148 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



couraged or perverted by the dominant orthodoxy. Whoever 

 studied Nature studied it either openly to find illustrations of the 

 sacred text, useful in the " saving of souls/' or secretly to gain 

 the aid of occult powers, useful in securing personal advantage. 

 Great men like Bede, Isidore of Seville, Rabanus Maurus, accepted 

 the scriptural standard of science, and used it as a means of 

 Christian edification. The views of Bede and Isidor on kindred 

 subjects have been shown in former chapters ; and typical of the 

 view taken by Rabanus is the fact that in his great work on the 

 Universe there are only two chapters which seem directly or in- 

 directly to recognize even the beginnings of a real philosophy of 

 Nature. A multitude of less-known men found warrant in Script- 

 ure for magic applied to less worthy purposes.* 



But after the thousand years to which the Church, upon sup- 

 posed scriptural warrant, had lengthened out the term of the 

 earth's existence had passed, " the end of all things " seemed fur- 

 ther off than ever ; and in the thirteenth century, owing to causes 

 which need not be dwelt upon here, came a great revival of 

 thought, so that the forces of theology and of science seemed ar- 

 rayed for a contest. On one side came a revival of religious fer- 

 vor, and to this day the works of the cathedral-builders mark its 

 depth and strength ; on the other side came a new spirit of in- 

 quiry incarnate in a line of powerful thinkers. 



First among these was Albert of Bollstadt, better known as 

 Albert the Great, the most renowned scholar of his time. Fet- 

 tered though he was by the methods sanctioned in the Church, 

 dark as was all about him, he had conceived ideas of better 

 methods and aims ; his eye pierced the mists of scholasticism ; he 

 saw the light, and sought to draw the world toward it. He stands 

 among the great pioneers of physical and natural science; he 

 aided in giving foundations to botany and chemistry; he rose 

 above his time and struck a heavy blow at those who opposed the 

 possibility of human life on opposite sides of the earth ; he noted 

 the influence of mountains, seas, and forests upon races and prod- 

 ucts, so that Humboldt justly finds in his works the germs of 

 physical geography as a comprehensive science. 



But the old system of deducing scientific truth from script- 

 ural texts was renewed in the development of scholastic theology, 



* As typical examples, see the utterances of Eusebius and Lactantius regarding astrono- 

 mers given in the chapter on Astronomy. For a summary of Kabanus Maurus's doctrine of 

 physics, see Heller, Geschichte der Physik, vol. i, pp. 172 et seq. For Bede and Isidore, see 

 the earlier chapters of this work. For an excellent statement regarding the application of 

 scriptural standards to scientific research in the middle ages, see Kretschmer, Die physische 

 Erdkunde im Christlichen Mittelalter, pp. 5 et seq. For the distinctions in magic recognized 

 in the media3val Church, see the long catalogue of various sorts given in the Abbe Migne's 

 Encyclopedic Theologique, third series, article " Magie." 



