860 ■ BEPORT— 1900, 



In the early centuries of our era, however, a great change was coming over 

 the human mind. We have seen from the ahove quotations that, even before the 

 advent of Christianity, thinking men were beginning to revolt against the super- 

 stition of the old mythology. 



Soon after there arose the Neoplatonic school at Alexandria, which mixed up, 

 in a way diificult to describe, beautiful conceptions of moral and religious 

 training through astronomy and the sciences in an iusxplicable tangle of pseudo- 

 Greek philosophy. 



At the same time there was gradually stealing over the minds of men an 

 entirely new feeling, born of a new faith, which taught that things earthly and 

 appertaining to the earth were of slight importance, and that all the splendid 

 learning of the Greeks was but vain philosophy, and that the thoughts of man 

 must be directed, not to the present, but to the future. 



Among these conflicting ideas, there was intruded the outer barbaric power 

 which knew nothing of science or of philosophy, but which, by its virile force and 

 austere tenacity of moral worth, overran and conquered the Roman Empire. 



These untutored peoples were soon attracted by the beautiful simplicity of the 

 new religion, and were gradually absorbed into the Christian Church. 



In the year a.d. 640 a serious blow was struck to advancing science, and for a 

 thousand years we are parted from all the learning of the ancient world by the 

 destruction of the Alexandrian Library by the Saracens. 



Then followed for nearly a thousand years that period of intellectual torpor 

 which we generally denominate ' the dark ages.' To a large extent natural 

 science became unknown, the astronomy of the Greeks degenerated into astrology, 

 and when occasional thiokers did inquire into nature's secrets, it took the form of 

 alchemy, and a desire to discover the philosopher's stone, and the transmutation of 

 metals. Mixed up with these were also a school of magicians, individuals who 

 revelled in mysteries — always an indication of ignorant superstition. 



During this period the ideas of the universe were taught from the books of 

 Moses; even the learned lost all conception of the rotundity of the earth, and 

 indeed we have treatises written to prove that we live on a flat world. 



Of course, during the period I am speaking of there were some minds, in 

 isolated cases, which still believed in the teaching of the Ptolemaic system. But 

 the overruling authority of the Church crushed out all inquiry into the nature of 

 things, deeming it sufficient that men should either remain ignorant, or devote their 

 attention to a future existence. 



At length, however, after the conquest of Constantinople, in 1453, there came 

 a period when the literature of the ancient world again claimed attention, and the 

 logic of Aristotle became the dominant factor in the teaching of the Church. 



Another element was also contributing to the revival of the human in- 

 tellect. 



The Saracens, after their conquest of Alexandria, had preserved in the univer- 

 sities of Bagdad and Damascus much of the learning of the philosophers of the 

 ancient world. This in the course of time followed their conquests along the 

 northern coast of Africa, and was gradually grafted into the European mind by 

 the teaching of the doctrines of the school at Salamanca ; and it is to this channel, 

 strange to say, that we are indebted for what we know of the tenets of Hippar- 

 chus and Ptolemy, as well as to many of the alchemistic sciences which they them- 

 selves assiduously cultivated. 



Thus gradually we see dawning upon the benighted minds of the middle ages 

 a revival of the learning of the ancient world. 



The invention of printing and the lessons of the Reformation at once threw 

 open the whole question to independent thought, and at the same time afforded a 

 means of free interchange of opinions throughout the whole world. 



About this same time the vexed question of the earth's rotundity was for ever 

 set at rest by the discoveries of Columbus in 1492, and the circumnavigation of the 

 globe in 1522. 



I now approach a period when it becomes necessary to show, with somewhat 

 more exactitude than that with which I have hitherto treated the subject, how 



