The Sleepwalkers (44 page)

The
Middle
Ages
had
an
even
greater
horror
of
change,
and
desire
for
permanence
than
the
age
of
Plato,
whose
philosophy
they
carried
to
obsessional
extremes.
Christianity
had
saved
Europe
from
a
relapse
into
barbarism;
but
the
catastrophic
conditions
of
the
age,
its
climate
of
despair,
prevented
it
from
evolving
a
balanced,
integrated,
evolutionary
view
of
the
universe
and
of
man's
role
in
it.
The
recurrent,
panic
expectations
of
the
End
of
the
World,
the
outbreaks
of
dancing
and
flagellating
manias,
were
symptoms
of
mass
hysteria,

"brought
on
by
terror
and
despair,
in
populations
oppressed,
famished,
and
wretched
to
a
degree
almost
unimaginable
today.
To
the
miseries
of
constant
war,
political
and
social
disintegration,
there
was
added
the
dreadful
affliction
of
inescapable,
mysterious,
and
deadly
disease.
Mankind
stood
helpless
as
though
trapped
in
a
world
of
terror
and
peril
against
which
there
was
no
defence."
¹²

It
was
against
this
background
that
the
vision
of
the
walled
universe
was
taken
over
from
the
Platonists
as
a
protection
against
the
Black
Death
of
Change
–
rigid,
static,
hierarchic,
petrified.
The
Babylonian
oyster-world,
which
lay
three
and
four
thousand
years
back,
was
full
of
dynamism
and
imagination
compared
with
this
pedantically
graded
universe,
wrapped
in
cellophane
spheres,
and
kept
by
God
in
the
deep-freeze
locker
to
hide
its
eternal
shame.
Yet
the
alternative
was
even
worse:

...
when
the
planets
In
evil
mixture
to
disorder
wander,
What
plagues
and
what
portents,
what
mutiny,
What
raging
of
the
sea,
shaking
of
earth,
Commotion
in
the
winds,
frights,
changes,
horrors,
Divert
and
crack,
rend
and
deracinate
The
unity
and
married
calm
of
states
Quite
from
their
fixture
...
Take
but
degree
away,
untune
that
string,
And
hark,
what
discord
follows.
Each
thing
meets
In
mere
oppugnancy.
The
bounded
waters
Should
lift
their
bosoms
higher
than
the
shores
And
make
a
sop
of
all
this
solid
globe.
¹³

2.
The Age of Double-Think

I
have
said
that
the
Herakleidian
system,
in
which
the
two
inner
planets
circle
the
sun,
and
not
the
earth,
had
been
rediscovered
toward
the
end
of
the
first
millennium.
But
it
would
be
more
correct
to
say
that
heliocentricism
had
never
been
quite
forgotten,
even
at
the
time
of
the
tabernacular
universe.
I
have
already
quoted
(pp.
71-72),
among
others,
Macrobius
to
that
effect.
Now
Macrobius,
Chalcidius
and
Martianus
Capella,
three
encyclopaedic
compilers
of
the
period
of
Roman
decadence
(all
three
of
the
fourth-fifth
century
A.D.),
were,
together
with
Pliny,
the
main
sources
on
natural
science
available
till
the
Greek
revival;
and
they
all
propounded
the
system
of
Herakleides.
¹⁴
It
was
again
taken
up
by
John
the
Scot
in
the
ninth
century,
who
made
not
only
the
inner
planets,
but
all
of
them
except
distant
Saturn,
satellites
of
the
sun;
and
from
then
onward,
Herakleides
remains
firmly
established
on
the
medieval
scene.
¹⁵
In
the
words
of
the
best
authority
on
the
subject:

"the
majority
of
the
men
who,
from
the
ninth
to
the
twelfth
century,
have
written
on
astronomy,
and
whose
books
are
preserved,
were
acquainted
with
and
adopted
the
planetary
theory
designed
by
Herakleides
of
Pontus."
16

And
yet
at
the
same
time,
cosmology
had
reverted
to
a
naive
and
primitive
form
of
geocentrism
–
with
concentric
crystal
spheres
determining
the
order
of
the
planets
and
the
accompanying
hierarchy
of
angels.
The
highly
ingenious
systems
of
Aristotle's
fifty-five
spheres,
of
Ptolemy's
forty
epicycles
were
forgotten,
and
the
complex
machinery
was
reduced
to
ten
revolving
spheres
–
a
kind
of
poor
man's
Aristotle
which
had
nothing
whatever
in
common
with
any
of
the
observed
motions
in
the
sky.
The
Alexandrian
astronomers
had
at
least
tried
to
save
the
phenomena;
the
medieval
philosophers
disregarded
them.

But
a
complete
disregard
for
reality
would
make
life
impossible;
and
thus
the
split
mind
must
evolve
two
different
codes
of
thought
for
its
two
separate
compartments:
one
conforming
to
theory,
the
other
to
cope
with
fact.
Up
to
the
end
of
the
first
millennium
and
beyond,
the
rectangular
and
oval,
tabernacle-inspired
maps
were
piously
copied
out
by
the
monks;
they
provided
a
kind
of
Sunday
idea
of
the
shape
of
the
earth
according
to
the
patristic
interpretation
of
Scripture.
But
co-existing
with
these
was
an
entirely
different
kind
of
map
of
amazing
accuracy,
the
so-called
Portolano
charts,
for
practical
use
among
Mediterranean
seamen.
The
shapes
of
countries
and
seas
on
the
two
types
of
maps
are
as
unrelated
to
each
other
as
the
medieval
idea
of
the
cosmos
and
the
observed
events
in
the
sky.
¹⁷