=The Secular Science.= At the same time it must not be supposed that the teaching of Augustine was by any means the only source from which this first period of the Middle Ages drew its materials of knowledge. A glance at the list of books in a mediæval library (see p. 327) will not confirm such a supposition. Augustine does not include in his doctrine――massive as it is――all the factors that finally made up mediæval civilization. Even at the beginning there was a tendency toward secular science derived from Plato and Aristotle. Noticeable as this was at first it became prominent later. Secular science tried at first to modify scholasticism, and then later to gain an independence for itself. The doctrine of Augustine did not contain the germs of science. But at the start the Middle Ages had writings on science in the inadequate compendiums of Capella, Cassiodorus, and Boëthius, and in the fragments of the logic of Aristotle. =The Life of Augustine= (354–430). Aurelius Augustine, often called “the Plato of Christianity,” was born in Thagaste, Numidia. His father was a Pagan, his mother a Christian; and it was his mother who contributed chiefly to the formation of his character. He was a boy of brilliant gifts, and was educated in the schools of Madaura and Carthage. At Carthage his life was full of dissipation, which he has described in his _Confessions_. He took up in succession all the scientific and religious problems of his time. He gave up the teaching of rhetoric, which he had practiced in several towns in Asia Minor and Italy, and began to study theology. He was troubled by his religious doubts and tried to find relief first in Manichæism, then in the skepticism of the Academy, and then in neo-Platonism. He was converted to Christianity through three influences: his study of Plato, the eloquence of St. Ambrose, and the unremitting moral influence of his mother. He became a priest, then a bishop, and was untiring in his activity both in the practical organization of the church and in the theoretical construction of its doctrines. He was especially active in his literary attempts to refute the Pelagian and Manichæan heresies, whose doctrines he had previously professed. His life falls at the time when the barbarian invasions were beginning and when Rome was crumbling. Moved by his Platonic idealism, he wrote his _City of God_, which, in an elaborate philosophy of history, shows that God’s city is not on earth, but in heaven.