Albert the Great and St.Thomas Aquinas, the famous scholastics of the thirteenth century, had to write a "_Summa Theologiae_," or system of theology, as well as to treat of the other departments of human knowledge.
Why were these men not overwhelmed with the task set them by the tradition of their time?
It was because the task was not, after all, so great as a modern man might conceive it to be.

Gil Blas, in Le Sage's famous romance, finds it possible to become a skilled physician in the twinkling of an eye, when Dr.Sangrado has imparted to him the secret that the remedy for all diseases is to be found in bleeding the patient and in making him drink copiously of hot water.

When little is known about things, it does not seem impossible for one man to learn that little.

During the Middle Ages and the centuries preceding, the physical sciences had a long sleep.

Men were much more concerned in the thirteenth century to find out what Aristotle had said than they were to address questions to nature.