218 Philosophy of Botany. 



Before briniging to a conclusion the history of the gradual 

 collapse of the Byzantine empire, and its extinction through 

 the second conquest of Constantinople by Asiatic barbarians, 

 it will be well to recall the principal data of the fate of the 

 Western empire, and what little there can be said about the 

 intellectual state in that time. 



Constantine the Great had on his deathbed, A.D. 337divid- 

 ed the empire into two halves between his sons. Byzantium 

 had already put on the name of New Rome, City of Constan- 

 tine ; finally, Constantinople ; and had taken on customs and 

 manners of Oriental character, having little semblance to 

 Roman habits ; Oriental servility and sycophancy the tone of 

 court life. 



After Emperor Justinian had reconquered Africa from the 

 Vandals he turned his forces against the Goths, who held 

 Italy, where his general, Belizarius, captured Rome, December, 

 S56. The operation closed with the surrender of Ravenna, 

 493. Under the reign of the Ostro-Gothic king, Theodoric, 

 two remarkable men were his ministers, Boetius, the philoso- 

 pher, and Cassiodorus, the theologian. The latter, being 

 completely imbued with the doctrines and principles of 

 Augustinus, the Bishop of Hippo, introduced an educational 

 system which totally ignored the classical. philosophical style 

 of teaching. Heaven, he says, is to be the terminus of man's 

 earthly wanderings ; abandonment of worldly interests, and 

 the surrender of personal convictions to the doctrines and 

 commandments of the church, the sure path to his supreme 

 blessing. The schools were graded into two courses: the 

 Trivium, or lower class, instructed in grammar, rhetoric, and 

 dialectic ; the upper course, or Quadrivium, was occupied with 

 the teaching of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. 

 He pays some tribute to the natural sciences only in aid to. 

 agriculture and horticulture, but omits them altogether in the 

 course of education. 



This system remained in vogue under the monastic rule 

 throughout the Middle Ages. Unremitting scholastic and 

 sophistic strife about theological whims and trifles, bloody 

 contests, and cruel persecutions for opinion's sake, fill hence- 

 forth, under the unbroken dominion of the church, the annals 



