Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 75.djvu/352

348 gendered and the ancient writings were quoted as sustaining one side or the other. All this led to referring questions as to their truth or error to authority as the source of knowledge, and resulted in a complete eclipse of the reason.

This was a barren period, not only for science, but also, curiously enough, for those studies which were especially engaged in. Notwithstanding the fact that for more than a thousand years all the new works were written by theologians, there was no substantial advance in their field of learning, and the reflection comes to us that the reciprocal action of free inquiry is an essential condition for the growth of any department of learning.

We should remember that the mental life of the Middle Ages was active. It is a mistake to suppose that men of those times differed much in their mental powers from those of to-day. The medieval philosophers were masters of the metaphysical method of argument, and their ingenuity and mental alertness were great. The principal thing that held progress in check was the method of setting about to ascertain truth.

Renewal of Observation.—It was an epoch of great importance, therefore, when men began again to observe, and to attempt, even in an unskilful way, hampered by intellectual inheritance and habit, to unravel the mysteries of nature and to trace the relation between causes and effects in the universe. The new movement was, as previously said, a Tevolt of the intellect against existing conditions. In this movement were embraced all the benefits that have resulted from the development of modern science. The invention of printing, the voyages of mariners, the growth of universities, all helped in a general way, but just as the pause in science a thousand years or more earlier had been owing to the turning away from nature and to new mental interests, so the revival was a return to nature and to the method of science.

The Widening Horizon.—The reign of authority in intellectual matters lasted for twelve centuries, and then gave way gradually to the reign of observation and reason. Under the influence of the new method we have been moving generation by generation into a state of clearer discernment and into an intellectual atmosphere of wider horizon.

There is an inspiration in this ever-widening horizon. We must recognize, I think, that there has been a reconstructive force accompanying scientific progress. Wherever traditional opinion has been uprooted something more helpful to humanity has been planted. When rightly understood, we see that this freer life of thought has been constructive and helpful, not merely iconoclastic. Man has once again taken his high place in the world as the interpreter of nature, and as investigation widens his comprehension of the laws of natural