36 SCIENCE AND THE HUMAN MIND 



acute dialectic of mediaeval scholasticism. Save in the 

 rarest cases, the mediaeval mind could not shake off the 

 trammels which compassed it about in every direction. 

 The tyranny of Rome and its dogmatic school pressed 

 more hardly inwardly over the workings of the mind 

 than outwardly over the expression of its opinions. 



This inward intellectual constraint, this permanent 

 bent of the mind, in deference to traditional bonds 

 which could not be cast off and could scarcely be 

 loosened, seems to have been much less powerful 

 among the Greeks. The fluidity of their religion, 

 the variety of its ever-changing myths, its adaptability 

 to the needs of poetic and artistic beauty, its readiness 

 to incorporate and to adorn new ideas, led to a freedom 

 and openness of intellectual outlook quite foreign to 

 the Middle Ages. 



The natural bias of the two religions the Greek, 

 the expression of the genius of the Northern race set 

 free in a Southern atmosphere ; the Mediaeval, the 

 warping and distorting of the divine truths of Christi- 

 anity through the incorporation of late Jewish dogma 

 by the bewildered minds of the denizens of the early 

 centuries of chaos this natural bias was exaggerated 

 by the difference in social conditions. The full and 

 fairly secure life of a Greek city contrasts with the 

 painful emergence of some sort of safety and ordered 

 though narrow existence under the protection of the 

 Church from the welter of economic ruin and social 

 confusion of the Dark Ages. It is no wonder that in 

 one case we get freedom and breadth of outlook, in the 

 other narrow preconceived ideas and rigid dogmatism 

 to which the mind clings for safety and dares not 

 contemplate an escape. 



