I 1 8 Science Religion and Reality 



stimulus of Arabian learning. The schemes thus produced took 

 into account the form of the world and of man as derived from 

 Arabian sources, and read into each relationship a spiritual 

 meaning. For such an attitude of mind there could be no ultimate 

 distinction between physical events, moral truths, and spiritual 

 experiences. In their fusion of the internal and external universe 

 these mystics have much in common with the mystics of all 

 ages. The culmination of the process is reached with Dante 

 (1265-1321). 



The medieval world thus knew nothing of that infinite sea 

 of experience on which the man of science nowadays launches his 

 bark in adventurous exploration. The task of these writers of 

 scholastic " science " was rather to give a general outline of know- 

 ledge, to set forth such a survey of the universe as would be in 

 accord with spiritual truth. The framework on which this 

 encyclopaedic scheme was built was Aristotle, largely as conveyed 

 by his Arabic commentators. 



Yet despite all these drawbacks, it is a fact that man is an 

 inquisitive, an observing, a classifying animal. Scholasticism could 

 not and did not alter his nature ; it could only mask it and overlay 

 it. Precisely in the period when the respect for ratiocination and 

 the indifference to direct access to nature had reached their zenith 

 among the learned, the craftsman asserted his humanity. The 

 great theological movement of the thirteenth century reared vast 

 cathedrals that stand as monuments of what the faith meant in 

 those days. This faith adorned them with images, beautiful if 

 you will, but such as never were on land or sea. Those dislocated 

 joints, those impossibly attenuated bodies, those fantastic anatomies, 

 however noble as an artistic expression, tell their own tale of the 

 ignorance on the part of their makers of the world without. But 

 look at the capitals of the columns or the stone frames of these 

 anatomical monstrosities and you will see something different. You 

 will see ivy and vine, buttercup and columbine, growing, twining, 

 shooting as they do in the craftsman's own garden. The mason is 

 a better naturalist than the saint, the professor, or the architect. 

 Natural curiosity, the mother of science, is beginning to awake 

 from her millennial slumber. 



There are other minor arts, e.g.y that of miniature, in which 

 the love of nature eai-ly asserts itself. The complete story of the 

 birth of naturalism in medieval art has yet to be written. When 



