Aside from unfairness in the general tone and mode of presentation,—Cosmas Indicopleustes, for instance, is set forth as a typical representative of mediæval science of the clerical type, while Albertus Magnus is not permitted to stand as a representative of “theological” science at all but is pictured as one inclined to true science who was frightened into the paths of theology by an ecclesiastical tyranny bitterly hostile to scientific endeavor—the author makes some inexcusable mistakes in details. For instance, after speaking of “theological” methods, he proceeds (vol. i, p. 33): “Hence such contributions as that the basilisk kills serpents by his breath and men by his glance,” apparently in serene ignorance of the fact that this statement about the basilisk was a commonplace of ancient science. Again (vol. i, p. 386) he tells us that in 1163 the Council of Tours and Alexander III “forbade the study of physics to ecclesiastics, which of course in that age meant the prohibition of all such scientific studies to the only persons likely to make them.” On turning to the passage cited we find the prohibition to be that persons who have vowed to lead a monastic life shall not absent themselves from their monasteries for the purpose of studying “physica” (which the context indicates means medicine, not physics), or reading law. The canon does not apply to all ecclesiastics, and it is as absurd to infer from it that “all such scientific studies were prohibited to the only persons likely to make them” as to conclude that henceforth no one could study civil law. To argue from a single piece of legislation is hazardous in any case. (For the canon, see Hardouin, vol. vi, pt. ii, p. 1598. Canon viii.) On the whole the book strikes one as an unscientific eulogy of science and a bigoted attack on bigotry. The inconsistency of the author’s professions and practice, to say nothing of the somewhat perplexing arrangement of his material, reminds one of Pliny’s _Natural History_. Footnote 114: _Nat. Hist._, bk. xxx, ch. 2. “Certe Pythagoras, Empedocles, Democritus, Plato ad hanc discendam navigavere exsiliis verius quam peregrinationibus susceptis. Hanc reversi praedicavere, hanc in arcanis habuere.” Philostratus, as we shall see, mentioned the same men as associating with the magi, although he denied that they embraced the magic art. (See _infra_, p. 67.) Footnote 115: