Not only Tertullian, but several Fathers of the Church,
regarded physical research as superfluous and absurd, and even as
godless. "What happiness shall be mine if I know where the Nile has its
source, or what the physicists fable of heaven?" asked Lactantius. And,
"Should we not be regarded as insane if we pretended to have knowledge
of matters of which we can know nothing? How much more, then, are they
to be regarded as raving madmen who imagine that they know the secrets
of nature, which will never be revealed to human inquisitiveness?" Here
one is reminded of a remark made in "Phaedros" by _the wisest of all
Greeks_, who refused to leave town because "what could Socrates learn
from trees and grass?" And Julius Caesar wrote an account of his wars to
while away the time when he was crossing the Alps.
Very likely the system of the Church would have been less rigid had it
not largely been occupied in dealing with ignorant barbarians. In the
case of Celts and Teutons, a complete and unassailable form of dogmatics
with its corollary of hieratical intolerance was the only possible
system.
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