r a full millennium, Christian Europe
midst all its vicissitudes was spared the absurdities of
astrological belief and practice, thanks to the patristic school of
writers.

_A Surprising Omission_.--We have thought it well to bring to light
these none too well-known facts regarding one important part of the
astronomical teachings of the Fathers. How they could have {491}
escaped the attention of Andrew D. White, or how he could have
failed to find place for them in his voluminous work, it is
difficult to understand.

His book bristles with accounts of superstitions, always telling
against the theologians, and in favor of the scientists. But
astrology is absent even from the index of his work. Had he allotted
it a chapter, his numerous readers would have learned that one great
school of theological writers, enduring for a thousand years, did
wage war on a certain sort of science, to wit, the pseudo-science of
astrology.

{492}

APPENDIX VIII.

SCIENCE IN AMERICA.

For Americans it is very probable that the chapter in the history of
science which will demonstrate most clearly that there was not only no
opposition on the part of the Popes or the Church authorities to the
teachings of science or its development, but on the contrary
encouragement and patronage, in spite of our English traditions to the
contrary, is that which gives even very briefly the story of the
evolution of science and its teaching on the American continent.
Notwithstanding the very prevalent impression, indeed we might say the
practically universal persuasion, that there was nothing worth while
talking about in any department of education in America before the
nineteenth century, except what little there was in the English
colonies, and while it is confidently assumed that above all science
received no attention from our Southern neighbors, Spanish America not
only surpassed English America in education, but far outdistanced
English America in what was accomplished for scientific research and
the evolution of the knowledge of a large number of scientific
subjects in a great many ways.

Even those among us who thought themselves well read in American
history have, as a rule, known almost nothing of this until
comparatively recent years. Professor Bourne of Yale, whose untimely
death deprived the United States of a distinguished historical
scholar, was the first to point out emphatically how far ahead of the