CONCLUDING REMARKS. 661 



Alexandrian school remained in its best condition for a few centuries, 

 the arts of experiment, observation, and rigid induction would have 

 fully developed themselves in its midst. 



At Alexandria, Greek science came in contact with other influences. 

 As we have seen, the Arabians were the people who passed on the 

 torch of knowledge to later generations. In the Christendom of that 

 period natural knowledge was despised and neglected. All philosophy 

 and science was held to be false and empty. " To search," says a 

 Christian writer of the fourth century, "for the causes of natural 

 things ; to inquire whether the sun be as large as he seems ; whether 

 the moon is convex or concave; whether the stars are fixed in the 

 sky or float freely in the air ; of what size and of what material are 

 the heavens ; whether they be at rest or in motion ; what is the mag- 

 nitude of the earth; on what foundations it is suspended and balanced;, 

 to dispute and conjecture on such matters, is just as if we chose to 

 discuss what we think of a city in a remote country of which we never 

 heard but the name." Another author observes that " it is not through 

 ignorance of the things admired by them, but through contempt of 

 their useless labour, that we think little of these matters, turning our 

 souls to the exercise of better things." 



The Arabian science was in the main derived from Greek sources, 

 ( but was affected by a peculiar tinge of mysticism foreign to the true 

 scientific spirit. Thus their chemistry merged into alchemy; their 

 astronomy into astrology; their physics into magic; their mathematics 

 I into occult relations of quantity and number. These tendencies were 

 ( transmitted to the science of the Middle Ages, which was also brought 

 under the influence of Christian theology. This last, which was the 

 engrossing subject of mediaeval thought, claimed to be a complete 

 philosophy of nature, of man, and of God. It is true that, directly, 

 theology concerned itself little with any physical questions, except 

 perhaps such as related to the creation of the world and the Scriptural 

 cosmography as then understood. NaturaLscience was, in fact, con- 

 ! sidered by the Christians as worse than useless, hence its study was 

 ( in general left to Arabians and Jews, both races inheriting the traditions 

 of the schools of Alexandria. But in alliance with Christian theology 

 there arose in the Middle Ages the Scholastic Philosophy, which claimed 

 the character of a universal science. In physical matters it fell into 

 the same fallacy which had misled Aristotle and other Greeks, namely, 

 a confusion of words with facts, of language with things. It assumed 

 that by properly analysing and combining the notions derived from 

 ordinary language, all knowledge could be attained. The details of 

 this philosophy were also in a great measure borrowed from the 

 Stagyrite. As at that time theology comprehended all philosophy, it 

 is easy to understand how scholasticism became almost a part of re- 

 ligious belief, and thus imposed upon the progress of natural science 

 those heavy shackles which were broken at length by the genius of 



