Historical Relations 1 1 I 



beggarly elements, whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage ? " 

 (Galatians iv. 8-9). 



With this contempt for the study of phenomena was soon, 

 however, welded another belief which was very widely current in 

 Judaeo-Christian literature. The end of the world was a constant 

 preoccupation of that literature and is described over and over 

 again in lurid colours. 



But in much of Greek physical philosophy, as in that of 

 Democritus, this world is but one of a long series of worlds, and the 

 end thereof would mean but the beginning of another world like 

 to it. This ill-fitted Judaeo-Christian idea of eschatology and a 

 conception of the destruction of the elements themselves was 

 adopted. " The day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night ; 

 in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise and the 

 elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works 

 that are therein shall be burned up" (II Peter iii. 10). So long as 

 that idea was prominent in men's minds there could be no serious 

 attention paid to phenomena. " The day of the Lord " rang the 

 death-knell of science. The development of Christian and of Jewish 

 theology ceases, at this point, to have an interest for our purpose. 



8. j4n attempted Compromise between the Pagan and the 

 Christian standpoint 



Before we part with the ancient world, we may consider the 

 work of one pagan writer who, coming near to the Christian stand- 

 point, exercised a vast influence in the centuries which followed. 

 The physician Galen of Pergamum (150-200 a.d.) was an Asiatic 

 Greek who practised with great success at Rome and was the 

 medical attendant of several Emperors, Marcus Aurelius among 

 them. Galen was an exceedingly voluminous writer and a vast 

 mass of his works has come down to us. He was an ingenious, 

 a practical, and an industrious investigator, and the anatomical and 

 physiological system which he sets forth remained in current use 

 until the middle of the sixteenth century. For our purpose the 

 interest of that system is in its philosophical assumptions. 



The philosophical standpoint of Galen in relation to his science 

 comes out most clearly and consistently in his treatise " On the 

 Uses of the Parts of the Body of Man." In that remarkable work, 

 vastly influential in the ages which followed, Galen seeks to prove 

 that the bodily organs are so well constructed, and in such perfect 



