{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_38943/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_38943","id":"gutenberg_38943","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/38943","summary":null,"tags":["Category: History - Medieval/Middle Ages","Category: History - Modern (1750+)","Category: Science - Physics","Philosophy, Medieval"],"text":"E-text prepared by Irma Spehar, Turgut Dincer, and the Online Distributed\nProofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made\navailable by Internet Archive/American Libraries\n(http://www.archive.org/details/americana)\n\n\n\nNote: Images of the original pages are available through\n      Internet Archive/American Libraries. See\n      http://www.archive.org/details/sciencemedievalt00allbrich\n\n\n\n\n\nSCIENCE AND MEDIEVAL THOUGHT.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nLondon: C. J. CLAY AND SONS,\nCAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE,\nAVE MARIA LANE.\nGlasgow: 50, WELLINGTON STREET.\n\nLeipzig: F. A. BROCKHAUS.\nNew York: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.\nBombay: E. SEYMOUR HALE.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\nSCIENCE AND MEDIEVAL THOUGHT\n\nThe Harveian Oration Delivered Before\nthe Royal College of Physicians,\nOctober 18, 1900,\n\nby\n\nTHOMAS CLIFFORD ALLBUTT, M.A., M.D. Cantab.\n\nFellow of the College,\nHon. Ll.D. Glasgow, Hon. M.D. Dubl., Hon. D.Sc. Vict.,\nHon. F.R.C.P. Dubl., F.R.S.\n\nRegius Professor of Physic in the University of Cambridge;\nFellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge;\nConsulting Physician to the Leeds General Infirmary;\nPhysician to the Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nLondon\nC. J. Clay and Sons\nCambridge University Press Warehouse\nAve Maria Lane\n1901\n[All Rights reserved.]\n\n\n\n\n  \"Duo enim sunt modi cognoscendi, scilicet per argumentum et\n  experimentum. Argumentum concludit, et facit nos concludere\n  qu\u00e6stionem, sed non certificat, neque removet dubitationem, ut\n  quiescat animus in intuitu veritatis, nisi eam inveniat via\n  experienti\u00e6.\" ROGER BACON, _Op. Majus_, Venet. 1750, p. 336.\n\n\n  TO\n\n  SIR WILLIAM SELBY CHURCH, BART., M.D.\n\n  PRESIDENT OF THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS OF LONDON,\n\n  THIS ORATION,\n  DELIVERED AT HIS REQUEST,\n  IS DEDICATED.\n\n\n\n\nERRATUM.\n\n\np. 78, note 1, l. 19; _for_ \"were in orders, for the most part in holy\norders;\" _read_ \"were generally speaking in holy orders;\"\n\n\n\n\nPREFACE.\n\n\nIn the Middle Ages the old world had passed, and the vision of a new\nworld came near to the eager and passionate hearts of many peoples.\nLincoln and Wells, Amiens and Chartres, Florence and Assisi tell us of\nthe glory of that vision; and bear witness of its flight: for with\nGilbert, Galileo, Harvey and Newton the Middle Ages themselves became a\nphantom, and again the spirit of a new world appeared. Thus in the\nphases of time the world dies and is born again; fulfilling greater\ndestinies. But the new are born in the cold bed of the elder worlds, and\nthe young life is chilled, or a lustier offspring turns unnaturally to\ncurse the dead; so in their decrepitude lay the Middle Ages upon modern\nlife; and the Middle Ages were accursed, until certain pious men sought\nto reanimate their vestments and their formulas, and to set the hands\nback on the dial of the centuries; as manyminded man seeks wistfully to\nreanimate the simple wonders and beliefs of his childhood. Their\nministry was no more than pious; the method of modern history wins the\nfruits of the past while casting away the shadow of its withered\nbranches. This comparative method, first applied to the art and romance\nof the Middle Ages, so that every dilettante may now discourse to us of\ntheir evolution, has been applied also to the thought of the period; but\nits results, laid up in the closets of a few scholars, are as yet\nunfamiliar. It may then become one, who in no sense a scholar has\nstrayed into these secret places, to try to distribute some lessons of\nthe medieval thought which, to many of us, seems as sere and outworn as\ndid the relics of Gothic shrines to our great-grandfathers. For, as in\nthose medieval generations which lay nearest us the furnace had cooled,\nimpatiently we had thrown metal and dross aside, and let our contempt\nfor the dryness and pedantry of its latter days prevent our vision of\nthe earlier time when the passion for knowledge bore up the world, and\nsought even to contain it. That dogma is not eternal is manifest to\nevery wanderer in the streets of Toledo, yet the historian may well\nrecall us to the study of a time when, by mystical or intellectual\ninspirations, men strove eagerly to know the meaning of life, its\norigins, and its issues; and may lead us to the discovery of the seeds\nand wells of its fertility. The Greeks prophesied that before man can\ndetermine his place and service in this world he must form some theory\nof the world as a whole; the ages of faith prophesied that great deeds\nmust be born of great faith and of great conceptions.\n\nTo those who live only in the past, or only in the present, there seems\nin the discriminations of the comparative historian to be a certain\ncold-bloodedness. Are not the ears of this critic, so aloof from the\nmurmuring of creed and controversy, are they not deaf to the voices of\nthe spirit which he would interpret to us? A distinguished bishop who\nwas among my hearers, with the fervour and gentle humour so well known\nin him, rallied me not for celebrating science but for putting religion\nto rout. Yet in our own day surely the argument is changed, not in form\nonly but in very nature; so changed by the conceptions of evolution,\nwhich have entered the mind of churchman and layman alike, that not a\nfew speculative beliefs are changing sides without the knowledge of the\ndisputants; and he who thinks himself a defender of the faith may have\njoined the revolt. But if we no longer carry the colours of the troops\nof the past we shall collect our lessons from its strategies; and for\none of these lessons a prelate of the King will give thanks with me,\nthat his supremacy has palsied the arm of the inquisitor to strengthen\nthat of the apostle.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nAn unsystematic reader of a subject finds it out of his power to make\ndue acknowledgment of the help and advantage derived from expert\nauthors. Much of the matter had seeded itself insensibly in his brain in\nthe course of general reading and conversation; much of it again had\nbeen obtained more carefully from sources now forgotten. To the\nfollowing authors I know I am profoundly indebted, as I am to many\nothers to whose names and works I can now give no reference:\n\n  Haur\u00e9au, La Philosophie Scolastique, Ed. 1872;\n\n  Jowett, Dialogues of Plato (vol. III. p. 523);\n\n  Jourdain (Amable), Recherches critiques, Paris 1848;\n\n  Jourdain (Charles), Excursions historiques, Paris 1888 (and the\n    Philosophie de St Thomas of the same author);\n\n  Amp\u00e8re, Histoire litt. de la France avant le XIIme si\u00e8cle;\n\n  Brucker's Historia Critica Philosophi\u00e6 (English Ed., 1791);\n\n  Renan, Averro\u00e8s, Paris 1866; the Philosophie p\u00e9rip. apud Syros;\n    and the Peuples S\u00e9mitiques dans l'histoire de la civilisation, of\n    the same author;\n\n  Roger Bacon, Westminster Review, 1864, two Articles (by Thomas\n    Marshall, M.A. Oxon.);\n\n  Schmidt, Essai sur les Mystiques du XIVme si\u00e8cle;\n\n  Benn, A. W., The Greek Philosophers, London 1882 (and many helpful\n    essays in periodical literature);\n\n  Zeller, Die Philosophie der Griechen, 1881;\n\n  Krische, A. B., Theologische Lehre d. Griechischen Denker,\n    G\u00f6ttingen 1840;\n\n  Ueberweg, Grundriss d. Gesch. d. Phil. des Alterthums, Berlin\n    1867; Gerlach und Traum\u00fcller, Gesch. d. physik.\n    Experimentierkunst, Leipzig 1899;\n\n  Rashdall's History of Universities;\n\n  Haeser, Geschichte der Medicin, Jena 1875-82;\n\n  Baas, J. H., Gesch. d. Medicin, Stuttgart 1876;\n\n  _Idem_, Die geschichtliche Entwicklung des \u00e4rztlichen Standes,\n    Berlin 1896;\n\n  Charles Daremberg (all his works);\n\n  Rousselot, \u00c9tudes sur la philosophie dans le Moyen Age, 1840;\n\n  Pattison, Casaubon, 1875;\n\n  Meunier, Francis, Essai sur la vie et les ouvrages de Nicole\n    Oresme, Paris 1857.\n\n  Descartes, Epist. Cartes. 4to. Amst., 1668;\n\n  Plumpius, Fundamenta Med. Fol. Lovan., 1652;\n\n  Sylvii Op. Omn., 1679, p. 875;\n\n  Haller, Elem. Physiol., 1757, I. 3;\n\n  Tiedemann, Physiologie de l'homme, Paris 1831, I. 41;\n\n  Delle Chiaja, Instituzione di Anatom. e Fis. Comp., 1832, I. 13.\n\n  (The six last works are cited as being especially useful, among\n  many others, to show the extent to which modern physiology, from\n  Harvey onwards, is based upon vivisection; and that it could not\n  have arisen or thriven otherwise. It was by the test of many\n  vivisections that Plumpius was led to the honourable withdrawal of\n  his opposition to Harvey.)\n\n\n\n\nINTRODUCTION[1].\n\n\nIn the many Harveian Orations which have been delivered since the death\nof the founder of modern physiology the direct aspects of his honour and\nof his work have been exhausted; of late years the orators have\nconcerned themselves with indirect aspects. Some of my friends have said\nto me that they lack a perspective view of Harvey and his work; that\neven highly educated men have little sense of his relation to medieval\nthought, or of the evolution of medieval into modern thought. Of the\nseveral stars of the constellation--of Copernicus, Gilbert, Galileo,\nHarvey--they had some knowledge; but how came Harvey to be at Padua? how\ndid science spring up in North Italy? did science arise out of the womb\nof medicine, or contrariwise? why did natural science not flourish in\nthe thirteenth century, and was it not a great misfortune for Europe\nthat it did not then flourish? what were the systems of thought which in\nthe Middle Ages preceded, encouraged or thwarted the travail of the\nhuman mind, and what of good or ill do we owe to them? These and such\nquestions it seemed not unfitting that a Harveian Orator of this latter\nday should consider. Now on the philosophy of the Middle Ages, and on\nits relation to the era of positive science of which Harvey was perhaps\nthe chief pioneer, there lay in a drawer in my cabinet the confused and\noccasional notes of many years. An interest in this thorny subject, sown\nin my mind at first by accident, and reawakened by these enquiring\nfriends, had for me the charms of an old fancy, and I trust some brief\nessay thereon may have a temporary service; if, that is, I can touch the\nimagination of my hearers, and after some broken fashion bring before\nthem a vision of the nations swayed hither and thither upon the face of\nEurope by a thirst for knowledge of a kind different, both in its\nmethods and in its aims, from our own.\n\nThis oration cannot have the merit of an original study. Had I the\nequipment I have not the leisure to carry my investigations to the\nsources. Yet I may have attained to some maturity of judgment herein by\nlong occupation of my mind since, in 1863, my old friend Mr Thomas\nMarshall of Leeds, sometime of St John's College, Oxford, interested me\nin the life and work of Roger Bacon, the only eminent forerunner of the\ngreat naturalists of the seventeenth century.\n\nThe art of the Middle Ages and the social and political history of the\ntime have fascinated modern Europe; for medieval thought, though its\nphrases survive in their mouths, few persons have shown any care: yet to\nthese conflicts we owe what we are. No great battles of mankind have\nbeen fought in vain; none of its great captains has deserved oblivion.\nYet we shrug our shoulders at their uncouth or outlandish names; we\nassume that from their chairs there issued naught but rhetoric,\ncasuistries and fallacies, and that their multitudinous disciples were\nsilly moths.\n\nEach period of human achievement has its phases of spring, culmination,\nand decline; and it is in its decline that the leafless tree comes to\njudgment. In the unloveliness of decay the Middle Ages are as other ages\nhave been, as our own will be: but in those ages there was more than one\noutburst of life; more than once the enthusiasm of the youth of the West\nwent out to explore the ways of the realm of ideas; and, if we believe\nourselves at last to have found the only thoroughfare, we owe this\nknowledge to those who before us travelled the uncharted seas. If we\nhave inherited a great commerce and dominion of science it is because\ntheir argosies had been on the ocean, and their camels on the desert.\n\"Discipulus est prioris posterior dies\"; man cannot know all at once;\nknowledge must be built up by laborious generations. In all times, as in\nour own, the advance of knowledge is very largely by elimination and\nnegation; we ascertain what is not true, and we weed it out. To perceive\nand to respect the limits of the knowable we must have sought to\ntransgress them. We can build our bridge over the chasm of ignorance\nwith stored material in which the thirteenth century was poor indeed, we\ncan fix our bearings where then was no foundation; yet man may be well\nengaged when he knows not the ends of his work; and the schoolmen in\ndigging for treasure cultivated the field of knowledge, even for Galileo\nand Harvey, for Newton and Darwin. Their many errors came not of\nindolence, for they were passionate; not of hatred of light, for they\nwere eager for the light; not of fickleness, for they wrought with\nunparalleled devotion; nor indeed of ignorance of particular things, for\nthey knew many things: they erred because they did not know, and they\ncould not know, the conditions of the problems which, as they emerged\nfrom the cauldron of war and from the wreck of letters and science, they\nwere nevertheless bound to attack, if civil societies worthy of the name\nwere to be constructed. How slow in gestation is the mother of truth we\nmay see by comparing the schoolmen of the second medieval period with\nthose of the first; in the enlargement of their view, the better\nfurniture of their minds, and the deeper meaning of their distinctions:\nand when we compare with these later schoolmen the naturalists of the\nseventeenth century, we find not new acquirements only but also a new\ndirection of the pursuit of truth.\n\nIt seems hardly comprehensible that great and stable societies have been\nbuilt up on transcendental schemes of thought, upon conceptions poised\nas it were in the air. Without a system of morals no civil society\ncould exist; yet if mankind must have waited for civil polity until some\nsuch system were built up from below, of scientifically tested\nmaterials, social constructions would have been virtually impossible. In\nmorals, as in the arts, the art precedes the science; the intuitions of\ngenius imagine social schemes of provisional validity, and new and lofty\nstandards of fitness. But a social fabric thus born of a vision can bear\nno rough handling; and even the solid builders who would make a more\npermanent foundation upon positive conceptions, while seeking more or\nless deliberately to underpin the fabric, may, and often do, shake it to\nruin.\n\nHence in all guardians of morals the dread of meddling with the reigning\nvision of truth; hence its sanctity, that no man shall try the stuff of\nwhich it is made. And the dangers of heresies from within are more\nfearful than those of alien attacks; social cohesion, the end of it all,\nis thereby more exposed to disintegration. Yet nevertheless, as the\ngenerations of men change, and as knowledge increases, men see from new\npoints of view; and thus while for some the reigning vision retains its\napparent solidity, for others its rays are broken or dissolved. Even\nJohn Henry Newman was compelled to teach the relativity of truth, and\nthat a doctrine of development must be accepted. For every provisional\nsynthesis then the time must come when the apparition of truth can no\nlonger command united allegiance, and criterions begin to encroach upon\nsanctions. Broader and more stable foundations have, it is true, been\nrising almost insensibly, yet it may be long ere the superstructure rise\ninto the heavenly light; in the lower work many will see no beauty and\nno hope, others will see safety in its enlargement and solidity. By\nthese indeed the visions of the imagination are apt to be forgotten, or\nin the pressure of intellectual verification even despised; the mean\nlevel of conception may not indeed be lower, it may haply be higher, yet\nthe highest, wherein truth may be revealed by illumination, is not\ndivined in its full force, abundance and life. Great seers are wont to\nleave to others to find out, or even to care, what bottom they stood\nupon; yet only through transitory periods of a humbler duty than theirs\ncan the bases be laid and enlarged for times of richer fruition. One of\nthe profoundest of modern sayings was that of Freeman--that the end of\nmodern material progress is to bring large societies up to the level of\nsmall ones.\n\n\nThis is the day of a great celebration; that on this anniversary I am\nworthy to take a place in the succession of your Orators is more than I\ndare to believe, that you have deemed me worthy is my encouragement. In\nprivate duty also I am bound to honour one of the greatest of the sons\nof the University of Cambridge, and the greatest member of the ancient\nand honourable house of Gonville and Caius College.\n\nIn some respects I am ill equipped for my office; of the history of the\npractice of Medicine from the time of Galen to the time of Harvey I am\nalmost ignorant, I fear wilfully ignorant. Well indeed may we turn our\neyes away from those centuries wherein one of the chief callings of man\nfell into unexampled and even odious degradation; yet I trust that in me\nthis ignorance and this aversion may be compensated by some familiarity\nwith the history of thought in the Middle Ages, a familiarity acquired\nduring thirty-six years of abiding interest, and occasional study.\n\nThe discovery of the circulation of the blood by William Harvey is\ncommonly regarded among scientific discoveries as pre-eminent if not\nunique. I can quote but two opinions on this matter, both taken beyond\nour own land. In France, Dr Daremberg exclaims \"Voici Harvey! Comme au\njour de la cr\u00e9ation le chaos se d\u00e9brouille, la lumi\u00e8re se s\u00e9pare des\nt\u00e9n\u00e8bres!\" In Germany, Dr Baas says that Harvey stands alone in respect\nof the world of life; that his discovery of the inner working of the\nmicrocosm takes a place equal to, if not indeed higher than, those of\nCopernicus, Kepler and Newton in respect of the macrocosm. It will be\nmy endeavour to show that these judgments are historically justifiable.\n\nTo put the discovery of the systemic circulation of the blood in its\ntrue light, we must have some notion of the history of philosophy,\nscience and medicine. Medicine, and herein it is in contrast with\nTheology and Law, had its sources almost wholly in the Greeks. Not only\nin the doctrine of the four elements of Empedocles, a doctrine which has\nsurvived almost to our own day[2], and in the physical theories of\nHeraclitus and Leucippus, did medicine, for good or ill, first find a\nscheme of thought, but in the schools of Hippocrates and of Alexandria\nit was based also, and far more soundly, upon natural history and\nanatomy. The noble figure of Galen, the first experimental physiologist\nand the last of the great Greek physicians, portrayed for us by Dr Payne\nin the Harveian Oration of 1896, stood eminent upon the brow of the\nabyss when, as if by some convulsion of nature, medicine was overwhelmed\nfor fifteen centuries. To the philosophy of medicine, Galen had given\nmore than enough; to its natural history he had contributed in the\nfollowing of Hippocrates; to its discoveries he had given the greatest\nof all means of research, individual genius; to its methods he had\ngiven, but in vain, that indispensable method, practised first perhaps\nin history by Archimedes and the Alexandrians, of verification by\nexperiment; a method, after Galen, virtually lost till the time of\nGilbert, of Galileo and of Harvey.\n\nIn the growth of human societies small civilisations, however exquisite,\nhave been sacrificed to the formation of vaster and vaster congregations\nof men; thus only, it would seem, is an equilibrium to be reached of\nsufficient stability for the highest ends of mankind. Greece, beautiful\nas was her bloom, penetrating as was her spirit, perhaps because of her\nvery freedom of thought, never became a nation; her city states were too\nwilful to combine. The Macedonian power broadened the foundation of\npolity eastward and westward; and this work was carried as far perhaps\nas sword and fasces could carry it by the power of Rome. But even the\nRoman peace, bought as it was at the cost of learning and the arts, was\nbut a mechanical peace; in the wilder, more turbulent and more\nheterogeneous peoples of the later Empire the bodies but not the wills\nof men were in subjugation. The great system of Roman Law, which Numa,\nthe Moses of Rome, had invested with supernatural awe, had become but an\nexternal rule; even in Rome herself, poorer in people, poorer in\ncommerce, poorer than ever in ideas, the sanction of patriotism was\nfailing, and her citizens were held together for the most part by their\nbaser and more dangerous passions[3]. For Eastern Europe the University\nof Constantinople established a compact and uniform system of thought,\nsubtle prolix and acquisitive rather than original or profound; but in\nthe West, under the Frank and later Northern devastations, the very\ntraditions of learning and obedience were broken up; schools were\nclosed, and even the art of writing was almost lost. Then it was that\nthe cohesion and development of Western Europe were saved by a new and\na wonderful thing. From the East, the home of religions, had spread,\nlike an exhalation, Christianity, that religion which proves by its\nsurvival that it is the fittest sanction for the will of man. This\nreligion, entering as a new spirit into the ancient fabric of Roman\nEmpire, was to hold men's service in heart and soul as well as in body;\nyet to this end no mere mystic or personal religion could suffice:\nclothing itself with the political and ritual pride and even with the\nmythology of the pagan Empire it inspired a new adoration; but it\nimposed also upon Europe a catholic and elaborated creed. To preserve\nthe authority of the common faith not only must every knee be bowed, not\nonly must every heart be touched, but to build and to repair its fabric\nevery mind must also bring its service. How the scheme of the Faith was\nbuilt up, how oriental ecstasy and hellenistic subtlety, possessing\nthemselves of the machinery of Roman pomp, were wrought to this end, we\nmay briefly consider.\n\nAs, politically, under Diocletian and Constantine the ancient world gave\nplace to the new, so in the third century philosophy was born again in\nneo-platonism[4], the offspring of the coition of East and West in\nAlexandria, where all religions and all philosophies met together. The\nworld and the flesh were crucified that by the spirit, man might enter\ninto God[5]. Pure in its ethical mood, neo-platonism, says Harnack, led\nsurely to intellectual bankruptcy; the irruption of the barbarians was\nnot altogether the cause of the eclipse of natural knowledge: to\ntranscendental intuition the wisdom of the world had become foolishness.\nYet even then, as again and again, came the genius of Aristotle to save\nthe human mind. The death of Hypatia was the death of the School of\nAlexandria, but in Athens neo-platonism survived and grew. Proclus,\nascetic as he was, was versed also in Aristotle; and he compelled the\nEastern mysteries into categories: so that on the closure of the School\nof Athens by Justinian (A.D. 529) a formal philosophy was bequeathed to\nthe Faith; the first scholastic period was fashioned, and the objects\nand methods of enquiry were determined for thirty generations. From\nAristotle Europe adopted logic first, and then metaphysics, yet both in\nmethod and in purpose Origen and Augustine were platonists; rationalised\ndogma lived upon dialectic, and conflicted with mysticism; but logic,\ndogma and mysticism alike disdained experience.\n\nThus, no mere external sanction, stood the Faith; threefold: from the\npast it brought its pompous ritual, it appealed by its subtle dogmatic\nscheme to the intellects, and by its devotion to the hearts of men.\nThrough the mirage of it, when its substance had waned, Copernicus,\nGalileo, and Harvey had to steer by the compass of the experimental\nmethod. This was their chief adversity, and of other adversities I have\nto speak.\n\nThe visitor to the Dominican Church of St Catherine at Pisa will see on\nits walls St Thomas of Aquino with the Holy Scriptures in his hand;\nprostrate beneath him is Averroes with his Great Commentary, but beside\nhim Plato bearing the Tim\u00e6us. It was the fortune of the Faith that, of\nall the treatises of Plato, the Tim\u00e6us, the most fantastic and the least\nscientific, should have been set apart to instruct the medieval world;\nthat the cosmical scheme of the Tim\u00e6us, apparelled in the Latin of\nChalcidius,--for there were then no Greek texts in the libraries of the\nWest,--should for some 500 years have occupied that theoretical activity\nwhich Aristotle regarded as the highest good of man[6]. Again, those\nworks of. Aristotle which might have made for natural knowledge fell out\nof men's hands[7], while in them, as Ab\u00e9lard tells us of himself, lay\nthe Categories, the Interpretation, and the Introduction of Porphyry to\nthe Categories, all in the Latin of Boetius[8]; treatises which made for\nperipatetic nominalism, but whereby men were versed rather in logic and\nrhetoric than in natural science. Thus Plato's chimera of the human\nmicrocosm, a reflection of his theory of the macrocosm, stood beside the\nFaith as the second great adversary of physiology.\n\nThe influence of authority, by which Europe was to be welded together,\ngoverned all human ideas. As in theology was the authority of the Faith,\nso in the science and medicine of the first period of the Middle Ages\nwas that of the neo-platonic doctrines, and, in the second period, of\nthe Arabian versions of Galen and of Aristotle; furthermore in this\nrigid discipline metallic doctrine almost necessarily overbore life and\nfreedom. It is not easy for us to realise a time when intellectual\nprogress--which involves the successive abandonment of provisional\nsyntheses--was unconceived; when truths were regarded as stationary;\nwhen reasons were not tested but counted and balanced; when even the\nlater Averroists found final answers either in Aristotle or in Galen[9].\nThus in the irony of things it came to pass that Harvey was withstood by\nthe dogma of Galen who, in his own day, had passionately appealed from\ndogma to nature.\n\nPorphyry of Tyre, who lived in the 3rd century, may be called the\nfounder of both Arabian and Christian scholastics. He was an\nAlexandrian, but of peripatetic rather than platonic opinions. In the\nIsagoge, or Introduction to the Categories, already mentioned as\ntranslated by Boetius about 500 A.D., he set forth plainly a problem\nwhich during the Middle Ages rent Western Europe asunder; a problem\nwhich, says John of Salisbury[10], engaged more of the time and\npassions of men than for the house of C\u00e6sar to conquer and govern the\nworld; one indeed which even in our day and country is not wholly\nresolved.\n\nThe controversy lay between the Realists[11] and the Nominalists; and\nthe issues of it, in the eleventh century,--at which time the \"Dark\nAges\" passed into the earlier of the two periods of the Middle\nAges,--were formulated on the realist side by William of Champeaux,\nwhile the Breton Rousselin, or Roscellinus, had the perilous honour of\ndefining them on behalf of the nominalists[12]. To see the depth of the\ndifference we must step back a little, to a time when metaphysics and\npsychology were not distinguished from other spheres of science[13], and\nall research had for its object the nature of being. Plato himself held\nideas not as mere abstractions but in some degree as creative powers;\nand we shall see how potent this function became in the thought of the\nMiddle Ages when, in the ardour of research into the nature of being,\nthe modes of individuating principles were distinguished or contrasted\nwith an ingenuity incomprehensible to Plato or Aristotle, or at any rate\nundesired by these greater thinkers. Aristotle avoided the question\nwhether form or matter individuate; he held that there is no form and no\nmatter extrinsic to the individual. But by the medieval realist every\nparticular, every thing, was regarded as after some fashion the product\nof universal matter and individual form. Now \"form\" might be regarded,\nand severally was regarded, as a shaping, determinative force or\nprinciple, pattern type or mould, having real existence apart from\nstuff, or, on the other hand, as an abstract principle or pattern having\nno existence but as a conception of the mind of the observer. The\nrealists roundly asserted that form is as actual as matter, and that\nthings arise by their participation--without whiteness no white thing,\nwithout humanity no man; and not individuals only: for the realist,\nout-platonising Plato, genera and species also had their forms, either\npre-existent (\"universalia ante rem\"), or continuously evolved in the\nseveral acts of creation (\"universalia in re\"). Indeed for the extreme\nrealist every \"predicamental modality\" was \"aliquid ens separatum\"; for\ninstance, the soul, the active intellect, the passive intellect, and so\non: conversely, by fusing idea with will, for other philosophers realism\nwould get pushed back into efficient reason or divine will, and almost\nvanish[14]. By this latter route the Sorbonne, originally opposed to the\nThomists, became nominalist after all; as did those once pious realists\nthe Augustinians and Cistercians. Setting aside then the extreme\nnominalists, who would have dissolved thought by declaring all creatures\nto be so individual as to be incomparable,--\"pulverising existence into\ndetached particulars,\" as some one has put it--and that names of kinds\nare mere nouns, or indeed mere air (\"flatus vocis\"), the prevalent\nnominalists were content to deny to ideas, forms, principles, or\nabstractions any other existence than as functions of the human\nmind--as subjective conceptions. For Ockham, says Haur\u00e9au, an idea was\nbut a modality of the thinking subject. Abstractions then for these\nthinkers were but mental machinery for analysis of the concrete.\nAristotle was as obscure and inconsistent in his language herein, and\noften elsewhere, as he was profound and scrupulous; but when his works\ncame to be studied as a whole, and in the original tongue, the influence\nof his method, rather than the close consistency of his language, told\nagainst realism: virtually he was a conceptualist, and he found reality,\nwhere Plato denied it, in the particular object of sense[15].\nEven Francis Bacon, who was deeply indebted to Aristotle, never\nextricated himself from the tangle of form, cause and law[16].\n\nNow this was a great argument, no empty dispute; the bones of dead\ncontroversies cumber the ground, but no controversy was empty which\nmoved profoundly the minds and passions of men: both for ecclesiastical\nand secular thought the dispute was grave. While realism was essential\nto the Church--for instance, on realist grounds St Anselm defended the\nmedieval doctrine of the Trinity against Roscellinus; the Church herself\nclaimed a real existence apart from the wills of successive generations\nof individual and variable men; she taught that Man had fallen\nnot only in many or all individual cases, but as a kind having a\nreal existence[17], and again that in the Mass there is change of\nhypostasis[18]--while then realism was essential to the Faith,\nyet if forms pre-exist (\"ante rem\") then the acts of God must be\npredetermined--\"fatis\" non \"avolsa voluntas\"; or if forms are only \"in\nre\" God must be form, living in each and every act and thing, which is\nPantheism (\"materia omnium Deus\"): an impersonal conception and a\ndissolution of dogma which the Church must and did abhor. \"Pessimus\nerror\"--there is the abyss, cried Albert, avoiding it by dialectical\njuggles. Erigena, the brilliant prophet and protestant[19] of the first\nperiod of the scholastic philosophy, was virtually a pantheist after\nthe pattern of Parmenides[20]; as Spinoza was the last great realist.\nDavid of Dinan again was such a pantheist, though luckily for him the\nChurch did not find it out till he was dead; and he was martyred only in\nhis bones. Indeed the great Robert of Lincoln barely escaped the\naccusation of pantheism under the wing of Augustine. The heresies of\nDavid, and of Amaury, caused the reaction of the first years of the 13th\ncentury against Aristotle. Amaury seems indeed to have cleared out\nChristian dogma pretty thoroughly, and to have preached the coming of\nscience as the \"third age\" of the world. Many of his followers were sent\nto the stake; by the Synod of Paris (1209) the works of Aristotle were\nproscribed, and many copies of them burned. This proscription was\nvirtually withdrawn by Gregory the Ninth in 1231; and Hales, Albert and\nSt Thomas devoted themselves again to the study of Aristotle, and\nestablished his supremacy[21]. Indispensable then as realism was for\nthe Church, its creed, and its sacraments, yet therein it found itself\nin a dilemma between the conceptions of a Creator working under\nconditions, and of a spirit immanent in matter; and when theological\nphilosophy culminated in St Thomas, and was fixed by him as it now rules\nin Rome, this difficulty was rather concealed in his system than\nresolved[22]. Every scheme of thought must make some declaration on the\nnature and place of universals; the problem was no hair splitting[23],\nit dealt with the very nature and origin of being; it agitated the minds\nof thinking men at a time of the most fervid and widespread enthusiasm\nfor knowledge which the Western world has ever known,--at a time when\nOxford counted its students by thousands, and when in Paris a throng\nathirst for knowledge would stretch from the cloisters of the Mathurins\nto the faubourg of St Denis[24]; and, in respect of our theme of this\nday, we shall see that even Harvey was embarrassed by certain aspects of\nit.\n\nFor, to resume, closely allied to the argument concerning universals was\nthat concerning \"form and matter.\" Whether the terms used were \"form and\nmatter,\" force or energy or \"pneuma\" and matter, \"soul or life\" and\n\"body,\" \"determinative essence and determinate subsistence,\" \"male\nprinciple and female element,\" \"arch\u00e6us and body,\" the potter and the\nclay of the potter; or whether again they were \"type and individual,\"\n\"cause and effect,\" \"law and nature,\" \"becoming and being,\" or even the\n\"thought and extension\" of Descartes, the riddle lay in the contrast of\nthe static and dynamic aspects of things; in the incessant formation of\nvariable and transitory individuals in the eternal ocean of\nexistence[25].\n\n  \"Spiritus intus alit, totamque infusa per artus\n   Mens agitat molem, et magno se corpore miscet.\"\n\nFor early thinkers, untrained in the methods and unaware of the limits\nof thought, even for the great and free thinkers of Greece, a\ncaptivating analogy was irresistible[26]; while inventing schemes of\nthought they believed themselves to be describing the processes of\nnature. Moreover it has been the temptation of philosophers of all\ntimes, and even of Harvey himself than whom none had put better the\nconditions of scientific method, to suppose that by means of abstraction\nkinds may be apprehended; that thus they may get nearer to the inmost\ncore of things; that by purging away the characters of individuals they\nmay detect the essence and cause of individuation ([Greek: spermatikos\nlogos]): not perceiving indeed that the content of notions is, as\nAb\u00e9lard had pointed out plainly, in inverse proportion to their\nuniversality. Like Sidney's hooded dove, the blinder they were the\nhigher they strove[27]. For example: from a lump of silver a medal is\nstruck; from many lumps of silver many medals are struck, each different\nfrom the other: let us eliminate as accidents the notions of silver, of\nthe blow of a hammer, even of particular features of the devices, and we\nshall reach the idea of an agent with a type or seal, or of such an\nagent with many seals, or ideas, who may thus individualise indifferent\nmatter; or, to penetrate deeper into abstraction, who may transfer forms\nof his own activity to motionless stuff. It is my part to-day to show\nthat before motionless stuff--before the problem of the \"primum\nmobile\"--even Harvey himself stood helpless; helpless yet fascinated by\nthe indulgence of invention when, in the _De motu cordis_, or the _De\ngeneratione_, he permitted himself to carry contemplation beyond the\nsphere of his admirable experiments. \"Natural, vital and animal spirits\"\nindeed he would have none of; saying well that he should want as many\nspirits as functions, and that to introduce such agents as artificers of\ntissues is to go beyond experience: yet in his need of a motor for his\nmachine he was not able to divest himself of the language nor even of\nthe philosophy of his day; he referred the cause of the motion of the\nblood, and therefore of the heart, to innate heat[28]. In his day he\ncould not but regard rest and motion as different things; and motion as\na super-added quality. In denying the older opinion[29] that the heart\nis the source of motion, of perfection[30] and of heat, he put the\ndifficulty but one stage back; and, when in the treatise on Generation\nhe propounded his transcendental notion of the impregnation of the\nfemale by the conception of a \"general immaterial idea,\" we find in him\nrealism still very much alive indeed. Had Harvey been content with\ninnate heat he would have done well enough; but the innate heat of the\nblood, as he explains it, is not fire nor derived from fire; nor is the\nblood occupied by a spirit, but is a spirit: it is also \"celestial in\nnature, the soul, that which answers to the essence of the stars ... is\nsomething analogous to heaven, the instrument of heaven.\"\n\nIn denying that a spirit descends and stows itself in the body, as \"an\nextraneous inmate,\" Harvey advances beyond Cremoninus, who then taught\nin the chair of Averroistic philosophy in Padua; for, says Harvey, I\ncannot discover this spirit with my senses, nor any seat of it. In\nanother passage indeed Harvey warns us \"not to derive from the stars\nwhat is in truth produced at home\"; in yet another he tells us that\nphilosophers produce principles as indifferent poets thrust gods upon\nthe stage, to unravel plots and to bring about catastrophes: yet he\nconcludes that \"the spirit in the blood acting superiorly to the powers\nof the elements, ... the soul in this spirit and blood, is identical\nwith the essence of the stars.\"\n\nThus the riddle which oppressed these great thinkers, from the Ionians\nto Lavoisier, was in part the nature of the \"impetum faciens[31]\"--of\nthe Bildungstrieb. What makes the ball to roll? Does heart move blood or\nblood move heart; and in either case what builds the organ and what\nbestows and perpetuates the motion? Albert of Cologne, and at times even\nAristotle, as we have seen, were apt to leave moving things for abstract\nmotion, and to regard formulas as agents. Telesius again, the first of\nthe brilliant band of natural philosophers in Italy of the XVIth and\nXVIIth centuries, was still seeking this principle of nature in the\n\"form\" of the peripatetics. Gilbert regarded his magnetic force as \"of\nthe nature of soul, surpassing the soul of man.\" Galileo, although\nwilling to conceive circular motion as perpetual[32], and even\nself-existent, was unable thus to conceive rectilineal motion.\n\nHarvey, then, and other naturalists of the time, including C\u00e6salpinus\nand after a fashion even Descartes, followed the medieval world and\nAristotle in deriving the source of motion directly from the spheres.\nHarvey says with Dante, \"Questi nei cuor mortali \u00e8 permotore.\" The\nattraction exercised by external supreme mind (not associated with\nmatter) and its thoughts bring the material cosmos and its parts into\nregular movements. The so-called [Greek: Aith\u00ear], or fifth element,\n\"[Greek: stoicheion heteron t\u00f4n tessar\u00f4n, ak\u00earaton te kai theion]\" (De\nC\u00e6lo, cap. 2 and vid. Zeller II. ii. 437), under the name of the\nQuintessence, played a large part in the speculations of Lulli,\nParacelsus and other chemical mystics. Till Copernicus transfigured the\ncosmos, and Galileo and Newton carried terrestrial physics into the\ncelestial world, the heavenly bodies were regarded as animated beings,\nthemselves set in motion by spheres, and, by propagation of their\nintense activity from sphere to sphere, animating all sublunary matter,\nwheels within wheels, even to its innermost particles. Aristotle's view\n(Metaph. XI.) was as follows:--The stars and planets are in their nature\neternal essences; that which moves them must itself be eternal, and\nprior and external to that which it causes to be moved; likewise that\nwhich is prior to essence must itself be essence; and so on for a\nhierarchy of eternal essences: thus Heaven if not God is a divine\nembodiment ([Greek: Theion s\u00f4ma]); and this [Greek: pr\u00f4ton t\u00f4n s\u00f4mat\u00f4n]\nhe regarded as the essence of heaven and stars, and the cause of animal\nheat in living beings. Thus the transition from Aristotle to the later\nconception of the celestial bodies as themselves animated beings was\neasy; indeed the attribution of intelligence to the spheres goes back at\nany rate to Plato (Tim\u00e6us), if not to Pythagoras; and was the foundation\nof astrology. In Harvey's time there was still in Rome a basilica of the\nSeven Angels (the planetary essences). Much of this doctrine Harvey\nprobably got from Cicero (Acad. I. ii. 39 and De Fin. IV. 5-12; vid.\nKrische), who speaks of \"ardor coeli\" as the whole astral sphere. If I\nam not mistaken Harvey somewhere advises Aubrey to study Cicero.\n\nMatthew Arnold thus regrets the old illusion:--\n\n  And you, ye stars!\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n  You too once lived--\n  You too moved joyfully\n  Among august companions\n  In an older world, peopled by Gods,\n  In a mightier order,\n  The radiant, rejoicing, intelligent Sons of Heaven!\n  But now you kindle\n  Your lonely, cold shining lights,\n  Unwilling lingerers\n  In the heavenly wilderness,\n  For a younger, ignoble world.\n  And renew by necessity,\n  Night after night your courses,\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n  Above a race you know not,\n  Uncaring and undelighted[33].\n\n\nOf the origin of energy we have not solved the riddle, we have given it\nup; but instead of coming from without we know that it comes from\nwithin. As Mr Benn puts it, we have extended the atomistic method from\n\"matter\" to motion. Harvey's contemporary, Francis Bacon, sagaciously\nguessed that heat is an expansive motion of particles; but he regarded\nheat and cold as two contrary principles. Almost in the same generation\nthe brilliant John Mayow perceived a substance in the air \"allied to\nsaltpetre,\" which passed in and out of the blood by the way of the lungs\nor placenta. \"Innate heat\" then gave way to phlogiston; but it was not\ntill the discovery of oxygen and of the conservation of energy that we\nattained a theory of energy, and finally got rid of \"matter and form,\"\nand of all the thicket of metaphysics, relating thereto; through which\nin the day of Harvey no mind, however mighty, could have made its way.\n\nIn the history of medieval thought we must always bear in mind that in\nneither of its two periods were theology, logic, metaphysics,\npsychology, or even physics, fully differentiated; and before the\nArabian literature they were not differentiated at all[34]. Logic, which\nfor us is but a drill, and, like all drills, a little out of fashion,\nwas for the Middle Ages a means of discovery, nay, the very source of\ntruth; thus every man carried his own busy laboratory within him. The\nheirs of Porphyry and Boetius had no other method in their possession.\nThe dialectically irresistible was the true ([Greek: katal\u00eapsis]); thus\nwas man to succeed \"irrefutabile aperire secretum.\" To begin to think\nbefore beginning to learn is a hollow business, yet then logic furnished\nthe theorems which experience might illustrate at its leisure; and\nnature was contemplated under philosophy. The differentiation of\npsychology began with the translation of the _De anima_[35], and the\nrecognition of the relation of the percipient; hence, in the second\nperiod, Roger Bacon denounced the pretensions of logic, and John Duns,\nthat brilliant backslider, forced them to an absurdity. Again, on the\ntranslation of the Metaphysics, theology parted into the studies of the\ndoctrines of God and the soul, which belong to theology proper, and of\nbeing, in modes, kinds and universals, which belong to metaphysics.\nMedicine again was a confusion of spheres, as was theology; the care of\nthe soul and the care of the body were the ends of knowledge, and their\nmeans contained all knowledge. Thus when we hear that Alcuin ordered the\nformal teaching of medicine, it was under the name of \"Physica\"; and not\nuntil the Physics of Aristotle came to light did the various branches of\nnatural history become in their turn not only definite studies but also\nself-sufficient, aside from the art of healing. To this day the healer\nkeeps the name of \"physician\"; and the subject at Cambridge the name of\nPhysic. It is well to be reminded that although the soldiers of truth\nmust be separated into several regiments, nevertheless for its\nedification the healing art must draw, directly or indirectly, on all\nnatural science. Robert of Lincoln, Albert of Cologne, and all the\nMasters of that time studied medicine--that is [Greek: ta physika]--as a\nsolid part of knowledge, which in their apprehension was not only a\nwhole but also a manageable whole. Even Francis Bacon did not realise\nfully the littleness of man in the presence of nature; he hoped that for\nhis harvest man would on a right method--by, let us say, a reformed\nastrology and a reformed alchemyquickly surprise the secret of her\nprocesses: thus Bacon was the last of the Summists. With the\ndifferentiation of the several spheres of knowledge, and the perception\nof the vastness and variety of each, man has ceased to hold not the\nunity but the simplicity of nature; and he has given up summaries: the\ntheologian rules no longer in metaphysics and psychology; the physician\nis no longer the only naturalist.\n\nSystems succeed each other but give each other the hand; it takes many a\ngeneration to kill a strong theory outright: realism, shaken by\nRoscellinus and Ab\u00e9lard, and scotched by Hales and Ockham, survived to\nmislead Harvey; and still it stretches its withered hand over us in the\nnursery, in the school, and in the great arguments of life[36].\nMalebranche warned us against our deceptive terminology. \"Ils\npr\u00e9tendent expliquer, (he says), la nature par leurs id\u00e9es g\u00e9n\u00e9rales et\nabstraites, comme si la nature \u00e9tait abstraite.\" The methods of the\nEnglish grammar schools are even now medieval in so far as their\nteaching begins, as it mostly does still, with abstract propositions.\n\nMysticism gathered over Germany; in Paris to this day nature is\nconstrained in the artifices of logic and rhetoric; and to this day\nplatonism, chiefly by the influence of the Florentine humanists and\nperhaps of the Cambridge school of Henry More, has moulded both thought\nand language in England. John Hunter conceived a \"materia vit\u00e6 diffusa\";\nand but yesterday Huxley had to say of Owen's theory of \"spermatic\nforce\" that an artillerist might as well attribute the propulsion of a\nbullet to \"trigger force.\" We profess Aristotle, and we talk Plato. Even\nby men of science it is daily forgotten that the only being is the\nparticular. After the Faith then, realism--the belief in principles and\nkinds having external existence, and in formative essences to be reached\nby abstract thinking--stood another adversary against natural\nknowledge.\n\nBut, stronger even than realism, was a third adversity--the pride of the\nhuman mind. Socrates, although, for ethics and politics, he initiated\nthe inductive method, was disposed to regard physical speculations as\nbut a rational pastime[37], and the political and ethical study of man\nas the only serious engagement of thought. Aristotle took up natural\nknowledge as an encyclopedist[38]; he rarely verified his facts and he\nmade no experimental researches[39]. The medieval church held that \"ex\npuris naturalibus cognoscere\" was a meagre and might be a mischievous\namusement; and it sought to confine speculations to final causes, that\nis to the animation of the world by an intelligent Being, as man\nanimates his own instruments: though, as Roger Bacon declared, final\ncauses must have physical means. Even Locke thought nature to be\nhopelessly complex, and urged that ethics is the proper study of man.\nThe asceticism derived from the East, disdainful of carnal things,\nbrought the dualism of matter and spirit into monstrous eminence; and,\nin respect of medicine, in a few generations it turned the cleanest\npeople in the world into the most filthy[40]. Moreover, are we not bound\nto admit that, as ultimate analysis was dangerous to the synthesis of\nthe Faith, so for unwieldy and unstable societies in which ethical and\npolitical habits had not yet become engrained, to descend from\ntranscendental explanations to explanations by lower categories was\nfraught with some danger to lofty and imposing standards of custom and\nconduct? Nature is too base, says St Anselm, for us to argue from it to\nGod; we must argue from God to things. Analysis is a disintegrating\nfunction; the departure of the scientific enquirer is rather from below\nupwards: it is not only his bias but also his deliberate method to\ndecline to use the discipline and the conceptions of higher categories\nuntil he is satisfied that those of the lower are inadequate. A certain\nnatural process may not be attributed to those of chemistry until those\nof physics are proved to be inadequate; to another process biological\nconceptions and methods are denied until those of physics first, and\nthen of chemistry, have been tried and found wanting; psychological\nconceptions are denied to another until in their turns the physical, the\nchemical, and the physiological are exhausted[41]; and so on: and within\neach category the same economy prevails. Now this scientific economy,\nperhaps first formulated, or effectively used, by William Ockham, in the\nphrase \"entia non sunt multiplicanda\"--known as \"Ockham's rasor\"--is\nwhat is called now-a-days \"materialism\"; and there is no doubt that the\nmethod, legitimate, nay, imperative, as it is in natural science, may\nin custom and conduct engender a personal and collective habit of\napprehending in lower categories, and even of contentment in them until\nstrong reason be shown to go higher[42]. A higher order of ideas is put\nin a lower order of language; the \"[Greek: hodos eis to kat\u00f4]\" of\nHeraclitus. The danger of this attitude lies in loss of effort, of\naspiration, and even of imagination; he must stoop on the weary oar who,\nknowing no anchorage, is ever stemming the drift. Notwithstanding is\nthere in history any lesson sadder than this, that where ideals have\nbeen loftiest sin and failure have most abounded? a lesson from which\nCarlyle learned that \"the ideal has always to grow in the real, and\noften to seek out its bed and board there in a very sorry way.\"\n\nAlmost to this day then the mechanical arts, presumably concerned rather\nwith the lower categories, have been regarded as base; and the craft\neven of the laboratory as unworthy of great souls. Anatomy had to labour\nagainst antipathy both ecclesiastical and popular; chemistry and\nmechanics were gross pursuits, unless endowed with the perilous\ndistinctions of alchemy and sorcery. Unfortunately this charge upon the\ndignity of man was made heavier rather than lighter by Petrarch, and by\nthe later humanists of the Renascence; even in the 17th century we find\nin Oxford that Boyle was bantered by his friends as one \"given up to\nbase and mechanical pursuits.\" As Boyle himself put it in his delightful\nway--\"There are many Learned Men ... who are apt to repine when they see\nany Person capable of succeeding in the Study of solid Philosophy,\naddicting himself to an Art (Chemistry) they judge so much below a\nPhilosopher, and so unserviceable to him. Nay, there are some that are\ntroubled when they see a Man acquainted with other Learning countenance\nby his example sooty Empiricks\" ... \"whose Experiments may indeed be\nuseful to Apothecaries, and perhaps to Physicians, but are useless to a\nPhilosopher that aims at curing no Disease but that of Ignorance.\"[43]\n\nLord Herbert of Cherbury, who early in the seventeenth century attended\nlectures at Padua, opined that natural science deals with \"ignoble\nstudies, not proportioned to the dignity of our Souls.\" In the\neighteenth century indeed, grave English physicians, humanists who\nforgot how Aristotle had exclaimed that marvellousness lies in all\nnatural phenomena, scorned the trivial curiosity of John Hunter\nrespecting flies and tadpoles.\n\nIt is part of my argument to-day to point out one evil of many which\nthis prejudice has wrought for medicine. The progress of an applied\nscience dependent as it is upon accessions of advantage from other arts,\nyet on the whole is from the simple to the complex; from facts of more\ndirect observation to those of longer inference: and this path was the\nmore necessary when the right method of inference--the so-called\ninductive method--had not been formulated, and indeed was barely in use.\nNow in medicine, from Homer to Lord Lister, direct observation and the\nsimpler means of experiment have obtained their first-fruits on the\nsurface of the body. In Homeric times surgery was the institution of\nmedicine, and kings concerned themselves with the practice of it. From\nErasistratus to Celsus physicians of all schools practised medicine and\nsurgery as one art. Galen urges the unity of medicine, and Littr\u00e9 points\nout that this unity is maintained in the Hippocratic writings. In the\nMiddle Ages the ascetic contempt for the body--partly Stoic, chiefly\noriental,--the barren alliance of medicine with philosophy, and the low\nesteem of mechanical callings hid from the physician the very gates of\nthe city into which he would enter. Francis Bacon says of the physicians\nof Harvey's day, that they saw things from afar off, as if from a high\ntower; and, again, that after the manner of spiders they spun webs of\nsophistical speculation from their own bowels. Surgery, by virtue of its\nimperative methods, was kept clear of philosophy on the one hand and of\nhumanism on the other; and in Paris the establishment of the Coll\u00e8ge de\nSt C\u00f4me, afterwards the Academy of Surgery, protected the higher surgery\nagainst the rabble of barbers. Upon the raft of anatomy and surgery,\nwith some clinical aid from Salerno, positive medicine crossed the gulf\nbetween Byzantine compilations, monkish leechcraft, Arab starcraft and\nalchemy, and the scientific era of Harvey[44]. But physicians were not\nonly blind to the great services to the whole art of medicine of the\nsurgical school of Lanfranc in the fourteenth century, of Guy de\nChauliac in the fifteenth, and of Par\u00e9 and Gale in the sixteenth\ncentury, advances even accelerated in the seventeenth, but they ignored\nalso their very origin, and even withdrew from fellowship with the\nsurgeon; to our grievous harm from those days unto our own[45]. Surgery\nwas excluded from the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Paris;\nand from the Royal College of Physicians of England, which was, and is\nstill, enabled by charter to teach surgery, and to grant licenses\ntherein. Fabricius, the master of Harvey, was fortunately as great a\nsurgeon as anatomist, and such was Fallopius. In this College Harvey\nlectured on anatomy and surgery, and he left his surgical instruments to\nus; for us Caldwal founded a lectureship in surgery which has been\nallowed virtually to lapse. From the progress of anatomy which, under\nthe protection of the Italian nobles as formerly of the Alexandrian,\nwent hand in hand with surgery, physicians drew then little advantage;\nand so in part perhaps it came about that although Vesalius, Fallopius,\nand Fabricius broke up the traditional anatomy of Mundinus, yet anatomy\ndid more even for the fine arts than for physiology; and medicine at the\nend of the Middle Ages had not recovered the standard of Alexandria.\nAgainst this adversity also had to contend the founder of physiology\nwhom to-day we celebrate.\n\nSuch were the chief adversities (vid. Appendix on Astrology) under which\nthe naturalist suffered, but natural knowledge was never stifled; let us\nnow turn our eyes to another point of view, from the oppression to the\ngradual enfranchisement of knowledge.\n\nNecessary for the welding of western society in the Middle Ages as was\nauthority in all spheres of thought and action, and, heavy as the price\nof its inertia has been since its work was done, yet in the celebration\nof the founders of natural science it would be untrue to assume that\nbefore them, even in the earlier scholastic period, the indomitable\nspirit of man had lain under tyranny in silence. \"[Greek: Menei to\ntheion doulia per en phreni].\" The way had been prepared for them. By\nthe Crusades of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries fury and\ndevastation were diverted in part from Europe, and hurled upon Asia;\nwhich soon closes up again. The na\u00efve serenity of the Faith was gone,\nbut as its great minsters arose it forgot its dangers; and the social\nbonds of orthodoxy rudely shaken were renewed. The Schools grew as great\nas the churches: Naples, Pavia, Bologna and Padua; Paris, Orleans,\nBourges, Toulouse, Montpellier, the Sorbonne; Oxford and Cambridge. Even\nthe Friars Preachers and Minors were driven to fight with the new\nweapons; first rivalling the universities, then possessing themselves of\ntheir chairs. But philosophy, which had lent much to the Faith[46],\ngained nothing from it; and to philosophy rather than to the Church the\nsciences looked for their principles and methods. In physics the\nexperimental method was creeping into life; and the substance as well as\nthe form of old controversies was changing. Thus through all these\ngenerations was rising a leaven of free thought, and its reforms may\nroughly be put in a twofold division, into the reform of tradition, and\nthe reform of method; the reform of texts being again divisible into two\nperiods--the Arabian, or second scholastic, and the modern or Renascence\nperiod. The chief monuments of learning were stored in Byzantium[47]\nuntil Western Europe was fit to take care of them. In the peace of\nTheodoric, in the peace of Charlemagne, under Alfred at Winchester, the\narts and sciences had scarcely found breathing-time, and no sure\nestablishment[48]. Cassiodorus is said to have directed the Benedictines\nof the sixth century to read C\u00e6lius Aurelianus, a Roman adaptor of\nSoranus of Ephesus; but medical lore consisted of little beyond some\nrelics of the Roman schools, handed on in prose or verse compilations\nwhich the teacher read to his class, and explained so far as he could.\nIt seems that medicine was not taught formally until so ordered, in 805,\nby Charlemagne; probably by the advice of Alcuin, the founder of the\nlearned tradition at Fulda, the founder, we may almost say, of the\nneo-latin period, and some time headmaster of my own school of St Peter\nat York. The influence of the School of Salerno, relatively excellent as\nit was in the domains of clinical medicine and of public health, never\nmade its way into the general stream of Western culture. Religious wars\nand persecutions had driven Greek learning eastwards, as in the case of\nthe Nestorians from Antioch to Persia; Hebrew and Syrian sages[49]\ntranslated some classical texts, and from these again the Arabs, in\ntheir brief and brilliant culture, made translations; for no Arab sage\nknew Greek. The palace of the Spanish Caliphs in the tenth century was a\nworkshop of translators, and a huge storehouse of books. The learned and\nubiquitous Jew carried texts and translations from Bagdad to Morocco,\nand from Morocco to Toledo, Paris, Oxford and Cologne; but translations\nmade in Bagdad in the ninth century did not reach Paris till the\neleventh or twelfth.\n\nAmong the earliest of these renderings in the West were works on\nmedicine, mathematics, and astronomy, which in the Schools of Toledo and\nCordova, by Constantinus Africanus at Monte Cassino (including certain\ntreatises of Hippocrates and Galen), by Gerard of Cremona (a Salernitan\nscholar), by Michael the wizard[50], and by other hands, were converted\ninto Latin; and, thus doubly disguised, and half buried in glosses which\nnot only overlaid the text (\"oscura glossa dov' \u00e9 piana la lettera\") but\noften supplanted it, were received with pathetic eagerness by the ardent\nscholars of the West. Aristotle, for instance, was now taught in the\nschools of the West from a Latin translation of a Hebrew translation of\nan Arab commentary upon an Arab translation of a Syriac translation of\nthe Greek text[51]. Even in the sixteenth century medicine and anatomy\nwere taught wholly from books; and teachers were forbidden to use other\nthan prescribed books. Students began with the \"Articella\" of the\nVenetian physician Gregorio Volpi, a compendium of translations with\nwoodcuts, published in 1491; they advanced to the Aphorisms, the Diet\nin Acute Diseases and the Prognostics of Hippocrates, overlaid with\nSyriac, Arabic and Spanish apparatus and glosses; to the Ars Parva of\nGalen; to the first and fifth Canons of Avicenna, with glosses; to the\nIXth Book of Rhazes, Honein, Aegidius Corboliensis, and perhaps some of\nthe translations of Constantinus Africanus[52];--this was the lore that\nruled the medical schools even to the birth of Harvey. Disputations\namong the students were incessant, both \"inter se\" and \"sub cathedr\u00e2\";\nbut it is doubtful whether these did more than sharpen their dialectical\nwits. Botany, regarded by the galenists as the secret of the divine\ndispensary, was always more forward; every medical school had its physic\ngarden, professors carried their students abroad to gather herbs, and\nHerbals, Dispensatoriums and Kr\u00e4uterb\u00fccher were much in advance of the\nBestiaries, mostly after Pliny's kind, the chief of which, largely an\noriginal work, was that of the well-known Conrad Gesner.\n\nSome hundred years before the appearance of the Arabian Aristotle, which\nmarked the second scholastic period, we have seen that the shadow of the\nFaith and the savagery of the peoples had not quelled such teachers as\nRoscellinus and Ab\u00e9lard, who fought for rationalism so sturdily as even\nthen to threaten the ascendency of realism and the persuasion of supple\nand plausible demagogues like Anselm of Laon--that \"sterile tree\" as\nAb\u00e9lard called him,--and actually to determine the first period of the\nMiddle Ages. Happily the Arabian scholastic philosophy took its root in\nAlexandria when neo-platonism had veered towards Aristotle[53], and it\nwas more uniformly peripatetic than the earliest Christian\nScholasticism. It is one of the notes of the greatness of Aristotle\nthat, even thus garbled and glossed, his power made itself felt by the\nmouths of the great Franciscans Alexander Hales, Roger Bacon, and\nWilliam Ockham. The Organon had been expounded in Paris in 1180, and\nabout the same time Alexander Neckam cited the Posterior Analytics, the\nTopics and the _De anima_; but Hales was in possession of the whole, or\nalmost the whole, of a more or less corrupt Aristotle, which he turned\nupon theology.\n\nRoger Bacon was the first of the natural philosophers of the West, and\nthe only eminent forerunner of Harvey and the other pioneers of natural\nscience in the seventeenth century. As erudite as Albert, Bacon was more\ninventive, freer of spirit, more disposed to scientific method, better\naware of the hollowness of authority, better aware that truth can be\nfound only in free reason guided by experiment. Unfortunately as an\nauthor he was as dull and ineffectual as Francis Bacon was rich,\nanimated and impressive. That indeed this premature renascence, without\nscientific methods or sound tradition, should have failed[54], that its\nlight was but the phantom of dawn[55], is no matter for surprise; yet\nfrom this time forward the methods of Cyprian and Athanasius lost their\nundisputed sway. This earlier renascence made the second period of the\nMiddle Ages: the period distinguished by the Arabian version of\nAristotle; by a check to the chimeras of realism; by some liberty of\nsecular knowledge, for even bishops came out of the Mussulman school of\nToledo and arrayed themselves in vestments of Arab work decorated with\nsentences from the Koran; and again by the coming of the friars, the\nDominican and Franciscan especially, whose influence upon the thought of\nthe Middle Ages was considerable, and soon rivalled even that of the\nuniversities, wherein later, as we have seen, they filled some of the\nchairs.\n\nThe issues of all schemes of thought led indeed as inevitably to natural\nscience, as all ways to Rome. The logic and rhetoric of the learned\nDominicans--the watch-dogs (\"Domine cani\") of the Lord against the\nwolves of heresy,--culminating in the systems of Albert and St Thomas,\nby their rationalism defined, and in defining restricted, the dominion\nof the Faith. Keen defenders of the Faith recognised this danger, and\nwhimpered even against Albert that \"philosophiam profanam in limen\nSanct\u00e6 Theologi\u00e6 intromiserit; ... in ipsa sacraria Christi[56].\" Men\ngot used to reason, and great protestants, such as Robert of Lincoln,\nhad put justice and honour before ecclesiastical politics[57]. Then the\nfew Greek texts found their way into the West, and in the thirteenth\ncentury Albert and Aquinas possessed themselves of Greco-latin\ntranslations of some treatises of Aristotle[58]. And in the history of\nthe comparatively unlearned Friars Minors we find, as elsewhere in the\nhistory of thought, that mysticism was less unfavourable to natural\nscience than the passionate dogmatism of Clairvaux, or the dogmatism by\nratiocination of St Thomas; the Victorians, as Gerson after them,\ndespised reason rather than feared it; they would not accept the\nservices of philosophy even with its wings clipped.\n\n  \"Cujus laus est ex ore infantum,\n   H\u00e6c est sapientia\"!\n\nMysticism makes for individual religion, as with Glisson and Newton,\nrather than for a Church, as Albert was clear-sighted enough to\nforesee; if science undermines dogma, mysticism relaxes or neglects it:\nhence, as clerks only could teach, it may have been that independent\nthinkers like Hales, Roger Bacon, and Ockham entered the Franciscan\norder[59]. Indeed the science of Pietro di Abano (1250-1320), which\nlaid the foundations of medicine at Padua, and inspired the frescoes of\nthe Salla della Ragione, was occult and mystical.\n\nIn the thirteenth century then the conflict with the provisional\nsynthesis of the Faith had become imminent and menacing. The faith, the\nchivalry and the learning of the Saracens led men to feel that without\nthe Church all might not be utter darkness. Albert owed as much to\nAvicenna--\"the Albert of the Orient\"--as St Thomas to Averroes; pagan\nsages technically damnable yet \"mighty spirits,\" worthy of reverence.\nDante put in Hell, but on green meadows in an open place, lofty and\nluminous,--esteeming himself exalted by the sight of them,--not only\nAristotle, Plato and Socrates, but also\n\n  \"Euclide geometra, e Tolommeo,\n   Ippocrate, Avicenna, e Galieno,\n   Averrois, che il gran comento feo.\"\n\n                         Inf. IV. 142.\n\nUniversities were founded in France, England, and Italy. Frederick the\nSecond protected the Arabs, and even aped them; Ghibeline indeed almost\nsignified freethinker. From the Roman de Renard, from the candid\nJoinville, from Boccaccio, we may infer that the very foundations of the\nFaith were sapped; and therewith, for good or ill, both moral and\npolitical bonds were loosened. But the natural Science which made the\nsecond renascence irresistible was absent in the first: the\nconsolidation of the European peoples was not compact enough for a\nrehandling of the conceptions of religion and morals, too incomplete\neven for the latitude of opinion which, in nations as in individuals, is\napt to slacken swift and consentient action. The toleration and\nscepticism of the first renascence had causes no deeper than a general\nenlargement of experience and thought.\n\nTo appreciate the influence, covert or overt, of scepticism in the\nMiddle Ages we must clear the meaning of the word. Under the yoke of\ntribal custom scepticism can hardly arise, there is no place for the\nhalf-hearted, as all men feel alike so all think alike: scepticism\narises when beliefs are put into formal propositions. Then, as\nexperience and comparison enlarge, we detect scepticism in three forms\nor degrees: namely, doubt of a particular creed; doubt of all unverified\npropositions; and doubt of the validity of reason itself, whether in\nrespect of the supernatural only or of all argument. It is remarkable\nthat this last, the most devastating of the forms of scepticism, has\ncome from the ranks of the faithful (Pascal, Hamilton, Mansel), who in\nresentment of the attacks of reason have turned blindly to rend reason\nherself. No civil society has been without scepticism; even in ages of\nmost prevalent faith some current of doubt has flowed under the surface.\nIn the Ionian philosophy the place of scepticism was only restricted in\nso far as many aspects of the subject-matter were not before those\nthinkers; for instance no Greek philosopher would have separated faith\nfrom reason. In the well-known words of Hippocrates, \"[Greek: ouden\nheteron heterou theioteron oude anthr\u00f4pin\u00f4teron, alla panta theia].\"\n\"The Greek boldly set up his academy by the side of the temple.\" Even\nProtagoras never taught the futility of all reason, nor even the\ninconstancy of sensation which indeed is doctrine rather than\nscepticism. Neo-platonism had its scepticism in the first two forms,\ncovering even the ground of the modern agnostic. Agnosticism does not\ndeny the existence of the ladder, but asserts that the ladder begins and\nends in the clouds; it is consistent therefore with ethical and\npractical activity. When Ab\u00e9lard said \"Dubitando enim ad inquisitionem\nvenimus, inquirendo veritatem percipimus,\" if a sceptic, he was no\ninfidel. Even in the thirteenth century it was never doubted that truth\nis attainable, nor indeed that the Faith contained the truth. The\nscepticism of that age was rather cautious and controversial than\nfaithless, and in practice divine discontent rather than indifference\n([Greek: ataraxia]). Pyrrhonism on the other hand leads to slackness of\nethics; either to the insouciance of Horace and Montaigne, or to the\nattitude of the seventeenth century in Padua (Pomponatius) and\nelsewhere, when the \"economy,\" ironic or disingenuous, of allotting\ntheir several spheres to reason and dogma, if not first invented, became\nas fashionable as in the pulpits and in the drawing-rooms of Mayfair.\n\"Comme savant j'ignore tout; comme citoyen je crois tout.\" The\n_Hypotyposes Pyrrhonioe_ of Sextus Empiricus, whose influence in the\ntimes of the Renascence was considerable, was not translated till the\nfourteenth century. The detachment of mind and shrewd wisdom of John of\nSalisbury foreshadowed Petrarch rather than Hume; and when John\ndiscusses what it is given to man to know, asking the frequent question,\n\"Utrum contingat homini scire aliquid?\", we must not fall into the error\nof importing into his question all it connotes for ourselves. Likewise\nwhen James of Douay (in MS. _De anima_, quoted by Haur\u00e9au) roundly says,\n\"Id quod recipitur ab aliquo non recipitur secundum naturam rei recept\u00e6\nsed secundum naturam recipientis ... sicut recipitur ita patitur....\nSensus judicando de sua passione non decipitur\" and so on, he knew no\nmore whither this would lead than John Duns knew that his system must\nlead to that of Spinoza. That guardians of morals and social cohesion,\nfrom Cato to the Westminster Assembly, and from Samuel Johnson to\nCardinal Newman, should have distrusted scepticism even as reserve of\njudgment, or indeed repelled it with fierceness; that priest, presbyter,\nmagistrate and moralist have tolerated irony, or even license, rather\nthan vigilant and radical criticism of doctrine, is intelligible; and\nwithin limits springs from a justifiable apprehension. For the gay and\nindolent sceptic veers to conformity, especially if he mistrust the\ncompetence of reason; while the active sceptic endangers the theory of\nhis society, and of the sanctions upon which all moral conduct\ntemporarily depends. Hence the bitter condemnation of Galileo, \"Perish\nall physical science rather than one article of the Faith be lost.\"\nHappily it is true that during times of transition piety and good\nconduct survive by virtue of \"inertia,\" that is by tradition, social\npressure, custom and sense of fitness; and it is true that in times of\ntransition, as in our own times, halting thought is quickened for a\nwhile by plenitude of emotion, and wealth of \u00e6sthetic impressions makes\namends for poverty of ideas; yet that morals are based on a theory of\nlife is a truth still deeper and more abiding, and this deeper truth it\nwas the function of the \"Ages of Faith\" to root in the conscience of\nmankind. \"Abeunt studia in mores.\" As contrasted with Pyrrhonism,\nscepticism in its normal sense, while it declares that the conformity of\nnotions with things in themselves cannot be postulated, for lack of an\nexternal standpoint of comparison, and while it declines to be confuted\nby the \"regressus ad infinitum,\" for, having repudiated first principles\nit is prepared to be pushed backwards to remoter and remoter causes, is\nready nevertheless to yield to assurance as facts are intercalated into\ninferences, and as inferences thus stiffened by verification are found\nto consist with each other and with the general context of experience.\n\nIf in the Middle Ages these various attitudes of mind were not fully\ndistinguished, yet scepticism was moving variably towards the demand for\nverification on which all natural science is based; and the reaction was\nnot long delayed. In the thirteenth century the culture of Omeyad and\nAbasid caliphs failed; by the end of the century philosophy was\ndenounced and its books were burned; the generous and learned Frederick\ndashed himself in vain against the Papacy; Clement, the protector of\nBacon, was dead, and during the two following centuries, in Spain at any\nrate, freedom of thought was crushed out by the Church. In the\nfourteenth and fifteenth centuries the very name of Averroes--of \"the\nmad dog who barked against the Christ,\" the \"Averroem impium [Greek: kai\ntris kataraton]\" of Erasmus--began to signify loose life as well as free\nthought. Of this resentment there had been no trace in Albert or St\nThomas; but Imola had begun to wonder why Dante had treated so well\nAverroes who, if the Great Commentator, was yet the father of infidels.\nThe Dominicans controlled the fine arts, and for them,--at Pisa, at\nSiena, in the Spanish Chapel,--Orcagna, Gaddi, Spinello Aretino, Simone\nMemmi abased the Empire, Averroes, and the new learning far more\nintolerantly than Dante had done; and exalted the Pope, with his\nhandmaids Theology, Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric. In Santa Maria\nNovella, Memmi represents the triumph of the Dominicans in theology,\nGaddi in philosophy; St Thomas and the Dominicans march triumphant over\nArius, Sabellius, Averroes, and Savonarola. Thus in the Middle Ages\nAverroes appeared in two forms--first as the Great Commentator, later as\nthe blasphemer and father of infidels of the Campo Santo and of Santa\nMaria Novella. In the fifteenth century the Council of Constance forbad\nthe laity to teach, under a penalty of forty days' excommunication. In\nthe sixteenth, in Granada, Ximenes burnt, it is said, 80,000 books of\nArab philosophy, as Torquemada did for Hebrew in Seville; medical works,\nhowever, such as the Colliget[60] of Averroes, and his Commentary on\nGalen, were spared.\n\nWith the greater renascence the second period of Scholasticism, and\nindeed the Middle Ages themselves are closed. With the fall of\nConstantinople the stream of learning, driven eastwards in the first\nperiod of the Middle Ages, set westward again. Exiled grammarians now\nfound their shelter under the protection of the \"literate tyrants\" of\nItaly, and with their spoil of manuscripts enriched the libraries of\nRome and Venice. The Universities of Bologna and Padua from their\nfoundation became notable for independence of thought; and, on the\nrevival of learning, for their peripatetic teaching as opposed to the\nplatonism of Florence, where, however, a spirit of accurate learning was\nnurtured in the deciphering and verification of texts. The political and\ncommercial ambition of Venice, the Holland of Italy, of which State\nPadua was the learned quarter, and the inflow of liberal thinkers from\nother nations, kept her aloof from the fury of the Catholic reaction of\nthe sixteenth century, which ruined Paris; thus in North-east Italy the\nspirit of modern science awoke sooner than in England or in France, and\ninquisitive students, both home and foreign, were attracted rather to\nPadua and to Bologna than, as in earlier times, to Paris.\n\nIn so far as Scholasticism may be described as a temporary\nreconciliation of Aristotle--that is, of natural and secular\nmethods--with the Faith, this end had been attained, if at all, by St\nThomas; in St Thomas Scholasticism culminated. But no such artificial\ntruce could abide; and the issue of the chief scholastic controversy was\nto be determined by one greater than St Thomas. The pilgrim to Ockham,\nsitting in its church beneath the seven lancets of its twelfth century\nwindow, may be solitary also in his memory of one of the greatest of\nEnglishmen, who saw that light six long centuries ago; yet a child\nrather of our age than of his own. As Ab\u00e9lard had closed the gates upon\nthe neo-platonist tradition of Alexandria, so Ockham closed them against\nrealism in all its forms; and the Church cursed them both. In his own\nperson the occupation of professorial chairs by Franciscans came to an\nend; Paris and the Thomists could not consistently oppose nominalism;\nDuns the Northumbrian had inflated realism into a monstrous phantasm,\nand speculative reason had to submit to the yoke of verification. Yet\nwhat could nominalism do for theology, or for clerical schools? The\nFranciscans for the most part had turned to mysticism, and thenceforth\nthe man of science and the devotee were to work apart. Furthermore, by\nOckham philosophy gained a new meaning, or lost all meaning. Before\nLocke, Voltaire, and Kant, Ockham demonstrated that faculties were not\nsubstances; and differentiated logic, psychology, and natural\nscience[61].\n\nBut if, as I have said, the way for Harvey and the other pioneers of\nnatural knowledge was thus prepared for them, it was still, even in the\nseventeenth century, dark, rough and perilous. As in all times of\ntransition, still the weight of defunct systems rolled inertly along;\nand while the new forces seemed to slumber stresses were accumulating.\nIn Oxford and Cambridge the influence of Linacre, and even of Caius[62],\nseems to have been rather humanist than scientific[63]; in Oxford the\ntext rather than the inspiration of Aristotle prevailed, while in\nCambridge the platonist school, of which the charming Henry More was the\nleader, full of inspiration as it was, soon evaporated into mysticism,\nor obscurantism. Bacon and Harvey seem to have left Cambridge--for Paris\nand Padua respectively--as Locke left Oxford[64], under some\ndiscouragement. Of Paris the great days were over; it was in Padua that\nmedicine, long degraded or disguised, was now to prove her lineage as\nthe mother of natural science, and the truth of the saying of\nHippocrates that to know the nature of man one must know the nature of\nall things. But on Harvey's arrival, Padua, which had become the first\nschool of Medicine in Europe, as was Bologna of Imperial Law[65], was\nsettling down upon the lees of the once noble school of Averroes: a\ndiscipline which, by its original strength, by its freedom of thought,\nand by the ascendency of its professors, had withstood in the thirteenth\ncentury the direct condemnation of the brilliant fourth Lateran\nCouncil; and in the sixteenth the thunders of Trent. Padua adopted\nAverroism, in the fourteenth century, because of its medical contents;\nin the two following centuries this system was emptied of heart and\nlife, but pattered and mumbled by pretentious pedants in North-east\nItaly it prevailed till the seventeenth, when after a reign of three\ncenturies it was succeeded by the Cartesian. Of its phases in the\nsixteenth century Patrizzi said, \"Ingens ab his philosophorum numerus ac\nsuccessio manavit qu\u00e6 in Aven Rois hypothesibus habitavit.... Inde\ndubitationum ac qu\u00e6stionum sexcentorum milium numerus manavit\" (Disc.\nPeripat. Vol. I. Venet. 1571; quoted by Renan, Averro\u00e8s). The name of\nAverroes, \"perfectus et gloriosissimus physicus, veritatis amicus et\ndefensor intrepidus,\" became the shibboleth of philosophers who held the\ndifferent nature of the heavenly bodies against the \"moderns\" who\nalleged the identity of matter in sky and earth, and the doctrine of the\nuniversal against the individual soul.\n\nYet, in spite of Petrarch's gibes, Averroism in its spring had nursed\nPadua with the milk of natural science. Even in its decay--for all\nteaching of philosophy, as a separate study, must decay--the triumph of\nthe Faith was premature; like Jansenism, the School of Averroes, effete\nas it became, held the ground for a more dangerous invasion, for\nLeonardo, Telesio, Bruno, Gilbert, Sarpi, Campanella, Galileo, and\nHarvey; for the pioneers of truth, not as consistency with tradition,\nnot as an alchemical search for real essences, nor indeed as wisdom\nonly; but as the verification of premises. This fuse Paracelsus fixed to\nthe shell which burst upon the Faith, upon Scholasticism, upon Galenism,\nand even upon humanism, \"So Christus spricht 'Perscrutamini scripturas';\nwarum soll ich nicht sagen 'Perscrutamini naturas rerum'?\" The _Credo ut\nintelligam_ of Augustine and Anselm of Canterbury; the _Intelligo ut\ncredam_ of Aquinas belonged to the past; and men began to cry \"c'est\nDieu qui nous veut h\u00e9r\u00e9tiques.\" A criticism based upon a larger sense of\nthe relativity of knowledge, and, in the sixteenth century, a new\nscepticism[66], which pierced even into the Vatican, as to the very\npossibility of knowledge of the nature of being, were preparing the way\nfor new conceptions: but in ethics meanwhile men were falling either\ninto the carelessness of the scoffer or into the anti-nomianism of the\nmystic. The brilliant futilities of the medieval dialectic had led to\nweariness of spirit. After vain and vexatious jugglings with the dry\ntissues of unchastened ratiocination, simplicity and even ignorance\nbrought their solace.\n\nAs from Florence humanism invaded English letters, so the Averroistic\nphysician of Padua became known, even in Chaucer's day, as a man of\nsecular rather than of Scriptural learning. In Padua, while Galileo was\nteaching Euclid for a pittance, chairs of Averroistic philosophy were\nfilled by highly paid professors, whose \"rotuli\" or portfolios, many of\nwhich now rest in the dust of the libraries of North Italy, were handed\ndown from one to another in deadly routine. Virtually, however, the\nAverroistic tradition ended with a contemporary Paduan professor,\nCremonini, lifted into fame by Harvey's refutation in the _De motu\ncordis_, and by his own repudiation of the satellites of Jupiter, bodies\nfor which Aristotle had made no provision. The coarseness and pedantry\nof the Averroistic freethinkers, whose scepticism lacked the elegance\nand sprightliness of the French, and their bastard language--mongrel of\nGreek and Arabic--revolted the humanists also: \"Nihil indoctius, nihil\ninsulsius, frigidius.\" \"Unum te obsecro,\" Petrarch had said two hundred\nyears before (in his invectives against doctors, whom he classed with\nastrologers, as afterwards indeed did Harvey more or less), \"ut ab omni\nconsilio mearum rerum tui isti Arabes arceantur atque exsulent.\" \"De\nmedicis non modo nil sperandum sed valde etiam metuendum[67].\" The\ndoctors in their turn did not hide their disdain for poets. Whether\njustly or unjustly, the Doctors of Medicine were classed with\nastrologers and alchemists; the latter of whom Harvey repudiated\nfrankly, not altogether avoiding a contempt for chemistry itself. Clad\nin fine raiment, with rings on their fingers and golden spurs on their\nheels, they rode tall horses, and gave themselves pompous airs. The\nhumanist would rather pose as a believer than as an underbred infidel;\nthe Averroist protected the license of his doctrines and manners by\nsubterfuge and ironic evasion: and humanist and Averroist alike stood by\nat the burning of Bruno[68].\n\nIt must not be supposed, however, that these pompous pedants had it all\ntheir own way, and that Medicine was not better justified of her\nchildren. It is full of interest for our present purpose to read in the\npreface by Thomas Junta to the Edition of Averroes (1552), \"Plerique\nomnes juniores medici jam intolerabile in Arabum Mauritaniorumque\ndogmata odium conceperunt, ut ne nominandi citandive locus relinquatur;\nprincipes etiam Hippocratem atque Galenum habere nos pr\u00e6dicant.\" This\nenlightenment seems to have come about in some part through the teaching\nof Thom\u00e6us Nicolaus Leonicus[69], who began to lecture, for the first\ntime, from the Greek text of Aristotle (there were chairs thenceforth\nfor both the Arabian and the Greek Aristotle) in 1497.\n\nIt was with Galileo however that scientific research began in Padua, at\nany rate for professors; and Galileo may be venerated as the first\nmodern naturalist to set the experimental method conceptually,\ncoherently, and thoroughly before himself, including the deductive side\nof it. In the Harveian Oration of 1892, Dr Bridges reminded us that\nGalileo conceived of motion and energy as calculable quantities, and\ndrew our attention to those most interesting experiments wherein\nGalileo applied the pendulum to measure the rate and rhythm of the\npulse. Roger Bacon had dwelt upon experiment, but scarcely upon\nmethodical verification thereby. The chemistry of Albert of Cologne was\nbut a return of the curiosity of Geber of Cordova (in the ninth\ncentury). Even Francis Bacon saw the method less clearly than Galileo\nhad done; and, as the last of the schoolmen and encyclopedists, he made\na place for it rather in literature and philosophy: he ignored, as the\nscientific Descartes welcomed, the cardinal discoveries of Copernicus\nand of Harvey[70]. But if Galileo discovered the experimental method as\na method, before Galileo the method was in use. Leonardo had laid down\nthe rule of investigation of nature by experiment, and the aphorism that\nnature never deceives us; unfortunately his manuscripts were not\npublished. In the first half of the fifteenth century Nicholas of Cusa\nweighed plants at definite stages of their growth in known weights of\nearth; and he weighed the moisture of the air. His contemporary Leon\nBattista Alberti of Genoa had done likewise. But above all the\nscientific forerunners of Galileo and Harvey stands William Gilbert,\nFellow of St John's College, Doctor of Medicine of Cambridge, Censor and\nPresident of this College, Physician to Queen Elizabeth, and Founder of\nthe science of Magnetism.\n\nThe century dating from the birth of Galileo to the death of Harvey was\nperhaps the most brilliant in the history of modern knowledge. The\ndiscovery of Greek texts had destroyed the conventional Aristotle, the\nconventional Hippocrates and Galen; since the latter part of the\nsixteenth century Greek had been taught in the High Schools, philosophy\nwas born again, and men found themselves no longer the slaves but the\nkin of the great ancients. Telesius, Bruno, Campanella vindicated\nnatural science and liberty of thought. Galileo taught in Padua for\ntwenty years, including the time when Harvey graduated there; Torricelli\nwas a pupil of the great Florentine; in 1582, on the theory of\nCopernicus, Gregory reformed the Calendar, and thus laid the axe to the\nroot of astrology; by Newton terrestrial physics were established in the\ncelestial spheres[71]. Malpighi, who was to fulfil Harvey's discovery\nand foresight, was born in N.-E. Italy in the very year (1628) in which\nthe _De motu cordis_ was published. In 1626 Boyle was creating\nchemistry. Anatomy, which had slept since its days in Alexandria, was\nfully awake. The Society of the Lincei was virtually founded in 1603;\nthe Royal Society[72] in 1645; the Academy of France in 1656. Clinical\nteaching, initiated in Salerno and advanced by the _Consilia_\n_medica_[73], was formally established in Padua[74], to be pursued in\nHeidelberg, Leyden, and Vienna. Thus was the study \"De rerum natura\njuxta propria principia\" unfolded, and the \"Civitas Dei\" gave place to\nthe \"Regnum Hominis.\"\n\nThe \"Regnum Hominis\"! Yet when I look, from a respectful distance, upon\nthe folios of the schoolmen, monuments, I am told, as empty as the\nPyramids of Egypt, my mind turns back to the fiery and turbulent tribes\nwhich in the \"deep but dazzling darkness\" of the Middle Ages raged upon\na barren land before the nations began; and I wonder if the ideas which\nawed them, swayed them, and welded them into stable societies were\nfancies as wild and sterile; and if the men who wrought them were mere\ntraffickers in words. And then I wonder if we are glad that the riddle\nof the origin and issues of being, which tormented their eager hearts,\nis not solved, but proved insoluble: if we are glad that \"sub specie\nhominis\" the earth, no longer the nursery of eternal souls, is but a\nmeteor in the sky; men and women but the gleam upon it; the sons of\nHeaven but companies of whirling stones, and the Father of Heaven an\ninaccessible idea.\n\nThe scholastic philosophies became inhuman only in their decrepitude. In\nthe equal eye of history, the Middle Ages teach us that the slow and\npainful travail of natural science is not to be regarded as the belated\nlabour of light in the womb of darkness, nor as a mere stifling of the\ngrowth of the human mind by tyranny and oppression, nor indeed as the\narming of moral forces against brute forces, but as the condition of\ntime in the making of societies on a necessarily provisional theory of\nlife. They teach us that conduct in state and morals depends upon a\ntheory of life; that although habits and even standards of ethics may\nabide for a time after the theory on which they were built is sapped, it\nis but for a time; that if the social discipline and fruition are to be\nrenewed and enlarged it must be upon a new synthesis, as laborious and\nardent as the former, and more true. Meanwhile the business of a nation,\nwhether in war or peace, is first to be quick and strong in action, to\nbe rational afterwards; and swiftness and strength come of union of\nwills and singleness of heart rather than of wisdom. Even within its\nborders freedom of opinion must awaken slowly; the nation strong enough\nto suffer irresolutions in its outward policy has yet to appear. Hence\nit is that we find in ruling classes, and in social circles which put on\naristocratical fashions, that ideas, and especially scientific ideas,\nare held in sincere aversion and in simulated contempt.\n\nThe Greek was no heathen, suckled by nature and endowed only with her\ninstincts; he sought in his mind to improve nature: but in the\nRenascence instincts were set as free as thought. In this passionate\nand adventurous time to preach the destruction of the animal instincts,\nor to crush them for the higher life, was a noble idea, but an\nimpossible hope; the animal impulses are to be trained, not suppressed,\nand for this the help of science was to come. Yet science was to be not\nthe hated rival but a necessary ally of religion. It is not within the\nprovince of science to answer the medieval searchings on the nature of\nbeing, nevertheless this threshold problem--\"_der Drudenfuss auf der\nSchwelle_\"--faces us still; and the world, so far as we have seen of it,\nhas always demanded a provisional answer. To-day Professor James Ward\noffers it again in \"Supreme Intelligence\"; and Principal Caird\n(\"Fundamental Christianity\") yearns for the knowledge of infinite being\nalmost in the words of Plato himself:--\"If,\" he cries, \"underneath all\nthe phenomena of the world in which we live we can discern no principle\nof reason and order, no absolute intelligence and love, then indeed\"\nthis world is a \"meaningless waste.\"\n\nGilbert Galileo and Harvey, Maxwell Hertz and Darwin have taught men not\nthat the speculations of the schoolmen were over-bold, for they busied\nthemselves with no speculations bolder or more transcendental than are\nour modern theories on matter, on inertia, on the ether, or on the\norigin of life, but that metaphysics by \"intercalation of facts\" shall\nbecome physics, that, in the words of Descartes, concepts, if \"[Greek:\nmeta ta physika],\" \"talia sint tantum ut omnibus naturae ph\u00e6nomenis\naccurate respondeant,\" and that notions great and small shall be\nsubjected to strict verification, so far as such tests can be carried;\nnot that men shall deny themselves the rapture of touching that various\ninstrument they find within themselves, but that they shall endure the\ndrudgery of learning to play it in harmony with the orchestra of nature;\nnot that they shall desist from imagining, but that before proclaiming\nhypotheses they shall be compelled to the humble task of making an\ninfinite number of little piles of facts. The art of experiment can grow\nonly with the growth of science itself; instruments of precision are not\nprovided till men feel the need of them. The experimental verification\nof concepts is no mere alternative path, no mere renunciation, but a new\nbirth; a birth into a dull and vexatious discipline for the impatient\nHegelian, whether of the thirteenth or of the twentieth century, who\nbelieves that, as mind is the product of evolution, and so the sum and\nstore of nature, \"in dem Gedanken selbst das Wahre ist zu suchen[75].\"\n\n  \"Long fed on boundless hopes, O race of man,\n   How angrily thou spurn'st all simpler fare.\"\n\nThe genius and courage concerned in a particular discovery or reform it\nwere impossible to estimate; there is no method of determining the\nspecific gravity of such adventures: moreover we are now so well used to\nthe lights, bells, and soundings of the routes of scientific enquiry\nthat it is hard for us to realise the pain and peril of fogs and\ncontrary winds in voyages where were no such guides. Indeed no\nexposition of defects of methods can explain false habits of thought\nwithout a careful estimate of historical causes also, in what we may\ncall the embryology of thought; for at no time were right methods of\nthought wholly wanting, or even wholly disregarded. But, as we approach\nHarvey's own time, if on the one hand I have shown that Europe until he\ncame was not ready for him, on the other hand I trust I have made it\nmore easy to conceive the weight of the social systems, opinions, and\nprejudices against which his gigantic effort was made. For, brilliant as\nwas the promise of the Renascence, yet in the time of Harvey, and in the\ngeneration immediately before him, the decay of the scholastic methods\nand the worldliness of the Church, which in the first half of the\nsixteenth century had favoured the advance of secular culture, had led\nto a reaction, not against Luther only but also against all liberal\nlearning and science. In the Vatican, in the Sorbonne, in the\nConsistory, and even in the courts of justice it was proclaimed that as\nthese studies make government more difficult, it were ill to encourage\nthem! We have seen that the Faith, though undermined and no longer\ncatholic, was aroused, and was terrible still; orthodoxy was crushing\nfree thought in Italy; Alva was in Flanders, and had been visited by\nCatherine de Medici at Bayonne; in France the ruthless religious wars\nended in the triumph of Rome; Europe was overrun by Dominicans and\nFranciscans; Trent was long pregnant with anathema. Contrary sects alike\ndefied liberal culture; and four years before Harvey's birth the wolf,\nhidden under another cloak, had torn Servetus--Servetus who shared with\nColombo the honour of preparing the way for the founder of modern\nphysiology. Even the genial conformist of the world, after his manner\nwhen he is scared, had turned brutal; he felt that the old conceptions\nupon which society was built for him, were suspected, and therewith\nsociety itself beginning to crack and split, yet he did not see that now\nby science only could society be recreated.\n\nIn Italy the Cinque Cento had taken its birth and nourishment chiefly\nfrom Latin sources and tradition. It regarded symmetry of form and\nrhetorical modes of passion; elegance was preferred to matter, and style\nto knowledge. Such a culture had not the seeds of life in it; in the\nmiddle of the sixteenth century its enthusiasms waned, its philosophy\nfell into routine, its style into mannerism; but science, not\nphilosophy, not the Faith, was the heir of the Middle Ages. Science is\nnot of Latin but of Greek inheritance, its sources are Greek; and with\nthe westward swarm of the Greeks their older boons of eloquence and\nbeauty were rivalled by their newer gifts of scholarship and natural\nknowledge. In France the leaders of this school were the Huguenots, the\nflower of the nation; in the Catholic reaction of the sixteenth century\nFrance scorched her own bloom, and Spain was blasted for ever. The\nhumanists, who at best were false friends of science and medicine, were\nno longer powerful friends; their noble rage was suppressed by chill\npenury, and many of the most learned and zealous of them were vagabonds\nin Europe. Rhetoric, fine art, and even philosophy may flourish in\nslavery, learning and science can breathe no air but that of freedom;\nand freedom of learning was quenched in the blood of the Massacre of St\nBartholomew. In 1540 had been founded the Society of Jesus, which then\nas now used science and learning, not as sources of truth or tests of\nconduct, but as tactics; putting on indeed the habit of the scholar, but\nonly the more effectually to control research. Two years later the\nSpanish Inquisition was set up in Rome; and its shadow fell even over\nVenice, which abased itself to the imprisonment of Bruno. The great\nVenetian printers, some time reduced to the publications of decadent\nAverroism (p. 97), to avert bankruptcy had to print breviaries. Henry of\nNavarre, deserting Du Plessis Mornay, D'Aubign\u00e9, and De Thou, turned not\nonly Roman Catholic but also ultramontane; and, if with his accession\nthe Terror had ceased, social and political ostracisms, tests, and\ndisabilities stifled all generous culture.\n\nThe great University of Paris, which throughout the Middle Ages had been\nthe heart of Christendom, the centre of its life and heat, which in the\nfourteenth century was at its splendid culmination, and which had\nmeddled with no feeble hand even in the State, was waning even in the\nfifteenth century, when France was devastated by war and rapine and her\nschools were emptied. This University, which had savagely condemned Joan\nof Arc, and sent Nicholas Midi to preach a solemn sermon at the stake,\n\"pro Joann\u00e6 salutari admonitione et populi \u00e6dificatione,\" in the\nsixteenth century came out of the religious wars stripped of its\nendowments, and deserted by its students; its curriculum was crassly\nconservative, its philosophy buckram, its theology a petrifaction; its\nforty colleges were closed, grass grew in its courts, and its public\ndisputations were abased to the decorous apostasy of the freethinker.\nMontpellier was dominated by realism (vitalism). Francis Bacon had done\nbetter to have gone with Harvey to Padua; almost in the year of the\npublication of the _De motu cordis_, the Parliament of Paris issued an\nedict that no teacher should promulgate anything contrary to the\naccepted doctrines of the ancients.\n\nSuch was the check which, after the death of Leo the Tenth, had befallen\nliberal studies: no Bembo now secretly protected freethinkers; in\nCentral Europe the generous Maximilian the Second, who died in 1576\nwhile counselling tolerance in religion to Henry the Third, was followed\nby reactionary emperors. In England no doubt the sky was clearer; in the\nSalamis of modern civilization the malign pretensions of Philip were\nshattered, and the \"spacious times of Elizabeth\" were glorious in their\noutburst of freedom, adventure, and culture, Medicine, however, sinking\nin the sixteenth century, fell, in the seventeenth, into that reproach\nwhich has become a byword. All superstition was not within the Faith.\nWhen Harvey's discovery, like an earthquake, had broken up galenism and\nother outworn sophistries, his masterly work stood forth not only\nagainst long-winded dialectics on ars sphygmica, critical days,\ncoctions, derivatives, revulsives, and like abstractions bequeathed by\nrealism and uncritical subservience to texts, but also against a more\nlurid background of folk superstitions--of vampires, witch-burning,\nmagic, cabbalism, astrology, alchemy, chiromancy, and water-casting. For\nmedicine, says Bacon, is associated with charlatanry as Aesculapius\nwith Circe. In physics, terrestrial and celestial, Galileo, persecuted\nas he was, had some current with him and before him; Copernicus had\npreceded him, Kepler was beside him: but in physiology the waters had\nclosed upon the path of Galen as upon the wake of a great ship; the\nanatomists, themselves galenists, had given Harvey little help; and the\nshare of Servetus[76], Colombo, and Fabricius was but small in the\ndiscovery of the central fact of the science, and of the method which\nopened the way to Pecquet and Aselli, to Glisson, to Steno, to Wharton\nand Willis, to Haller and Bernard. Harvey's discovery was the first step\nto a transfiguration of medicine; and though after Harvey there arose\nmuch false physiology and therewith again great floods of medical\nsophistry, yet from his time medicine has had to reckon with physiology,\nthe only source of scientific nosology and therapeutics.\n\nWe celebrate the memory of great men in the certain hope that in their\nchildren they will be born again.\n\n\n\n\nAPPENDIX.\n\nASTROLOGY.\n\n\nBesides those greater preventions which lay in the very structure and\norganised conceptions of society in the Middle Ages, the student of\nnatural science was thwarted also by many lesser, which could not find\nplace in this oration. Among the chief of these was judicial astrology,\nwhich supplanted and degraded the art of medicine.\n\nIt is difficult to carry the imagination into a time when the heavens\nwere conceived as an animate and divine being[77], the heavenly bodies\nas active and intelligent parts of it, and the whole set not in\nillimitable space but around man and his home, and waiting upon him\n(vid. p. 47); yet without such an effort we cannot realise the ancient\nplace and dominion of astrology. Such a possession when in its strength\nmust have enthralled the human mind; and it abode tenaciously with the\nfirst scientific conceptions of celestial phenomena, even in the\nthoughts of the enlightened. Tycho Brahe, for many years of his life,\nwas an adept; and even Kepler saw portents in the skies. When we read\nthe doctrines of Aristotle on the celestial beings, it is indeed\nsomewhat strange that upon him, upon Plato, and upon the Ionians, the\n\"judicia astrorum\" had even less hold than the mythology: so truly\npoised, even in the infancy of science, were the cosmic speculations of\nthis wonderful race. The Romans by their Etruscan tradition held to\nastrology, chiefly derived from Chaldea and Egypt, and by them it was\nmixed with grosser folk magic; yet even in Rome there were many to\nrepudiate it, not only such Grecian spirits as Cicero but also such\nRomans as Juvenal; as in Harvey's time it was assailed by the irony of\nPascal and of La Fontaine. Even in the twelfth century John of Salisbury\nhad not failed to turn his light artillery upon astrology.\n\nThis art of forecast naturally attached itself closely to that of\nmedicine; and in its decrepitude still it clung to medicine like a\nparasite. And as parasites in the field of pathology, so astrology\nbrought with it other noxious superstitions and follies even worse than\nitself. In England it survived till the witty attack of Swift killed\nPartridge and astrology together; yet to this day many of its notions\nare embedded in our common speech.\n\nPtolemy among his good services did one ill to mankind by his\n_Tetrabiblon_ or \"Quadripertit,\" an astrological treatise which was\ncurrent with the Almagest in the Western Schools. This authoritative\ntreatise, together with the Aristotelian conception of the heavens, gave\nto astrology the aspect of a regular science with its own principles and\nmethods; a science admired and even courted by princes. As Frederick\nthe Second and Charles the Fifth would learn of the stars the moment to\ntake the field against their foes, so the medieval physician sought\ntheir countenance in the letting of blood or in the exhibition of a\nclyster or emetic. The Church, abhorring all concurrent dominion, and\njustly abhorring this bondage of the judgment of God and of the will of\nman, almost alone withstood the astrologer. If the doctors of theology\ndid not know how to deny the power of the stars in the material cosmos,\nthey vehemently denied it in the world of the spirit. \"Et ideo pro certo\ntenendum est,\" says Aquinas, \"grave peccatum esse circa ea qu\u00e6 a\nvoluntate hominis dependent judiciis astrorum uti.\" Of the priestly\nassailants of astrology, the most attractive to us for his wit, sagacity\nand sound knowledge, was Nicholas Oresme, sometime Bishop of Lisieux\n(died 1382), translator of the _Ethics_ and other Aristotelian\ntreatises, as he is portrayed for us by Haur\u00e9au (_Dict. des Sciences\nphilosophiques_, art. Oresme) and M. Charles Jourdain. The fun of the\nthing is that the outspoken Oresme was the counsellor, the friend, and\neven the tutor of that notable astrologer Charles the Fifth; a story as\nhonourable to the prince as to the subject. As Charles issued from the\nchambers of his astrologers the discourses of Oresme must have made him\na little uncomfortable, especially when Oresme records the misfortunes\nof astrologising captains, such as Alphonso king of Castille, of whom,\nsays he, I have heard nothing notable except that he cast horoscopes,\nwas unfortunate in war, and neglected his kingdom; or such again as\nJames the king of Majorca, a passionate astrologer, who on the dictation\nof the stars made a sortie against Peter of Aragon, and never came back\nagain. It is all very well, says Oresme, for kings to know somewhat of\nthe noble science of astronomy, but they must be content to hear of it\nin talk with sages, and not to spend upon the stars time and care which\nthey should devote to the interests of their people. \"Mesmement tele\nchose (astrology, necromancy, geomancy and \"quelconques tels ars\") est\nplus p\u00e9rilleuse \u00e0 personnes d'estat, comme sont princes et seigneurs\nausquelz appartient le gouvernement publique. Et pour ce ay je compos\u00e9\nce livret en fran\u00e7ois afin que gens lais le puissent entendre, desquels,\nsi comme j'ay entendu, plusieurs sont trop enclins \u00e0 telles fatuit\u00e9s. Et\nautres fois ay je escript en latin de ceste mati\u00e8re\" etc. In spite of\nthe Bishop of Lisieux, astrology at the end of the fourteenth century\nreached the summit of its influence and popularity. In the course of his\nargument Oresme gives an admirable account of the nature of\nhallucination and the parts it may play in perverting knowledge; not\nonly so but he explains also the fallibility of the normal senses in\nrespect of organic defects, of media, of false inference, of\nassociation, of imposition of the imagination, and so forth. Under such\ncircumstances, he says, a mystic might conceive himself to have been\nvisited by an angel!\n\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n  [1] To bring the oration within the time allotted, this portion, and\n  the paragraphs on astrology added as an appendix, were omitted. For\n  the same reason the paragraphs on scepticism (p. 82) were also omitted\n  but by inadvertence have held their continuity in the text. It is\n  customary to print the text as delivered; and this must be my excuse\n  for the cumbrous apparatus of notes, much of which might have been\n  taken into an enlarged text. The notes are necessary to fortify\n  statements which orally may pass, but do not satisfy a reader.\n\n  [2] The \"humoral doctrine\" is imperfectly known. The four _elements_\n  are earth, water, air, fire; the four _qualities_ are hot, cold,\n  moist, dry; the four _humours_ are blood, phlegm, yellow bile, black\n  bile. By permutation of these were obtained the endless elaborations\n  of the galenist doctrine which for many centuries blinded Europe not\n  to the truth only, but also to the clinical and physiological methods,\n  example, and attainments of Galen himself.\n\n  [3] \"Nec ullum satis validum imperium erat coercendis seditionibus\n  populi, flagitia hominum ut c\u00e6remonias deum protegentis.\" Tac. Ann.\n  III. 60.\n\n  [4] It must not be supposed that the idealism of Plato and the\n  mysticism of the East were alike, or even akin. Plato was a Greek; his\n  mind, as we appreciate such qualities, was sane and lucid: he had no\n  yearning whatever for absorption in the Infinite; but rather, like\n  Aristotle, for a noble life.\n\n  [5]  \"Oftener on her knees than on her feet\n        Died every day she lived.\"\n                                Macbeth IV. 3.\n\n  [6] I see in recent reports of Egyptian exploration that at\n  Oxyrhynchus Plato was represented with curious persistence by the\n  Ph\u00e6do and the Laches; and these treatises appear in the early Fayyum\n  papyri.\n\n  [7] A few axioms, collected from the physical and metaphysical\n  treatises (perhaps by Cassiodorus from Boetius), were current from an\n  early date. The translations of Boetius must for a time have lain in\n  some neglect?\n\n  [8] Alcuin had but a translated abridgment or summary of the\n  Categories, attributed to Augustine; and in a MS. of the tenth century\n  we find no more than this. Boetius' full translation of the Categories\n  was not current till the end of this century, when all the logic of\n  Aristotle was in the hands of the doctors. In the earlier Middle Ages,\n  as in the writings of John of Salisbury and of William of Conches, we\n  hear even more of Boetius than of the master himself. Virgil, Seneca\n  and Cicero also were the sources of much of the culture of this\n  period. Alcuin was a grammarian; he taught from Priscian and Donatus,\n  improved the eighth century Latin, and probably made Virgil and Cicero\n  known in Gaul and Britain. He knew but little Greek, as we infer from\n  his quotation of the names of the Categories. Erigena knew more Greek\n  and carried some of it to the Court of Charles the Bald. See note 2,\n  p. 65. Alcuin probably did not visit Ireland. Boetius had translated\n  also both Analytics and the Topics.\n\n  [9] Yet Roger Bacon seems to have apprehended both progress and the\n  relativity of truth. Before Newman, he declared that God makes no full\n  revelation but gives it in instalments; and in another passage he\n  speaks of the judgments of Aristotle, and of other great teachers,\n  \"secundum possibilitatem sui temporis ... aliud tempus fuit tunc, et\n  aliud nunc est\"--a remarkable saying. Of the Saints he says \"they had\n  their time, we have our own.\" Vid. also note, p. 80.\n\n  [10] Modern French historians do us the honour of annexing our heroes;\n  in respect of the scholars of the Middle Ages M. Charles Jourdain has\n  set, or followed, this example. John of Salisbury, that charming child\n  of renascence, born out of due time, was first claimed as a Frenchman;\n  then, as this \"provenance\" becomes untenable, he, and others, are\n  called \"Anglo-French.\" The University of Paris in the XIIth century\n  was no more France than Rome was Italy. In our sedentary arable life\n  we do not realise the nomad habits of our forefathers. Edward the\n  First would inhabit six distant castles in less than as many weeks;\n  indeed Great Britain itself was then no island. The heroes, nay the\n  armies, of Froissart's Story fly about the world in their seasons like\n  migrating birds. All keen scholars of the West went to the University\n  of Paris, the daughter of kings and popes, and the intellectual centre\n  not of a strip of kingdom between Anjou and the Empire, but of Europe\n  itself. And of the scholars of Paris, Englishmen were, we hear, the\n  most turbulent, but the boldest in argument and the most greedy of\n  learning; this last character perhaps it is that now-a-days looks\n  least English. Kuno Fischer admires the procession of great Englishmen\n  down the highway of medieval thought, from Erigena to Francis Bacon.\n  John was born at Salisbury, spent thirteen of his early years at the\n  University of Paris, the best of them in the stormy service of Thomas\n  Becket, and but the last five as Bishop of Chartres. We do not call\n  Lanfranc an Englishman, nor even Adrian the Fourth an Italian.\n\n  [11] The name Realism has been improperly used--improperly because\n  previously engaged--to signify the conception of an objective world,\n  from the play of which our impressions arise, and of which our\n  impressions are, if not likenesses, at any rate symbols, as opposed to\n  the name \"Idealism\" which, with a like violence, has been turned to\n  signify the conception that the universe of things is but a picture\n  produced by the evolution of the phenomena of consciousness. The\n  proper names for these opposite conceptions are of course Noumenalism\n  and Phenomenalism. Realism proper as a habit of thought, whatever may\n  have been its provisional uses, is now a mischievous habit;\n  noumenalism is a harmless amusement.\n\n  [12] Roscellinus, the Roger Bacon of the eleventh century, learned,\n  rebellious, lucid and heroic, withstood the Church for philosophy as\n  did Bacon in the thirteenth for natural science. It would seem that in\n  heroism at any rate Ab\u00e9lard was below his master.\n\n  [13] Vid. p. 50.\n\n  [14] The opponents of the theory of the Mass are apt to charge the\n  Roman Church with the proposition that therein the elements are\n  changed into \"real\" flesh and blood. In the nineteenth century, as in\n  the thirteenth, this Church has not, I believe, determined whether the\n  \"real\" substance be corporeal or incorporeal, separable or inseparable\n  from the sensible properties of things; whether in a word it be\n  something or, as many of us would say, nothing at all. Spinoza\n  regarded \"substance\" as intelligent and extended.\n\n  [15] Thus it was difficult to claim his authority for one side or the\n  other. The metaphysical treatises were not known till the later part\n  of the twelfth century. (See p. 75, note 2.) At the outset of the\n  Physics Aristotle discusses what nature is in itself, and defines\n  first elements; in the Second Analytics on the other hand, although\n  thinking of science as deductive and expository, he strongly opposes\n  the primary existence of ideas, though these are predicable of many\n  individuals. By excess of logical formations, the division of\n  properties, the use of such terms as \"[Greek: gen\u00ea hypokeimena],\" &c.\n  &c., he laid himself open to misconception, and so was readily\n  platonised by his commentators. It would seem indeed that for\n  Aristotle universals were not merely propositions obtained by negation\n  of individual variations, but something more active. A [Greek: no\u00easis]\n  became somehow a [Greek: poi\u00easis]; e.g. \"[Greek: h\u00ea d\u00eamiourg\u00easasa\n  physis].\" His position may be appreciated briefly thus:--In the\n  Categories Aristotle speaks of individuals as primarily existent,\n  while in Met. Z, and elsewhere, the primary existent is the form. The\n  inconsistency is, however, more apparent than real; for in the\n  Categories it is the individual so far as he represents his natural\n  kind which is primarily existent, whilst the form which in the\n  Metaphysics is primarily existent occurs only in the individual. This\n  terse appreciation is one of my many debts to Dr Jackson.\n\n  [16] It were almost to be desired, for our own lucidity, that we could\n  get rid of the words cause and law, and use language significant of\n  order only. Aristotle's influence has weighed heavily in favour of\n  studying \"Causes\" rather than sequences; thus it is hard to clear our\n  own minds, and impossible to clear the minds of our pupils, of a\n  genetic notion of causation--that an effect comes, as it were, from\n  the womb of its causes. Even Ockham taught as if causes contained\n  their effects. Mr Marshall (West. Rev. loc. cit.) is of opinion that\n  Roger Bacon by his \"non oportet causas investigare\" intended to\n  confine scientific thought to the relations of phenomena.\n\n  [17] As St Anselm put it, \"Participatione speciei plures homines sunt\n  unus homo.\" Out of humanity individual men proceed.\n\n  [18] Vid. p. 32, note.\n\n  [19] Erigena, \"the miracle of the Holy Ghost\"; a figure of almost\n  mythical grandeur, arising in the far west, full of new learning, of\n  lyric enthusiasm, and heroic courage. He did not protest, with St\n  Columba, against the Papacy only; he protested against authority, and\n  he protested against mighty ignorance; neither of which should\n  withstand the persuasion of right reason. \"Ratio immutabilis ... qu\u00e6\n  ... nullius auctoritatis adstipulatione roborari indiget.\" His works\n  were proscribed and burned.\n\n  [20] The one, to which alone Parmenides and Melissus attributed\n  existence, was a material although an incorporeal unity. We must\n  beware of accepting \"matter\" in the current dualist sense; for\n  Aristotle himself [Greek: hyl\u00ea] was hardly distinguishable from\n  [Greek: dynamis].\n\n  [21] With every allowance for the phases of church and school in\n  successive academical generations it seems strange that in 1209\n  Aristotle should have been forbidden under excommunication, and in\n  1231 restored to such favour that for the disciples of Albert and St\n  Thomas the master almost attained the authority of a father of the\n  church; the explanation probably is that \"Aristotle\" meant for a time\n  the paynim interpretations of Toledo, particularly of the Physics (the\n  Metaphysics were not translated from the Greek till about 1220); and\n  meant not this only, but also liberal quotation and incorporation of\n  the writings of Arab philosophers. To show how learning, even in the\n  University of Paris, lay under ecclesiastical control, some extracts\n  from the Edicts of the Synod of Paris and of Gregory the Ninth may be\n  cited in illustration:--After directing that \"Corpus magistri Amaurici\n  extrahatur e cimiterio, et projiciatur in terram non benedictam\" the\n  Synod farther orders that the \"Quaternuli [\"Quaternuli\" is translated\n  by Ducange, Quatuor quart\u00e6 chart\u00e6, seu octo folia: i.e. the octavos]\n  magistri David de Dinant, ... afferantur et comburantur; nec libri\n  Aristotelis de naturali philosophia, nec Commenta legantur Parisiis,\n  publice vel secreto. Et hoc sub poena excommunicationis\n  inhibemus.... De libris theologicis scriptis in romano, pr\u00e6cipimus\n  quod episcopis diocesanis tradantur, et Credo in Deum et Pater noster\n  in romano, pr\u00e6ter vitas sanctorum.\" The order two years later\n  confirming these prohibitions differs but in form. Even the Bull of\n  Gregory in 1231, relieving the schools of this proscription, says, \"Ad\n  h\u00e6c jubemus ut magistri artium unam lectionem de Prisciano et unam\n  post aliam ordinarie semper legant, et libris illis naturalibus, qui\n  in concilio provinciali ex certa causa prohibiti fuere, Parisiis non\n  utantur, quousque examinati fuerint, et ab omni errorum suspicione\n  purgati.\" The pope adds paternally, \"Magistri vero et scholares\n  theologi\u00e6, in facultate quam profitentur, se studeant laudabiliter\n  exercere, nec philosophos se ostendant, sed satagant fieri theodocti:\n  nec loquantur in lingua populi, et populi linguam hebr\u00e6am cum azotica\n  confundentes\" [azotica or arethica means the profane tongue (Ducange);\n  Hebrew being a Sancta lingua]. The pantheistic outburst of the later\n  twelfth century, although deriving in part from Erigena, was probably\n  fed by the commentary of Alexander of Aphrodisias. This commentary was\n  widely read in Arabic and Arab-latin translations, the latter of which\n  were made, as we know (v. A. Jourdain, p. 123 and seq.), by Gerard of\n  Cremona (d. 1187). Alexander's more material interpretation of [Greek:\n  hyl\u00ea] involved the return of All into God; hence no resurrection, no\n  future life. In his followers these doctrines become grosser and\n  grosser, and, fused with other Arabian doctrine, prepared for and\n  afterwards strengthened the Averroism of Padua, in the XV-XVIth\n  century, in which system it was taught that the universal soul,\n  dipping for the time into the individual man, is at death resumed into\n  the universal soul. This virtual denial of personal immortality was of\n  course bitterly resented by the Church. (Vid. p. 68, note.) Thus from\n  the thirteenth century onwards pantheistic infidelity survived and\n  even defied the menaces and the punishments of the Church.\n\n  [22] Both Albert and Aquinas were inconsistent. Haur\u00e9au points out\n  that St Thomas was a vitalist in physics, an animist in metaphysics, a\n  nominalist in philosophy, and a realist in theology. \"Il a cherch\u00e9 \u00e0\n  reconcilier des morts (i.e. Plato and Aristotle) qui, toute leur vie,\n  se sont contredits.\" But even sceptics contradict themselves; and it\n  is fair to add that St Thomas pushed universals back to immanence in\n  the Divine mind. For Plato the ideas are thoughts of universal mind;\n  for Aristotle God, or Nature by its thoughts or plans determines the\n  lines of phenomena: thus Plato and Aristotle were more alike than\n  Thomas knew, or Haur\u00e9au admits. There was no such thing of course as\n  The Scholastic Philosophy, of which I read again but the other day in\n  a modern work. Scholasticism is the very various teaching of the\n  schools of the XI-XVth centuries; though its general tendency was to\n  search rather into the origin and nature than into the functions of\n  being. The philosophy of the thirteenth century on the whole was\n  eclectic;--though perhaps eclectic by confusion rather than by\n  reconciliation. The rule of authority prevented an appreciation of the\n  relative values of opinions; the recognised authorities were equally\n  true, and had to be dovetailed together somehow. Critical\n  interpretation had not begun.\n\n  [23] The objection should not lie against hair splitting, for thought\n  cannot be too penetrating; but against the splitting of imaginary\n  hairs.\n\n  [24] M. Charles Jourdain thus describes the procession of Rector,\n  doctors and disciples of the University of Paris at the beginning of\n  the fourteenth century. At the end of this century its decay began.\n\n  [25] For Aristotle the principle of individuation was matter and form\n  (vid. note, p. 33); for Averroes it was form; for St Thomas it was\n  matter. For all \"vitalists\" the identity of form, soul and life is\n  essential; thus Stahl regarded soul as bestowing on body all activity,\n  as determining all vital functions. In Aristotle [Greek: psych\u00ea] is\n  untranslatable = anima and animus--soul and vital principle. [Greek:\n  Pneuma] again in various writers may mean anything, from air to spirit\n  or other essence; cf. Arist. De Generat. An. II. 3, and the \"aura\" of\n  Harvey, and even of Haller in the same connexion as the fertilising\n  element.\n\n  [26] Not for all, not for the greatest of them! Aristotle, in vain,\n  warned later generations against prophesying what seems likely,\n  instead of looking to see how things come about:--\"[Greek: ouk al\u00eath\u00ea\n  legontes, alla manteuomenoi to symb\u00easomenon ek t\u00f4n eikot\u00f4n, kai\n  proslambanontes h\u00f4s hout\u00f4s echon prin ginomenon hout\u00f4s idein].\" (De\n  Gen. Anim. IV. i.) \"Croire tout ce qu'on r\u00eave,\" if useful and possibly\n  admirable in its day, in \"neo-Hegelians\" is a little stale.\n\n  [27] Thus, in ascending from general to more general, in the most\n  general will be sought unique and perfect being; the primary cause and\n  sole object of science--the [Greek: autoz\u00f4on] of the Alexandrians:\n  whereas by successive eliminations utter abstractions would become\n  utter vacuity. To such realists all subordinate beings are integral\n  parts of the primary being. It would serve no useful end here to\n  analyse these doctrines, or to indicate the pythagorean or stoical\n  elements of them; for platonists and realists had their schools and\n  degrees of subtlety; and Plato himself was inconsistent. Some brought\n  secondary agents--demiurges or angels--into more creative activity,\n  others carried creative reason back to the ideal good, and so on.\n\n  [28] Held by Gilbert, and attributed to Averroes; but older than\n  Averroes. In turning to Francis Bacon's hypothesis I read (Ed. E. and\n  S. II. 263. Hist. Densi et rari--chapter, \"Dilatationes per spiritum\n  innatum se expandentem,\" a Paracelsian sort of chapter) \"Pulsus cordis\n  et arteriarum in animalibus fit per irrequietam dilatationem\n  spirituum, et receptum ipsorum, per vices.\" The muscular quality of\n  the heart was known to Galen, forgotten, and rediscovered. Spiritus\n  vitalis, for Bacon, was \"aura composita ex flamma et aere\" (cf. \u00c6n.\n  VI. 747). Glisson has been fortunate in two generous judges, in Haller\n  and Virchow; it would ill become me to depreciate a distinguished\n  Fellow of my own College, and as a clinical observer Glisson had\n  considerable merits; but as a physiologist he was sunk in realism. He\n  was happy in the invention of the technical term \"irritability,\" but\n  for him this virtue was as metaphysical an essence as the vital\n  spirit; his prime motor was not physical. As a philosopher I fear the\n  independent reader of his works will find him fanciful and wearisome.\n\n  [29] Herein Harvey's sagacity brought him towards the truth. \"Air,\" he\n  says in the _De generatione_, \"is given neither for the cooling nor\n  the nutrition of animals ... it is as if heat were rather enkindled\n  within the foetus (at birth) than repressed by the influence of the\n  air.\" Boyle (who says that he worked under the influence of Harvey's\n  discoveries) carried this matter forward by most interesting and\n  sagacious experiments with his air-pump. For the layman, I may add\n  that (to speak generally) before Harvey's time respiration was\n  regarded not as a means of combustion but of refrigeration. How man\n  became such a fiery dragon was the puzzle!\n\n  [30] Perfection was attributed, not only by medieval philosophers but\n  also by Plato and Aristotle, to the circle. Circular movement was\n  therefore the most perfect, and therefore again must be that of the\n  planets. This is a good illustration of the almost necessary tendency\n  in the earlier excursions of thought to equate incoordinates, and to\n  fill gaps in reasoning from alien sources.\n\n  [31] Not only movement but also formative activity. The [Greek: arch\u00ea\n  t\u00eas kin\u00ease\u00f4s] is the efficient cause of Aristotle; for him final\n  causes direct motion--the [Greek: hou heneka]. Thus dialectic was\n  taken for dynamics. Even Kant confused cause and effect with reason\n  and consequence in hypothetical propositions (Benn). Caverni (Storia\n  del methodo sperimentale in Italia, 1891-5) says that Jordanus\n  Nemorarius (of Borgentreich near Warburg, d. 1236) made the great\n  advance of extending the static physics of the ancients to establish\n  dynamics; and that he introduced the word \"moment.\" In a cursory\n  survey of the two works of Nemorarius which we have in Cambridge I\n  have not been able to verify this statement; the notion I have found\n  but not the word itself.\n\n  [32] Vid. p. 44, note 2.\n\n  [33] And Goethe:\n\n    \"Wie Himmelskr\u00e4fte auf und nieder steigen\n     Und sich die goldnen Eimer reichen!\n     Mit segenduftenden Schwingen\n     Vom Himmel durch die Erde dringen,\n     Harmonisch all das All durchklingen.\"\n\n                             Faust I. i. 1.\n\n  In many of the older poets the same motive is found. Vaughan, a\n  contemporary of Harvey, says:\n\n    \"And round beneath it Time in houres, dayes, yeares,\n     Driven by the spheres\n     Like a vast shadow moved.\"\n\n  The only celestial messenger who has discussed this matter with\n  mankind was something of an obscurantist. Vid. Paradise Lost, Bk.\n  VIII.\n\n  [34] The word \"philosophy\" in the Middle Ages signified the pursuit of\n  knowledge of things human and divine, and of the causes of them. It\n  was often divided into Physics, Ethics and Logic. Cicero, to some of\n  whose writings I have referred as then popular, says (in many\n  passages, e.g. in the Acad. I. and II.) that philosophy \"Prima rerum\n  naturam scrutatur, secunda animum componit, tertia bene disserendi\n  rationem docet.\"\n\n  [35] Vid. note, p. 77.\n\n  [36] The judicious reader will remember in the Letters to Martinus\n  Scriblerus the \"familiar instance\" of the jack. \"In every roasting\n  jack there is a meatroasting quality which neither resides in the fly,\n  nor in the weight, nor in any particular wheel of the jack ... but is\n  inherent in the jack.... As sensation, reasoning, volition &c. are the\n  several modes of thinking, so roasting of beef, roasting of mutton,\n  roasting of pullets, geese, turkeys &c. are the several modes of\n  meatroasting.... And as the general quality of meatroasting, with its\n  several modifications as to beef, mutton, pullets &c. does not inhere\n  in any part of the jack, so neither does consciousness\" &c. &c.\n\n  [37] Or indeed he shrank from them, as the continual exclusion of\n  divine interference seemed to him a starvation of moral growth. Vid.\n  Ph\u00e6do, 96, the interesting passage beginning \"[Greek: eg\u00f4 gar neos \u00f4n\n  Thaumast\u00f4s \u00f4s epethum\u00easa taut\u00eas t\u00eas sophias \u00ean d\u00ea kalousi peri phuse\u00f4s\n  istorian k.t.l.]\"\n\n  [38] The encyclopedic method, followed by Francis Bacon, and\n  perpetuated even in the nineteenth century by some German\n  metaphysicians, was not the mere collection of matter from any or all\n  quarters, after the manner of Pliny; nor again mere omniscience; but\n  was the demonstration of a cosmical theory from all departments of\n  knowledge. When knowledge was a theological philosophy theologians\n  were bound to supply thinking men with \"Summ\u00e6,\" or comprehensive\n  applications and casuistries of it. Hugo of St Victor (d. 1141) and\n  Robert Pullen (d. 1150) were the first scholastic Summists.\n\n  [39] Aristotle made many experiments, but experiments are not\n  necessarily verification; and for the most part his were not. It is\n  not experiment which makes science but the experimental method. Dr\n  Payne, in the Harveian Oration of 1896, reminded us that among the\n  ancients the forerunner of Harvey in this method was Galen.\n\n  [40] Those who are curious in manners will observe that during the\n  last few years the medievalising clergy in England have discarded that\n  fair linen which in the elder clergy was the emblem and the example of\n  cleanliness.\n\n  [41] \"Nemo psychologus nisi prius physiologus,\" said Johannes M\u00fcller.\n\n  [42] For example, one man, fixing his eyes on a sublime ideal of\n  holiness, confesses on his knees that he is a miserable sinner;\n  another, surveying men about him, repudiates this imputation: it is a\n  matter of parallax.\n\n  [43] Boyle, Essays, 2nd Ed. 1669, p. 119. In his Edition of 1661 Boyle\n  speaks of the discovery of Harvey \"our English Democritus\" (published\n  1628) as commonly accepted. Whereby, he says, other \"very plausible\n  and radicated opinions\" (the old schemes of the circulation) ... \"are\n  generally grown out of request.\"\n\n  [44] Haeser says (vol. II. p. 433): \"Einen sehr bedeutenden Aufschwung\n  nahm die Chirurgie im Zeitalter Harvey's bei den Engl\u00e4ndern, unter\n  denen bis dahin kein Wundarzt ersten Ranges aufgetreten war. Nach\n  kurzer Zeit erlangten die englischen Chirurgen durch allgemeine\n  Bildung, gr\u00fcndliche Kenntniss der Anatomie, und praktische Gelegenheit\n  ein entschiedenes Uebergewicht \u00fcber die bis dahin herrschende\n  franz\u00f6sische Schule.\" Cf. also Daremberg, Hist. et Doct. vol. I. p.\n  281 et seq.\n\n  [45] In the Medical Magazine (May, June, July, August, and Sept. 1899)\n  is an interesting essay by Mr D'Arcy Power, \"How Surgery became a\n  profession in London.\" Mr Power tells us that a scheme for the unity\n  of the medical profession in London was set on foot in 1423, when the\n  surgeons were the more highly organised body. A \"Rector of Medicine\"\n  was indeed elected (Master Gilbert Kymer). It is not known how long\n  the conjoint faculty of medicine and surgery lasted in London; but\n  unhappily for our profession it seems to have been dissolved in a very\n  few years.\n\n  [46] This relation was somewhat one-sided: the philosophers forged\n  doctrines and presented them to the Church; whereupon the Church\n  consecrated them to eternity, and the philosophers were not allowed\n  thereafter to improve or to restore their own creations. \"La th\u00e9ologie\n  n'est quelque chose qu'\u00e0 condition d'\u00eatre tout.\"\n\n  [47] As Erigena and Rabanus knew some Greek, Ireland, like Edessa and\n  Bagdad, seems to have shared the honour of preserving original texts;\n  we may infer from the doctrines of Erigena that in Ireland the Tim\u00e6us\n  was the chief of them.\n\n  [48] See Baas, Geschichtliche Entwickelung des \u00e4rztlichen Standes,\n  1896, p. 128. Charlemagne journeyed in Italy where some schools still\n  existed, and where Priscian, Donatus, Bo\u00ebtius, Cassiodorus, Augustine,\n  even Virgil and Cicero were read; thence he called teachers to his\n  palace schools; and to Lyons, Orleans or Tours. How Paris became the\n  centre of enlightenment in the Western world is not clear. The \"palace\n  school\" probably was of no place, but of the royal retinue; that the\n  School of Paris was made up of those of St Genevi\u00e8ve, St Germain des\n  Pr\u00e8s and the Cathedral school seems not to be a very probable\n  conjecture.\n\n  [49] The \"Arabs\" were a mixed throng of orientals; some of them were\n  Aryans, as the Persians and Nestorians; some were Arabs, Syrians, or\n  Hebrews. The Nestorians were eminent as physicians, and it is\n  interesting to this College to know that one of the best translators\n  of Aristotle into Arabic was Johannitius, a Nestorian physician. The\n  Eastern peoples, as the Western, owed all to the Greeks except a\n  double measure of dialectical ingenuity, which was their own, and is\n  their own to-day. By the incisive methods of Aristotle the Christian\n  neo-platonists had been variously carved into heretics--such as the\n  Monophysites; and these when driven eastwards carried Greek to Edessa\n  and Bagdad: from these centres it was, and from Nisibur in Persia and\n  elsewhere, that the \"Saracens\" drew their culture. Aristotle was first\n  translated into Arabic in the reign of Al Mansur, the son of Har\u00fbn al\n  Raschid (813-833); Avicenna carried the Aristotelian encyclopedia to\n  its culmination; and Cordova in the tenth century was as full of\n  fervid disciples as was Paris in the thirteenth. The Arabian medicine\n  was Aristotle and Galen. The Arabian philosophy was originally built\n  upon the Alexandrian emanations and hypostases (the soul of the\n  universe, intelligence the first of creatures, nature and mutability,\n  and so forth). Essences and forms were produced, as the\n  \"intelligibilia\" of \"real\" knowledge, till, as some one has wittily\n  put it, \"universals became almost palpable.\" Avicenna indeed\n  approached understanding from the senses, and Averroes accepted this\n  right position; but he taught the permanent subsistence of\n  intelligence, as a sphere in a hierarchy of spiritual principles\n  independent of matter and persons. In no long time this was turned\n  into the unity, as opposed to the individuality, of the soul; the\n  universal soul dipping as it were into the individual, and at his\n  death returning into the universal; a virtual denial of personal\n  immortality. Hence the bitter defiance of Albert and St Thomas. The\n  Averroistic doctrines were enthusiastically propagated on the other\n  hand by that \"malleus Ecclesiae Romanae\" Frederick the Second\n  (1212-1250). The Arabian science consisted in medicine, mathematics,\n  astronomy, and alchemy. Averroes it was who first asserted the\n  independence of the spheres of science and religion; a division\n  popular at the present day, and one which lent itself to many a\n  convenient subterfuge, in Padua.\n\n  [50] Dante, Inf. (XX. 115). Michael Scot translated Averroes from\n  Arabian to Latin; also the _De c\u00e6lo_ and _De anima_ of Aristotle,\n  which reached Roger Bacon about 1230. Thus we may regard Michael as\n  the founder of Paduan Averroism. All persons who busied themselves\n  with natural experiment in the Middle Ages were accused of magic; even\n  Albert did not escape the suspicion or the credit of sorcery.\n\n  [51] Renan, Averro\u00e8s. And to like effect M. Haur\u00e9au says, \"Le\n  p\u00e9ripat\u00e9ticisme d'Averro\u00e8s ne diff\u00e8re pas moins de l'antique doctrine\n  du Lyc\u00e9e que l'Alhambra du Parthenon\"; and he compares \"le\n  p\u00e9ripat\u00e9ticisme d'Albert et d'Aquinas\" to the \"monuments fiers et\n  bizarres du Gothique du XIIIme si\u00e8cle.\"\n\n  [52] I may venture to quote again the \"locus classicus\":--\n\n         \"Wel knew he the olde Esculapius,\n          And Deiscorides, and eek Rufus,\n          Old Ypocras, Haly, and Galien;\n          Serapion, Razis, and Avicen;\n          Averrois, Damascien, and Constantyn;\n          Bernard, and Gatesden, and Gilbertyn.\"\n\n             Chaucer, C. T. Prol. 429-434 (Skeat's Ed.).\n\n  [53] See pp. 24 and 28.\n\n  [54] As a school of thought; in fine art of course it was glorious.\n\n  [55] Ozanam (Doc. in\u00e9dits, quoted by Rashdall, p. 78) says this early\n  light was \"une de ces nuits lumineuses o\u00f9 les derni\u00e8res clart\u00e9s du\n  soir se prolongent jusqu'aux premi\u00e8res blancheurs du matin.\"\n\n  [56] Albert--\"nostri temporis stupor et miraculum!\"--is an attractive\n  figure, and deserves his renown as the greatest of the medieval sages.\n  His endowments were richer and wider than those of the great Italian\n  logician, his pupil, whose name has had a greater vogue, and whose\n  doctrines are still the accepted discipline of the Church of Rome.\n  Albert restored Aristotle, and in astronomy and chemistry sought for\n  truth in nature. That St Thomas was a man of the highest intellectual\n  power and attainments, an eminence which is claimed for him by many\n  scholars, as by Mr Vernon in his edition of the Paradise, I cannot\n  admit; unless it be to a critical scholar who has mastered the\n  contents of his many folios, if such a scholar there be. For my part,\n  after reading much of what is written of St Thomas, I have but done\n  what was possible to me in other such cases; that is, I have run my\n  eye over the titles of his books and chapters, and formed some rapid\n  judgment here and there of the ways of his thought. Now I venture to\n  assert that the ways of the thought of Aquinas, subtle and symmetrical\n  as they are, lie wholly within the formulas of his age. He left\n  science for logic, the stuff of thought for its instrument; satisfying\n  himself with such tinkling cymbals as \"Nihil potest per se operari,\n  nisi quod per se subsistit; ... Impossibile est quod forma separetur a\n  seipsa ... quod subsistens per se desinat esse\" ... and so forth.\n  Albert though a less symmetrical is a more original genius. To Aquinas\n  indeed I should hesitate to attribute genius; to Albert it seems to me\n  this title may be granted, if with some hesitation. \"Vir famosus et\n  erroneus\" was Roger Bacon's summary of Albert's career, but Bacon was\n  scarcely an indifferent witness.\n\n  [57] Among the MSS. in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, are letters\n  of Innocent IV. to the Archdeacon of Canterbury (and others), \"Ut\n  (Episc. Linc.) nepotem suum Fredericum (of Lavagna) in canonicatum in\n  ecclesia Lincolniensi, proxim\u00e8 vacaturum, inducat, et Resp. Episc.\n  Linc. in qu\u00e2 probat talem provisionem esse contra voluntatem et cultus\n  Dei; ideoque negat se concessurum.\" I see that the authenticity of\n  some of these letters has been called in question by M. Charles\n  Jourdain, but in any case they are contemporary, and consonant with\n  Robert's acts and character. Moreover, two years before, Innocent had\n  suspended the bishop for refusing to induct an Italian, ignorant of\n  English, to a rich benefice in his diocese. I find that Dr Luard, in\n  1880, had no doubts of the authenticity of these letters (Encycl.\n  Brit. XI. 211). Mons. Charles Jourdain's collected essays, in which he\n  discusses their authenticity, were published posthumously in 1888; but\n  his Editor makes the slovenly omission of the dates and places of the\n  first publications of the several essays.\n\n  [58] There were three ways of access to the Greek texts of Aristotle:\n  by the Arab-latin translations; by translations into Latin direct from\n  the Greek; and by the use of the Greek text itself. These means were\n  modified again by the chances of access to particular authors, and, as\n  in the case of Aristotle for example, to particular treatises. To\n  ascertain the dates of access to these new sources I have made some\n  search; and herein I have found great help in the \"Recherches\n  critiques\" of Amable Jourdain. We must remember that though the source\n  of Western culture is not Latin, but Greek, yet its meagre channels in\n  medieval Europe were Latin; its best tradition lay in Lucretius,\n  Cicero, Seneca, Virgil. The ill-starred Boetius was the last of the\n  Grecians. Greek was driven East and West: West into Ireland, where in\n  the ninth century a few Greek MSS. survived, and were read in the\n  original by Erigena and his disciples; but this Irish Greek tradition\n  was soon lost, and there were no teachers of Greek. Yet it seems\n  certain that, in Oxford, Robert of Lincoln and Adam Marsh had at any\n  rate learned assistance in the production of some Greco-latin\n  translations of Aristotle, of the Ethics for example. Dr Jackson has\n  pointed out to me a passage in Aquinas' Commentary on the Ethics,\n  where \"the presentation of the right reading misspelt, and of a\n  ludicrous etymology side by side with one which is very nearly right,\n  seem to show that, whilst Aquinas had about him people who knew Greek,\n  he himself had no substantial knowledge of it.\" Grosseteste himself\n  may have had some efficient knowledge of Greek; \"vir in latino et in\n  greco peritissimus,\" says Matthew Paris. Dr Jackson (in a private\n  letter) feels assured that \"Roger Bacon was plainly a competent Greek\n  scholar. Of this there is proof in the _Opera inedita_, edited by\n  Brewer for the Master of the Rolls.\" We know also that more than one\n  scholar of the 11-12th centuries travelled in the East, though, as Dr\n  Daremberg says, travellers to the East were more apt to bring back\n  false relics than genuine manuscripts. There was a small Greek\n  community and a Greek monastery at Auriol, near the old colony of\n  Marseilles. Still, for lack of masters and materials, Greek then was a\n  very rare accomplishment; and it is manifest, from much internal\n  evidence, that Albert had no Greek; though he certainly possessed\n  Greco-latin translations of some few Aristotelian treatises by other\n  hands, of the _De anima_ and of the Physics for example, whence he\n  makes quotations without interspersion of Arabic titles, proper names,\n  nouns and terms, such as he rather helplessly reproduces in his\n  rendering of the ninth book of the _De c\u00e6lo_ and elsewhere. We know\n  from other sources that a few treatises, such as the _De anima_, and\n  the first two books of the Ethics, existed in Greco-latin rendering\n  before the Arab-latin versions of Michael Scot and others (1220-1225).\n  In later life Albert had the assistance of Aquinas to whom we have\n  attributed some knowledge of Greek; for we find Aquinas, with the\n  countenance of Urban the Fourth, not only searching Europe for Greek\n  manuscripts, sending emissaries to Spain to make versions for him, and\n  supervising the preparation of translations directly into Latin, but\n  also personally comparing the Latin translations with the Greek texts\n  of the Ethics and Politics, and recording variants; variants which\n  Albert copied from his disciple. (It may be worthy of remark that even\n  so late as 1586 there were no Greek types in Oxford, and that in 1599\n  Casaubon (Life by Pattison) could find no compositors for Greek in\n  Lyons.) The great debt of the West to the Arabs was a new enthusiasm\n  for learning, and for the \"Princeps philosophorum\"; not their\n  travestied texts and unwieldy commentaries, which Roger Bacon,\n  probably perceiving that his contemporaries swore by the Arab rather\n  than by the Greek, wished he could burn.\n\n  [59] To wonder why Roger Bacon became a clerk and a Franciscan is to\n  look upon the thirteenth century with the eyes of the nineteenth. The\n  vision of St Francis had not grown dim; the strange beauty of his life\n  held men captive still, and his cheerful natural religion still\n  animated his disciples. None could have said more truly than St\n  Francis\n\n    \"While others fish with craft for great opinion,\n     I with great truth catch mere simplicity.\"\n\n  The grey friar of the fourteenth century, as we know him in Langland\n  and Chaucer, or later in the degraded fanaticism of the Observants,\n  had fallen far from the example of his master. Perhaps the chief\n  reason for Bacon's decision was that his friend Grosseteste, who on\n  the first coming of the friars wrote eloquently to Gregory the Ninth\n  of their illumination, humility and piety, was a member of the Order,\n  and was the first of its Rectors in Oxford. (Rd. Grosseteste, Epist.\n  ed. Luard; Rolls, 1861, p. 179.) Even in Cambridge, till 1877,\n  teachers and professors, save those of Law or Medicine, were\n  generally speaking in holy orders; for instance, the following\n  extract, of date 1849, which I owe to the kindness of Dr Donald\n  MacAlister, \"C\u00e6terum neminem in socium unquam admitti volumus qui non\n  sit aut Theologiam professurus et sacros ordines post certum temporis\n  intervallum inferius definiendum suscepturus aut e Collegio\n  discessurus, nisi unus e duobus sociis qui Medicin\u00e6 aut ex illis\n  duobus qui Juris Civilis studio deputati sunt, electus fuerit.\" (Stat.\n  Coll. Div. Joh. Evan. Cant. cap. xii. 28 April, 12 Vict. 1849.) To\n  this hour in England the clergy command the public schools. In a\n  warlike society learning and contemplation must fall to the clergy;\n  without the fortresses of war or learning, if there was any safety,\n  there was not dignity or peace. The mendicant orders were young\n  institutions, ascendant, and in favour with the great. Of their\n  usurpations in the universities I have spoken. Within them even Popes\n  could not meddle, as Bacon found to his sorrow. Hales and Ockham also\n  became Minors, as Albert and St Thomas, both of illustrious descent,\n  became Preachers. Moreover the Franciscans had devoted themselves to\n  the care of the sick, and especially of those smitten with the new\n  pestilences--such as leprosy, syphilis, and plague--which Oriental\n  dirt and asceticism had engendered or inflamed; and thus a bent to\n  observation of natural phenomena may have been encouraged (see art.\n  Roger Bacon, Westminster Rev. loc. cit.). To say that to the monks we\n  owe the conservation of learning is not so true as to say that learned\n  men betook themselves to the religious houses in order to find relief\n  from turmoil, to secure the subsistence of life without its cares, to\n  get access to books, and to profit by the counsel of comrades who had\n  enjoyed not only the culture of their own house, but also the\n  interchange of ideas and manuscripts with all the learned houses in\n  Europe. When these advantages were to be had in the world, learning\n  deserted the monasteries. Again, Bacon was not an unbeliever, nor\n  anything like it; in the _Opus Majus_ he declares the Holy Scriptures\n  to be the source of all truth; not only, like Socrates before him and\n  Kant after him, did he fix his eyes on moral perfection as the end,\n  but also on the Church as the means: on the other hand the resentments\n  of passionate genius under harsh duress did not make a naturally\n  rebellious temper more tractable. \"Fames et mora bilem conciunt.\" It\n  is evident that within the Franciscan order there were three\n  well-marked parties; namely, of the naturalists, as Bacon; of the\n  mystics, as Bonaventura; and of the sophists, as John Duns the\n  Northumbrian. Now Bacon's troubles did not begin till the succession\n  to the Generalship of the Order of the seraphic Bonaventura, an\n  argumentative mystic (like Duns, and unlike the ecstatic mystics of St\n  Victor), who, rejecting Aristotle, had steeped himself in the\n  neo-platonism of Augustine and \"Dionysius the Areopagite\"; and\n  Bonaventura and his party it was who stopped Bacon's mouth at Oxford,\n  and shut him up in Paris. What the life of Bacon and the direction of\n  medieval thought might have been had Grosseteste been able to spare\n  Adam Marsh from Oxford for the Generalship it were perhaps too curious\n  to consider; yet we may profitably remember that Bacon, brushing aside\n  Porphyry and his questions, and denouncing the \"vain physics\" of\n  Paris, urged that enquiry should begin with the simplest objects of\n  research, and rise gradually to the higher and higher; every\n  observation being controlled by experiment. He says indeed that by\n  experiment only can we distinguish a sophism from a demonstration.\n  (Op. Tert. XIX.) Earnestly he tried to follow this method; he seems to\n  have spent on it substance of his own, and, after this was exhausted,\n  to have appeared for the first time in history as a petitioner for\n  \"scientific grants in aid.\" Diderot speaks of Bacon as \"Un des g\u00e9nies\n  les plus surprenants que la nature ait produits, et un des hommes les\n  plus malheureux\"; he lived in vain, died unhonoured, and left no\n  disciple.\n\n  [60] \"Colliget,\" Mr E. G. Browne tells me, is a corruption of\n  Kulliyyat. It does not exactly mean \"Summary\" (as commonly stated) but\n  rather \"General Principles\" (Kull means \"the whole\"; Kulli universal\n  or general; fem. pl. Kulliyyat). It may also mean collected writings\n  (e.g. of a poet).\n\n  [61] Vid. p. 50.\n\n  [62] I venture to say \"even of Caius,\" though Caius was a competent\n  and indeed for his time an able clinical physician, as we observe in\n  his work on the sweating sickness. (Vid. note, p. 96.)\n\n  [63] Oxford fell in the first instance under Franciscan influence, yet\n  Alexander Hales (of this order) gave the peripatetic bent to Oxford\n  which it retains to this day. Creed rather than conduct was the\n  dominant note of the Faith (p. 85); it is interesting therefore to\n  learn that for Oxford Robert of Lincoln and Adam Marsh translated, or\n  procured a translation of, the Ethics. On the probability that\n  Grosseteste had some substantial knowledge of Greek, see p. 75, note\n  2.\n\n  [64] In Casaubon's diary we get a glimpse of Oxford in 1613. The\n  University was wealthy enough; it had escaped the Paris devastation,\n  but had scarcely deserved its good fortune. There was much active\n  teaching of a routine kind, many formalities, much serving of tables;\n  but of living interest in science, learning, or high culture there was\n  not a trace. Of classical learning, in Casaubon's sense, there was\n  naught. Ecclesiastical controversies absorbed or overwhelmed all other\n  subjects; and the University was regarded by the Government as an\n  instrument of party. The professors were all clerks, and ardent only\n  as pamphleteers. Thus, says Pattison, \"the University took its full\n  share of national passion, prejudice and religious sentiment, but was\n  wholly destitute of any power to vivify, to correct, to instruct, or\n  to enlighten.\" Pattison's Casaubon, p. 417.\n\n  [65] Both in Bologna and Padua of course there was a faculty of\n  Medicine; but its tradition in Bologna was traditional and galenical,\n  in Padua independent and progressive. Montpellier had suffered in the\n  desolation of Languedoc.\n\n  [66] See page 82.\n\n  [67] Contra Medicum quendam Invectivarum Libri Quatuor. (Op. T. II.\n  pp. 1086, 801. Ed. Basel, 1555, quoted Renan, Aver. p. 331.)\n\n  [68] The Royal College of Physicians of London had its birth in the\n  schools of Italy; and perhaps in revolt from Averroism the elegant\n  humanity of Linacre has too often prevailed in this College rather\n  than Harvey's strenuous control of tradition and rhetoric by more\n  positive conceptions, and of all conceptions by direct experimental\n  verification.\n\n  [69] Niccol\u00f2 Leonico (I give his Latin name in the text as Ueberweg\n  gives it) seems to have been a spirited and effective philosophical\n  lecturer of Hellenist and critical qualities, and of much charm both\n  of style and character. He is not to be confounded with his elder\n  contemporary, Nicolaus Leonicenus, of Vicenza and Ferrara, professor\n  of medicine and an elegant latiner, who translated the aphorisms of\n  Hippocrates; and whose friend Linacre, in translating parts of Galen,\n  did a like service to medicine and letters in England.\n\n  [70] Not only of the circulation of the blood. In his treatise _De\n  generatione_ Harvey disposed of the belief in spontaneous generation\n  (so far as regards visible creatures, its abolition we owe to\n  Pasteur), yet Bacon (N. O. II. 41) accepts it, perhaps as fully as did\n  Sir Thomas Browne. The _De generatione_ however was not actually\n  published till 1651, some 30 years after the _Novum Organon_.\n\n  [71] Galileo and Kepler had proved the validity of terrestrial physics\n  and mathematics in astronomy. Aristotle of course was the first to\n  apply physics to astronomy, but wrong physics.\n\n  [72] With which Malpighi was in close association.\n\n  [73] The _Consilia medica_, or Consultations, were published records,\n  either of particular cases or of diseases in a more general sense,\n  which seem to have been instituted by Thadd\u00e6us of Florence in the\n  thirteenth century, were abundant in the fifteenth, and were continued\n  into the sixteenth, and even later. In the fifteenth century these\n  records have a considerable historical value, and no little clinical\n  interest, as the questions to the patient and the records of symptoms\n  are often orderly and graphic, and enable the modern reader to revise\n  the diagnoses, many of them grotesque enough. These Consilia make a\n  great bulk of matter, and one which has not been thoroughly explored.\n  A general account of the Consilia may be read in any good history of\n  medicine, but perhaps the most interesting is to be found in the\n  chapters on medieval medicine in Daremberg's \"Histoire et Doctrines\"\n  (e.g. tom. 1. p. 334 et seq.).\n\n  [74] Originally by Fracastorius, Montanus and others, in the former\n  half of the sixteenth century. Caius in England, Mercado in Spain,\n  Baillou in Paris, if not bedside teachers, had done good clinical\n  work, in Consilia and otherwise, in the same century. What\n  Fracastorius did for syphilis, Caius did for the sweating sickness,\n  and Mercado for petechial typhus. Baillou was too dependent upon the\n  letter of tradition.\n\n  [75] Even Descartes has some share with Hegel in the profound error\n  that whatsoever is clearly and definitely conceived is true. The\n  inference if true for formal logic, is not true for natural processes;\n  for instance, Descartes' well-known attribution of the soul to the\n  pineal gland, because all other parts of the brain are double, and the\n  soul is single!\n\n  [76] \"The share of Servetus was small\"; that is, the effect of his\n  remarkable discovery was small, for it was buried in a theological\n  work of which but a few copies were rescued from the burning; namely\n  \"Christianismi restitutio. Vienn\u00e6 Allobrogum, 1553.\" (Haeser gives the\n  reference to pp. 170-177, De Trinitate divina.) The work was reprinted\n  at Nuremberg in 1790.\n\n[77]   Qu\u00e6, simul \u00e6thereos animo conceperat ignes,\n       Ore dabat vero carmina plena dei.\n\n                          Ovid, _Fasti_ I, 473.\n\n\nCAMBRIDGE: PRINTED BY J. AND C. F. CLAY, AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.","title":"Science and Medieval Thought: The Harveian Oration Delivered Before the Royal College of Physicians, October 18, 1900","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":25489}