THE DOGMA OF EVOLUTION 



sixteenth centuries in many respects the most fascin- 

 ating and the most glorious in human history. 



After the long and sterile interval of eighteen 

 hundred years from the death of Archimedes, the 

 spell is at last broken by the founder of modern 

 science, Galileo, a youth of twenty years of age who 

 was then beginning that career which not only sur- 

 passed individually the achievements of the Greeks 

 but became the symbol of the new inductive philoso- 

 phy. The barrenness of those centuries requires no 

 further comment when, to the three names already 

 mentioned, we need to add only Roger Bacon (12,14- 

 1294), Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), and Co- 

 pernicus ( 1473-1543). The other names preserved on 

 the rolls of science are those of men who have the 

 high credit of composing the thin line of scholars 

 who carried on the tradition of learning but who 

 themselves added but little of permanent value. 



If it be correct to define the spirit of the Middle 

 Ages as one dominated by the religious idea, there are 

 sufficient grounds for beginning the period, from this 

 point of view, with the Council of Nice. The Chris- 

 tian Church, at last supreme in the Roman Empire, 

 established then its fundamental dogma and initiated 

 its ecclesiastical and civil polity. The spirit of Greece 

 with its keen interest in human affairs was con- 

 demned, and in its place there was adopted the car- 

 dinal thesis that man had lost his fellowship with 

 God through the sin of Adam and had been redeemed 



