27 



peripatetic nominalism, but whereby men were 

 versed rather in logic and rhetoric than in 

 natural science. Thus Plato's chimera of the 

 human microcosm, a reflection of his theory of 

 the macrocosm, stood beside the Faith as the 

 second great adversary of physiology. 



The influence of authority, by which Europe 

 was to be welded together, governed all human 

 ideas. As in theology was the authority of 

 the Faith, so in the science and medicine of the 

 first period of the Middle Ages was that of 

 the neo-platonic doctrines, and, in the second 

 period, of the Arabian versions of Galen and of 

 Aristotle; furthermore in this rigid discipline me- 

 tallic doctrine almost necessarily overbore life and 

 freedom. It is not easy for us to realise a time 

 when intellectual progress which involves the 

 successive abandonment of provisional syntheses 

 was unconceived ; when truths were regarded 



from Priscian and Donatus, improved the eighth century 

 Latin, and probably made Virgil and Cicero known in Gaul 

 and Britain. He knew but little Greek, as we infer from his 

 quotation of the names of the Categories. Erigena knew 

 more Greek and carried some of it to the Court of Charles the 

 Bald. See note 2, p. 65. Alcuin probably did not visit Ireland. 

 Boetius had translated also both Analytics and the Topics. 



