228 EVOLUTION OF THK SCIKNTIFIC IN VESTIGATOK. 



event of iiiodei'ii times. r)ei"()re tliis event the intellect was hound down 

 hv a scholasticism which reiiai'<led knowled_i>e as a rounded whole, 

 the parts of which weiv written in hooks and carried in the minds of 

 learned men. The student was taui>ht from the heoinning- of his 

 Avoi-k to look ujion authority as the foundation of his beliefs. The 

 oldei- the authority the greater the weight it can-ied. So effective 

 Avas this teaching that it seems never to have occurred to individual 

 men that they had all the opportunities ever enjoyed by Aristotle of 

 discovering ti-uth. with the added advantage of all his knowdedge to 

 begin with. Advanced as was the develoi)ment of formal logic, that 

 |)i-actical logic was wanting wdiicli could see that the last of a series 

 of authorities, every one of which rested on those wdiich ])receded it, 

 could never form a surer foundation for any doctrine than that su]")- 

 plied by its original propouiider. 



The result of this view- of knowledge was, that although during 

 the fifteen centuries following the death of the geometer of Syracuse 

 great uniA'ersities were founded at which generations of professors 

 exjjonnded all the learning of their time, neither professor nor student 

 over suspected what latent possil)ilities of good Av.ere concealed in the 

 most familiar operations of nature. Everyone felt the wind blow, 

 saw w^ater boil, and heard the thunder crash, but never thought of 

 investigating the forces here at play. Up to the middle of the 

 fifteenth century the most acute observer could scarcely have seen 

 the dawn of a new era. 



In view of this state of things, it must be regarded as one of the 

 most renuirkable facts in evolutionary history that four or five men, 

 whose mental constitution was either typical of the new order of 

 things or who were pow^erful agents in bringing it about, were all 

 Itorn dui-ing the fifteenth century, four of them at least at so nearly 

 the same time as to be contemporaries. 



T^eonardo da \^inci, whose artisti(^ genius has charmed succeeding 

 generations, was also the first practical engineer of his time, and the 

 first man after Archimedes to make a substantial advance in develoj)- 

 ing the laws of motion. That the world was not prepared to make 

 use of his scientific discoveries does not detract from the significance 

 which must attach to the period of his birth. 



Shortly after him was born the great navigator whose bold spirit 

 was to make known a new world, thus giving to connnercial enter- 

 prise that impetus which w^as so powerful an agent in bringing about 

 a revolution in the thoughts of men. 



The birth of Columbus was soon followed by that of Coi)ernicus, 

 the first after Aristarchus to demonstrate the true system of the 

 w^orld. In him more than in any of his contemporaries do we see the 

 struggle between the old forms of thought and the new. It seems 

 almost i)athetic, and is certainly most suggestive of the general view 



