logical finalities, the
evolution of scientific thought continued, its main germ being the
geocentric doctrine--the doctrine that the earth is the centre, and that
the sun and planets revolve about it.(40)

(40) For passage cited from Clement of Alexandria, see English
translation, Edinburgh, 1869, vol. ii, p. 368; also the Miscellanies,
Book V, cap. vi. For typical statements by St. Augustine, see De Genesi,
ii, cap. ix, in Migne, Patr. Lat., tome xxiv, pp. 270-271. For Origen's
view, see the De Principiis, lib. i, cap. vii; see also Leopardi's
Errori Populari, cap. xi; also Wilson's Selections from the Prophetic
Scriptures in Ante-Nicene Library, p. 132. For Philo Judaeus, see On the
Creation of the World, chaps. xviii and xix, and On Monarchy, chap. i.
For St. Isidore, see the De Ordine Creaturarum, cap v, in Migne, Patr.
Lat., lxxxiii, pp. 923-925; also 1000, 1001. For Philastrius, see the
De Hoeresibus, chap. cxxxiii, in Migne, tome xii, p. 1264. For Cosmas's
view, see his Topographia Christiana, in Montfaucon, Col. Nov. Patrum,
ii, p. 150, and elsewhere as cited in my chapter on Geography.

This doctrine was of the highest respectability: it had been developed
at a very early period, and had been elaborated until it accounted
well for the apparent movements of the heavenly bodies; its final name,
"Ptolemaic theory," carried weight; and, having thus come from antiquity
into the Christian world, St. Clement of Alexandria demonstrated that
the altar in the Jewish tabernacle was "a symbol of the earth placed
in the middle of the universe": nothing more was needed; the geocentric
theory was fully adopted by the Church and universally held to agree
with the letter and spirit of Scripture.(41)

(41) As to the respectibility of the geocentric theory, etc., see
Grote's Plato, vol. iii, p. 257; also Sir G. C. Lewis's Astronomy of the
Ancients, chap. iii, sec. 1, for a very thoughtful statement of Plato's
view, and differing from ancient statements. For plausible elaboration
of it, and for supposed agreement of the Scripture with it, see
Fromundus, Anti-Aristarchus, Antwerp, 1631; also Melanchthon's Initia
Doctrinae Physicae. For an admirable statement of the theological view
of the geocentric theory, antipodes, etc., see Eicken, Geschichte und
System der mittelalterlichen Weltanschauung, pp. 618 et seq.

Wrought into this foundation, and based upon it, there was developed
in the Middle Ages, mainly out