THE DECAY OF CREDULITY 87 



hundred to two thousand years after him. Even that 

 delightful person Herodotus, who preceded Aristotle by 

 a hundred years, occasionally took the trouble to inquire 

 into some of the wonders he heard of on his travels, 

 and is careful to say now and then that he does not 

 believe what he heard. But the mediaeval-makers of 

 " bestiaries," herbals, and treatises on stones, which were 

 -collections of every possible fancy and " old-wife's tale," 

 about animals, plants, and minerals, mixed up with Greek 

 and Arabic legends and the mystical, medical lore of the 

 4 Physiologus ' that Byzantine cyclopaedia of " wisdom 

 while you wait " deliberately discarded all attempt to set 

 down the truth ; they simply gave that up as a bad job, 

 and recorded every strange story, property and " applica- 

 tion " (as they termed it) of natural objects with solemn 

 assurance, adding a bit of their own invention to the 

 gathered and growing mass of preposterous misunder- 

 standing and superstition. 



In the seventeenth century the opposition to this method 

 of omnivorous credulity (which even to-day, in spite of all 

 our " progress," flourishes among both the rich and the 

 poor) crystallised in the purpose of the Royal Society of 

 London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge 

 whose motto was, and is, " Nnllius in verba" (that is, " \Ye 

 accept no man's bare assertion "), and whose original first 

 rule, to be observed at its meetings, was that no one 

 should discourse of his opinions or narrate a marvel, 

 but that any member who wished to address the society 

 should " bring in," that is to say, " exhibit " an experi- 

 ment or an actual specimen. A new spirit, the "scientific" 

 spirit, gave rise to and was nourished by this and similar 

 societies of learned men. As a consequence the absur- 

 dities and the cruel and injurious beliefs in witchcraft, 

 astrology, and baseless legend, melted away like clouds 

 before the rising sun. In the place of the mad nightmare 



