ADDRESS. Ixxi 
the first of them and the last, the human intellect was active in other fields 
than theirs. Pythagoras had founded a school of mathematics and made 
his experiments on the harmonic intervals. The sophists had run through 
their career. At Athens had appeared Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, 
who ruined the sophists, and whose yoke remains to some extent unbroken to 
thé present hour. Within this period also the School of Alexandria was 
founded, Euclid wrote his ‘Elements,’ and made some advance in optics. 
Archimedes had propounded the theory of the lever, and the principles of 
hydrostatics. Astronomy was immensely enriched by the discoveries of Hippar- 
chus, who was followed by the historically more celebrated Ptolemy. Ana- 
tomy had been made the basis of Scientific medicine; and it is said by Draper* 
that vivisection had begun. In fact the science of ancient Greece had 
already cleared the world of the fantastic images of divinities operating 
capriciously through natural phenomena. It had shaken itself free from that 
fruitless scrutiny ‘‘ by the internal light of the mind alone,” which had vainly 
sought to transcend experience and reach a knowledge of ultimate causes. 
Instead of accidental observation, it had introduced observation with a purpose ; 
instruments were employed to aid the senses ; and scientific method was ren - 
dered in a great measure complete by the union of Induction and Experiment. 
What, then, stopped its victorious advance? Why was the scientific intel- 
lect compelled, like an exhausted soil, to lie fallow for nearly two millenniums 
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—obscurity of thought, servility, intolerance of disposition, 
enthusiasm of temper; and he gives striking examples of eacht. 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 
putrefaction. Christianity had appeared, offering the gospel to the poor, and, 
by moderation if not asceticism of life, practically protesting against the 
profligacy of the age. The sufferings of the early christians and the extra- 
ordinary exaltation of mind which enabled them to triumph over the dia- 
bolical tortures to which they were subjected}, must have left traces not 
easily effaced. They scorned the earth, in view of that “building 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. Augus- 
tine, who flourished a.p. 400, would not deny the rotundity of the earth ; but 
he would deny the possible existence of inhabitants 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 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 braye remarks regarding the. spirit of the 
Middle Ages. It was a menial spirit. The seekers after natural knowledge 
had forsaken that fountain of living waters, the direct appeal to nature by 
observation and experiment, and had given themselves up to the remanipula- 
* History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, p. 295. 
+ History of the Inductive Sciences, vol. i. ‘ 
+ Depicted with terrible vividness in Rénan’s ‘ Antichrist.’ 
