THE ANATOMY OF SCIENCE 71 



able to discover other theorems in addition, which have not yet 

 occurred to me. 



Also quoted by Sambursky is Seneca, writing on cometary theories : 



The day will come when time and the researches of long generations 

 will bring to light what is now concealed. A single generation is not 

 enough for the solution of such great problems. . . . Let us be con- 

 tent with what we have discovered so far. Those who come after us 

 will also add their share to truth. 



These statements, so true to the spirit of modern science, express 

 what was in the ancient world a comparatively rare insight: the gen- 

 eral idea of progress was not yet established— by most, not even con- 

 ceived. No trace of that idea can be found in Aristotle's opinion that, 

 rather than damage the prestige of all law, it were better to leave un- 

 changed an admittedly bad law. There are indeed all too many an- 

 cient spokesmen for the medieval view of succession not as evolution 

 but devolution; a long inexorable corruption and decay— from antique 

 perfection of world, man, and knowledge— to final and soon-to-be 

 accomplished dissolution. 



In the ancient and medieval periods the world is then something 

 to be endured, not a place in which improvement is to be expected 

 or even sought. Haggard writes : 



The medieval Christians saw in childbirth the result of a carnal sin 

 to be expiated in pain as defined in Genesis 111:16. . . . During me- 

 dieval times the mortality for both the child and the mother rose to a 

 point never reached before. This rise of mortality was in part the 

 consequence of indifference to the suffering of women. It was due also 

 to the cultural backwardness of the civilization and the low value 

 placed on life. It was aggravated by the increasing difficulty attending 

 childbirth. These were the "ages of faith," a period characterized as 

 much by the filth of the people as by the fervor and asceticism of 

 their religion; consequently nothing was done to overcome the enor- 

 mous mortality of the mother and of the child at birth. It was typical 

 of the age that attempts were made to fonn intrauterine baptismal 

 tubes, by which the child, locked by some ill chance in its mother's 

 womb, could be baptized and its soul saved before the mother and 

 the child were left to die together. 



Highly overcharged this account doubtless is. Yet the ingenuity that 

 devised intrauterine baptismal tubes might not have been wholly 



