The most
careful inductions from ascertained facts were regarded as
wretchedly fallible when compared with any view of nature
whatever given or even hinted at in any poem, chronicle, code,
apologue, myth, legend, allegory, letter, or discourse of any
sort which had happened to be preserved in the literature which
had come to be held as sacred.
For twelve centuries, then, the physical sciences were thus
discouraged or perverted by the dominant orthodoxy. Whoever
studied nature studied it either openly to find illustrations of
the sacred text, useful in the "saving of souls," or secretly
to gain the aid of occult powers, useful in securing personal
advantage. Great men like Bede, Isidore of Seville, and Rabanus
Maurus, accepted the scriptural standard of science and used it
as a means of Christian edification. The views of Bede and
Isidore on kindred subjects have been shown in former chapters;
and typical of the view taken by Rabanus is the fact that in his
great work on the _Universe_ there are only two chapters which
seem directly or indirectly to recognise even the beginnings of
a real philosophy of nature.
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