Page:Science and medieval thought. The Harveian oration delivered before the Royal College of Physicians, October 18, 1900 (IA sciencemedievalt00allbrich).pdf/96

90 who saw that light six long centuries ago; yet a child rather of our age than of his own. As Abélard had closed the gates upon the neo-platonist tradition of Alexandria, so Ockham closed them against realism in all its forms; and the Church cursed them both. In his own person the occupa- tion of professorial chairs by Franciscans came to an end; Paris and the Thomists could not con- sistently oppose nominalism; Duns the North- umbrian had inflated realism into a monstrous phantasm, and speculative reason had to submit to the yoke of verification. Yet what could nominalism do for theology, or for clerical schools? The Franciscans for the most part had turned to mysticism, and thenceforth the man of science and the devotee were to work apart. Furthermore, by Ockham philosophy gained a new meaning, or lost all meaning. Before Locke, Voltaire, and Kant, Ockham demonstrated that faculties were not substances; and differentiated logic, psychology, and natural science¹.

But if, as I have said, the way for Harvey and the other pioneers of natural knowledge was thus prepared for them, it was still, even in the seven-

1 Vid. p. 50.