DESCRIPTIONS OF NATURE BY THE INDIANS. 43 



oimded by hermitages, in one of which hved Chrysostom. 

 It seemed as if Eloquence had recovered' her element, freedom, 

 /rom the fount of nature in the mountain regions of Syria and 

 Asia Minor, which were then covered with forests. 



But in those subsequent ages — so inimical to intellectual 

 culture — when Christianity was diffused among the Germanic 

 and Celtic nations, who had previously been devoted to the 

 worship of nature, and had honored under rough symbols its 

 preserving and destroying j)owers, intimate intercourse with 

 nature, and a study of its phenomena were gradually consid- 

 ered suspicious incentives to witchcraft. This communion 

 with nature was regarded in the same light as TertuUian, 

 Clement of Alexandria, and almost all the older fathers of • 

 the Church, had considered the pursuit of the plastic arts. 

 In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the Councils of Tours 

 (1163) and of Paris (1209) interdicted to monks the sinful 

 reading of works on physics.^ Albertus Magnus and Roger 

 Bacon were the first who boldly rent asunder these fetters of 

 the intellect, and thus, as it were, absolved Nature, and re- 

 stored her to her ancient rights. 



We have hitherto depicted the contrasts manifested accord- 

 ing to the different periods of time in the closely allied litera- 

 ture of the Greeks and Romans. But differences in the mode 

 of thought are not limited to those which must be ascribed to 

 the age alone, that is to say, to passing events which are con- 

 stantly modified by changes in the form of government, social 

 manners, and religious belief ; for the most striking differences 

 are those generated by varieties of races and of intellectual de- 

 velopment. How different are the manifestations of an ani- 

 mated love for nature and a poetic coloring of natural descrip- 

 tions among the nations of Hellenic, Northern Germanic, Se- 

 mitic, Persian, or Indian descent ! The opinion has been re- 

 collect descriptions of nature ; but I am indebted to my friend and col- 

 league H. Hase, Member of the Institute, and Conservator of the King's 

 Library at Paris, for all the admirable translations of Chrysostom and 

 Thallasius that I have already given. 



* On the Concilium Tnronense, under Pope Alexander III., see Zie- 

 gelbauer, Hist. Rei Litter, ordinis S. Benedicti, t. ii., p. 248, ed. 1754; 

 and on the Council at Paris in 1209, and the Bull of Gregory IX., from 

 the year 1231, see Jourdain, Recherches Crit. sur les Traductions d^ Ar- 

 istote, 1819, p. 204-206. The perusal of the physical works of Aristotle 

 was forbidden under penalty of severe penance. In the Concilium La- 

 teranense of 1139, Sacror. Concil. nova Collectio, ed. Ven., 1776, t. xxi., 

 p. 528, the practice of medicine was interdicted to monks. See, on 

 this subject, the learned and agreeable work of the young Wolfgang 

 vou G6the. Der Mensch tind die Elementarische Natur, 1844, s. 10 



