According to a widespread and
circumstantial legend, Albert, by magical means, created an
android--an artificial man, living, speaking, and answering all
questions with such subtlety that St. Thomas, unable to answer
its reasoning, broke it to pieces with his staff.
Historians of the Roman Church like Rohrbacher, and historians
of science like Pouchet, have found it convenient to propitiate
the Church by dilating upon the glories of St. Thomas Aquinas in
thus making an alliance between religious and scientific
thought, and laying the foundations for a "sanctified science";
but the unprejudiced historian can not indulge in this
enthusiastic view: the results both for the Church and for
science have been most unfortunate. It was a wretched delay in
the evolution of fruitful thought, for the first result of this
great man's great compromise was to close for ages that path in
science which above all others leads to discoveries of
value--the experimental method--and to reopen that old path of
mixed theology and science which, as Hallam declares, "after
three or four hundred years had not untied a single knot or
added one unequivocal truth to the domain of philosophy"--the
path which, as all modern history proves, has ever since led
only to delusion and evil.
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