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.
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.
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 Nüremberg 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 Nüremberg."
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:
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.
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:--
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.
In is with regard to ants even more than bees that Dante's proclivities for nature study are most evident. When in the Purgatorio, in the twenty-sixth canto, Dante would describe the meeting of souls in Paradise who kiss each other as they speed on their way, he compares them to the ants who as they meet one another touch antennae, thus communicating various messages, and then go on their way. The passage is very striking because, as Dean Plumptre remarks, the picture drawn reminds one almost of Sir John Lubbock's ant studies, or the remarkable descriptions of ant life in Bishop Ken's Hymnotheo. Dante's lines are as follows:--
"So oft, within their dusk brown host proceed
This ant and that, till muzzle muzzle meet;
Spying their way, or how affairs succeed."
Thus did Dante know the whole round of science in his time better than any modern university man. People who take exception to his knowledge fail to realize its environment. They may smile a little scornfully now at his complacent acceptance of the Ptolemaic system without a question, but it must not be forgotten that for three centuries after his time educated men still continued to accept it, and that even the distinguished Jesuit astronomer, Clavius, to whom we owe the Gregorian reformation of the calendar and the restoration of the year to its proper place as regards the heavens, not only accepted it, but worked out his calendar reform problems by means of it. Clavius's great contemporary, Tycho-Brahe, the distinguished Danish astronomer, found no reason to reject it. Even Lord Bacon, who with perverted historical sense is still proclaimed the father of modern experimental science, also accepted the Ptolemaic system, and found that it thoroughly explained all the phenomena of the heavens, while he rejected the Copernican system, then nearly a century before the world, because he thought it did not. The surprise, however, is not in Dante's knowledge of astronomy, but in his familiarity with details of biology that enables him to reason, though in poetic language, with straightforward and logical directness with regard to basic thought in this science that is usually considered so thoroughly modern.
Another surprising feature is the knowledge of the habits of birds and of insects. Our modern students of {361} nature are supposed to be the first who went deeply enough into these subjects to make them material for literature. Here, however, is Dante describing, in a few picturesque words, characteristic peculiarities of birds and insects, which our modern writers spend pages over, yet tell us scarcely more about them. A little knowledge of Dante is evidently the best antidote that our generation can have for that foolish persuasion that the Middle Ages were ignorant of science and that the universities taught nothing but nonsense about nature.
I am tempted to add just a few paragraphs with regard to another aspect of Dante's scientific interests which assimilates him to the modern educated man. Education itself would seem to be one of the sciences the development of which was surely left to a late and more conscious age. There are, however, as has been pointed out by Brother Azarias, quite enough materials in Dante's works to show that a serious student who was, however, only a literary man and not an educator, had many thoughts with regard to the practical side of education, and had come to many conclusions with regard to how it should be carried on, that are anticipations of the most fruitful thoughts of our modern educators and that have formed the subject of many theses on education down to our own day. Education is, of course, scarcely one of the physical sciences, yet since its subject-matter is mainly the child and the developing human intellect, and in that sense it is nature study in its highest form, this aspect of Dante's thinking also deserves to be given due weight here. Brother Azarias says:--
"It is the mission of the poet to reflect in his work the predominant, all-pervading spirit and views of his age. Now, in his day, the universities were the {362} controlling element in thought, in art, in politics, moulding the thinkers and rulers of the age both in church and state. But Dante was a life-long student. He traveled from land to land and from school to school, and sat impatiently, yet humbly, at the feet of masters, imbibing whatever knowledge they could convey. He disputed in public. His bright eyes and strong, sombre, reserved features attracted the attention of fellow students as he wended his way, absorbed in his own thoughts, through the rue de Fouarre and entered the hall in which Siger was holding forth. Tradition has it that he was no less assiduous a frequenter of School Street in Oxford. He has left us no distinct treatise on education; but he who embodied all the science of his day, who was supreme in teaching so many other lessons, could not be silent in regard to pedagogy. From his writings a whole volume of rules and principles bearing upon education might be gleaned. In 'Il Convito' he expresses himself fully on the different ages of human growth and development; speaks of obedience as an essential requisite for the child; after his father he should obey his master and his elders. He should also be gentle and modest, reverent and eager to acquire knowledge; reserved, never forward; repentant of his faults to the extent of overcoming them. As our soul in all its operations makes use of a bodily organ, it behooves us to exercise the body, that it grow in grace and aptness, and be well ordained and disposed in order that the soul may control it to the best advantage. Thus it is that a noble nature seeks to have a sound mind in a sound body."
It is especially with regard to the attitude of the churchmen, the people, and even the physicians of the Middle Ages toward insanity, that most opprobrium has been heaped upon the Church and her teachings in the so-called histories of the relations of science to theology or faith. Much of what has been said that has been supposed to tell worst against the Church, however, should not rest upon the shoulders of ecclesiastics, and should not be set down to the evil effect of theology. It is easy now to look back and blame men for the acceptance of supernatural agencies as causes in nearly all cases of mental and nervous diseases, but the reason for this is rather to be looked for in the nature of man than in his belief in religion. Ethnology shows us traces of it everywhere. Our American Indians, long before any tincture of Christianity, and before any hint of theology of any kind reached them, beyond that which develops spontaneously from the depths of their natural faculties, believed in the effect of the evil spirits in producing disease, and, of course, particularly the mental diseases which made men do things so contrary to their own interests, and often so harmful to the beings they loved best in the world.
In the Middle Ages they had not yet outgrown this primitive way of looking at mental diseases. For that matter, we have not even as yet. The intelligent classes in the community are, as a rule, convinced of the physical basis of mental diseases, but there are a {364} great many people who still are inclined to think that some of them, at least, are manifestations of some punitive force outside of the patients themselves, or even some manifestation of ill-understood forces quite apart from matter. Not all the thinking people of the Middle Ages accepted all the absurd notions sometimes rehearsed in this matter, but as in our own time, foolish traditions and superstitions dominated the unthinking classes, which form still, unfortunately, the great mass of mankind. We have had just the opposite delusions forced upon our attention in our own day. Large numbers, supposedly of intelligent people, have pretended to believe or have definitely accepted the teaching that disease is nothing. This is quite as foolish as attributing to spiritual agencies what has come to be recognized as due to physical factors. It is to be hoped that our generation and its thinking shall not be judged by future generations to have been utterly foolish, just because a few millions of us accepted Eddyism,--and it must be remembered that these are not, as a rule, the uneducated. Another side of this question is even more interesting, or at least has become so during the last twenty years. A generation ago it was the custom to scoff not a little scornfully in scientific circles, at the idea of admitting even the possibility of the interference of immaterial or spiritual agencies, or of any other intelligences or wills at work in the ordinary affairs of this life, than those of men. This scornful attitude still continues to be the pose of many students and teachers of science. It is by no means so universal as it was, however. Strikingly enough, the converts from this attitude of mind have come, not from the lower ranks of teachers of science, but from among the very leaders in original {365} research and scientific investigation. We may still continue to laugh at and ridicule the medieval people for their admission of the activity of spirits in ordinary mundane affairs, but if we do so, we must also laugh at and ridicule just as much, such prominent leaders of scientific thought and progress as Sir William Crookes, Mr. Alfred Russell Wallace, Sir Oliver Lodge, Professor Charles Richet, the distinguished French physiologist, Flammarion the astronomer, and even of late years Professor Lombroso, the well-known Italian criminologist, whose special doctrines as to crime and criminals would apparently insure him against such theories as those of the spiritualists. All of these men have confessed their belief not only in the possibility of spiritual interference in this world of ours, but insist that they have seen such interference, and are absolutely convinced of its frequent occurrence.
This is a decided reaction from previous states of the scientific mind on this subject, and represents a retroversion to medieval modes of thought that may be deprecated by scientific investigators of materialistic tendencies, but that cannot be neglected, and must not be despised. When the results of these recent investigations are taken into account, the opprobrium which has been heaped upon medieval scholars and churchmen for the facility with which they accepted the doctrine of the interference of spirits in human life, must be minimized to such a degree, or indeed eradicated so entirely, that a saner view of the whole situation as regards the relationship of the spiritual and material world seems likely to prevail. It is easy and cheap to reject without more ado and without serious consideration, such evidence of spiritual manifestations as has {366} convinced these leaders of scientific thought. But this rejection is not scientific, nor does it show an open mind. What is needed is a calm review of the situation, in order to see just where truth lies. It is not at either extreme. It is not in too great credulity with regard to spiritual interference, but certainly not at the opposite pole of the negation of all spiritual influence in human life, that genuine progress in knowledge is to come. This premised, we may take up the consideration of the actual accomplishment of the Middle Ages with regard to the insane, better prepared to appreciate their point of view and to get at the significance of their attitude toward the mentally diseased.
There are two phases of this question of the attitude of even intelligent men of the Middle Ages toward nervous and mental diseases, that deserve to be studied, not superficially, but in their actual relationships to the men of that time, and to our opinions at the present day. These are: first, the question of the treatment of the mentally afflicted, and second, the mystery of demoniacal possession and its related phenomenon--mediumship, as we call it.
Personally, I was very much surprised some years ago, while collecting material for a paper to be read before the International Guild for the Care of the Insane, to find how many things that are most modern in our methods of treating the insane, and that are among the desiderata which are universally conceded to be most necessary for the improvement of present conditions in our management of mental diseases, were anticipated by the generations of the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries. It is not hard, for instance, to show that such eminently desirable conditions as the {367} open door for mild cases, the combination of the ordinary hospital with a ward for psychic cases, the colony system for the treatment of those of lower mentality, were all in existence in the Middle Ages and did good work. The colony system particularly, as it comes to us from the Middle Ages, has recently been studied very carefully, and this has given us many valuable hints as to the methods that will have to be adopted in other countries in modern times.
The conditions which developed at Gheel in Belgium have deservedly attracted much attention in recent times, and have been the subject of articles in the medical journals of nearly every country in the world, because of the poignant realization by our generation that large institutions, meaning by this large single buildings or closely associated groups of buildings, are very unfavorable for the care of the insane. In America, one of these articles was published in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases, and a second, written by my friend, Dr. Jelliffe, who is the Professor of Mental Diseases in Fordham University School of Medicine, was written after a special visit paid to Gheel by him, in order to investigate conditions there. Though the situation at Gheel now is practically identical with that which originated there at least five centuries ago, there are many who consider that similar conditions would be ideal for the treatment of certain classes of the insane even in our own day. It is this sort of interpretation of the work of these old-time philanthropists and physicians that we need, and not the cheap condemnation which makes it necessary for us to begin all over again in each generation.
In the light of this unexpected revelation and the {368} consequent revolution of thought it suggests, a short review of the treatment of the insane will not be out of place. It is usual for our self-complacent generation to consider that it was not until our own time that rational measures for the care of the insane were taken. Most of the text-books on mental diseases that touch at all on the historical aspects of the treatment question, are apt to say that the evolution of methods for the treatment and cure of the insane might be divided into four historical periods: First, the era of exorcism, on the theory that insane patients were possessed of devils. Second, the chain and dungeon era, during which persons exhibiting signs of insanity were imprisoned and shackled in such a manner as to prevent the infliction of injury upon others. Third, the era of asylums. Fourth, the present era of psychopathic wards in general hospitals for the acutely insane in cities, and colonies for the chronic insane in the country, which is only just beginning to develop.
From this classification, the ordinary reader would suppose that nothing at all was done for the insane during the first two periods, except exorcism in one and confinement in the other. As a matter of fact, the number of the harmlessly insane has always been much larger than the violent, and the latter, indeed, constitute only a very small portion of the mentally ailing at any period. Exorcism, as a rule, was applied only to the violent and to the hysterical. In the asylums at all times there were a number of patients who were not chained or confined to any great degree, and unless one had shown some special violent manifestation, severe measures were not taken. It is the treatment of the great mass of the insane rather than of the few {369} exceptional cases, that must be considered as representing the attitude of mind of the generations of the Middle Age toward the mentally afflicted, and not what they found themselves compelled to do because of their fear and dread of violence.
For those who were mentally afflicted in a mild degree, abundant suitable provision was made by the generations of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. When historical writers suggest the contrary, they are only making one of the usual assumptions from ignorance of the details. Because in some cases insanity was supposed to be due to possession by the devil, to say that, therefore, in all cases no provision was made for the insane is nonsense. It is comparatively easy to find, from records of the hospitals of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, that there were what we now call psychopathic wards for the acutely insane in the cities, and some colonies for the chronic insane in country places.
Knowing nothing of this, Prof. White, for instance, says: "The stream of Christian endeavor, so far as the insane were concerned, was almost entirely cut off. In all the beautiful provision during the Middle Ages for the alleviation of human suffering, there was for the insane almost no care. Some monasteries indeed gave them refuge. We hear of a charitable work done for them at the London Bethlehem Hospital in the thirteenth century, at Geneva in the fifteenth, at Marseilles in the sixteenth, by the Black Penitents in the South of France, by certain Franciscans in Northern France, by the Alexian Brothers on the Rhine, and by various agencies in other parts of Europe; but, curiously enough, the only really important effort in the Christian Church {370} was stimulated by the Mohammedans." This last clause is a slur on Christianity absolutely without justification. As is true for all broad generalizations, to ignore thus the work of caring for the insane and the methods employed in earlier times, amounts to deplorable injustice to generations whose provision for the sick of every class was not only much more abundant, but more rational and complete, than it has been our custom to recognize and acknowledge. The earliest city hospitals that we know of were due to the fatherly care and providence of that great Pope, Innocent III., whose pontificate (1198-1213) has been more misunderstood than perhaps any corresponding period of time in history. It was Virchow, the great German pathologist, whose sympathies with the Papacy were very slight, and whose attitude in the Kulturkampf in Germany showed him to be a strenuous opponent of the Papal policy, who paid the high tribute to Pope Innocent III. which we quote in the chapter on the Foundation of City Hospitals. It was in connection with these hospitals founded by Pope Innocent III., or the result of the movement initiated by him, that the insane were cared for at first. This may seem to have been an undesirable method, but at the present time there is an almost universal demand on the part of experts in mental diseases for wards for the mentally diseased in connection with city hospitals, because admission is thus facilitated, treatment is begun earlier, the patient is not left in unsuitable conditions so long, friends are readier to take measures to bring the patient under proper treatment and surveillance, and, as a consequence, more of the acutely insane have the course of their disease modified at once, and more cures take place than would otherwise be possible. Of course, this was {371} not the idea of the original founder of the medieval hospitals, or even the conscious plan of those who were in charge. They had to take the mentally infirm because there was nowhere else for them to go at that time. As a matter of fact, however, their simple method of procedure was better in the end for the patient than is our more complex method of admission to insane asylums, with its disturbing necessity for formal examination of the patient under circumstances that are likely to increase any excitement that he may be laboring under. And the transfer to an institution bearing the dreaded name of asylum, or even sanitarium (for that term has taken quite as ominous a meaning in recent years) is sure to aggravate the patient's irritated state, and to exaggerate symptoms which might otherwise be relieved by prompt, soothing care, and by the consciousness that his ailment is being treated rather than that he himself is being placed in durance.
An examination of the methods for the care of the insane in the Middle Ages brings out clearly the fact, that the modern generation may learn from those old Catholic humanitarians, whose hearts and whose charity served so well to make up for any deficiencies of intellect or of science the moderns would presume them to have labored under. There are said to be three great desiderata for the intelligent care for the insane:
First: The open door system, permitting patients who are not violent, and who can be trusted even though they have many queer notions, to come and go at will.
Second: The after care treatment of those who have been insane, to the end that they may not be compelled to go back to strenuous lives of toil; and above all, that they {372} may not be forced into the too harrassing conditions of which their mental breakdown originally was born.
Third: A colony system by which patients of lowered intelligence may be cared for in the country, far away from the stress of city life, and where, without the cares of existence pressing upon them, they may be surrounded by gentle, patient, kindly friends who will make every allowance for their peculiarities and strive to help them in their up-hill struggles.
These desiderata are so absolutely modern that they have only been formulated definitely with the beginning of the twentieth century. Notwithstanding this apparent newness, I think that it will not be difficult to show that the old-time methods of caring for the insane partook, to a greater degree than would be suspected at the present time, of these desirable qualities that modern science has come to recognize as so indispensable for the rational care of the mentally unbalanced. In saying this I do not wish to claim for the Middle Ages accomplishments beyond their deserts. My idea is rather to write an interpretation; to make clear from what we know of the details of the care of the insane in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, that unconsciously those generations, in their large-hearted charity, anticipated what is best in our present system.
The first record in English medical literature of a home for the insane is that of Bethlehem Royal Hospital, London, which has become famous under the familiar shortened name of Bedlam, meaning a house or place of confusion. Bethlehem was a general hospital into which during the fourteenth century insane patients were admitted. There is a historical record to the effect that at the beginning of the fifteenth century a royal commission {373} investigated the methods of treating the insane in vogue there, because there had been complaint of abuses in the institution. Practically every century since there have been written corresponding records of similar investigations. The trouble seems always to have been that there were too few attendants properly to take care of insane patients, and thus they had to be placed in confinement in various ways, which inevitably led to abuses.
For a generation or longer after each exposure by a committee of inspection, the evils of this system would be more or less tolerable; then they would become unbearable once more and another investigation would be demanded. I would like to feel that we have progressed in all respects beyond these hit and miss methods, but any one familiar with the present situation in the matter is quite well aware that there are still many abuses that need correction, and inspection committees find many suggestions to make and sometimes gross evils to stigmatize.
Bedlam seems, however, to have always been as well and as humanely conducted as the spirit of the times demanded. It must not be forgotten that according to well authenticated tradition, a very large part of the hospital's income was obtained by the collection of fees for the admittance of visitors who came to be amused by the vagaries of the insane. The number visiting the asylum for this purpose must have been enormous, for, though only a penny was charged for admission, the resulting revenue is said to have amounted to four hundred pounds sterling a year, showing that nearly one hundred thousand persons had visited the institution.
From generations that were pleased to derive morbid amusement out of the misfortunes of others, humanitarian {374} care of the insane could not be reasonably expected; but in view of this custom it is difficult to understand how there could have been at this period any great abuse of patients, in the matter of severe punishments or inhuman restraint.
Some of the customs of the old-time hospitals were interesting. It was believed that the one chance for an insane patient to recover lay in trusting him somewhat, allowing him even to go unattended outside the walls at times. Patients in Bedlam were permitted to go out alone after they improved in health, and if they were poor they were allowed to obtain their living by means of begging. In order that they might more easily work upon public sympathy, they were permitted to wear tin plates fastened to their arms. The wearers of these were called "Bedlams," or "Bedlamites" or "Bedlam beggars," and tradition says that they received much more consideration than ordinary beggars.
It may appear that this was dangerous liberty, but the ordinary person is apt to consider as dangerous the open door treatment of the insane which most alienists now hold to be the most commendable feature of present day treatment. It seems reasonable that to permit patients to go into the open air and sunshine was better than confining them in the hospital, and doubtless the insignia which they wore especially commended them to the care and alms and sympathy of the people.
Much has been said with regard to the alleged neglect and abuse of the insane during the period of exorcism, because of the misunderstanding of the cause of the disease. There are persons who consider neurasthenia and major-hysteria as more or less modern forms of nervous diseases, but it is more than probable that they {375} existed with considerable frequency in the olden time. Many of these cases would be cured by strong suggestions, that is, by the treatment usually given to supposed possessed persons, and as we know that the best possible treatment for certain forms of major-hysteria is to frighten the patient (the earthquake at San Francisco cured a dozen persons who had not been regarded as able to walk, some of them for years), it is probable that a goodly number of the patients of the past were cured by the rather heroic measures sometimes devised. Sir Thomas More mentions such cases, and though himself eminently humane, commends this method of treatment "in which such patients were severely scourged and thoroughly aroused from their willfulness."
When psychiatrists talk slightingly of the old-time methods of caring for the insane, it is well to recall that, considering the conditions and limitations of scientific knowledge, they seem to have done very well in those times. It has been the custom of critics to hold up to ridicule that insane patients were sometimes taken to special shrines in order that their ills might be cured by the direct interposition of Heaven; or that the devil supposed to possess them, might be driven out. It must not be forgotten, however, that such procedures were of supreme utility in mild cases viewed merely from the human standpoint, and without any appeal to the supernatural. The journey to a favorite shrine, undertaken under conditions that gave variety to life and new interests, together with the hope aroused while there, were sufficient to help the patient physically and, not infrequently, mentally.
Some of the most distinguished specialists in mental diseases in Germany, France and England are on record {376} as believing that one of the most helpful agencies in the relief of certain symptoms of mental disturbance, and even the cure of milder forms of insanity, is confidence in the Almighty as expressed by prayer. At a meeting of the British Medical Association two years ago, this idea was expressed very forcibly by a distinguished specialist, and was concurred in by a number of those at the meeting of the Section on Mental Diseases. He said:
"As an alienist and one whose life has been concerned with the suffering of the mind, I would state that of all hygienic measures to counteract disturbed sleep, depressed spirits and all of the miserable sequels of a distressed mind, I would undoubtedly give the first place to the simple habit of prayer. * * * Such a habit does more to calm the spirit and strengthen the soul to overcome mere incidental emotionalism than any other therapeutic agent known to me."
The medieval peoples realized this, and finding it beneficial, used it to decided advantage in a large number of cases.
Occasionally some very striking developments resulted from pilgrimages made for the cure of the insane. A typical instance is to be found at the shrine of St. Dympna in Belgium. Many persons in various stages and differing forms of mental derangement were accustomed to go or be taken to the shrine of this Irish girl missionary, whose martyrdom had so elevated her in the estimation of the people of the neighborhood that they thought her tomb worthy of special reverence. The sufferers who journeyed thither frequently lingered for some time in order to invoke the aid of the Saint, and, if possible, secure her intercession for the relief of their {377} ailments. Many of them were found to get along better in the quiet of the little village than they had done in their homes, and as they were simply quartered among the people of the village, their friends were able for a trifling pecuniary consideration to secure their maintenance there for an indefinite period, in the hope that what the Saint had not granted at the beginning might be obtained by more assiduous devotion at her shrine. At first the friends probably intended to come back and take the patients away, but after a time, finding that they got along so well near the shrine, they gradually learned to leave them there entirely. Thus originated the famous insane colony at Gheel which has in recent years been the subject of more attention on the part of alienists the world over than almost any other therapeutic method of our time. This medieval invention of caring for the non-violent insane, especially those of low grades of intelligence, in the midst of small families, where none of the cares of life burden them and where they have occupation of mind and body and certain human interests, such as might appeal to their weakened intelligence, is probably the ideal method of caring for such patients. Certain it is that it is much better than the large institutional system, the invention of succeeding centuries, from which we are now trying to get away as fast and as far as possible.
The Gheel mode of caring for the insane is really the colony system that is now universally recognized as the most favorable mode of treatment for these patients. It seems not unlikely that there was much more of this practice during the Middle Ages in Europe than we have any idea of.
With regard to the serious accusations so often made {378} against the people of the Middle Ages for their cruelty to the insane, not much apology will be needed by those who know anything about the treatment of the insane, even in quite recent times. Measures of rigid restraint were employed for dangerous cases. Patients who had shown manifestations of violence were likely to be chained. Severe and unusual punishments were sometimes inflicted. Of all this there is no doubt. Abuses crept into institutions. The insane were sometimes brutally treated or hideously neglected. These, however, are objections that can be urged against our system of taking care of the insane in many places even at the present day. In certain states, in order to lessen the expense of caring for the insane, they are kept in departments in the Poor Houses, and every now and then a legislative committee of investigation tells the story of appalling evils that have been discovered. It was not because they thought that possessed people deserved punishment, nor because they hoped thus to get the devils to go out of them, that the medieval generations allowed such things in their asylums, but because human nature will neglect its duties toward the ailing unless carefully superintended, and because regular attendants become hardened in their feelings sooner or later, when they serve only for pay, and the result always is the abuse of patients.
In proportion to the number of patients cared for, there was much more need for restraint in those old days than at present. As a rule, during the Middle Ages prisons and asylums were few. Only the violently insane, who already had actually committed some serious crime or threatened to, were kept in the asylums. For these restraint is needed even at the present {379} time. We have learned to apply milder measures by employing many more attendants, but even that has come only in the last generation or two. The milder cases of insanity were not kept in asylums, but were allowed to wander about the country, or were cared for in their families with a devotion of which one finds no example at the present time; or if the insane person belonged to a noble family, very often the patient was kept in the house of a retainer and gently cared for. The fact that the milder cases were allowed to wander about the country might seem to be dangerous, but is not so serious as is ordinarily thought. Only a limited number of insane patients are likely to be violent, and these, as a rule, show manifestations of it early in the history of their affection. It was the frequent meeting with these harmless insane, as they were to be encountered in the many places through which he wandered professionally in England, that enabled Shakespeare to make his pictures of insane characters so true to life, that even at the present day we are able to recognize from his marvelous description exactly the form of insanity that was present.
In a word, these generations of the Middle Ages builded better than they knew in this matter of the care of the mentally afflicted, as in everything else which they took up for serious consideration. They did only the most obvious things, and what they could not very well help, under the circumstances, and yet very often the solutions of grave problems which they hit upon so naturally, proved to be as efficient as, indeed sometimes practically identical with, those we have reached by much more elaborate methods. This story of the treatment of the insane in the Middle Ages {380} deserves careful study. I have given only a few suggestions for the interpretation of certain methods of action on their part, apparently very different from our ideas, yet in reality anticipating our most recent conclusions.
What many people have not been able to forgive the generations of the Middle Ages, and especially the ecclesiastics of the centuries before our own, is that as educated men and leaders of the people they should have accepted the view that mental diseases may, in some of their forms at least, be due to possession by the devil or some other spiritual interference with the working of the human intellect. During the latter half of the nineteenth century, it became the custom among the educated to scoff at any possible manifestation of this kind. The interference of the spiritual world with any of man's actions came to be looked upon as absurd, except by those who still clung to old-time beliefs and thought that new fashions in opinion might very well prove almost as variable as do corresponding fads in the realm of dress or of interests. The difficulty in the matter was that the generations of the latter nineteenth century lost their faith, to a great extent, in the existence of a spiritual world, and consequently it was easy to laugh at those who had found the interference of such a world as not only possible, but actual, in a great many affairs in human life. As a matter of fact, when we realize how many utterly inexplicable phenomena the earlier centuries tried to explain this way, it is not surprising to find their explanation sometimes wrong.
It is very easy, to my mind, for men of our generation to be too hard in their judgments of the men of {381} the Middle Ages with regard to the curious phenomena, psychic, spiritistic and occult, which, with all our advance in science, are still almost as obscure to the eye of the intellect as they were seven centuries ago. The medieval generations saw a great many things that they could not explain happening round them, and attributed them to spiritual agencies. We have learned since that many of these things are merely natural, and must not be considered as due to anything else than the ordinary laws of nature. We have not eliminated belief in the spiritual world, however, and there is still a large proportion of mankind who think that they see, even in the matter-of-fact world around them of the present day, many signs of interference in human affairs by agencies distinct from those of human beings and quite independent of matter. It is easy to dismiss this side of the question with a shrug of the shoulders and say that it need not be taken into account. A man who does this easily succeeds in convincing himself that there are no evidences for spiritual manifestations in our life, and that the stories with regard to them are all nonsense.
It is curious, however, that anyone who investigates and does not merely dismiss at once, is very prone to come to a contrary conclusion, even though all his training and the traditions of his education are opposed to such an admission. There are many prominent scientists who have allowed themselves to be drawn into the investigation of spiritualistic manifestations so-called. Very few of them have come away from their investigations entirely convinced that there was nothing in them. Frauds they have found; sleight-of-hand impositions they have exposed; but apart from all these, there {382} is a residue of phenomena which they cannot explain and which convinces many of them of the existence and the mundane action of forces independent of matter. The men who come to these conclusions are not only the ignorant, nor the over-credulous, but frequently representative leaders in scientific thought--men who are known to be thoroughly capable of weighing evidence, prominent lawyers and judges, above all, men who are accustomed to investigation as most painstaking scientists and faithful students of nature.
A few examples will illustrate this. Mr. Alfred Russell Wallace, the co-discoverer with Darwin of the theory of natural selection, has a name in the scientific world that places him among the leaders of scientific thought. For many years he has been convinced that spiritualism contains in itself truths that deserve careful investigation, and he for one is persuaded that the neglect of investigation of this subject, on the part of recent generations, is one of the most serious mistakes, from a purely scientific standpoint, that they have made. Sir William Crookes, whose brilliant theories with regard to the fourth stage of matter, radiant matter, would seem to have quite appropriately prepared him for the proper investigation of existences even beyond the domain of the attenuated substances with which he had been so much concerned, is another of the prominent scientists of the day who confesses to a belief in the truth of spiritualistic phenomena. He made his first publication on the subject more than a quarter of a century ago. When a score of years after this he was elected as the President of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, the most prominent scientific body in Great Britain, and, it may be said, in the {383} English-speaking world, he recurred in his Presidential address to the subject of spiritualism, and said that in the meantime he not only had not changed his mind with regard to the truth of certain spiritualistic phenomena, but had even become more convinced than he was originally.