NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 579 



a fluid resembling blood oozing from the rocks about the Dead 

 Sea, and cites authorities to prove that the statue of Lot's wife 

 still exists and gives signs of life. 



Yet, as we near the end of the sixteenth century, some evi- 

 dences of a healthful and fruitful skepticism begin to appear. 



The old stream of travelers, commentators, and preachers, ac- 

 cepting tradition and repeating what they have been told, flows 

 on ; but here and there we are refreshed by the sight of a man 

 who really begins to think and look for himself. 



First among these is the French naturalist Pierre Belon. As 

 regards the ordinary wonders, he has the simple faith of his time. 

 Among a multitude of similar things, he believed that he saw 

 the stones on which the disciples were sleeping during the prayer 

 of Christ, the stone on which the Lord sat when he raised Laza- 

 rus from the dead, the Lord's footprints on the stone from which 

 he ascended into heaven, and, most curious of all, "the stone 

 which the builders rejected." Yet he makes some advance on his 

 predecessors, since he shows in one passage that he had thought 

 out the process by which the simpler myths of Palestine were 

 made. For, between Bethlehem and Jerusalem, he sees a field 

 covered with small pebbles, and of these he says : " The common 

 people tell you that a man was once sowing peas there, when Our 

 Lady passed that way and asked him what he was doing ; the 

 man answered, f I am sowing pebbles/ and straightway all the 

 peas were changed into these little stones." 



His ascribing belief in this explanatory transformation-myth 

 to the " common people " marks the faint dawn of a new epoch. 



Typical also of this new class is the German botanist Leon- 

 hard Rauwolf. He travels through Palestine in 1575, and, though 

 devout and at times credulous, notes comparatively few of the 

 old wonders, while he makes thoughtful and careful mention of 

 things in nature that he really saw ; he declines to use the eyes of 

 the monks, and steadily uses his own to good purpose. 



As we go on in the seventeenth century, this current of new 

 thought is yet more evident ; a habit of observing more carefully 

 and of comparing observations had set in ; the great voyages of 

 discovery by Columbus, Yasco Da Gama, Magellan, and others 

 were producing their effect, and this effect was increased by the 

 inductive philosophy of Bacon, the reasonings of Descartes, and 

 the suggestions of Montaigne. 



So evident was this current that, as far back as the early days 

 of the century, a great theologian, Quaresmio, of Lodi, had made 

 up his mind to stop it forever. In 1616, therefore, he began 

 his ponderous work entitled "The Historical, Theological, and 

 Moral Explanation of the Holy Land." He labored upon it for 

 nine years, gave nine years more to perfecting it, and then put it 



