94 



triumph of the Faith was premature; like Jansenism, 

 the School of Averroes, effete as it became, held the 

 ground for a more dangerous invasion, for Leonardo, 

 Telesio, Bruno, Gilbert, Sarpi, Campanella, Galileo, 

 and Harvey; for the pioneers of truth, not as 

 consistency with tradition, not as an alchemical 

 search for real essences, nor indeed as wisdom 

 only ; but as the verification of premises. This fuse 

 Paracelsus fixed to the shell which burst upon 

 the Faith, upon Scholasticism, upon Galenism, 

 and even upon humanism, "So Christus spricht 

 ' Perscrutamini scripturas ' ; warum soil ich nicht 

 sagen ' Perscrutamini naturas rerum ' ? " The Credo 

 ut intelligam of Augustine and Anselm of Can- 

 terbury ; the Intelligo ut credam of Aquinas 

 belonged to the past ; and men began to cry "c'est 

 Dieu qui nous vent h&retiques." A criticism based 

 upon a larger sense of the relativity of knowledge, 

 and, in the sixteenth century, a new scepticism 1 , 

 which pierced even into the Vatican, as to the very 

 possibility of knowledge of the nature of being, 

 were preparing the way for new conceptions : but 

 in ethics meanwhile men were falling either into 

 the carelessness of the scoffer or into the anti- 

 1 See page 82. 



