human functions, and return. The heaven is tempered with glacial
waters, lest it should be set on fire. The inferior heaven is
called the firmament, because it separates the superincumbent
waters from the waters below. The firmamental waters are lower
than the spiritual heaven, higher than all corporeal beings,
reserved, some say, for a second deluge; others, more truly, to
temper the fire of the fixed stars."

Was it for this preposterous scheme--this product of ignorance
and audacity--that the works of the Greek philosophers were to be
given up? It was none too soon that the great critics who
appeared at the Reformation, by comparing the works of these
writers with one another, brought them to their proper level, and
taught us to look upon them all with contempt.

Of this presumptuous system, the strangest part was its logic,
the nature of its proofs. It relied upon miracle-evidence. A fact
was supposed to he demonstrated by an astounding illustration of
something else! An Arabian writer, referring to this, says: "If a
conjurer should say to me, 'Three are more than ten, and in proof
of it I will change this stick into a serpent,' I might be
surprised at his legerdemain, but I certainly should not admit
his assertion." Yet, for more than a thousand years, such was the
accepted logic, and all over Europe propositions equally absurd
were accepted on equally ridiculous proof.

Since the party that had become dominant in the empire could not
furnish works capable of intellectual competition with those of
the great pagan authors, and since it was impossible for it to
accept a position of inferiority, there arose a political