untry, and the
philosophy of cultured Romans of the time of the physician Galen tended
towards atheism.

The prime factor of Greek philosophy was the insistence on intelligence
and knowledge, and by these means it reached its pinnacle of reasoning.
The blight that exterminated all scientific progress, with the fall of
the Roman Empire, carried with it the neglect of the Greek thinkers.
Similar to the retrogression of scientific thought, traced in former
chapters, is the corresponding retrogression in philosophic thought. In
place of the free inquiry of the Greeks we see arising the theology of
Clement of Alexandria, Origen, St. Augustine, and finally that of St.
Thomas Aquinas. At the time of St. Augustine most of the cultural Greek
writings had disappeared in western Europe. The greatest store of Greek
thought was in the hands of the Arab scholars and led to a marked
scepticism, as we see manifested in the writings of the Spanish Moors.

It is significant that during the "age of faith" in Europe no
philosopher of merit arose, and the only philosophy permitted was the
puerile Scholastic-Aristotelic. This scholastic philosophy, hemmed in
between metaphysics and theology, sought to reconcile Plato, Plotinus,
and Aristotle with the needs of orthodoxy, and split hairs over subtle
essences and entities. Francis Bacon impeaches, in this manner, the
medieval philosophers: "Having sharp and strong wits, and abundance of
leisure, and small variety of reading, but their wits being shut up in
the cells of a few authors, as their persons were shut up in the cells
of monasteries and colleges, and knowing little history, either of
nature or time, did out of no great quantity of matter and infinite
agitation of wit spin out unto us those laborious webs of learning which
are extant in their books."

The sole preoccupation of medieval philosophy seemed to be conjectures
as to what would happen to man after death, and the entire system of
thought was based on authority. The medieval philosopher turned in
disdain from the arduous path of investigation of actual phenomena and
confidently believed that he could find truth by easy reliance upon
revelation and the elaboration of dogmas. A few brave minds rebelled
against this unnatural imprisonment of the intellect, with the usual
consequences. Peter Abelard was condemned for his scepticism at a
council at Sens in 1140; the philosophy of John Scotus Erigena was
condemned for its pantheisti