276 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



English monk, still tends to moralize and allegorize. For instance, he 

 says that some persons call the spots on the moon caverns or mountains, 

 but that he believes that they were put there to signify the stain of 

 sin which Adam's transgression brought into the world. But Neckani 

 also displays a scientific attitude. When he finds a statement in the 

 book of Genesis in apparent contradiction to the astronomy of his time, 

 he explains that the Bible here follows "the judgment of the eye and the 

 popular notion," but that astronomy is really right. The later and longer 

 encyclopedias of Arnold of Saxony, Thomas of Cantimpre, Bartholomew 

 of England, and Vincent of Beauvais greatly increased the amount of 

 space devoted to nature and contained comparatively little moralizing. 



I may explain that in a medieval encyclopedia, instead of the alpha- 

 betical arrangement followed in modern encyclopedias, there is first a 

 topical arrangement under such heads as Reptiles or Birds or Trees, and 

 then an alphabetical arrangement under each topic. As in modern 

 encyclopedias, most of the information was taken from other books, but 

 sometimes the medieval encyclopedist adds new data which he has heard 

 from hunters, travelers and others, or which he has learned from per- 

 sonal observation. 



The twelfth and thirteenth centuries were a period of intellectual 

 curiosity. Albertus Magnus says that he lists the properties of indi- 

 vidual plants in order to satisfy the curiosity of his students. A favor- 

 ite book of the period, translated into almost every European language, 

 was entitled, "De omni re scibili et quibusdam aliis" which may be 

 freely translated as " Concerning everything that can be known and 

 then some." Indeed, it is not merely in professedly learned works 

 written in Latin that one sees the interest of those times in natural 

 science. If we turn to popular literature in the tongue of the layman 

 and open one of the long French romances of the thirteenth century, 

 we find Dame Nature making a speech concerning various branches of 

 natural science which occupies a considerable section of the entire 

 poem, whereas little space is devoted to logic or theology. 



This interest in nature is often accompanied by an independent 

 scientific spirit, of which we have just seen some evidence even in the 

 moralizing Neckam. But it can be traced back earlier than him to the 

 beginning of the twelfth century. As the life story and writings of 

 Abelard illustrate the great interest in logic, philosophy and theology at 

 the beginning of the twelfth century, and help to explain the origin 

 of the University of Paris; so the career and books of a contemporary 

 of his with a very similar name, Adelard of Bath, depict a pioneer of 

 natural science. As Abelard went forth from Brittany through the 

 towns of France in quest of Christian teachers, so from England Ade- 

 lard made a wider circuit in lands both Christian and Mohammedan, 

 where he might acquaint himself with all that was best in contemporary 

 learning, but especially in mathematics and natural science. 



