146 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



soil, to lie fallow for nearly two millenniums, before it 

 could regather the elements necessary to its fertility 

 and strength? Bacon has already let us know one 

 cause ; Whewell ascribes this stationary period to four 

 causes obscurity of thought, servility, intolerance of 

 disposition, enthusiasm of temper; and he gives striking 

 examples of each. 1 But these characteristics must have 

 had their antecedents in the circumstances of the time. 

 Eome, and the other cities of the Empire, had fallen 

 into moral putrefaction. Christianity had appeared, 

 offering the Gospel to the poor, add by moderation, if 

 not asceticism of life, practically protesting against the 

 profligacy of the age. The sufferings of the early 

 Christians, and the extraordinary exaltation of mind 

 which enabled them to triumph over the diabolical tor- 

 tures to which they were subjected, 2 must have left traces 

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

 that ' building of Grod, that house not made with hands, 

 eternal in the heavens.' The Scriptures which minis- 

 tered to their spiritual needs were also the measure of 

 their Science. When, for example, the celebrated ques- 

 tion of 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 in- 

 habitants at the other side, c 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 beings 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 govern* 



1 * History of the Inductive Sciences,' vol. i. 



Described with terrible vividness in Renan's 'Antichrist,' 



