INTRODUCTION. 



WE have now to consider more especially a long and barren period, 

 which intervened between the scientific activity of ancient Greece 

 and that of modern Europe ; and which we may, therefore, call the 

 Stationary Period of Science. It would be to no purpose to enumer- 

 ate the various forms in which, during these times, men reproduced 

 the discoveries of the inventive ages ; or to trace in them the small 

 successes of Art, void of any principle of genuine Philosophy. Our 

 object requires rather that we should point out the general and dis- 

 tinguishing features of the intellect and habits of those times. We 

 must endeavor to delineate the character of the Stationary Period, 

 and, as far as possible, to analyze its defects and errors ; and thus ob- 

 tain some knowledge of the causes of its barrenness and darkness. 



We have already stated, that real scientific progress requires dis- 

 tinct general Ideas, applied to many special and certain Facts. In 

 the period of which we now have to speak, men's Ideas were obscured ; 

 their disposition to bring their -general views into accordance with 

 Facts was enfeebled. They were thus led to employ themselves un- 

 profitably, among indistinct and unreal notions. And the evil of these 

 tendencies was further inflamed by moral peculiarities in the character 

 of those times ; by an abjectness of thought on the one hand, which 

 could not help looking towards some intellectual superior, and by an 

 impatience of dissent on the other. To this must be added an enthu- 

 siastic temper, which, when introduced into speculation, tends to sub- 

 iect the mind's operations to ideas altogether distorted and delusive. 



These characteristics of the stationary period, its obscurity of thought, 

 its servility, its intolerant disposition, and its enthusiastic temper, will 

 be treated of in the four following chapters, on the Indistinctness of 

 Ideas, the Commentatorial Spirit, the Dogmatism, and the Mysticism 

 of the Middle Ages. 



