t the
Pope and his adherents have not cared much about physical philosophy. In
truth, orthodoxy has always had other fish to fry. Physics, which {36} in
modern times has almost usurped the name _philosophy_, in England at least,
has felt a little disposed to clothe herself with all the honors of
persecution which belong to the real owner of the name. But the bishops,
etc. of the Middle Ages knew that the contest between nominalism and
realism, for instance, had a hundred times more bearing upon orthodoxy than
anything in astronomy, etc. A wrong notion about _substance_ might play the
mischief with _transubstantiation_.

The question of the earth's motion was the single point in which orthodoxy
came into real contact with science. Many students of physics were
suspected of magic, many of atheism: but, stupid as the mistake may have
been, it was _bona fide_ the magic or the atheism, not the physics, which
was assailed. In the astronomical case it was the very doctrine, as a
doctrine, independently of consequences, which was the _corpus delicti_:
and this because it contradicted the Bible. And so it did; for the
stability of the earth is as clearly assumed from one end of the Old
Testament to the other as the solidity of iron. Those who take the Bible to
be _totidem verbis_ dictated by the God of Truth can refuse to believe it;
and they make strange reasons. They undertake, _a priori_, to settle Divine
intentions. The Holy Spirit did not _mean_ to teach natural philosophy:
this they know beforehand; or else they infer it from finding that the
earth does move, and the Bible says it does not. Of course, ignorance
apart, every word is truth, or the writer did not mean truth. But this puts
the whole book on its trial: for we never can find out what the writer
meant, until we otherwise find out what is true. Those who like may, of
course, declare for an inspiration over which they are to be viceroys; but
common sense will either accept verbal meaning or deny verbal inspiration.

* * * * *

{37}

A BUDGET OF PARADOXES.

VOLUME I.

THE STORY OF BURIDAN'S ASS.

Questiones Morales, folio, 1489 [Paris]. By T. Buridan.

This is the title from the Hartwell Catalogue of Law Books. I suppose it is
what is elsewhere called the "Commentary on the Ethics of Aristotle,"
printed in 1489.[13] Buridan[14] (died about 1358) is the creator of the
famous ass which, as _Burdin's_[15] ass, was current i