

Ch. III.] 



EARLY ITALIAN" WRITERS. 



33 







received ; but there was sufficient spirit of toleration and 

 candour amongst the Italian ecclesiastics, to allow the sub- 

 ject to be canvassed with much freedom. They even entered 

 warmly into the controversy themselves, often favouring dif- 

 ferent sides of the question; and however much we may 

 deplore the loss of time and labour devoted to the defence 

 of untenable positions, it must be conceded that they dis- 

 played far less polemic bitterness than certain writers who 

 followed them ' beyond the Alps/ two centuries and a half 

 later. 



* 



% 



. 







• 



eetf 



in 



-- 



• 













/ 



CONTROVERSY AS TO THE REAL NATURE OF FOSSIL 



ORGANIC REMAINS. 



Matiioli — Falloppio. — The system of scholastic disputa- 

 tions, encouraged in the universities of the middle ages, 

 had unfortunately trained men to habits of indefinite argu- 

 mentation; and they often preferred absurd and extrava- 

 gant propositions, because greater skill was required to 

 maintain them ; the end and object of these intellectual 

 combats being victory, and not truth. No theory could be 

 so far-fetched or fantastical as not to attract some fol- 

 lowers, provided it fell in with popular notions ; and as 

 cosmogonists were not at all restricted, in building their 

 systems, to the agency of known causes, the opponents of 



stance. 



met his arguments 

 red from each othe 

 ndrew Mattioli. for 



name 



the illustrator of Dioscorides, embraced the notion of Agricola, 



miner, that a certain ' materia 



c fatty matter/ set into fermentation by heat, gave birth to 

 fossil organic shapes. Yet 



om 



me able 1 

 3 manner 



Yet Mattioli had come to the conclu- 



observations, that porous bodies, such as 



mierlit be converted into stone, as being 



5 



termed 



In 



were generated by fermentation in the spots where they are 

 found, or that they had in some cases acquired their form 

 from ' the tumultuous movements of terrestrial exhalations/ 

 Although celebrated as a professor of anatomy, he taught 



VOL. I. 



D 



