interest in science and in nature study in our own
day, one of the expressions that is probably oftenest heard is surprise
that the men of preceding generations and especially university men did
not occupy themselves more with the world around them and with the
phenomena that are so tempting to curiosity. Science is usually supposed
to be comparatively new and nature study only a few generations old. Men
are supposed to have been so much interested in book knowledge and in
speculations and theories of many kinds, that they neglected the
realities of life around them while spinning fine webs of theory.
Previous generations, of course, have indulged in theory, but then our
own generation is not entirely free from that amusing occupation.
Nothing could well be less true, however, than that the men of preceding
generations were not interested in science even in the sense of physical
science, or that nature study is new, or that men were not curious and
did not try to find out all they could about the phenomena of the world
around them.

The medieval universities and the school-men who taught in them have
been particularly blamed for their failure to occupy themselves with
realities instead of with speculation. We are coming to recognize their
wonderful zeal for education, the large numbers of students they
attracted, the enthusiasm of their students, since they made so many
handwritten copies of the books of their masters, the devotion of the
teachers themselves, who wrote at much greater length than do our
professors even now and on the most abstruse subjects, so that it is all
the more surprising to think they should have neglected science. The
thought of our generation in the matter, however, is founded entirely on
an assumption. Those who know anything about the writers of the Middle
Ages at first hand are not likely to think of them as neglectful of
science even in our sense of the term. Those who know them at second
hand are, however, very sure in the matter.

The assumption is due to the neglect of history that came in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. We have many other similar
assumptions because of the neglect of many phases of mental development
and applied science at this time. For instance, most of us are very
proud of our modern hospital development and think of this as a great
humanitarian evolution of applied medical science. We are very likely to
think that this is the first time in the world's hi