Page:Readings in European History Vol 2.djvu/640

 602 Readings in Enropea7i History and axioms be derived from things by a more sure and guarded way, and that a method of intellectual operation be introduced altogether better and more certain. . . . There is no soundness in our notions, whether logical or physical. Substance, quality, action, passion, essence itself are not sound notions ; much less are heavy, light, dense, rare, moist, dry, generation, corruption, attraction, repulsion, element, matter, form, and the like ; but all are fantastical and ill-defined. . . . There are and can be only two ways of searching into and discovering truth. The one flies from the senses and particulars to the most general axioms, and from these principles, the truth of which it takes for settled and im- movable, proceeds to judgment and the discovery of middle axioms. And this way is now in fashion. The other derives axioms from the senses and particulars, rising by a grad- ual and unbroken ascent, so that it arrives at the most general axioms last of all. This is the true way, but as yet untried. . . . Religious It is not to be forgotten that in every age natural phi- opposition to losophy has had a troublesome adversary and hard to deal with, — namely, superstition and the blind and immoderate zeal of religion. For we see among the Greeks that those who first proposed to man's uninitiated ears the natural causes for thunder and for storms were thereupon found guilty of impiety. Nor was much more forbearance shown by some of the ancient fathers of the Christian Church to those who, on most convincing grounds (such as no one in his senses would now think of contradicting), maintained that the earth was round and, of consequence, asserted the existence of the antipodes. 1 Moreover, as things now are, to discourse of nature is made harder and more perilous by the summaries and systems of the schoolmen ; who, having reduced theology into regular order as well as they were able, and fash- ioned it into the shape of an art, ended in incorporating the science. Influence of the scholastic philosophers. 1 See extract from Lactantius given above, p. 60 1, note.