[15]
The men of the middle ages believed that through the Scriptures, the
traditions of the Fathers, and the authority of the Church, they were
in possession of far more, and more trustworthy, information with
respect to the nature and order of things in the theological world
than they had in regard to the nature and order of things in the
sensible world. And, if the two sources of information came into
conflict, so much the worse for the sensible world, which, after all,
was more or less under the dominion of Satan. Let us suppose that a
telescope powerful enough to show us what is going on in the nebula of
the sword of Orion, should reveal a world in which stones fell
upwards, parallel lines met, and the fourth dimension of space was
quite obvious. Men of science would have only two alternatives before
them. Either the terrestrial and the nebular facts must be brought
into harmony by such feats of subtle sophistry as the human mind is
always capable of performing when driven into a corner; or science
must throw down its arms in despair, and commit suicide, either by the
admission that the universe is, after all, irrational, inasmuch as
that which is truth in one corner of it is absurdity in another, or by
a declaration of incompetency.
In the middle ages, the labours of those great men who endeavoured to
reconcile the system of thought which started from the data of pure
reason, with that which started from the data of Roman theology,
produced the system of thought which is known as scholastic
philosophy; the alternative of surrender and suicide is exemplified by
Avicenna and his followers when they declared that that which is true
in theology may be false in philosophy, and _vice versa_; and by
Sanchez in his famous defence of the thesis "_Quod nil scitur_.
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