How could it be expected that science should flourish when the greatest minds of the age could concern themselves with problems such as these?
Despite our preconceptions or prejudices, there can be but one answer to that question.

Oriental superstition cast its blight upon the fair field of science, whatever compensation it may or may not have brought in other fields.

But we must be on our guard lest we overestimate or incorrectly estimate this influence.

Posterity, in glancing backward, is always prone to stamp any given age of the past with one idea, and to desire to characterize it with a single phrase; whereas in reality all ages are diversified, and any generalization regarding an epoch is sure to do that epoch something less or something more than justice.

We may be sure, then, that the ideal of ecclesiasticism is not solely responsible for the scientific stasis of the dark age.