He says: "It very often happens that there is some question as to the earth or the sky, or the other elements of this world, respecting which one who is not a Christian has knowledge derived from most certain reasoning or observation" (that is, from the ordinary means at the command of an investigator in natural science), "and it is very disgraceful and mischievous, and of all things to be carefully avoided, that a {297} Christian speaking of such matters as being according to the Christian Scriptures, should be heard by an unbeliever talking such nonsense that the unbeliever, perceiving him to be as wide from the mark as east from west, can hardly restrain himself from laughing." It is the opinions of such men as Augustine and Albert that must be taken as representing the real attitude of theologians and churchmen toward science, and not those of lesser men, whose zeal, as is ever true of the minor adherents of any cause, always is prone to carry them into unfortunate excesses. Albert the Great was indeed a thoroughgoing experimentalist in the best modern sense of the term. He says in the second book of his treatise On Minerals (De Mineralibus): "The aim of natural science is not simply to accept the statements of others, that is, what is narrated by people, but to investigate the causes that are at work in nature for themselves." When we take this expression in connection with the other, that "we must endeavor to find out what nature can naturally bring to pass," the complete foundation of experimentalism is laid. Albert held this principle not only in theory, but applied it in practice.