66 SCIENCE AND THE HUMAN MIND 



death was an effective door into the mystery of the 

 next world and the horror of the Shade. Darkness 

 was covering the civilization of the ancient lands, 

 and thick darkness the spirit of mankind, almost 

 obscuring the one transcendent ray of Christ's 

 message of hope and reconciliation. 



With such an outlook on life and such a prospect in 

 death, it is no wonder that the Fathers showed small 

 interest in secular knowledge for its own sake. " To 

 discuss the nature and position of the earth," says 

 St Ambrose, " does not help us in our hope of the life 

 to come." With Augustine, God's inscrutable will 

 is the direct and immediate source of all causation. 

 In this atmosphere, natural knowledge was valued 

 only as a means of edification, or as an illustration of 

 the doctrines of the Church or the passages of Scripture. 

 Critical power soon ceased to exist, and anything was 

 believed if it accorded with Scripture as understood 

 by the Fathers. The contemporary knowledge of 

 natural history in the Church, for instance, was soon 

 represented by a second-century compilation called 

 Physiologus, or the Bestiary, in which the subjects 

 and the accounts of them, originally Christian allegories 

 with imagery taken from the animal world, were 

 frankly ruled by doctrinal considerations. For ex- 

 ample, it is stated seriously that the cubs of the 

 lioness are born dead. On the third day the lion 

 roars, and they wake to life. This signifies our 

 Lord's resurrection. 



And so with their views of history and biography. 

 The classical historians were always ready to modify 

 their accounts to serve the rhetorical fitness of the 

 situation, and the Church historians carried this 



