Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 64.djvu/13

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intellects; and its religious authority was assigned to it by making all truth a part of religion. And as Religion claimed assent within her own jurisdiction under the most solemn and imperative sanctions, Philosophy shared in her imperial power, and dissent from their doctrines was no longer blameless or allowable. Error became wicked, dissent became heresy; to reject received human doctrines was nearly the same as to doubt Divine declarations.

Aristotle became the sole authority in science just as the church was the sole authority in religion.

While a general statement like the foregoing is, in the main, true, it requires countless modifications if it is to be taken as an explanation of the course of intellectual progress in the middle ages. Their conditions were almost as complex as those that surround our own century. They were modified by unnumbered circumstances of place, time and personality. No one formula can possibly express the spirit of the middle ages, even in respect of a single branch of science. It is, for example, entirely true that the authority of Aristotle was overwhelming. What was not found in his works was, necessarily, false. This is a general truth, and the career of Galileo is a commentary upon it. On the other hand, it must not be supposed that Aristotle was always and everywhere unquestioned.

It was not until two great doctors of the church—Albertus Magnus and St. Thomas Aquinas—had adopted, explained and consecrated Aristotle 's doctrines in the thirteenth century that his authority became overpowering and universal. Roger Bacon, the great contemporary of St. Thomas and Albert, was also, as Voltaire has said, "un homme admirable pour son siècle. Quel siecle? me direz-vous. C'était celui du gouvernement féodal et des scholastiques. Figurez vous les Samoïdes et les Ostiasques qui aurient lu Aristote et Avicenne—voilà ce que nous étions."

In the year 1000, the world did not come to an end, as had been prophesied and expected: 'Whereupon men took renewed possession of the Earth and of themselves.' This gave leisure to the spirit; leisure and comfort for the body had already, in some measure, been conquered. Men again began to be curious regarding humanity, life, nature. Science for the first time became possible. It is with the greatest difficulty that the attitude of the middle ages towards scientific matters can be comprehended. The time is full of the sharpest contrasts. Roger Bacon illustrates its highest lights. Its deepest shadows are found in the doings of the inquisitors of Spain. Its everyday aspect is, perhaps, best to be conceived from poems and legends that pleased the people. Bestiaries, or story-books of animals, were extremely popular.

They declared, among other things, that:

The basilisk kills with a glance of his eye; "the bite of the cockatrice is fatal to the weasel if the weasel eat not rue before"; the salamander lives in fire;