270 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



entirely checked for a long time the progress of natural science which 

 under the ancients had been tardy enough. 



With the fall of Roman power came, at the same time, the fall of 

 polytheism, a system dating from the anthropomorphic period of the 

 Philosophy of Nature. Christianity now came into possession of Olym- 

 pus, crowded with barbaric gods, and banished its denizens to the region 

 of demons and ghosts. Nor was it content with such purification of the 

 temple as this. Sprung itself from Judaism, which possessed neither 

 art nor science, but which was already characterized by an exclusive 

 estimate of the value of moral effort, the new creed restricted the circle 

 of ideas, which alone it recognized as profitable to man, within the cate- 

 gories of good and bad, and the relations between the sinful creature 

 and his creator. In opposition to heathenism, which was languishing 

 from sensuous excess, it enjoined on its adherents self-denial and con- 

 tempt of earthly life, and bade them to tremble in constant expectation 

 of the judgment which was to come both for them and for the whole 

 world. This earth, with all its glory, appeared henceforth to man as 

 a resting-place unworthy of notice,-where the soul must prepare for a 

 better state to come. Our bodj r , given to us in love by father and 

 mother, this crown and masterpiece of creation, Christianity despised 

 as the perishable shell of the soul which alone was akin to God ; nay, 

 it hated the body as the accursed source of sin. Only with fear and 

 trembling could the believer pluck the fruit of the tree of life. A celi- 

 bate life within the walls of a cloister, and entirely occupied with prayer 

 and penances, was held to be the best way, and the one most pleasing 

 to God, of spending the time of trial here below ; in recompense, the 

 elect were assured of sempiternal beatitude post mortem. 



That this new mode of looking at the universe was little favorable 

 to natural science is obvious. Still it is only with difficulty that we can 

 form to ourselves an idea of the attitude of the human mind toward 

 Nature during the middle ages. A passage from the life of Francesco 

 Petrarca will serve to throw light upon this point. 



Petrarca, in whom the reminiscences of classic antiquity awoke and 

 were strangely blended with the beliefs of his own day, daily had in 

 sight, from Avignon, Mont Ventoux, that uttermost spur of the mari- 

 time Alps, swept by the mistral. Long had he wished to stand upon 

 its summit. His longing was stimulated on reading in Livy that Philip 

 of Macedon (the enemy of the Romans) ascended Mount Hagmus, in 

 Thrace, 1 in order to view simultaneously the Adriatic and the Euxine. 

 At last, on the 26th of April, 1336, the plan was carried into execu- 

 tion, and, as the weather was very favorable, Petrarca and his younger 

 brother, Gherardo, enjoyed the broad prospect. The clouds beneath his 

 feet proved to him the possibility of what he had often read of before 

 with incredulity with regard to Athos and Olympus. The distant chain 



1 Titi Livii, " Hist. Rom.," lib. xxx., 21, 22. Petrarca falls into the error, not before 

 noted, as far as I am aware, of planting Mount Hsemus (the Balkans) in Thessaly. 



