The science, the art, the jurisprudence, the chief political and social theories, of the modern world have grown out of those of Greece and Rome--not by favour of, but in the teeth of, the fundamental teachings of early Christianity, to which science, art, and any serious occupation with the things of this world, were alike despicable.
All that is best in the ethics of the modern world, in so far as it has not grown out of Greek thought, or Barbarian manhood, is the direct development of the ethics of old Israel. There is no code of legislation, ancient or modern, at once so just and so merciful, so tender to the weak and poor, as the Jewish law; and, if the Gospels are to be trusted, Jesus of Nazareth himself declared that he taught nothing but that which lay implicitly, or explicitly, in the religious and ethical system of his people.
The first-recorded judicial murder of a scientific thinker was compassed and effected, not by a despot, nor by priests, but was brought about by eloquent demagogues, to whom, of all men, thorough searchings of the intellect are most dangerous and therefore most hateful.
Platonic philosophy is probably the grandest example of the unscientific use of the imagination extant; and it would be hard to estimate the amount of detriment to clear thinking effected, directly and indirectly, by the theory of ideas, on the one hand, and by the unfortunate doctrine of the baseness of matter, on the other.
The development of exact natural knowledge in all its vast range, from physics to history and criticism, is the consequence of the working out, in this province, of the resolution to "take nothing for truth without clear knowledge that it is such"; to consider all beliefs open to criticism; to regard the value of authority as neither greater nor less than as much as it can prove itself to be worth. The modern spirit is not the spirit "which always denies," delighting only in destruction; still less is it that which builds castles in the air rather than not construct; it is that spirit which works and will work "without haste and without rest," gathering harvest after harvest of truth into its barns and devouring error with unquenchable fire.
In truth, the laboratory is the forecourt of the temple of philosophy; and whoso has not offered sacrifices and undergone purification there has little chance of admission into the sanctuary.