THE BELFAST ADDRESS 157 



traces not easily effaced. They scorned the earth, in view 

 of that "building of God, that house not made with hands, 

 eternal in the heavens. ' ' The Scriptures which ministered 

 to their spiritual needs were also the measure of their 

 Science. When, for example, the celebrated question of the 

 Antipodes came to be discussed, the Bible was with many 

 the ultimate court of appeal. Augustine, who flourished 

 A.D. 400, would not deny the rotundity of the earth; but 

 he would deny the possible existence of inhabitants at the 

 other side, "because no such race is recorded in Scripture 

 among the descendants of Adam." Archbishop Boniface 

 was shocked at the assumption of a "world of human be- 

 ings out of the reach of the means of salvation." Thus 

 reined in, Science was not likely to make much progress. 

 Later on, the political and theological strife between the 

 Church and civil governments, so powerfully depicted by 

 Draper, must have done much to stifle investigation. 



Whewell makes many wise and brave remarks regard- 

 ing the spirit of the Middle Ages. It was a menial spirit. 

 The seekers after natural knowledge had forsaken the 

 fountain of living waters, the direct appeal to Nature by 

 observation and experiment, and given themselves up to 

 the remanipulation of the notions of their predecessors. 

 It was a time when thought had become abject, and when 

 the acceptance of mere authority led, as it always does in 

 science, to intellectual death. Natural events, instead of 

 being traced to physical, were referred to moral, causes; 

 while an exercise of the fantasy, almost as degrading as 

 the spiritualism of the present day, took the place of scien- 

 tific speculation. Then came the mysticism of the Middle 

 Ages, Magic, Alchemy, the Neoplatonic philosophy, with 

 its visionary though sublime abstractions, which caused 



