150 SCIENCE AND THE HUMAN MIND 



to see things as they are. The a priori methods of 

 the French Revolution were gradually left behind, to 

 consort with the yet older relics of mediaeval scholas- 

 ticism in the chilly confines of outworn, buried age. 



In the period under review, not only did science 

 emancipate itself from theological prepossessions, 

 but it gained freedom from metaphysical trammels 

 also. This was a step in advance which the Greeks 

 failed to make, and it marked a change of outlook 

 necessary for success at that time in scientific thought. 

 Nothing is more striking than the difference between 

 the confusion of metaphysics and science which the 

 Aristotelian tradition imposed on the opening years of 

 the Renaissance, and the entire freedom from such 

 mixture with which the eighteenth century drew 

 towards its close. A general consensus of opinion in 

 fundamental scientific conceptions had removed their 

 subject-matter from the airy realm of philosophy to 

 the clearly defined territory of science. 



At the beginning of the period, science had to con- 

 form to theology and to philosophy, in both of which 

 it was believed that something like finality had been 

 reached, in the first by the Roman Church, in the latter 

 by Aristotle. At the close of the epoch, science had 

 come into sure possession of its own new heritage, 

 and both theology and philosophy had realized that, 

 while still and for ever supreme each in its own em- 

 pyrean space, they must defer to the superior authority 

 of experience when they touched the firm ground of 

 natural science. 



Pari passu with this separation of subjects, we get 

 a parallel separation of men of science on the one 

 hand from theologians and philosophers on the other. 



