THE DOGMA OF EVOLUTION 



discussion of natural phenomena to an attempt to 

 reconcile them with Holy Writ. The majority were 

 hostile because the asceticism which had early been 

 introduced into Christianity from the Orient carried 

 with it the conviction that the world itself was evil 

 and was under the rule of the devil, the personifica- 

 tion of evil. The mediaeval attitude of mind can be 

 strikingly summed up in that exclamation of St. 

 Augustine, himself one of the most liberal and pro- 

 found of the Fathers : "God and my soul will I strive 

 to know. And nothing more*? Absolutely nothing."* 

 It seems to me, to say the least, quite unscientific 

 to condemn the Middle Ages for neglecting science 

 and putting their whole intellectual energy to the 

 problem of leading a completely disorganized society 

 into a new civilization by developing the religious 

 idea rather than the rational method. If natural law 

 is supreme, as science assumes, then men, as well as 

 other animals, must develop according to destiny, or 

 as the result of preceding acts of nature, and they 

 cannot choose the path of their development. And 

 yet modern scientific criticism is directed against the 

 Middle Ages on the ground that the ecclesiastical 

 power deliberately crushed the study of science and 

 persecuted those who would persist in cultivating 

 science in spite of this oppression. Possibly, for the 

 sake of propaganda it was necessary, during the 

 height of the Darwinian movement in the last cen- 



1 Augustine, Soliloquia, I, 2, n (7). "Deum et animam scire cupio. 

 Nihilne plus? Nihil omnino." 



