EXTINCTION OF SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY 5 



in medicine, and the elder Pliny, who compiled avast, 

 but wholly uncritical, encyclopaedia of natural history. 



We see from these facts how ancient nations, inhabit- 

 ing the Mediterranean basin and largely guided by 

 Greek intelligence, had not only striven to systematise 

 that knowledge of plants and animals which every 

 energetic and observant race is sure to possess, but 

 had with still more determination laboured to create a 

 science of human anatomy which should be serviceable 

 to the art of medicine. The effort was renewed time 

 after time during five or six centuries, but was at last 

 crushed under the conquests of a long succession of 

 foreign powers — Macedonians, Romans, Mohammedan 

 Arabs, and northern barbarians — each more hostile to 

 knowledge than its predecessors. 



Extinction of Scientific Inquiry. 



The decline and fall of the Roman Empire brought 

 with it the temporary extinction of civilisation in a 

 great part of Western Europe. Science was during 

 some centuries taught, if taught at all, out of little 

 manuals compiled from ancient authors. Geometry and 

 astronomy were supplanted by astrology and magic ; 

 medicine was rarely practised except by Jews and the 

 inmates of religious houses. Literature and the fine 

 arts died out almost everywhere. 



No doubt the practical knowledge of the farmer and 

 gardener, as well as the lore of the country-side, was 

 handed down from father to son during all the ages of 

 darkness, but the natural knowledge transmitted by 

 books suffered almost complete decay. The teaching 

 ascribed to Physiologus is a sufiicient proof of this 

 statement. Physiologus is the name given in many 

 languages during a thousand years to the reputed 



