Chapter XVII: Introduction (12)

Of course, it may well be said, even after all these communities of interest between the medieval and the modern teaching of the general principles of science have been pointed out, that the universities of the Middle Ages did not present the subjects under discussion in a practical way, and their teaching was not likely to lead to directly beneficial results in applied science. It might well be responded to this, that it is not the function of a university to teach applications of science, but only the great principles, the broad generalizations that underlie scientific thinking, leaving details to be filled in in whatever form of practical work the man may take up. Very few of those, however, who talk about the purely speculative character of medieval teaching, have manifestly ever made it their business to know anything about the actual facts of old-time university teaching by definite knowledge, but have rather allowed themselves to be guided by speculation and by inadequate second-hand authorities, whose dicta they have never taken the trouble to substantiate by a glance at contemporary authorities on medieval matters, much less by reading the old scholastics themselves.

How much was accomplished in applied science during the Middle Ages, that is, in those departments of science {330} which are usually supposed to have been least cultivated, since educators are prone to ridicule the over-emphasis of speculation in education and the constant preoccupation of mind of the scholars of these generations with merely theoretic questions, may be appreciated from any history of the arts and architecture during the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries. Some of the most difficult problems in mechanics as applied to the structural work of cathedrals, palaces, castles, fortresses, and bridges, were solved with a success that was only equaled by the audacity with which they were attempted. Men hesitated at nothing. There is no problem of mechanical engineering as applied to structural work which these men did not find an answer for in their wonderful buildings. This has been very well brought out by Prince Kropotkin in certain chapters of his book, Mutual Aid a Factor of Evolution, [Footnote 41] in which he treats of mutual aid in the medieval cities. He says:

[Footnote 41: New York, McClure, Philips & Co., 1902.]

"At the beginning of the eleventh century the towns of Europe were
small clusters of miserable huts, adorned with but low clumsy
churches, the builders of which hardly knew how to make an arch; the
arts, mostly consisting of some weaving and forging, were in their
infancy; learning was found in but a few monasteries. Three hundred
and fifty years later, the very face of Europe had been changed. The
land was dotted with rich cities, surrounded by immense thick walls
which were embellished by towers and gates, each of them a work of
art itself. The cathedrals, conceived in a grand style and profusely
decorated, lifted their bell-towers to the skies, displaying a
purity of form and a boldness of imagination which we now vainly
strive to attain. The {331} crafts and arts had risen to a degree of
perfection which we can hardly boast of having superseded in many
directions, if the inventive skill of the worker and the superior
finish of his work be appreciated higher than rapidity of
fabrication. The navies of the free cities furrowed in all
directions the Northern Seas and the Southern Mediterranean; one
effort more and they would cross the oceans. Over large tracts of
land, well-being had taken the place of misery; learning had grown
and spread; the methods of science had been elaborated; the basis of
natural philosophy had been laid down; and the way had been paved
for all the mechanical inventions of which our own times are so
proud."

The period for which Prince Kropotkin is thus enthusiastic in the matter of applied science, is all before the date usually given as the beginning of the Renaissance--the fall of Constantinople in 1453. The three centuries and a half from the beginning of the eleventh century represent just the time of the rise of scholasticism and the beginning of its decline. Few periods of history are so maligned as regards their intellectual feebleness, and in nothing is that quality supposed to be more marked than in applied science; yet here is what a special student of the time says of this very period in this particular department.

Kropotkin has shown just what were the limitations of scientific progress in the Middle Ages while emphasizing how much these wonderful generations accomplished. In this I am inclined to the opinion that he does not allow as much to the Middle Ages as he should. I have been able to point out, I think, in this chapter many evidences of important principles in science that were fully reached during the Middle Ages. Because of {332} his more conservative opinion in this matter, however, Kropotkin's opinion should carry all the more weight with those who are now called upon to realize for the first time, how much these despised generations accomplished in matters that were to prove a precious heritage for subsequent generations, and the foundation-stones of that great edifice of science which has been built up in more recent years. Kropotkin says:

"True that no new principle was illustrated by any of these
discoveries, as Whewell said; but medieval science had done
something more than the actual discovery of new principles. It had
prepared the discovery of all the new principles which we know at
the present time in mechanical sciences; it had accustomed the
explorer to observe facts and to reason from them. It had inductive
science, even though it had not yet fully grasped the importance and
the powers of induction; and it had laid the foundations of both
mechanical and natural philosophy. Francis Bacon, Galileo, and
Copernicus were the direct descendants of a Roger Bacon and a
Michael Scot, as the steam engine was a direct product of the
researches carried on in the Italian universities on the weight of
the atmosphere, and of the mathematical and technical learning which
characterized Nuremberg."

"But why should one take trouble to insist upon the advance of
science and art in the medieval city? Is it not enough to point to
the cathedrals in the domain of skill, and to the Italian language
and the poem of Dante in the domain of thought, to give at once the
measure of what the medieval city created during the four centuries
it lived?"

We are prone to think of evolution in human affairs as being the ruling principle. As a consequence of this, {333} we are apt to consider that since intervening periods between the nineteenth century and the Middle Ages were lacking in education, in applied science, and in interest in physical science to a great degree, beyond doubt, then, the Middle Ages must have been still more lacking in these desirable qualities of education and human knowledge. This is the sort of deduction that greets one constantly in so-called histories of education, and especially in such supposed contributions to the history of the relationship of science to religion or theology as have been made here in America. This deduction, as I have said before, is made by men who are the first to asperse the medieval scholars for having used deduction too freely, and who are ever ready to praise induction. The induction in this matter--that is, the story of the actual history of science in the Middle Ages--is the direct contradiction of the deduction from false principles. Intervening centuries not only failed to progress beyond the Middle Ages, but some of them were far behind the achievements of that unfortunately despised period. Once more Prince Kropotkin has touched this matter very suggestively. After describing the achievements of applied science in the Middle Ages, he says:

"Such were the magic changes accomplished in Europe in less than
four hundred years. And the losses which Europe sustained through
the loss of its free cities can only be understood when we compare
the seventeenth century with the fourteenth or thirteenth. The
prosperity which formerly characterized Scotland, Germany, the
plains of Italy, was gone. The roads had fallen into an abject
state, the cities were depopulated, labor was brought into slavery,
art had vanished, commerce itself was decaying."

{334}

In the meantime the reformation so-called had come, and had carried away with it in its course nearly everything precious that men had gained during the four centuries immediately preceding. Art, education, science, liberty, democracy--everything worth while had been hurt; most of them had been ruined for the time. Even the nineteenth century did not succeed in bringing us back to a level with the earlier centuries in all the intellectual and esthetic accomplishments.

Another striking evidence of the deep interest of these generations in science of all kinds and in details of information with regard to which they are generally said to have been quite incurious, was the publication of the famous encyclopedia, the first work of its kind ever issued, which was written about the middle of the thirteenth century by Vincent of Beauvais. It is only when a generation actually calls for it, and when the want of it has been for a good while felt, that such a work is likely to be undertaken. This immense literary undertaking was completed under the patronage of King Louis IX. by Vincent, a Dominican friar, who died at the beginning of the last quarter of the thirteenth century. His Majus Speculum is not the first book of general information, but it is the first deserving the name of Encyclopedia in the full sense of the word that we have. It is divided into three parts--the Speculum Naturale, Doctrinale, and Historiale. The only one which interests us here is the Speculum Naturale, which fills a huge folio volume of nearly a thousand pages, closely printed in double columns. It is divided into 32 books and some 4,000 chapters. The Encyclopaedia Brittanica says of it:--

"It was, as it were, the great temple of medieval {335} science,
whose floor and walls are inlaid with an enormous mosaic of
skilfully arranged passages from Latin, Greek, Arabic, and even
Hebrew authors. To each quotation, as he borrows it, Vincent
prefixes the name of the book and the author from which it is taken,
distinguishing, however, his own remarks by the word 'actor.'"

The interest aroused by Vincent's compilation outside of professional and educational circles strictly so-called, can be very well appreciated from the fact that, besides King Louis's interest, his Queen Margaret, their son Philip and son-in-law, King Theobald V., of Champagne and Navarre, were, according to tradition, among those who encouraged him in the work and aided him in bearing the expenses of it. It is rather curious to find that the method of compilation was nearly the same as that employed at the present day. Young men, mainly members of Vincent's own order of the Dominicans, were engaged in collecting the material, collating references, and verifying quotations. The main burden of the work, however, fell upon Vincent himself, and he accordingly deserves the reputation for wonderful industry which he has enjoyed. Much as he wrote, however, it does not exceed much in amount what was written by others of the great scholastics, and theirs was original material and not merely the collection of information.

If we had no other evidence of interest in nature and in natural science than this great work of Vincent of Beauvais, it would be ample to show the absurdity of the general impression that exists in the minds of most scientists, and, unfortunately, also in the minds of many educators, with regard to the barrenness of interest of {336} the Middle Age in natural phenomena. It might easily be imagined that this work of Vincent would have very little of interest for a modern scientist. Any such anticipation is entirely due, however, to the false impression that exists with regard to the supposed ridiculously absurd views in matters of science entertained by the medieval scholars. Those who do not take their opinions on theory, but actually consult the books with regard to which they are ready to express themselves, have no such opinion. There has been much more interest in this class of books and in the scientific side of the literature of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries during the last few years, and the consequence has been a complete reversal of opinions with regard to them, among German and French scholars.

An excellent example of this is to be noted in Dr. Julius Pagel, who, in his chapter on Medicine in the Middle Ages, in Puschmann's Handbook of the History of Medicine, says: "There were three writers whose works were even more popular than those of Albertus Magnus. These three were: Bartholomew the Englishman, Thomas of Cantimprato, and Vincent of Beauvais, the last of whom must be considered as one of the most important contributors to the generalization of scientific knowledge, not alone in the thirteenth, but in the immediately succeeding centuries. His most important work was really an encyclopedia of the knowledge of his time. It was called the Greater Triple Mirror, and there is no doubt that it reflected very thoroughly the knowledge of his period. He had the true scientific spirit, and constantly cites the authorities from whom his information was derived. He cites hundreds of authors, and there is scarcely a subject that he does not {337} touch on. One book of his work is concerned with human anatomy, and the concluding portion of it is an abbreviation of history carried down to the year 1250."

It might be considered that such a compend of information would be very dry-as-dust reading and that it would be fragmentary in character and little likely to be attractive except to a serious student. Dr. Pagel's opinion does not agree with this _a priori_ impression. He says with regard to Vincent's work: "The language is clear, readily intelligible, and the information is conveyed usually in an excellent, simple style. Through the introduction of interesting similes the contents do not lack a certain taking quality, so that the reading of the work easily becomes absorbing." This is, I suppose, almost the last thing that might be expected of a scientific teacher in the thirteenth century, because, after all, Vincent of Beauvais must be considered as one of the schoolmen, and they are supposed to be eminently arid, but evidently, since we must trust this testimony of a discerning modern German physician, only by those who have not taken the trouble to read them.

Vincent of Beauvais was not the only one to occupy himself with work of an encyclopedic character during the thirteenth century. At least two other clergymen gave themselves up to the life-long work of collecting details of information so as to make them available for ready reference in their own times and for succeeding generations. The very fact that three men should have taken up such a task, shows that there must have been a loud call for this sort of writing, and that there must have been a veritable thirst for information among the educated classes of the time. Such books, as we have said, are not created without a demand for them, though {338} they undoubtedly serve in turn to awaken a greater thirst for the information which they purvey. The other two encyclopedists of the time are Thomas Cantipratano and Bartholomaeus Anglicus, the Englishman.

Thomas of Cantimprato's work was probably published about 1260. Von Toeply, in his Studies in Anatomy in the Middle Ages, has the most readily available information with regard to Thomas's work. [Footnote 42] The work of most interest to us is the De Natura Rerum, a single large volume in twenty books. It required some fifteen years of work, and for some fifteen years before he began his work on it Thomas had been writing various historical and biographical works. Thomas's encyclopedic volume contains one book with regard to anatomy, one with regard to human monsters, and books with regard to quadrupeds, birds, marine monsters, fishes, serpents, worms, ordinary trees, aromatic and medicinal plants and the virtues of herbs, and of curative waters of various kinds. Then there are books on precious stones and their cutting, on the seven regions and the humors of the air, on the earth and the seven planets, and on the four elements and the Heavens and eclipses of the sun and moon. When such a work was published for general reading, it is easy to understand that no phase of information with regard to nature failed to be of interest to readers of the thirteenth century. Much that is absurd is contained in the book. But when we compare it with books written in the early part of the eighteenth century, we are apt to wonder rather at how little advance had taken place in the four centuries of interval, than at the ignorance of the medieval writer.

[Footnote 42: Studien zur Geschichte der Anatomie im Mittelalter von Robert Ritter von Toeply, Leipzig und Wien. Franz Deuticke, 1898.]

{339}

We have been able, of course, in this limited space to give only a modicum of the evidence for the cultivation of the Physical Sciences at the Medieval Universities, and their records in monumental works still extant; but this will probably be enough to enable those who are interested in the subject to realize its significance and to gather further material if they so wish. The universities were ecclesiastical institutions. Most of them derived their authority to give degrees directly from the Popes. Appeals were frequently made to the Popes with regard to the discipline and the teaching at the universities. Most of the great teachers of physical science were ecclesiastics. Nearly all the students were clerics. Many of those who were most successful in science reached high preferment in the Church. Evidently the pursuit of science did not prejudice their advancement, either in their orders, when they belonged to any of the various religious orders, or in the Church itself. They were the near and dear friends of archbishops, cardinals and Popes. This is entirely contrary to the ordinary impression in the matter; but this is the plain truth, while the contrary opinions are founded on the false assumption of Church opposition to science.

{340}

THE MEDIEVAL UNIVERSITY MAN AND SCIENCE.

Even after the series of demonstrations which we have given that the great thinkers and teachers at the medieval universities were deeply interested in the problems of what we now call natural or physical science, most people will still not be open to conviction that interest in nature was quite as lively in the Middle Ages as at any subsequent period, even our own. In spite of the fact that the scholastics faced scientific questions in nearly the same mood as we do ourselves, and, curiously enough, anticipated very closely many of the doctrines now current in science, not a few of those who are most interested in the history of education will continue to think that science occupied the minds of the students at the medieval universities very little, and that while the great thinkers may have known something about it, the rank and file of the university men of the time gave scarcely any thought to it. Besides, they will be almost sure to conclude that, whatever they did think was likely to be inept, and in most cases quite ridiculous. Such thoughts are a part of that unfortunate educational tradition which stamps the Middle Ages as neglectful of nature study, as we would call it now, and as lacking in interest in natural phenomena. Nothing could well be less true, and it will require, I think, but the simple tracing of the life and erudition of a single well-known student of these medieval universities, to show how utterly absurd and unfounded is the popular belief.

{341}

I have chosen Dante for this purpose, mainly because so much more is known about the personal details of his life than of anyone else, and we are able to glean from his writings and the contemporary comments on them, a good idea of what the general information on scientific subjects of the educated man of his period was. The fact that Dante was a member of the Guild of the Apothecaries in Florence, an association that included also the physicians of the city, has added an adventitious interest to his attractions as one of the few greatest of poets of all time, and has made details of his career and evidence of the breadth of his education and culture of special import, so that I have frequently taken occasion to call the attention of physicians to the honor implied by Dante's fraternal relation to us. His membership in the Guild of the Apothecaries, however, did not call for any special knowledge of science on his part. He had nothing to do with the sale of drugs, much less with the science of medicine. Originally the Italian apothecaries, as the Greek origin of the word indicates, were shop-keepers selling all sorts of things--edible, adorning, or useful for personal service. They sold drugs also, and as some of these were imported from the East, they commonly added to their stock certain other Eastern specialties--perfumes, gems and the like. In this way they soon became wealthy, as a rule, and indeed the name of the rich Florentine family who came eventually to rule their native city--the Medici--is said to be derived from similar connections. It was the sons of these men who became the upper middle classes in Florence. Perhaps one should say they became the upper classes, for Florence had no nobility, in the proper sense of the word, and men made their own positions. Their {342} descendants became the men of culture, until finally the Florentine Guild of the Apothecaries represented the most intelligent class of the population of the city. During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, then, most of the artists, the literary men, the architects, the sculptors, were members of the guild. Dante's occupation when he was a peaceful citizen of Florence was, according to tradition, that of architect, and one building designed by him is supposed to be still in existence in Florence.

Dante should represent for us, then, what an architect in Florence at the end of the thirteenth century knew about natural science, as the result of his school and university training. In our time, architects are likely to know more about certain forms of physical science than most other people, and due allowance would have to be made for this in Dante's case. It will be found, though, as we discuss his erudition, that the sciences in which he was particularly interested--astronomy and various phases of biology with physical geography--were not those which appeal especially to an architect, and certainly have no relation to his occupation. His knowledge of flowers might be thought to be due to his wish to use floral forms for structural decorative purposes, but Dante is rather weak for a poet in the matter of the description of flowers, and it is only from the side of their color that they made any special appeal to him.

Most people have been led to think of Dante as not a student of nature, because that impression would inevitably be gathered from certain passages of John Ruskin with regard to him. Ruskin was so faithful and loving a student of Dante that he would be expected not to be {343} mistaken in such a matter, nor is he; but he has dwelt overmuch on certain phases of Dante's lack of interest in nature, until the great Florentine's devotion to creation as he saw it around him is obscured. It is not difficult to show, from Dante's own writings, how much he was interested in nearly every phase of nature and natural phenomena. In the "Westminster Review" for July and August, 1907, Mr. George Trobridge, in articles on Dante as a Nature Poet, has furnished abundant evidence to prove his thesis, though he too has felt the necessity for apologizing for even apparently differing from so great a critic and such an enthusiastic Dante student as Ruskin. Dante's works, however, themselves can be the only appeal in this matter, and Mr. Trobridge has used them with good effect and in such a way as to carry to anyone the conviction that Dante was a profound student of nature in all her moods and tenses. Mr. Trobridge says in the introduction:

"It will appear presumptuous in the present writer to differ from so
great a critic and such an enthusiastic student of Dante as Ruskin,
but it seems to him that the author of Modern Painters has done
scant justice to the intense insight of the poet into the beauties
of the world we live in and his wonderful power of expressing what
he saw. There are few even modern poets who have taken so wide a
view of the field of nature, and even Shakespeare himself scarcely
excells the great Florentine in felicity and concentration of
expression. The Divina Commedia is full of vivid pictures covering
the whole range of natural phenomena. As these pass before our eyes,
we can scarcely realize that the painter of them is not of our own
day, so thoroughly does he enter into the spirit of modern landscape
art. {344} Sometimes his pictures are momentary impressions--studies
of effects painted with a large brush; at others his touch is of a
Preraphaelitic nicety, and now and then he gives us a studied
composition full of doubtful detail like one of Turner's landscapes.
He was one with Wordsworth in his sincere delight in every form of
natural beauty. Like him, he lived beneath the habitual sway of
fountains, meadows, hills and groves; with him he saw the 'splendor
in the grass' and the 'glory in the flower.' He could 'feel the
gladness of the May' and rejoiced in 'the innocent brightness of a
new day.'"

In the matter of science as distinct from poetic interest in nature, quite as much can be said for Dante. This greatest of Italian poets is a fair example to take of the university man of the thirteenth century in this respect. He was thirty-five before the first century of university existence properly so-called closed. He may be considered a typical product of university life. It is true he had had the almost inestimable advantage of the schooling and culture of his native Florence, where at the end of the thirteenth century there were more children, it is said, in attendance at the schools to the number of the population than there is at the present moment even in most of our American cities. Brother Azarias in his Essays Educational, [Footnote 43] said:

[Footnote 43: Essays Educational, by Brother Azarias, with Preface by His Eminence Cardinal Gibbons. Chicago, D. H. McBride & Co., 1906.]

"In the thirteenth century, out of a population of 90,000 in Florence, we find 12,000 children attending the schools, a ratio of school attendance as large as existed in New York City, in the year of Grace 1893." This ratio, it may be said, is as great as is ordinarily to be found anywhere, and this fact alone may serve to show {345} how earnest were these medieval burghers for the education of their children. Dante had the advantage of this, and in addition, of the training at two or three of the universities at least of Italy, besides spending some time at Paris, and probably a visit at least to Oxford.

Lest it should be thought that perhaps Brother Azarias gave too favorable an estimate in his account of the schools in Florence, though he quotes as his authority Villani, and other authorities are readily available, it seems worth while to give a very interesting reference to this subject of education in one of the notes in Prince Kropotkin's chapter on Mutual Aid in the Medieval City, from his book Mutual Aid a Factor in Evolution, a work that we have placed under contribution a number of times already in this attempt to picture medieval conditions as they were in reality, and not in the foolish imaginings of outworn traditions. Kropotkin's studies in what the free cities accomplished by the union of the guilds for every fraternal purpose, and the coordination of their citizens for every detail of the commonweal, has made him realize that common or public school education was an important feature of medieval free city life, and strange as that fact may appear to many modern minds, that such public school education occupied at least as prominent a position as it does with us in our own time. In the quotation from him it will be seen that he considers that Florence was not alone in this matter, and he ventures to place Nueremberg on a level with her. Doubtless other German cities, as certainly other Italian cities, provided similar facilities for general education.

Kropotkin says: "In 1336 it (Florence) had 8,000 to 10,000 boys and girls in its primary schools, 1,000 to {346} 1,200 boys in its seven middle schools, and from 550 to 600 students in its four universities. The thirty communal hospitals contained over 1,000 beds for a population of 90,000 inhabitants. (Capponi, ii. 249 seq.) It has more than once been suggested by authoritative writers, that education stood, as a rule, at a much higher level than is generally supposed. Certainly so in democratic Nueremberg."

The content of this educational system is our main subject of interest at the present moment.

"Seven hundred young men received the higher education. (This in a city of less than 100,000 inhabitants. How do our cities of 100,000 inhabitants compare with it?) The very spirit of the arts was scholastic in Dante's day. You read the story in the oratory of Orsanmichele, in which each art with its masterpiece receives a crown; you read it in the chapters of Santa Maria Novella, in Gaddi's painting of the Trivium and Quadrivium; you read it in Giotto's sculpture of the same subject upon this marvelous campanile. Here was the atmosphere in which Dante's boyhood and early manhood were passed."

We shall not be surprised, then, to find in Dante, the typical product of this form of education, an interest in every form of erudition and in all details of information.

I have preferred to take the evidence for Dante's knowledge of science from others, rather than attempt to supply it entirely by means of quotations from his works. This latter would be the most scholarly way, but Dante is not easy reading even in a good translation, and one needs to be familiar with his modes of expression and to be accustomed to the wonderful compression of his style to appreciate his full significance. There is {347} no lack of good authorities, however, who have made deep studies in Dante, to bring out for us the complete import of all the references to the science of his time, which Dante was tempted to make. We have perhaps been prone to think, in English-speaking countries, that no poets have ever kept more thoroughly in touch with the progress of science, or at least have ever used references to scientific details with more accuracy, than some of our own nineteenth century poets. A little study of the first great poet of modern times, in whom Carlyle said "ten silent centuries found a voice," though Dante by no means stands alone in the century, but is the culmination of a series of great poets, will show that he probably must be considered as taking the palm even from our most modern of poets in this respect. If the expressions in text-books of the history of education are to be accepted as evidence of the thoughts of educators with regard to the details of education in Dante's time, even a brief sketch of Dante's scientific knowledge will be a supreme surprise to them.

As will be at once appreciated, Dante was not a specialist in science, but used the knowledge of science current in his day in order to drive home his thoughts by means of figures. It is surprising, however, what a marvelous display of scientific knowledge, entirely without pedantry, which anyone who knows his supreme compression of style will realize to be the fault Dante is least liable to, was thus made by this educated literary man of the thirteenth century. Dr. L. Oscar Kuhns, Professor in Wesleyan University, has in his little book The Treatment of Nature in Dante's Divina Commedia, suggested a comparison between Dante and Goethe. [Footnote 44 ] {348} Everyone realizes at once how profound a scientist was Goethe. Professor Kuhns' comparison, then, will bring out the scientific qualities of this great medieval poet, who is the representative scholar of the universities of his time.

[Footnote 44: The Treatment of Nature in Dante's Divina Commedia, by L. Oscar Kuhns, Professor in Wesleyan University, Middletown, U. S. A. Edward Arnold, London and New York. 1897.]

"There is perhaps no innate contradiction between science and
poetry, but it is not often that they are found together in the same
man. Dante, like Goethe, half a millennium later, was not only drawn
by the beauty of nature, but he had likewise an unquenchable
intellectual curiosity, and sought diligently to understand the
meaning of the universe in which he lived.

"No other poet has ever combined the loftiest poetry with the
discussion of such complicated topics in all branches of learning.
In one place we find a long discussion of the origin and development
of life, which, naive and scholastic as it is, shows some lines of
resemblance to the modern doctrines in biology; in another place
there is a learned discussion between the poet and Beatrice
concerning the cause of the spots in the moon, in which an actual
experiment in optics is given."

The first passage to which Professor Kuhns refers, while containing many speculative elements, is a discussion of certain important basic problems in biology that have always appealed to thinking men at every period of the history of science, and never more so than in our own day. They must still be considered undecided, though many volumes have been written on them in the last century. There are thoughts in Dante's exposition of the subject that are startling enough to the modern biologist, and that make it clear how much men's minds run along the same grooves in facing questions that we are prone to think have occurred to men only in the last {349} few generations. The other quotation to which Professor Kuhns refers deserves to be quoted entire. It is perhaps even more striking because of its actual description of an experiment in optics, which shows how much this great poetic intelligence of the medieval time, usually supposed to be so abstracted and occupied with things other-worldly and supernal, living his intellectual life quite beyond the domain of sense, still remembered the teachings of his university days, and even recalled the details of demonstrations that he had seen. The passage occurs in the II. canto of the Paradiso, beginning with line 97:

"Take thou three mirrors, two of them remove
From thee an equal distance, and the last
Between the two, and further from thee move;
And turned towards them let a light be cast,
Behind thy back, upon those mirrors three,
So that from all reflected rays are passed.
Then, though the light which furthest stands from thee
May not with them in magnitude compete,
Yet will it shine in brightness equally."

It is easy to understand, then, that Professor Kuhns should have been enthusiastic with regard to Dante's knowledge of science. He says:

"The whole structure of Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise shows a
thorough knowledge of the Ptolemaic system; and we invariably find
astronomical facts, mingled with classical quotations, in the
description of stellar phenomena. But not only in specific passages
do we find evidence of Dante's love for science, but in brief
allusions to the various aspects of nature--metaphors, {350}
figures, descriptions--a word or two is added, giving the cause of
the phenomenon in question. Examples of this abound."

It is with regard to astronomy, of course, that Dante has given us the most convincing evidence of his knowledge of science, his interest in nature and natural phenomena, his questioning spirit in nature study, and the wonderful anticipations of his generation with regard to knowledge that has usually been supposed to have been hidden from them. The stars appealed to his poetic spirit, and then besides, his great poem occupied itself with all the visible universe, and especially with the parts outside this world. Professor Kuhns has said:

"One may confidently assert that no such perfect lines descriptive of the stars have ever been written. Shakespeare and others can furnish famous passages, but none, I think, equal to those of Dante. They have all the quality of his art--truth, clearness, possessing the power of touching deeply the imagination, yet terse and compact, containing not a word too much. We see the stars at all hours of the night, in all degrees of brilliancy, fading away at the approach of dawn, gradually appearing as twilight comes on, shining with splendor on a moonless night, keenly sparkling after the winds have cleared the atmosphere, or eclipsed by the greater effulgence of the moon. The motion of the constellations about the pole is referred to, those which are nearest to it never setting beneath the horizon."

It is often thought that the proper idea of the explanation of the Milky Way was quite modern. Dante, however, discusses in his Convito the theories of it that had been suggested up to his time, and then gives his own {351} views, which he confesses are founded on Aristotle, but which are evidently the result also of his own thinking. Pythagoras, he said, attributed it to the scorching heat of the sun, as if somehow this left a trace of itself even after the sun had sunk. Other Greek philosophers, as for example Anaxagoras and Democritus, explained it as a reflection of the light of the sun which still found its way even though that luminary had passed from sight. Dante himself says that, following Aristotle, he cannot help but think that the Milky Way is composed of a multitude of minute stars which are gathered very closely together in this particular part of the heavens, and which are so small that they cannot be distinguished from one another, though their light causes that special white luminosity which we call the Milky Way. This explanation is the true one, only that the apparent smallness of the stars are due to their distance, and not to their actual minuteness of size.

A brief list of the other astronomical phenomena mentioned by Dante has been made by Professor Kuhns. This serves to show very clearly that Dante's knowledge with regard to the heavens was quite as extensive as that of the modern educated man, indeed, probably more so, and that it was quite as exact. The little touch which shows that he knew, for instance, that August is the month when shooting stars are more frequent, is wonderfully illuminating. His powers of observation are brought out by his having seen them during the day as well as at night. In all this it must not be forgotten that Dante was no mere pedant making a display of his knowledge; that he was not one to parade his erudition for the sake of show; that indeed no one has ever written so compressedly as he; that every word that he {352} used counts in bringing out his meaning, and yet that we find all this wealth of information with regard to astronomy in a book that was meant to proclaim, and has, in the opinion of men for all time since, expressed more sublimely the significance of man's relations to the universe and his reflections on the infinite in lofty poetic thought, than any other that was ever written. Professor Kuhns says:

"The other celestial phenomena mentioned by Dante may be dismissed
briefly. We have references to the eclipse and its cause, and the
Blessed in the Heaven of the Fixed Stars flame brightly, _a guisa di
comete_ (in the guise of a comet). Shooting-stars are referred to
several times, almost invariably as a conventional figure for
rapidity. August is the month when they are the most frequent, and
they are most seen to shoot with lightninglike swiftness across the
serene blue sky or pierce the clouds that gather around the setting
sun. One fine passage describes the spectator following them with
his eyes as they lose themselves in the distance."

It is no wonder, then, that Prof. Kuhns should be quite enthusiastic with regard to Dante's use of astronomical knowledge. He insists, however, that while it was his poetic soul and love for the stars that tempted him to allow his thoughts to wander so frequently into the realm of the celestial bodies, his interest was always profoundly scientific. His passage to this effect is worth while quoting _in extenso_, because it brings out this fact very clearly. As Prof. Kuhns' only idea in this was to show how marvelously the representative poet of the Middle Ages turned to nature in his poetry, and there was no thought of controverting the foolish notions of those who so lightly declare that the students of the {353} Middle Age universities knew nothing of science, the paragraph is a bit of very striking evidence in this matter.

"Dante's love for the stars was largely scientific; he knew
thoroughly the Ptolemaic system of astronomy, which forms the
framework of the whole structure of the Paradiso. We find constant
and accurate allusions to the constellations, their various shapes
and positions in the heavens; while the hour of the day and the
season of the year are often referred to in terms of astronomical
science, frequently interwoven with mythology. But besides this
scientific interest, he was deeply touched by the beauty, the
mystery and the tranquilizing power of the celestial orbs. There is
hardly a phase of them that he has not touched upon; many of his
descriptions and allusions have a truth and vividness unsurpassed
even in this present day of nature worship. Here, as elsewhere in
the Divina Commedia, science and learning and poetry go hand in
hand. We have no mere dry catalogue of facts, but the wonderful
mechanism of the starry heavens is brought before our eyes, rolling
its spheres in celestial harmony, radiant with light and splendour,
while the innumerable company of angels and the 'spirits of just men
made perfect' raise the chorus of praise to the Alto Fattore."

We cannot but add the reflection that, as our own poets of the nineteenth century indulged themselves in figures drawn from science not only because of their own interest in the subject, but because they realized the interest of the men of their time in matters scientific and appreciated that figures drawn from them would add to the significance of their own thoughts, so Dante would not have used figures drawn from science only {354} that, closely in touch as he was with the educated men of his time in many cities and countries, he felt that he would thus not only be adding to the interest of his work, but would be making his own meaning clearer by a wealth of allusion from things scientific. This is indeed the side of this study of Dante that deserves the most thorough consideration by educators in our time, if they would understand what the real spirit of the teaching of science in the medieval universities was, and what the attitude of educated people of the time toward nature study, which has been so egregiously misrepresented by those who know nothing at all about it, must be considered to have been. All this we must judge, however, from contemporary sources, and not from subsequent supercilious misrepresentations.

It must not be thought, however, that Dante's interest in science was exhausted by his excursions into astronomy. This has already been more than hinted at in some of the passages quoted, which show his interest in other phases of science. In the modern time, however, it is almost the rule, that if a scholar who is not a scientist, and especially if he happens to be, as Dante was, a literary man, indulges in some scientific pursuits, he has at most but an interest in one branch of science. Quite as often as not he rather prides himself on knowing nothing at all about this department of knowledge. Specialism has invaded even scientific education, and a man specializes in some favorite department of science for his avocation, and is apt to know very little about other departments. Dante was not thus constituted, however. It will be comparatively easy to show that every form of scientific thought interested him, and that his love of nature led him into nature study, in the {355} best sense of that very modern term, and caused him to make observations for himself, or so retain the observations of others that he had heard or read, that he was able to use them very forcibly and appropriately in the figurative language of his great poem.

Alexander von Humboldt, the distinguished German naturalist and leader of scientific thought in the early nineteenth century, whose compliment to Albertus Magnus, quoted in the chapter on Science at the Medieval Universities, is probably a surprise to most people, but serves to show how wide was the reading of this great scientist, was also an attentive student of Dante, and has a passage with regard to the Florentine poet's knowledge of science quite as striking as that with regard to the great scholastic's excursions into the same field. In his Cosmos he has the following tribute to Dante as a student of nature and as a loving observer of natural phenomena:

"When the story of the Arabic, Greek or Roman dominion--or, I might
almost say, when the ancient world had passed away, we find in the
great and inspired founder of a new era, Dante Alighieri, occasional
manifestations of the deepest sensibility to the charms of the
terrestrial life of nature, whenever he abstracts himself from the
passionate and subjective control of that despondent mysticism which
constituted the general circle of his ideas."

With regard to the famous description of the river of light in the thirtieth canto of the Paradiso, Humboldt declared that the picture must have been suggested to Dante by the phosphorescence seen so beautifully and so luxuriantly in the Adriatic Sea at times. The passage itself is so beautiful and is so well worth the reading a {356} second time, even for those who have read it before, that I give it a place here, followed by Humboldt's comment.

I saw a glory like a stream flow by,
In brightness rushing, and on either shore
Were banks that with spring's wondrous hues might vie.
And from that river living sparks did soar,
And sank on all sides on the floweret's bloom.
Like precious rubies set in golden ore.
Then, as if drunk with all the rich perfume,
Back to the wondrous torrent did they roll,
And as one sank another filled its room.

Dean Plumptre says that Humboldt's suggestion with regard to this description has not been found elsewhere, and as it adds to the completeness of the idea conveyed by the figure, he gives it a place in his studies and estimates of Dante. Humboldt said:

"It would almost seem as if this picture had its origin in the
poet's recollection of that peculiar and rare phosphorescent
condition of the ocean when luminous points appear to rise from the
breaking waves, and, spreading themselves over the surface of the
waters, convert the liquid plain into a moving sea of sparkling
stars."

It is with regard to the little things in life, particularly those that are so small that one would be tempted to think at first blush that Dante paid no attention to them at all, that his powers of observation as a student of nature, and his all-pervading love for every even smallest manifestation of her power, is especially made manifest. With regard to this subject, Prof. Kuhns, to whom I have already turned so often, has an illuminating {357} passage, which sums up a large amount of reading of the poet. He says:

"The smallest members of the animal kingdom do not escape the
observing eye of the poet, and such unpoetical insects as the flea,
the gnat, and the fly are brought into use. By means of these latter
he has accurately given the time of day and season of the year in
one line, where, showing us the farmer lying on the hillside of a
summer evening, looking down upon the valley alight with fire-flies,
he says the time was that

'When the fly yields to the gnat.'

Those pests of dogs, the flea and hornet, are referred to in a
passage already given, where the dog is seen snapping and scratching
in agony. The butterfly was symbolical, during the Middle Ages, of
the death and resurrection of the body. The various phases of its
development are referred to by Dante; the caterpillar state, the
latter referring to the cocoon of the silk-worm, furnishing a figure
for the souls in Paradise, swathed in light; in one passage,
backsliding Christians are compared to insects in a state of
arrested development."

Dante's passage in the tenth canto of the Purgatorio, in which he compares man to the butterfly, who in this life passes through the caterpillar stage, passing in death, as it were, into the larval stage when in his coffin he is motionless and apparently dead, as the insect in its cocoon, yet finally reaching the glory of the resurrection in the winged butterfly stage, shows how well these medieval observers of nature had studied carefully aspects of nature which we are apt to think were holden entirely from their eyes. The passage would remind one of the story of the Jesuit, three centuries later, who, in {358} the early days of missionary work in this country, wondered how he would obtain a fitting word to express to the Indians the abstract idea of the resurrection of the body. The good Father finally recalled his Dante, and having found a caterpillar that had entered into the larval stage after having spun its cocoon and wrapped itself round with its shroud to lie down in what is a striking similitude of death, presented it to the Indians, and then having waited until the butterfly came out, asked them what they called this process, and applied the word for it to the resurrection. Dante says:--

"Perceive ye not we are of a wormlike kind,
Born to bring forth the angel butterfly,
That soars to Judgment, and no screen doth find?
Why doth your soul lift up itself on high?
Ye are as insects yet but half complete,
As worms in whom their growth fails utterly."

It is with regard to bees and ants, however, that Dante's observant love of nature and of natury study is especially to be admired. It is true, as has been often pointed out, that the older poets, of whom Dante was an assiduous and mindful reader, made use of figures with regard to bees, and Virgil, with all of whose works Dante was so intimately acquainted that nothing must have escaped him, devoted one of the four books of his Georgics to what is practically a treatise on Apiculture. In this most of the problems of bee raising are discussed. Lucretius, Lucan, and Ovid, all made use of this interesting insect for figures in their poetry. Dante might have obtained most of the references to the bee, then, from his reading. Prof. Kuhns is of the opinion, however, that some at {359} least of Dante's references to them are due to his observations, quite apart from his literary reminiscences with regard to their habits and instincts. He says:--

"There are certain touches in the Divina Commedia which seem to
prove that Dante's use of them was not entirely conventional. In the
wonderful passage where he stands contemplating

'La forma general di Paradiso,'

he saw the Blessed in the shape of a great white rose on the banks
of the river of light; and the white-robed angels, with wings of
gold and faces of flame, as they fly unceasingly back and forth from
the seats of the saints to the effulgent river, are compared to
bees, following their inborn instinct to make honey, flying from
flower to flower, burying themselves in the chalice, and then rising
heavily to carry their burden to their hives. In another passage
their buzzing noise is compared to the noise of a distant
waterfall;"--a touch of nature that could only have come from
familiarity with the insects.