113.
But naturally there was developed among both ecclesiastics and laymen a human desire to go beyond these special points in the history of animated beings--a desire to know what the creation really IS.
Current legends, stories, and travellers' observations, poor as they were, tended powerfully to stimulate curiosity in this field.
Three centuries before the Christian era Aristotle had made the first really great attempt to satisfy this curiosity, and had begun a development of studies in natural history which remains one of the leading achievements in the story of our race.
But the feeling which we have already seen so strong in the early Church--that all study of Nature was futile in view of the approaching end of the world--indicated so clearly in the New Testament and voiced so powerfully by Lactantius and St.Augustine--held back this current of thought for many centuries.

Still, the better tendency in humanity continued to assert itself.

There was, indeed, an influence coming from the Hebrew Scriptures themselves which wrought powerfully to this end; for, in spite of all that Lactantius or St.Augustine might say as to the futility of any study of Nature, the grand utterances in the Psalms regarding the beauties and wonders of creation, in all the glow of the truest poetry, ennobled the study even among those whom logic drew away from it.
But, as a matter of course, in the early Church and throughout the Middle Ages all such studies were cast in a theologic mould.

Without some purpose of biblical illustration or spiritual edification they were considered futile too much prying into the secrets of Nature was very generally held to be dangerous both to body and soul; only for showing forth God's glory and his purposes in the creation were such studies praiseworthy.

The great work of Aristotle was under eclipse.