Page:Science and medieval thought. The Harveian oration delivered before the Royal College of Physicians, October 18, 1900 (IA sciencemedievalt00allbrich).pdf/33

 peripatetic nominalism, but whereby men were versed rather in logic and rhetoric than in natural science. Thus Plato's chimera of the human microcosm, a reflection of his theory of the macrocosm, stood beside the Faith as the second great adversary of physiology.

The influence of authority, by which Europe was to be welded together, governed all human ideas. As in theology was the authority of the Faith, so in the science and medicine of the first period of the Middle Ages was that of the neo-platonic doctrines, and, in the second period, of the Arabian versions of Galen and of Aristotle; furthermore in this rigid discipline me- tallic doctrine almost necessarily overbore life and freedom. It is not easy for us to realise a time when intellectual progress-which involves the successive abandonment of provisional syntheses -was unconceived; when truths were regarded

from Priscian and Donatus, improved the eighth century Latin, and probably made Virgil and Cicero kuowa in Gaul and Britain. Ile knew but little Greek, as we infer from bis quotation of the names of the Categories. Erigona knew moro Greek and carried some of it to the Court of Charles the Bald. See note 2, p. 65. Alcuin probably did not visit Ireland. Boetius had translated also both Analytics and the Topics.