BICENTENARY OF LINNAEUS 23 



for placing Aristotle at the Jwad of those naturalists to whom the first views of 

 the necessity of a zoological system are due" (Op. cit., p. 352). 



The Scholastic Epoch. 



From the time of Aristotle and his classical successors until the rise of 

 scholasticism in the eleventh centur}^, Europe, as every one knows, was too 

 much preoccupied with world-wide displacements and readjustments of 

 peoples and of institutions to pay particular attention to natural science; 

 and even the Scholastic Epoch in the history of philosophy and science 

 was chiefly occupied with the further development and systematization of 

 the great body of religious and metaphysical doctrines. So far as natural 

 history is concerned, it is perhaps rather a further interregnum than an 

 epoch, rather an era or lapse of uneventful time than a time of the slow 

 ascension of some great illuminative idea. The anthropocentric idea domi- 

 nated in natural history as the geocentric idea dominated in astronomy; 

 hence a knowledge of the real or supposed properties of animals and 

 particularly of plants was chiefly cultivated in connection with alchemy, 

 magic and materia medica. The medieval imagination, full of mysticism, 

 eager for the uncanny ^nd fantastic and teeming with images of ubiquitous 

 devils, flourished on the marvelous tales of a "Sir John Maundeville," and 

 peopled the earth with the monsters w^hich so long sur^^ved and ramped 

 in the Terrse Incognitse of world maps. In the schools, citations from 

 authorities were accepted in lieu of proof, and the simple zoology of Aristotle 

 and the scriptures was deeply covered by the accretions of learned exegesis. 

 Scholasticism reached its prime as early as the thirteenth century, in the 

 system of the illustrious St. Thomas Aquinas, the "princeps scholasticorum." 

 Afterward, while the renaissance movement was discovering new worlds in 

 all directions, scholasticism in general (but with some brilliant exceptions) 

 rapidly reached the "phylogerontic stage" of its evolution, and produced all 

 sorts of bizarre specializations in terminology and in dialectics. 



It has been said of the scholastic philosophy that it "vigorously exercised 

 the understanding without bringing it to any conclusions." However this 

 may be, it cannot be doubted that the very' excesses of scholasticism stim- 

 ulated the reactive return to experience, which gave rise incidentally to 

 biological science. The schoolmen furthermore perpetuated and aroused 

 interest in Aristotle's analyses, and gave currency to many methods of 

 analysis and description. Among these we may cite, first, the dichotomous 

 method of division, which is a forerunner of modern classifications; second, 

 the logical concepts of genus and species. Especially noteworthy was the 

 expansion of classical Latin into a highly specialized language of philosophy 

 and science. 



