instances among the cultured men the priest- 

 hood. It was not, indeed, a re-genesis de novo, but one which 

 took its departure from the knowledge, the ideas, and the meth- 

 ods, bequeathed by the older civilizations. From these, long 

 buried, it was resuscitated, almost exclusively in the monaster- 

 ies. In his Science and Literature in the Middle Ages Lacroix 

 writes : 



" At the death of Charlemagne, the exact sciences, which had flourished 

 for a brief space at his court, seemed to shrink into the seclusion of the 

 monasteries. . . . The order of St. Benedict had almost made a monopoly 

 of the exact sciences, which were held in high honor at the Abbeys of 

 Mount Cassini, in Italy ; of St. Martin, at Tours (France) ; of St. Arnulph, 

 at Metz; of St. Gall, in Switzerland; of Prum, in Bavaria; of Canterbury, 

 in England, etc." 



A significant parallelism has here to be noted. We saw that in 

 India, in Assyria, and in Egypt, the earliest steps in science were 

 made in subservience to religious needs : their primary purpose 

 was to regulate the times of religious sacrifices so as to avoid 

 offense to the gods. And now, strange to say, mediaeval records 

 show that among Christian peoples science was first called in for 

 fixing the date of Easter. 



How on the Continent was illustrated the monopoly of science 



