158 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE 



men to look with shame upon their own bodies, as hin- 

 derances to the absorption of the creature in the blessed- 

 ness of the Creator. Finally came the scholastic philoso- 

 phy, a fusion, according to Lange, of the least mature 

 notions of Aristotle with the Christianity of the West. In- 

 tellectual immobility was the result. As a traveller with- 

 out a compass in a fog may wander long, imagining he is 

 making way, and find himself after hours of toil at his 

 starting-point, so the schoolmen, having "tied and untied 

 the same knots, and formed and dissipated the same 

 clouds," l found themselves at the end of centuries in 

 their old position. 



With regard to the influence wielded by Aristotle in 

 the Middle Ages, and which, to a less extent, he still 

 wields, I would ask permission to make one remark. 

 When the human mind has achieved greatness and given 

 evidence of extraordinary power in one domain, there is 

 a tendency to credit it with similar power in all other do- 

 mains. Thus theologians have found comfort and assur- 

 ance in the thought that Newton dealt with the question 

 of revelation forgetful of the fact that the very devotion 

 of his powers, through all the best years of his life, to a 

 totally different class of ideas, not to speak of any natural 

 disqualification, tended to render him less, instead of more, 

 competent to deal with theological and historic questions. 

 Goethe, starting from his established greatness as a poet, 

 and indeed from his positive discoveries in Natural His- 

 tory, produced a profound impression among the painters 

 of Germany, when he published his "Farbenlehre," in 

 which he endeavored to overthrow Newton's theory of 



1 WhewelL 



