management,
and always to the detriment of it. The greatest triumph of the Church
during the earlier centuries is to be found in the magnificent
organization of the {280} hospital system and the anticipation of so
many things in the organization of hospital work, the care of patients
and even the prevention of contagious disease, that we are apt to
think of as essentially modern.

{281}

THE CHURCH AND THE EXPERIMENTAL METHOD.

There is a very generally accepted false impression with regard to the
attitude maintained by the Church during the Middle Ages, especially
toward what is known as the experimental method in the gaining of
knowledge, or as we would now say, in the study of science. It is
commonly supposed that at least before the sixteenth century, though
of course in modern times it has had to change its attitude to accord
with the advances of modern science, the Church was decidedly opposed
to the experimental method, and that the great ecclesiastical scholars
of the wonderful period of the rise of the universities were all
absolute in their confidence in authority and their dependence on the
deductive method as the only means of arriving at truth. This
widespread false impression owes its existence and persistence to many
causes.

It is supposed by many of those outside the Church that there is a
distinct incompatibility between the state of mind which accepts
things on faith and that other intellectual attitude which leads man
to doubt about his knowledge and consequently to inquire. This
doubting frame of mind, which is readily recognized to be absolutely
necessary for the proper pursuit of experimental science, is supposed
quite to preclude the idea of the peaceful settlement of the doubts
that assail men's minds as to the significance of life, of the
relation of man to man and to his Creator, and the hereafter, which
comes {282} with the acceptance of what revelation has to say on these
subjects. Somehow, it is assumed by many people that there is
something mutually and essentially repellent in these two forms of
assent. If a man is ready to accept certain propositions on authority
and without being able to understand them, and still more, if he
accept them, realizing that he cannot understand them, it is
considered to be impossible for him to be able to assume such a mental
attitude towards science as would make him an original investigator.

It is almost needless to say to anyone who knows any