THE MEDIAEVAL ATTITUDE 



by the vicarious sacrifice of the Son of God. Salva- 

 tion depended not on his own efforts but on repen- 

 tance from sin as shown by a holy life and by com- 

 munion with Christ. The aspiration of the pagan had 

 been to live as full a life as possible, undisturbed by 

 hope or fear of future reward or punishment; the 

 attention of the Christian was now to be directed 

 solely towards preparing for a future and immortal 

 existence. This world and our carnal life thus became 

 a purely transitory state likely to interfere with the 

 purpose of God at the creation. The highest ideal 

 was a life of pious meditation to save one's own soul 

 and of exhortation and charitable works in order to 

 induce others to turn to the godly life. Truth was to 

 be found in the direct revelation of God as first given 

 in the Bible and continued in a living and infallible 

 Church, and was expressed mostly by miracles and 

 not by observation and reason. The very object of life 

 had become fundamentally antithetic to the scientific 

 spirit, and St. Thomas Aquinas can declare that the 

 desire to know phenomena was a sin in so far as it did 

 not tend to a knowledge of God. 



The attitude of the religious thinkers towards phe- 

 nomena of both the organic and inorganic worlds 

 ranged from indifference to bitter condemnation. 

 Even the most tolerant of the mediaeval philoso- 

 phers regarded the study of worldly affairs as useless 

 and a waste of the precious and brief time granted 

 us to prepare for judgement, and they limited their 



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