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PAGE 46. Symbolic Alchemical Design from Mutus Liber (1677).
PLATE: 25, to face p.176
47. Symbolic Alchemical Design illustrating the Work of Woman,
from MAIER's Atalanta Fugiens...,, 26,,, 178
48. Symbolic Alchemica Design, Hermaphrodite,
from MAIER's Atalanta Fugiens..,, 27,,, 180
49. ROGER BACON presenting a Book to a King, from a Fifteenth Century
Miniature in the Bodleian Library, Oxford...,, 28,,, 184
50. ROGER BACON, from a Portrait in Knole Castle..,, 29,,, 188
51. BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE, from an engraved Portrait
by ROBERT WHITE....30...194
52. HENRY MORE, from a Portrait by DAVID LOGGAN, engraved ad vivum, 1679
...,, 31,,, 198
53. RALPH CUDWORTH, from an engraved Portrait by VERTUE, after LOGGAN,
forming the Frontispiece to CUDWORTH's Treatise Concerning Morality
(1731) ,, 32,,, 3~

BYGONE BELIEFS

I. SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF MEDAEVAL THOUGHT

IN the earliest days of his upward evolution man was satisfied with
a very crude explanation of natural phenomena--that to which the name
"animism" has been given. In this stage of mental development all the
various forces of Nature are personified: the rushing torrent, the
devastating fire, the wind rustling the forest leaves--in the mind of
the animistic savage all these are personalities, spirits, like himself,
but animated by motives more or less antagonistic to him.

I suppose that no possible exception could be taken to the statement
that modern science renders animism impossible. But let us inquire
in exactly what sense this is true. It is not true that science robs
natural phenomena of their spiritual significance. The mistake is often
made of supposing that science explains, or endeavours to explain,
phenomena. But that is the business of philosophy. The task science
attempts is the simpler one of the correlation of natural phenomena, and
in this effort leaves the ultimate problems of metaphysics untouched. A
universe, however, whose phenomena are not only capable of some degree
of correlation, but present the extraordinary degree of harmony and
unity which science makes manifest in Nature, cannot be, as in animism,
the product of a vast number of inco-ordinated and antagonistic wills,
but must either be the product of one Will, or not the product of will
at all.

The latter alternative means that the Cosmos is inexplicable, which not
only man's growing experienc