68 SCIENCE AND THE HUMAN MIND 



maintained that form of the faith for many centuries, 

 a great central body of doctrine had been built up before 

 the Dark Ages began, and Rome had become the 

 recognized head of the Catholic Church, with all the 

 universalist tradition of the Empire behind it, and 

 the new power of a compelling religious faith to put 

 new life into its veins, and give it uncontrolled 

 dominion over the minds and consciences of mankind. 



Such was the nature of the intellectual position 



when the last gleams of sunset of the ancient civiliza- 



The tion were fading away into the dark night 



Dark Ages. o f the sixth and seventh centuries. And 

 such was the nature of the ideals to which the succeed- 

 ing ages looked back as they emerged into the feeble 

 light of the new morn, looked back as to a brighter 

 day whose glorious noon culminated in God's crowning 

 revelation by his Son, and whose resplendent eve was 

 illumined by the inspired writings of the Fathers of 

 the Church. It is small wonder that the men of the 

 new time took all that came to them from across the 

 darkness to be endowed with supernatural sanction, 

 and showed no power of critical insight, in which 

 the Fathers themselves had been equally deficient. 

 Almost the only traces of secular learning which 

 survived were the works of Boetius, a Roman of noble 

 birth, who was put to death in 525. Probably a 

 nominal Christian, Boetius was the last to show the 

 true spirit of ancient philosophy, and it is part of the 

 irony of history that he developed into a Christian 

 martyr after his death. He wrote compendiums and 

 commentaries on Aristotle and Plato, and treatises on 

 arithmetic, geometry, and music founded on those of 



