inflame the lower elements; as to the waters placed above the firmament, lower than the spiritual heavens, but higher than all corporeal creatures, he says, "Some declare that they were stored there for the deluge, but others, more correctly, that they are intended to temper the fire of the stars." He goes on with long discussions as to various elements and forces in Nature, and dwells at length upon the air, of which he says that the upper, serene air is over the heavens; that the other, which is coarse with humid exhalations, is sent off from the earth, and that in this are lightning, hail, snow, ice, and tempests, finding proof of this in the one hundred and forty-eighth Psalm, where these are commanded to "praise the Lord from the earth."[1]
So great was Bede's authority that nearly all the anonymous speculations of the next following centuries upon these subjects were eventually ascribed to him. In one of these spurious treatises an attempt is made to get new light upon the sources of the waters above the heavens, the main reliance being the sheet containing the animals let down from heaven, in the vision of Saint Peter. Another of these treatises is still more curious, for it endeavors to account for earthquakes and tides by means of the Leviathan mentioned in Scripture. This characteristic passage runs as follows: "Some say that the earth contains the animal Leviathan, and that he holds his tail after a fashion of his own, so that it is sometimes scorched by the sun, whereupon he strives to get hold of the sun, and so the earth is shaken by the motion of his indignation; he drinks in also, at times, such huge masses of the waves that when he belches them forth all the seas feel their effect."[2] And this theological theory of the tides, as caused by the alternate suction and belching of Leviathan went far and wide.
In the writings thus covered with the name of Bede, there is much showing a scientific spirit, which might have come to something of permanent value had it not been hampered by the supposed necessity of conforming to the letter of Scripture. It is as startling as it is refreshing to hear one of these mediæval theorists burst out against those who are content to explain everything by the power of God, as follows: "What is more pitiable than to say that a thing is, because God is able to do it, and not to show any reason why it is so, nor any purpose for which it is so; just as if God did everything that he is able to do! You talk like one who says that God is able to make a calf out of a log. But did he ever do it? Either, then, show a reason why a thing is so, or a purpose wherefore it is so, or else cease to declare it so."[3]
- ↑ See Bede, "De natura rerum"(Migne," Patr. Lat.," xc).
- ↑ See the treatise "De mundi constitutione," in Bede's "Opera" (Migne, "Patr. Lat.," xc, 884).
- ↑ See "Elementa philosophiæ," in Bede's "Opera" (Migne, "Patr. Lat.," xc, 1139). This treatise, which has also been printed, under the tide of "De philosophia mundi," among the works of Honorius of Anton, is believed by modern scholars (Haureau, Werner, Poole) to be the production of William of Conches.
