i 



78 THEOLOGIANS AND NATURAL PHILOSOPHERS. 



independent forms ; but as he compares the varieties and species 

 with each other, he comes to the conclusion that they are all 

 sprung from a single animal spirit, and at the same time that the 

 entire animal race forms a single whole. He makes the same dis- 

 covery among the plants, and finally he sees the animal and plant 

 forms in their unity, and discovers that among all their differences 

 they have sensitiveness and feeling in common ; from which he 

 concludes that animals and plants are only one and the same 

 thing." 



In the middle of the twelfth centur}^ the transla- 

 tion of the works of the Arabs into Latin began. 

 The Church Provincial Council of Paris in 1209 

 forbade the study of these Arabic writers, and 

 included Aristotle's Natural Philosophy in the 

 interdict, although Albertus Magnus and Thomas 

 Aquinas endeavoured to uphold the orthodoxy of 

 Aristotle against the prejudices which the heretical 

 glosses of Arabic writers had raised against him. 



Bruno and Suarez. 



In the same year with Bruno, the most extreme 

 rationalist among the theologians in science, was 

 born Suarez, the most extreme conservative. 



Giordano Bruno (1548- 1600), in his biology, 

 imbibed the diverse influences of the Greeks, of 

 Lucretius, of Arabic philosophy, and of Oriental 

 mysticism, and evolved a highly speculative and 

 vague system of natural philosophy. From the 

 physics of the Stoics he derived the idea that all 

 living beinsfs had a cjreater or less share of the 



