INTRODUCTION 19 



But there is another mode of attack on outgrown 

 dogma and unyielding law. If, on the one hand, 

 authority in matters of reason has been undermined by 

 a natural mysticism, on the other it has been destroyed 

 by a rational scepticism, which was the weapon of the 

 Humanists of the Italian Renaissance, chiefly men of 

 Northern descent. The Northern mind, while quick 

 and sure in intuition, is slow and persistent in reason- 

 ing power, and pursues its age-long enemy, intellectual 

 authority, with the unerring instinct of a bloodhound ; 

 for the thought, the essence of which is to create and re- 

 interpret, can make no lasting truce with the prophets 

 and priests of the unchanging law. Erigena, Occam 

 and Martin Luther, the great apostles of mysticism, 

 are not more effective in the society of their day and 

 century than Petrarch with his daring criticism, 

 Erasmus with his Praise of Folly in bitter satire of the 

 whole external paraphernalia of the Roman Church, or 

 Voltaire and the rationalists of the eighteenth century. 

 Once the true conception of historical events had been 

 obtained, the free mind of the Northern race set to 

 work to find the correct interpretation of present 

 tendencies in the light of past history and thought. 



If, therefore, in the light of recent research and of 

 age-long experience, we are compelled to attach so 

 much importance to the biological factors, it follows 

 that we are bound, in the course of our present enquiry, 

 to consider carefully the characters of the peoples 

 among whom science grew up. Their modes of 

 thought, their religion, their political condition, are all 

 pertinent to the subject we have in hand. And, as we 

 have said, since the history of science is best written in 

 the biography of its great men, any information that 



