in the Italian universities on the weight of
the atmosphere, and of the mathematical and technical learning which
characterized Nuremberg."

"But why should one take trouble to insist upon the advance of
science and art in the medieval city? Is it not enough to point to
the cathedrals in the domain of skill, and to the Italian language
and the poem of Dante in the domain of thought, to give at once the
measure of what the medieval city created during the four centuries
it lived?"

We are prone to think of evolution in human affairs as being the
ruling principle. As a consequence of this, {333} we are apt to
consider that since intervening periods between the nineteenth century
and the Middle Ages were lacking in education, in applied science, and
in interest in physical science to a great degree, beyond doubt, then,
the Middle Ages must have been still more lacking in these desirable
qualities of education and human knowledge. This is the sort of
deduction that greets one constantly in so-called histories of
education, and especially in such supposed contributions to the
history of the relationship of science to religion or theology as have
been made here in America. This deduction, as I have said before, is
made by men who are the first to asperse the medieval scholars for
having used deduction too freely, and who are ever ready to praise
induction. The induction in this matter--that is, the story of the
actual history of science in the Middle Ages--is the direct
contradiction of the deduction from false principles. Intervening
centuries not only failed to progress beyond the Middle Ages, but some
of them were far behind the achievements of that unfortunately
despised period. Once more Prince Kropotkin has touched this matter
very suggestively. After describing the achievements of applied
science in the Middle Ages, he says:

"Such were the magic changes accomplished in Europe in less than
four hundred years. And the losses which Europe sustained through
the loss of its free cities can only be understood when we compare
the seventeenth century with the fourteenth or thirteenth. The
prosperity which formerly characterized Scotland, Germany, the
plains of Italy, was gone. The roads had fallen into an abject
state, the cities were depopulated, labor was brought into slavery,
art had vanished, commerce itself was decaying."

{334}

In the meantime the reformation so-called had come,