PREFACE. Ix
evolution of religions truth was proceeding in Judaea, Greece became the scene of the growth of philosophy. Both were alike ordained in God's providence. In our own times, as in those of antiquity, the study of both should be carried on continuously. But for this purpose it was essential that the wisdom of the ancients should be studied in the language in which it was originally set forth. To limit students to Latin trans- lations is to ensure the multiplication of error. Most of these translations, especially those of the Bible and of Aristotle, are deplorably defective, and have been made by men imperfectly acquatnted with the subject treated of. The first condition, therefore, of a renova- tion of learning is the systematic study of at least three languages besides Latin, namely, Hebrew, Greek, and Arabic.
The second condition was the application of mathe- matical method to all objects of study, whether in the world or in the Church. Mathematie is the ‘ gateway and the key to all other sciences’; it raises the under- standing to the plane at which knowledge can be distinguished from ignorance. Without it other sciences are unintelligible. It reveals to us the motions of the heavenly bodies, and the laws of the propagation of force in things terrestrial, of which the propagation of light may be taken as a type; without il we are incapable of regulating the festivals of the Church ; we remain in ignorance of the influences of climate upon character; of the position of cities and of the boundaries of nations whom it is the function of the Catholic Church to bring within her pale, and to control spiritually. With these subjects the fourth and fifth sections of the Opus JAZajus are occupied: they form the principal bulk of its contents. But mathematical
