64 SCIENCE AND THE HUMAN MIND 



of such Eastern faiths as Mithraism and Manichaeism, 

 the latter of which enunciated a dualism of the powers 

 of good and evil, destined to appear again and again 

 in later times. The former, with its rites of initiation 

 and purification, disputed with Christianity the posses- 

 sion of the late Roman Empire. All were non-rational, 

 credulous and mystical. 



In such an intellectual environment the light of 

 Christianity came to the Greek and Latin Fathers of 

 the Church. They were products of their age and 

 race, and, however superior in moral power to the 

 contemporary pagans, their intellectual standards were 

 the same, and their philosophy was the philosophy of 

 their time, merely changed in emphasis by the story 

 of the Gospel and the Hebrew dogmas with which the 

 Gospel had become entangled. 



Christianity, like Neo-Platonism, was based on the 

 fundamental assumption that the ultimate reality of 

 the Universe was spirit, and it too accepted the super- 

 rational attitude. It has been well said that all men 

 except fools have their irrational sides. But, in the 

 early Fathers, the highest super-rationalism, the love 

 of God and the apprehension of the risen Christ, 

 passed down through every step to the lowest forms of 

 credulity held in common with the pagan populace 

 and the Neo-Platonic philosophers. While Plotinus 

 the pagan and Augustine the Christian lay little stress 

 on divination and magic, or on miracles of the saints, 

 Porphyry and lamblicus on the one side, and Jerome 

 and Gregory on the other, revel in the daemonic and 

 the miraculous. 



Symbolism, which had shownitself in Neo-Platonism, 

 became extended and developed by the efforts of the 



