EPOCHS IN THE HISTORY OF THE CONTEMPLATION OF 



had procured for the newly translated writings of Aristotle 

 an extensive reception, which was intimately connected with 

 the predilection for the experimental sciences, and highly 

 conducive to the gradual establishment of a basis on which 

 they might hereafter be solidly built. Until the end of the 

 twelfth and the commencement of the thirteenth centuries, 

 misunderstood doctrines of the Platonic philosophy pre- 

 vailed in the schools. The Fathers of the Church ( 3 ?7) had 

 thought they discovered in them types of their own religious 

 contemplations. Many of the symbolising physical fancies 

 of the Timseus were accepted with enthusiasm ; and thus 

 confused and erroneous ideas respecting the Cosmos, of 

 which the Alexandrian mathematical school had long since 

 shown the groundlessness, were revived by Christian autho- 

 rity. Thus the predominance of the Platonic philosophy, 

 or, to speak more correctly, of the new modifications of Pla- 

 tonism, was propagated under varying forms from Augustine 

 to Alcuin, John Scotus, and Bernard of Chartres. ( 378 ) 



When, on the other hand, the Aristotelian philosophy 

 gained the ascendancy, it influenced the minds of its students 

 at once towards the researches of speculative philosophy, and 

 the philosophical elaboration of natural knowledge by way of 

 experiment. Of these two directions the first might appear 

 to be but little connected with the object of the present work ; 

 yet it must not be left without allusion, because, in the middle 

 of the period of dialectic scholastics, it tended to incite a few 

 noble and highly gifted minds to the exercise of free and inde- 

 pendent thought, in the most different departments of know- 

 ledge. An enlarged physical contempl ation of the universe not 

 only requires a rich abundance of observations to afford a satis- 

 factory basis for the generalisation of ideas ; but also a pre- 



