THE BELFAST ADDRESS 



systematic manner in which the litera- 

 ture of Europe has contrived to put out 

 of sight our scientific obligations to the 

 Mohammedans." 1 



The strain upon the mind during the 

 stationary period towards ultra-terrestrial 

 things, to the neglect of problems close 

 at hand, was sure to provoke reaction. 

 But the reaction was gradual; for the 

 ground was dangerous, and a power was 

 at hand competent to crush the critic 

 who went too far. To elude this power, 

 and still allow opportunity for the ex- 

 pression of opinion, the doctrine of "two- 

 fold truth " was invented, according to 

 which an opinion might be held "theo- 

 logically," and the opposite opinion 

 " philosophically." 2 Thus, in the thir- 

 teenth century, the creation of the world 

 in six days, and the unchangeableness 

 of the individual soul, which had been 

 so distinctly affirmed by St. Thomas 

 Aquinas, were both denied philoso- 

 phically, but admitted to be true as 

 articles of the Catholic faith. When 

 Protagoras uttered the maxim which 

 brought upon him so much vituperation, 

 that "opposite assertions are equally 

 true," he simply meant to affirm men's 

 differences to be so great that what was 

 subjectively true to the one might be 

 subjectively untrue to the other. The 

 great Sophist never meant to play fast 

 and loose with the truth by saying that 

 one of two opposite assertions, made by 

 the same individual, could possibly 

 escape being a lie. It was not " sophis- 

 try," but the dread of theologic ven- 

 geance, that generated this double deal- 

 ing with conviction ; and it is astonishing 

 to notice what lengths were allowed to I 

 men who were adroit in the use of 

 artifices of this kind. 



Towards the close of the stationary 

 period a word-weariness, if I may so 

 express it, took more and more possession 

 of men's minds. Christendom had 

 become sick of the School Philosophy 

 and its verbal wastes, which led to no 



1 Intellectual Dtvelopment of Europe, p. 359. 



2 Lange, 2nd edit, pp. 181, 182. 



issue, but left the intellect in everlasting 

 haze. Here and there was jieard the 

 voice of one impatiently crying in the 

 wilderness: "Not unto Aristotle, not unto 

 subtle hypothesis, not unto church, Bible, 

 or blind tradition, must we turn for a 

 knowledge of the universe, but to the 

 direct investigation of nature by obser- 

 vation and experiment." In 1543 the 

 epoch-marking work of Copernicus on 

 the paths of the heavenly bodies appeared. 

 The total crash of Aristotle's closed 

 universe, with the earth at its centre, 

 followed as a consequence, and "The 

 earth moves !" became a kind of watch- 

 word among intellectual freemen. Coper- 

 nicus was Canon of the church of 

 Frauenburg in the diocese of Ermeland. 

 For three-and-thirty years he had with- 

 drawn himself from the world, and 

 devoted himself to the consolidation of 

 his great scheme of the solar system. 

 He made its blocks eternal ; and even to 

 those who feared it, and desired its over- 

 throw, it was so obviously strong that 

 they refrained for a time from meddling 

 with it. In the last year of the life of 

 Copernicus his book appeared ; it is said 

 that the old man received a copy of it a 

 few days before his death, and then 

 departed in peace. 



The Italian philosopher, Giordano 

 Bjynp, was one of the earliest converts 

 to the new astronomy. Taking Lucretius 

 as his exemplar, he revived the notion of 

 the infinity of worlds ; and, combining 

 with it the doctrine of Copernicus, 

 reached the sublime generalisation that 

 the fixed stars are suns, scattered number- 

 less through space, and accompanied by 

 satellites, which bear the same relation 

 to them that our earth does to our sun, 

 or our moon to our earth. This was an 

 expansion of transcendent import ; but 

 Bruno came closer than this to our 

 present line of thought. Struck with 

 the problem of the generation and 

 maintenance of organisms, and duly 

 pondering it, he came to the conclusion 

 that Nature, in her productions, does 

 not imitate the technic of man. Her 

 process is one of unravelling and unfolding. 



