wn
and spread; the methods of science had been elaborated; the basis of
natural philosophy had been laid down; and the way had been paved
for all the mechanical inventions of which our own times are so
proud."

The period for which Prince Kropotkin is thus enthusiastic in the
matter of applied science, is all before the date usually given as the
beginning of the Renaissance--the fall of Constantinople in 1453. The
three centuries and a half from the beginning of the eleventh century
represent just the time of the rise of scholasticism and the beginning
of its decline. Few periods of history are so maligned as regards
their intellectual feebleness, and in nothing is that quality supposed
to be more marked than in applied science; yet here is what a special
student of the time says of this very period in this particular
department.

Kropotkin has shown just what were the limitations of scientific
progress in the Middle Ages while emphasizing how much these wonderful
generations accomplished. In this I am inclined to the opinion that he
does not allow as much to the Middle Ages as he should. I have been
able to point out, I think, in this chapter many evidences of
important principles in science that were fully reached during the
Middle Ages. Because of {332} his more conservative opinion in this
matter, however, Kropotkin's opinion should carry all the more weight
with those who are now called upon to realize for the first time, how
much these despised generations accomplished in matters that were to
prove a precious heritage for subsequent generations, and the
foundation-stones of that great edifice of science which has been
built up in more recent years. Kropotkin says:

"True that no new principle was illustrated by any of these
discoveries, as Whewell said; but medieval science had done
something more than the actual discovery of new principles. It had
prepared the discovery of all the new principles which we know at
the present time in mechanical sciences; it had accustomed the
explorer to observe facts and to reason from them. It had inductive
science, even though it had not yet fully grasped the importance and
the powers of induction; and it had laid the foundations of both
mechanical and natural philosophy. Francis Bacon, Galileo, and
Copernicus were the direct descendants of a Roger Bacon and a
Michael Scot, as the steam engine was a direct product of the
researches carried on