55 



But, stronger even than realism, was a third 

 adversity the pride of the human mind. Socrates, 

 although, for ethics and politics, he initiated the 

 inductive method, was disposed to regard physical 

 speculations as but a rational pastime 1 , and the 

 political and ethical study of man as the only 

 serious engagement of thought. Aristotle took 

 up natural knowledge as an encyclopedist*; he 

 rarely verified his facts and he made no experi- 

 mental researches 8 . The medieval church held 

 that "ex puris naturalibus cognoscere" was a 



1 Or indeed he shrank from them, as the continual ex- 

 clusion of divine interference seemed to him a starvation 

 of moral growth. Vid. Phaedo, 96, the interesting passage 

 beginning " cy<o yap vtos a>v 0avfui<rTa>s tos eTredvprjo-a TOVTTJS 

 TJ}? <ro$iay f)v 8rf KaXoixri irfpl <pv(rfa>s i&ropiav K.T.X/' 



2 The encyclopedic method, followed by Francis Bacon, and 

 perpetuated even in the nineteenth century by some German 

 metaphysicians, was not the mere collection of matter from 

 any or all quarters, after the manner of Pliny; nor again mere 

 omniscience ; but was the demonstration of a cosmical theory 

 from all departments of knowledge. When knowledge was a 

 theological philosophy theologians were bound to supply 

 thinking men with " Summae," or comprehensive applications 

 and casuistries of it. Hugo of St Victor (d. 1141) and 

 Robert Pullen (d. 1150) were the first scholastic Summists. 



3 Aristotle made many experiments, but experiments are 

 not necessarily verification ; and for the most part his were 

 not. It is not experiment which makes science but the 

 experimental method. Dr Payne, in the Harveiau Oration of 

 1896, reminded us that among the ancients the forerunner 

 of Harvey in this method was Galen. 



