t] SCIENCE AND CULTURE. 11 



was to learn the Latin language, inasmuch as all the 

 higher knowledge of the western world was contained 

 in works written in that language. Hence, Latin 

 grammar, with logic and rhetoric, studied through 

 Latin, were the fundamentals of education. With 

 respect to the substance of the knowledge imparted 

 through this channel, the Jewish and Christian Scrip- 

 tures, as interpreted and supplemented by the Komish 

 Church, were held to contain a complete and infallibly 

 true body of information. 



Theological dicta were, to the thinkers of those 

 days, that which the axioms and definitions of Euclid 

 are to the geometers of these. The business of the 

 philosophers of the middle ages was to deduce from 

 the data furnished by the theologians, conclusions in 

 accordance with ecclesiastical decrees. They were 

 allowed the high privilege of showing, by logical 

 process, how and why that which the Church said 

 was true, must be true. And if their demonstrations 

 fell short of or exceeded this limit, the Church was 

 maternally ready to check their aberrations, if need 

 be, by the help of the secular arm. 



Between the two, our ancestors were furnished 

 with a compact and complete criticism of life. They 

 were told how the world began and how it would 

 end; they learned that all material existence was 

 but a base and insignificant blot upon the fair face 

 of the spiritual world, and that nature was, to all 

 intents and purposes, the playground of the devil; 

 they learned that the earth is the centre of the visible 

 universe, and that man is the cynosure of things 



