THE MEDIAEVAL ATTITUDE 



tury, for the Evolutionists to use the same method of 

 repression, I might say of bigotry, against the re- 

 ligious idea, — although this repression took the form 

 of logical rather than of corporeal restraint. At any 

 rate, the Evolutionists expressed unqualified con- 

 tempt for the Middle Ages because of a lack of in- 

 terest in science and of submission to the religious 

 idea, and did not hesitate to apply the verbal whip 

 of scorn to their contemporaries who still believed in 

 the miraculous and opposed the dominance of science. 

 Leaders of the scientific movement, such as Huxley 

 and Haeckel, condemned the centuries before the 

 Renaissance as a futile and wasted period when the 

 mind was held in ecclesiastical bondage. The histo- 

 rian, Buckle, fascinated his readers with the thesis 

 that civilization was the result of natural and eco- 

 nomic causes and that, to attain a worthy state, we 

 should study the supply of corn and rice rather than 

 the impulses of men ; and Draper pictured society as 

 perpetually engaged in a mortal conflict between re- 

 ligion and science in which the latter always dis- 

 played the banner of truth and was always the ulti- 

 mate victor. Such a view of society may have been 

 advisable as propaganda, but at the present time the 

 Evolutionists are finding this inheritance decidedly 

 embarrassing. If civilization is the result of a slow 

 but steady progress, then even the Middle Ages, 

 which brought men to an exalted religious state from 

 a spiritual chaos, should have an honoured place in a 



