discovery. To sum up in one sentence the most char- 

 acteristic feature of ancient and medieval science, we 

 see a notable contrast between the precision of thought 

 implied in the construction and demonstration of geo- 

 metrical theorems and the vague indefinite character 

 of the ideas of natural phenomena generally, a contrast 

 which did not disappear until the foundations of modern 

 science began to be laid. 



We should miss the most essential point of the 

 difference between medieval and modern learning if we 

 looked upon it as mainly a difference either in the pre- 

 cision or the amount of knowledge. The development 

 of both of these qualities would, under any circum- 

 stances, have been slow and gradual, but sure. We 

 can hardly suppose that any one generation, or even 

 any one century, would have seen the complete substitu- 

 tion of exact for inexact ideas. Slowness of growth is 

 as inevitable in the case of knowledge as in that of a 

 growing organism. The most essential point of differ- 

 ence is one of those seemingly slight ones, the impor- 

 tance of which we are too apt to overlook. It was like 

 the drop of blood in the wrong place, which some one 

 has told us makes all the difference between a philos- 

 opher and a maniac. It was all the difference between 

 a living tree and a dead one, between an inert mass and 

 a growing organism. The transition of knowledge 

 from the dead to the living form must, in any complete 

 review of the subject, be looked upon as the really 

 great event of modern times. Before this event the 

 intellect was bound down by a scholasticism which 

 regarded knowledge as a rounded whole, the parts of 

 which were written in books and carried in the minds 



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