THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD 75 



matter and infinite agitation of wit spin out unto us those 

 laborious webs of learning which are extant in their books. 



The Christian religion, which so greatly modified the mes- 

 sage of the Greek thinkers as it was transmitted by the 

 medieval scholars, was of Hebrew origin and was dominated 

 by a doctrine that had no echo in Greek thought, the doc- 

 trine of authority. The account of cosmology, history, an- 

 thropology, religion, and ethics given in the Hebrew scrip- 

 tures, together with the New Testament, was accepted as the 

 unquestioned authority for all thought in that field, so that 

 very soon opinion as to any event was based entirely upon 

 what could be found on the subject in the Holy Scriptures 

 or, if there was nothing available in the Scriptures, in the 

 writings of the fathers, ainong whom Aristotle was often in- 

 cluded. One may guess that Aristotle would have been very 

 much astonished at the company in which he found himself. 



At the universities, theology and scholasticism predomi- 

 nated even while the towns were emersrino^ from the intellec- 

 tual deadlock. Casuistry and fine-drawn distinctions became 

 a game to which men devoted their lives, and natural phe- 

 nomena were judged primarily for their theological implica- 

 tions. It was held always that each individual phenomenon 

 had been decided by the will of God for a definite purpose 

 and that the interest of man lay in detecting the purpose 

 behind the will. Zilsel * says that the first representatives 

 of secular learning appeared in the fourteenth century in 

 Italian cities. They were the secretaries and officials of the 

 governors of the cities who chiefly had to conduct the cor- 

 respondence and external relations of their employers. To 

 do this, they strove after perfection of style and the exhibi- 

 tion of knowledge, making their ^vritings very polished and 

 their speeches most eloquent. Thus the humanists emerged, 

 ^vho soon, because of their learning, became teachers— in- 

 structors of their employers' children and then professors at 

 the universities. In this way, the humanist scholars became 



* Op. cit., p. 549. 



