conclusion
of a bit of vapid superficial argumentation. It is one of the great
mysteries of life and of the significance of man in the world. The
medieval peoples did much harm by accepting the position, that many
persons suffering from ordinary nervous and mental diseases as we now
know them were really possessed by the devil. The treatment accorded
these supposedly possessed (for the moment we lay aside the question
as to the possibility of the reality of diabolic possession) was not
any worse than has frequently been accorded to sufferers from mental
and nervous disease in presumably much more intelligent times, either
because of fear of them, or neglect on account of the absence of a
sufficient number of keepers, or because of curious theories of
medical science. Mankind, it is hoped, is progressing, but the amount
of progress from generation to generation is not enough, that any
succeeding age should criticise severely the well-intentioned though
mistaken efforts of their predecessors to meet, according to the best
of their ability, problems that are as deep as those involved in
nervous and mental diseases.

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APPENDIX.

"The truth seeker has had to struggle for his physical life. Each
acquisition of truth has been resisted by the full force of the
inertia of satisfaction with preconceived ideas. Just as a new
thought comes to us with a shock which rouses the resistance of our
personal conservatism, so a new idea is met and repelled by the
conservatism of society." (_Jordan, The Struggle for Realities, in
Footsteps of Evolution._)

I.

OPPOSITION TO SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS.

The main purpose of this book has not been accomplished unless it has
been shown that the Church, the Popes, and ecclesiastics generally
during the Middle Ages, and especially during the three centuries
before the reformation so-called, far from opposing scientific advance
or investigation, were constantly in the position of encouraging and
fostering science, even if the meaning of that term be limited, as it
has come to be in modern times, to the physical or natural sciences.
The Popes and the great ecclesiastics were patrons of learning of
every kind, and that they not only encouraged, but aided very
materially the institutions of learning in which the problems of
science with which we are now engaged, were discussed in very much the
same way as we discuss them at the present time, is evident from the
st