[127] _Sentent._, 3, 13, 1. It seems extremely probable that Isidore did not quote from the poets directly but merely appropriated along with other material the quotations contained in the sources which he consulted. Toward pagan philosophy and poetry, then, Isidore’s attitude is hostile, and it is very improbable that he ever wasted any time on them. But in the field of secular knowledge apart from these subjects he has, within limits, a use for the inheritance left by pagan Rome. It is his chief claim to recognition that he was not absolutely content with the de-secularized science that he found in Ambrose, Jerome and Augustine, but had the independence to go behind it and draw upon its original sources in Roman literature. The spirit in which he did this, however, was not the spirit of revolt, but apparently only a natural desire for more extended information. His critical faculty did not warn him that in seeking this information from pagan sources he was passing from one intellectual atmosphere to another; his mind was too literal and plodding and dwelt too much on details to notice when it was on dangerous ground. His resort to pagan science was not always happy in its result; but the many blunders which he made cannot affect the merit of his enterprise in going beyond the circle of Christian writers; and it must be said for his version of secular knowledge, as contained in his secular writings, that, poor as it was, it was one without which the middle ages would have been a great deal poorer. As a matter of fact, Isidore did not leave the science of the Roman Empire in a state much worse than that in which he found it. It had been undergoing a process of decay for centuries. At their best the Roman men of science had been unable even to appropriate the more abstract parts of Greek science. They were governed throughout by a short-sighted practicality, as when, for instance, in the case of the mathematical sciences they tried to take over results without taking the method of reaching or verifying them. In the natural sciences their inferiority was only less marked. Here the absence of critical method permitted the incorporation of many superstitious notions. As has been pointed out, the Roman science was wholly a science of authority, and the greatest scientist was the greatest accumulator of previous authorities. Thus throughout its course in the Roman world science had been beating a retreat. By Isidore’s time these forces of short-sighted utilitarianism, the spirit of subservience to authority, and superstition, had brought it to a state of inoffensive feebleness such that it was more welcome to the Christian than was either poetry or philosophy.