150 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



excursions into every part of creation, visible and invisible, bnt 

 always with the most complete subordination of his thought to 

 the literal statements of Scripture. 



Could he have taken the path of experimental research, the 

 world would have been enriched with most precious discoveries ; 

 but the force which had given wrong direction to Albert of Boll- 

 stadt, backed as it was by the whole ecclesiastical power of his 

 time, was too strong, and in all the life labor of Vincent nothing 

 appears of any permanent value. He reared a structure which 

 the adaptation of facts to literal interpretations of Scripture, and 

 the application of theological subtleties to Nature combine to make 

 one of the most striking monuments of human error.* 



But the theological spirit of the thirteenth century gained its 

 greatest victory in the work of St. Thomas Aquinas. In him was 

 the theological spirit of his age incarnate. Although he yielded 

 somewhat at one period to love of natural science, it was he who 

 finally made that great treaty or compromise which for ages sub- 

 jected science entirely to theology. He it was who reared the most 

 enduring barrier against those who in that age and in succeeding 

 ages labored to open for science the path by its own legitimate 

 methods toward its own noble ends. 



He had been the pupil of Albert the Great, and had gained 

 much from him. Through the earlier systems of philosophy, as 

 they were then known, and through the earlier theologic thought, 

 he had gone with great labor and vigor ; and all his mighty pow- 

 ers, thus disciplined and cultured, he brought to bear in making a 

 treaty or truce which was to give theology permanent supremacy 

 over science. 



The experimental method had already been practically initi- 

 ated ; Albert of Bollstadt and Roger Bacon had begun their work 

 in accordance with its methods ; but St. Thomas gave all his 

 thoughts to bringing science again under the sway of theological 

 methods and ecclesiastical control. In his commentary on Aris- 

 totle's treatise upon Heaven and Earth, he gave to the world a 

 striking example of what his method could produce ; illustrating 

 all the evils which arise in combining theological reasoning and 

 literal interpretation of Scripture with scientific facts, and this 

 work remains to this day a monument of scientific genius per- 

 verted by theology, f 



The ecclesiastical power of the time hailed him as a deliverer ; 

 it was claimed that miracles were vouchsafed, proving that the 



* For Vincent de Beauvais, see Etudes sur Vincent de Beauvais, par l'Abbe Bourgeat, 

 chaps, xii, xiii, and xiv ; also Pouchet, Histoire des Sciences Naturelles au Moyen Age, Paris, 

 1853, pp. 470 et seq.; also other histories cited hereafter. 



f For citations showing this subordination of science to theology, see Eicken, chap. vi. 



