THE BELFAST ADDRESS. 14? 



merits, so powerfully depicted by Draper, must have 

 done much to stifle investigation. 



Whewell makes many wise and brave remarks re- 

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

 spirit. The seekers after natural knowledge had for- 

 saken the fountain of living waters, the direct appeal to 

 nature by observation and experiment, and given them- 

 selves up to the reman ipulation 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 exercies of 

 the phantasy, almost as degrading as the spiritualism of 

 the present day, took the place of scientific speculation. 

 Then came the mysticism of the Middle Ages, Magic, 

 Alchemy, the Neoplatonic philosophy, with its visionary 

 though sublime abstractions, which caused men to look 

 with shame upon their own bodies, as hindrances to the 

 absorption of the creature in the blessedness of the 

 Creator. Finally came the scholastic philosophy, a 

 fusion, according to Lange, of the least mature notions 

 of Aristotle with the Christianity of the West. Intel- 

 lectual 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 

 startiag-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 

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

 wields, I would ask permission to make one remark. 



1 WhewelL 



