these are the countless millions of those who suffered something less than death.
We look back to-day with feelings of horror on this ghastly carnage, especially when we remember the absurd character of the doctrines which the heretics assailed and the immorality of the clergy and monks who were primarily responsible for the executions and massacres. But this savage repression of independent thought had consequences of an even more disastrous nature on European civilisation. It not only removed from the community many of the more courageous and more intelligent stocks, but it intimidated others from using their powers, except in the futile argumentation of the Schoolmen. The result was a prolonged suspension of the development of the higher culture which was destined to give Europe its supremacy. It will hardly be doubted to-day that this culture was contained in the scientific works of the Greeks, especially the Alexandrian Greeks. The Arabs brought this culture to Spain, and, chiefly through the mediation of the Jews, it was slowly introduced into Europe and inspired such scholars as Gilbert, Roger Bacon, Albert the Great, and Copernicus. Physics, chemistry, and medicine began their development. But the fate of Roger Bacon and Albert and Vesalius sufficiently reminds us of the Church’s attitude toward the new culture, and the story of the hampering of intellectual progress in the exact study of nature has been repeatedly told. The scholastic fever, which had absorbed
