THE DECLINE OF ANCIENT LEARNING 65 



Scholasticism is of interest to science as a sign of an intense 

 intellectual activity and not because of its accomplishments. 

 The harbingers of the modern spirit were not the theologians, 

 but Roger Bacon, and the other scientist-philosophers of the 

 thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, who seem to have 

 drawn their knowledge and inspiration so largely from the 

 Arab sources. As was emphasized at the beginning of the 

 present chapter, the Middle Ages are not to be judged by 

 their scientific accomplishment, but rather by their unifica- 

 tion of a discordant world in preparation for the re establish- 

 ment and extension of the scientific spirit of antiquity. These 

 centuries were always lacking in the modern rationalistic 

 spirit, being dominated by supernaturalism. Reasoning was 

 taught and practiced as a form of mental gymnastics. The 

 preeminence of theology attracted to theological studies 

 minds that might better have been employed in science. 

 The dominant thought at the close of the period was still 

 without any clear conception of scientific reasoning. The 

 true and the false were hopelessly intermingled. Facts 

 "that would not be denied" were at length the means by 

 which the rationalism of modern times triumphed over 

 supernaturalism. 



