ntific
knowledge? Though it were admitted, as it cannot be in its entirety,
that they left physical science just where they found it, could not
an explanation be discovered that would exonerate them from all
blame? To justify such an apology, we do not even need to transport
ourselves in spirit back to their time, a process which, however,
strict fairness would demand. But in our own era we can think easily
of dozens and hundreds of men of highest respectability and most
beneficent accomplishment, men of books and men of affairs, jurists,
statesmen, historians and others, who have {486} themselves done
little or nothing for the onward march of Science. That the careers
of these men are profitless, who shall allege?

Again, the present writer has often thought of the almost parallel
example of the ancient Romans. It makes their history but little
less illustrious to learn that this conquering people did nothing
for Science's advance. Till Pliny of the first century after Christ,
what Roman was a scientist? They were a nation of soldiers,
statesmen, orators and jurists, and for seven hundred years they
pursued through such avenues their triumphant course. Yet what
writer of to-day rises to charge them with a cardinal sin, because
Science remained at a standstill among them for seven full
centuries? With these seven centuries can we not properly compare
the later seven in which the Christian Fathers were the teachers of
the civilized world?

_Heritage from the Greeks_.--Objection will be made, no doubt, that
the Fathers began their career with fairer start than the Romans,
forasmuch as they were the direct heirs of the astronomy and physics
of ancient Hellas. And they will be incriminated with having abused
their precious heritage, by not merely letting it lie fallow but by
raising every possible obstruction to its further cultivation. Such
is the tenor of Andrew D. White's accusations against them.

This well-known writer smiles at the puerilities of patristic
science. He cites from among them Cosmas of Egypt as having
propounded a perfectly childish theory of the structure of the earth
and grafted it on the science of theology. The ready answer to this
particular charge is that Cosmas' conception of the universe
belonged to cosmogony and not theology, and further that it had no
influence on subsequent thought. Returning to the general
arrai