ous profession, as long as there are men to speak.

THE MUSEUM AND MODERN SCIENCE. The Museum of Alexandria was thus
the birthplace of modern science. It is true that, long before its
establishment, astronomical observations had been made in China and
Mesopotamia; the mathematics also had been cultivated with a certain
degree of success in India. But in none of these countries had
investigation assumed a connected and consistent form; in none was
physical experimentation resorted to. The characteristic feature of
Alexandrian, as of modern science, is, that it did not restrict itself
to observation, but relied on a practical interrogation of Nature.

CHAPTER II.

THE ORIGIN OF CHRISTIANITY.--ITS TRANSFORMATION ON ATTAINING
IMPERIAL POWER.--ITS RELATIONS TO SCIENCE.

Religious condition of the Roman Republic.--The adoption of
imperialism leads to monotheism.--Christianity spreads over
the Roman Empire.--The circumstances under which it
attained imperial power make its union with Paganism a
political necessity.--Tertullian's description of its
doctrines and practices.--Debasing effect of the policy of
Constantine on it.--Its alliance with the civil power.--Its
incompatibility with science.--Destruction of the
Alexandrian Library and prohibition of philosophy.--
Exposition of the Augustinian philosophy and Patristic
science generally.--The Scriptures made the standard of
science.

IN a political sense, Christianity is the bequest of the Roman Empire to
the world.

At the epoch of the transition of Rome from the republican to the
imperial form of government, all the independent nationalities around
the Mediterranean Sea had been brought under the control of that central
power. The conquest that had befallen them in succession had been by no
means a disaster. The perpetual wars they had maintained with each
other came to an end; the miseries their conflicts had engendered were
exchanged for universal peace.

Not only as a token of the conquest she had made but also as a
gratification to her pride, the conquering republic brought the gods
of the vanquished peoples to Rome. With disdainful toleration, she
permitted the worship of them all. That paramount authority exercised by
each divinity in his original seat disappeared at once in the crowd of
gods and goddesses among whom he had been brought. Already, as we have
seen, through geographical