252 PHYSICAL SCIENCE IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 



of these tendencies was further inflamed, by moral 

 peculiarities in the character of those times ; by 

 an abjectness of thought on the one hand, which 

 could not help looking towards some intellectual 

 superior, and by an impatience of dissent on the 

 other. To this must be added an enthusiastic tem- 

 per, which, when introduced into speculation, tends 

 to subject the mind's operations to ideas altogether 

 distorted and delusive. 



These characteristics of the stationary period, 

 its obscurity of thought, its servility, its intolerant 

 disposition, and its enthusiastic temper, will be 

 treated of in the four following chapters, on the 

 Indistinctness of Ideas, the Commentatorial Spirit, 

 the Dogmatism, and the Mysticism of the Middle 

 Ages. 



