Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/764

746 an indigenous development. In Richard the First's time flourished Abbot Neckham, who wrote a scientific treatise in Latin verse, and the Bishop-elect Giraldus Cambrensis, who was a topographer. Under John we have Bishop Grosseteste, a writer on physical science, and in the next reign comes the Franciscan monk Roger Bacon, whose scientific reputation is familiar. The 15th century yields us among clerical men of science John Lydgate, chiefly known for his poetry. When we turn back to see who were the first to occupy themselves with the science of the sciences—philosophy—we perceive this same connection. In the old English period lived Scotus Erigena, a philosophical ecclesiastic whose philosophy was theological in its bearings. After a long interval, the next of this class was prior Henry of Huntingdon, who, as a moralist, brought other incentives than divine commands to bear on conduct. Presently came Bishop John of Salisbury, who, besides being classed as a writer on morality, was more distinctly to be classed as a writer on ancient philosophy. Grosseteste to his physical philosophy added mental philosophy, as also did Roger Bacon.

Joined with the fact that in mediæval days scarcely any laymen are named as devoted to studies of these kinds, the facts above given suffice to show that in Christian Europe, as in the pagan East, the man of science and the philosopher were of priestly origin. Inductive proof seems needless when we remember that during pre-feudal and feudal days, war and the chase were thought by the ruling classes the only honorable occupations. Themselves unable to read and write, they held that learning should be left to the children of mean people. And since learning was inaccessible to the masses, it becomes a necessary implication that the clerical class was the one to which mental culture of all kinds, inclusive of the scientific and philosophical kinds, was limited.

To trace the stages by which has been gradually effected the differentiation of the scientifico-philosophical class from the clerical class is not here requisite. It will suffice to note the leading characters of the change, and the state now reached.

The first broad fact to be observed is that the great body of doctrine distinguished by being based on reason instead of authority, has divided into a concrete part and an abstract part; with the result of generating two different classes of cultivators—the man of science and the philosopher. In the ancient East the distinction between the two was vague. Among the Greeks, from T hales onward, the thinker was one who studied physical facts and drew his general conceptions from them. Even on coming to Aristotle we see in the same man the union of