THE PATH OF EVOLUTION 



lowers of the Black Art, as it was called, were closely 

 watched and quickly called to account and punished 

 for any infraction of dogma or of discipline that arose 

 therefrom. So long as men confined themselves to 

 the legitimate work of their laboratories the quest 

 for the power of transmutation they were not dis- 

 turbed; but if they sought beyond or attempted to 

 question the truth of the teaching of the orthodox 

 Natura Naturata, the fate of Roger Bacon and of 

 Galileo, if not that of Giordano Bruno, awaited them. 



The general belief in the agency and power of 

 these master and ministering spirits of the unseen 

 world led to the dread delusion of Witchcraft, whose 

 horrors spread over Europe the more widely as the 

 practice of Alchemy became more general, and with it 

 died as the world grew wiser. The history of its 

 cruel persecution, of the innocent lives that, passed 

 away in a fiery death, and of the fearful superstition, 

 common alike to the magistrates, to the priests of 

 the Roman and to the ministers of the Reformed 

 Churches, lie, fortunately for us, outside of our prov- 

 ince, and needs not to be further here discussed. 



To recapitulate : thus far as we have seen, the learn- 

 ing of the world, apart from theology and dialectics, 

 principally consisted in studying, contrasting, or en- 

 deavoring to reconcile the more or less contradictory 

 views of Plato and Aristotle. The so-called Physics 



44 



