cause of sickness, a
conviction that souls merely inhabit bodies temporarily, and an
apocalyptic idea of the end of the world in a last judgment. As we
have seen, no part of this outlook was particularly unique, but it was
{100} accepted by the Christian Church as inspired because it was found
in the canonical writings accredited to prophets and apostles. During
the Middle Ages, this biblical view of the world was united with the
astronomical and physical teaching of Aristotle and hardened into a
system. So intimate was this union between these cosmological elements
and Christianity felt to be that an attack upon one was taken as an
attack upon the whole. To doubt the primitive notions of the world and
man's place therein, was to doubt the bible; and to doubt the bible as
an inspired compendium of information was to doubt Christianity.

For the sake of perspective, it will repay us to note the order in
which these primitive ideas were attacked and replaced by more adequate
ones. It will be noticed that the general cosmological setting was
first reconstructed and that the growing point passed thence to the
center, the nature and destiny of man. As we indicated above, the
replacement of older by newer and better-founded views is proceeding
most rapidly at this crucial point. Having obtained a different and
vaster heaven and earth, man has turned the microscope upon himself.
The suspicion is growing ever more insistent that he, also, is a
natural part of this procession of things.

When, at the time of the Renaissance, modern science was born, the
first field invaded with success was that of astronomy. Copernicus
became convinced that the current theory, called the Ptolemaic, was
untenable because it led to insuperable complexities in the
interpretation of the observed paths of the heavenly bodies. He was
led to suggest that the sun was the actual center of the system and
that the earth revolved around it in the {101} course of a year. One
can easily imagine the furore such a daring hypothesis aroused. The
Copernican theory was scoffed at by learned and ignorant alike, for it
upset the whole picture of the world which had been tranquilly accepted
from early times, except by such a radical non-conformist as
Aristarchus of Samos. To appreciate the intellectual revolution
threatened, one has only to read Dante's "Divine Comedy," for Dante
journeys from planet to planet and thinks of them as arranged within
crys