we should be wrong in inferring that it was wholly absent.

To the men of the fifteenth century the earth was still the centre of
the universe: the sun moved round it like a more magnificent planet,
and the stars had been created

'to shed down
Their stellar influence on all kinds that grow'.

Aristarchus had seen the truth, though he could not establish it, in
the third century B.C. But Greek science had been forgotten in an age
which knew no Greek; and it was not till after Erasmus' death that an
obscure canon in a small Prussian town near Danzig--Nicholas
Copernicus, 1473-1543--found out anew the secret of the world. This
fruit of long cold watches on the tower of his church he printed with
full demonstration, but he scarcely dared to publish the book: indeed
a perfect copy only reached him a few days before his death. Even in
the next century Galileo had to face imprisonment and threats of
torture, because he would speak that which he knew. But when Erasmus
was born, the earth itself was but partially revealed. Men knew not
even whether it were round or flat; and the unplumbed sea could still
estrange. The voyages of the Vikings had passed out of mind, and the
eyes of Columbus and Vespucci had not yet seen the limits of that
western ocean which so long fascinated their gaze. Polo had roamed far
into the East; but as yet Diaz and da Gama had not crowned the hopes
which so often drew Henry the Navigator to his Portuguese headland.

In the world of thought the conception of uniformity in Nature,
though formed and to some extent accepted among the advanced, was
still quite outside the ordinary mind. Miracles were an indispensable
adjunct to the equipment of every saint; and might even be wrought by
mere men, with the aid of the black arts. The Devil was an
ever-present personality, going about to entrap and destroy the
unwary. Clear-minded Luther held converse with him in his cell; and
lesser demons were seen or suspected on every side. Thus in 1523 the
Earl of Surrey writes to Wolsey describing a night attack on Jedburgh
in a Border foray. The horses took fright, and their sudden panic
threw all things into confusion. 'I dare not write', he says, 'the
wonders that my Lord Dacre and all his company do say they saw that
night, six times, of spirits and fearful sights. And universally all
their company say plainly the Devil was that night among them six
times.' In that ga