[129] _De Universo_ is published in Migne, _Patr. Lat._, 3. In the preface Rabanus says: “Much is set forth in this work concerning the natures of things and the meanings of words and also as to the mystical signification of things. Accordingly I have arranged my matter so that the reader may find the historical and mystical explanations of each thing set together (_continuatim positam_); and so may be able to satisfy his desire to know both significations.” Isidore’s _Etymologies_ is said to have been left unfinished (quamvis imperfectum ipse reliquerit. Braulio’s _Introduction_. See p. 25). The conjecture may be offered that the finishing of the work might have meant chiefly the insertion of “the higher meaning”. [130] _Sentent._, 2, 1, 14. He is far, however, from expressing complete approval of pagan science; the perversity of the pagan scientists forbids this. “The philosophers of the world are highly praised for the measuring of time, and the tracing of the course of the stars, and the analysis of the elements. Still, they had this only from God. Flying proudly through the air like birds, and plunging into the deep sea like fishes, and walking like dumb animals, they gained knowledge of the earth, but they would not seek with all their minds to know their Maker”.[131] [131] _Sentent._, 1, 17, 2. In judging the quality of Isidore’s science as science, we must remember that he is separated from Pliny, his great predecessor in the encyclopedic field, by nearly six centuries, and that those six centuries form a period of continuous intellectual decline; and, further, we must bear in mind the fact that Pliny himself sometimes copied what he did not understand, and was so little of a scientist as even to welcome the marvelous.[132] After this, what can be expected from Isidore? That he wrote what he did write, at the time he did, is in itself the astonishing fact. His work is the only symptom of intellectual life in two centuries of Western European history. [132] Cuvier, _Histoire des Sciences Naturelles_, vol. i, pp. 260–280.