Historical Relations I2i 



the general laws of the nature, growth, and distribution of plants. 

 Nay, they are even devoid of theories on these great biological 

 topics. They can but go to the ancients. ^ 



During the period between the beginning of the thirteenth and 

 the beginning of the sixteenth century there was a series of move- 

 ments of vast importance for the history of culture but which we 

 shall fortunately be able to pass over in almost complete silence. 

 These movements were (a) the firm establishment of the Inquisition, 

 {b) the religious upheaval known as the Reformation, and [c) the 

 Revival or Renaissance of Learning. We may very briefly consider 

 them in this order. 



The Inquisition as a separate, regular, and legally established 

 method of establishing faith and uprooting error makes its appear- 

 ance in the thirteenth century. Our horror at its methods, our 

 indignation at its injustice, our detestation of its blood-stained 

 and infamous history, must not mislead us into regarding it as an 

 attack on the experimental method, or as a means of suppressing at 

 its birth a monster which if allowed to live and grow would one day 

 strangle religion. There can be no reasonable doubt that in the 

 sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries the activities of the 

 officers of the Inquisition were directed to the suppression of scien- 

 tific views that were held to be dangerous to the faith. In the 

 centuries that preceded, however, no such tendency can be dis- 

 tinguished. The reasons for this are simple. During those 

 earlier centuries, on the one hand experimental methods produced 

 no conclusions that were dangerous to current theology, and on the 

 other it is extremely unlikely that any officer of the Inquisi- 

 tion ever grasped the nature of the scientific method. So far as 

 the Middle Ages are concerned we can therefore put aside the 

 Inquisition as irrelevant to our discussion. 



We may turn now to the great religious movement, the 

 Reformation, which has determined the main religious configura- 

 tion of Europe. Those who profess the reformed faith will 

 naturally, and from their point of view quite rightly, regard their 

 faith as truer and more reasonable than the faith which it displaced. 

 But Truth and Reason are not in themselves science, and search 



^ It m"ust be admitted that some slight theoretical advances were made in 

 alchemy. It is, however, very doubtful if these were the work of Europeans 

 until the sixteenth century. The science was essentially Arabian, and Paiacelsus 

 was perhaps the first efFective European investigator. 



