Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 87.djvu/295

Rh not merely was opposed by the unscientific attitude, but was itself tinged by fantastic theories and false data. Yet the scientific attitude, like the spirit of nationality, was at work in the seeming chaos; gradually it shook itself free from error, and, by the increasing application of truly scientific methods, won a similar triumph to that which the sovereign political power gained by its gradual development of governmental institutions.

This was the process going on in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. When men still believed in demons and witches and divination from dreams, it is not surprising that they believed also in natural magic. Only a small part of nature's secrets were revealed to them; of the rest they felt that almost anything might turn out to be true. It was a time when "one vast realm of wonder spreads around." They had to struggle against a huge burden of error and superstition which Greece and Rome and the Arabs handed down to them; yet they must try to assimilate what was of value in Aristotle, Galen, Pliny, Ptolemy, and the rest. Crude naïve beginners they were in many respects. Yet they show an interest in nature and its problems; they are drawing the line between science and religion; they make some progress in mathematics, geography, physics and chemistry; they not only talk about experimental method, they actually make some inventions and discoveries of use in the future advance of science. Moreover, they themselves feel that they are making progress. They do not hesitate to disagree with their ancient authorities, when they know something better. Roger Bacon affirms that many scientific facts and truths are known in his time of which Plato and Aristotle, Hippocrates and Galen, were ignorant. The ancients, says Peter of Spain in effect, were philosophers, but we are experimenters. Magic still lingers but the march of modern science has begun.