330 PHYSICAL SCIENCE IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 



in writers of the greatest fame ; and two of those, 

 who most occupied the attention of students, Plato 

 and Aristotle, were, on several points of this nature, 

 very diverse from each other in their tendency. The 

 attempt to reconcile these philosophers by Boethius 

 and others, we have already noticed; and the at- 

 tempt was so far successful, that it left on men's 

 minds the belief in the possibility of a great philo- 

 sophical system which should be based on both 

 these writers, and have a claim to the assent of all 

 sober speculators. 



But, in the mean time, the Christian Religion 

 had become the leading subject of men's thoughts ; 

 and divines had put forward its claims to be, not 

 merely the guide of men's lives, and the means of 

 reconciling them to their heavenly Master; but also 

 to be a Philosophy in the widest sense in which the 

 term had been used ; a consistent speculative view 

 of man's condition and nature, and of the world in 

 which he is placed. 



These claims had been acknowledged ; and, un- 

 fortunately, from the intellectual condition of the 

 times, with no due apprehension of the necessary 

 ministry of Observation, and Reason dealing with 

 observation, by which alone such a system can be 

 embodied. It was held, without any regulating 

 principle, that the Philosophy which had been 

 bequeathed to the world by the great geniuses of 

 heathen antiquity, and the Philosophy which was 

 deduced from, and implied by, the Revelations made 



