Page:Carroll Lane Fenton - A History of Evolution (1922).djvu/22

 Rh dicted the established authorities, either refused to believe their Own senses, or else feared to publish their information because of the almost certain prosecution that would follow. To believe blindly, without analysis or question, was considered right and proper; to seek knowledge for oneself was a crime that the medieval church, and her governmental allies, stood ever ready to punish.

But the autocratic enforcement of antiquated dogma, and the serf-like submission to authority, could not go on forever. A revolution came, even within the ranks of the theologians themselves. Giordano Bruno (1548–1600) revived the teachings of Aristotle, and combined them with theories, and combined them with ideas secured by omnivorous reading of Greek, Arabic, and Oriental writings. He undoubtedly had some conception of evolution, compares the intelligence of man and various of the lower animals, and recognizes a physical relationship between them. In geology he was essentially modern, arguing against the six thousand years of Bible chronology, and maintaining that conditions of his day were the same, fundamentally, as those during ancient periods of the earth's history–a doctrine which he probably borrowed from the Arabian, Avicenna.

Before considering others of the philosophers who became, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the sponsors of the evolution idea, we may well pause to glance at the general state of learning throughout Europe at the beginning of that period. Just as any idea is a product of the men who advocate it, so