human
and when the whimsical triads of poor old Proclus were powerless to stop the deluge of theurgy, incantations, and all superstitions that finally swamped Neo-Platonism for ever. With this view present to our minds the words of the scholar in this place are very significant
gpt
By these two studies, geometry and astronomy, he made us _a path toward heaven_, The three words that Saint Gregory uses in the description of this part of the master's teaching are worth noticing. The first is Geometry, which is taken to mean everything that relates to the earth's surface. The second is astronomy, which treats of the face of the heavens. The third is physiology, which is the science of nature, or of all that comes between heaven and earth. So that Origen's scientific teaching was truly encyclopaedic. He was, moreover, an experimental philosopher, and did not merely retail the theories of others. He analyzed things and resolved them into their elements (their
human
elements, says the scholar); he descanted on the multiform changes and conversions of things, partly from his own discoveries, and gave his hearers a rational admiration for the sacredness and perfection of nature, instead of a blind and stupid bewilderment; he
gpt
What were the precise details of his teachings on these subjects it would be unfair to ask, even if it were possible to answer. We know that he thought diamonds and precious stones were formed from dew, but this is no proof he was behind his age; and his acquaintance with the literature of the subject proves he was, if anything, before it. With regard to naphtha, the magnet, and the looking-glass, it will be pleasing to know he was substantially right. He was, perhaps, the first to make a spiritual use of the accepted notion that the serpent was powerless against the stag; the reason is, he says, that the stag is the type of Christ warring against Anti-Christ. That he believed in griffins is unfortunate, but natural in an Alexandrian, who had lived in an atmosphere d stories brought down from the upper Nile by the ingenious sailors. As to his