25 



objects and methods of enquiry were determined 

 for thirty generations. From Aristotle Europe 

 adopted logic first, and then metaphysics, yet both 

 in method and in purpose Origen and Augustine 

 were platonists; rationalised dogma lived upon 

 dialectic, and conflicted with mysticism ; but logic, 

 dogma and mysticism alike disdained experience. 



Thus, no mere external sanction, stood the 

 Faith ; threefold : from the past it brought its 

 pompous ritual, it appealed by its subtle dogmatic 

 scheme to the intellects, and by its devotion 

 to the hearts of men. Through the mirage of it, 

 when its substance had waned, Copernicus, Galileo, 

 and Harvey had to steer by the compass of the 

 experimental method. This was their chief ad- 

 versity, and of other adversities I have to speak. 



The visitor to the Dominican Church of St 

 Catherine at Pisa will see on its walls St Thomas 

 of Aquino with the Holy Scriptures in his hand ; 

 prostrate beneath him is Averroes with his Great 

 Commentary, but beside him Plato bearing the 

 Timseus. It was the fortune of the Faith that, 

 of all the treatises of Plato, the Timseus, the 

 most fantastic and the least scientific, should 

 have been set apart to instruct the medieval 



