iS 



LECTURES AND ESSA YS 



method was rendered in a great measure 

 complete by the union of Induction and 

 Experiment. 



What, then, stopped its victorious 

 advance ? Why was the scientific 

 intellect compelled, like an exhausted 

 soil, to lie fallow for nearly two millen- 

 niums, before it could regather the 

 elements necessary to its fertility and 

 strength ? Bacon has already let us 

 know one cause; Whewell ascribes this 

 stationary period to four causes obscu- 

 rity of thought, servility, intolerance of 

 disposition, enthusiasm of temper ; and 

 he gives striking examples of each. 1 But 

 these characteristics must have had their 

 antecedents in the circumstances of the 

 time. Rome, and the other cities of the 

 Empire, had fallen into moral putrefac- 

 tion. Christianity had appeared, offer- 

 ing the Gospel to the poor, and by 

 moderation, if not asceticism of life, 

 practically protesting against the pro- 

 fligacy of the age. The sufferings of the 

 early Christians, and the extraordinary 

 exaltation of mind which enabled them 

 to triumph over the diabolical tortures to 

 which they were subjected, 2 must have 

 left traces not easily effaced. They 

 scorned the earth, in view of that "build- 

 ing of God, that house not made with 

 hands, eternal in the heavens." The 

 Scriptures which ministered to their 

 spiritual needs were also the measure of 

 their science. When, for example, the 

 celebrated question of Antipodes came 

 to be discussed, the Bible was with many 

 the ultimate court of appeal. Augustine, 

 who flourished A.D. 400, would not deny 

 the rotundity of the earth ; but he would 

 deny the possible existence of inhabi- 

 tants at the other side, " because no 

 such race is recorded in Scripture among 

 the descendants of Adam." Archbishop 

 Boniface was shocked at the assumption 

 of a " world of human beings out of 

 the reach of the means of salvation." 

 Thus reined in, Science was not likely to 

 make much progress. Later on, the 



1 History of the Inductive Sciences, vol. i. 



2 Described with terrible vividness in Kenan's 

 Antichrist, 



political and theological strife between^/ 

 the Church and civil governments, so 

 powerfully depicted by Draper, must 

 have done much to stifle investigation. 



Whewell makes many wise and brave 

 remarks regarding the spirit of the Middle 

 Ages. It was a menial spirit. The 

 seekers after natural knowledge had for- 

 saken the fountain of living waters, the 

 direct appeal to nature by observation 

 and experiment, and given themselves 

 up to the remanipulation of the notions 

 of their predecessors. It was a time 

 when thought had become abject, and 

 when the acceptance of mere authority 

 led, as it always does in science, to 

 intellectual death. Natural events, in- 

 stead of being traced to physical, were 

 referred to moral, causes; while an 

 exercise of the phantasy, almost as degra- 

 ding as the spiritualism of the present 

 day, took the place of scientific specula- 

 tion. Then came the mysticism of the 

 Middle Ages, Magic, Alchemy, the Neo- 

 platonic philosophy, with its visionary 

 though sublime abstractions, which caused 

 men to look with shame upon their own 

 bodies, as hindrances to the absorption 

 of the creature in the blessedness of the 

 Creator. Finally came the scholastic 

 i philosophy, a fusion, according to Lange, 

 1 of the least mature notions of Aristotle ^ 

 i with the Christianity of the West. Intel- 

 j lectual immobility was the result. As a 

 traveller without a compass in a fog may 

 wander long, imagining he is making 

 way, and find himself after hours of toil 

 at his starting-point, so the schoolmen, 

 having " tied and untied the same knots, 

 and formed and dissipated the same 

 clouds," 1 found themselves at the end of 

 centuries in their old position. 



With regard to the influence wielded 

 by Aristotle in the Middle Ages, and 

 which, to a less extent, he still wields, I 

 would ask permission to make one 

 remark. When the human mind has 

 achieved greatness and given evidence 

 of extraordinary power in one domain, 

 there is a tendency to credit it with 



1 Whewell. 



