Content area
Full text
The Closing of the Western Mind The Rise of Faith and the Western Mind The Rise of Fall of Reason Fall of Res Freeman William Heinemann pp. xx + 470. L25 ISBN 0 434 00853 2 HISTORY TODAY BOOKSHOP PRICE L21
THE PLOT OF THIS LONG BOOK is simple enough: the Greeks of the classical age invented science, the Greeks of the Hellenistic age adorned it, the Romans tempered sovereignty with wisdom, until the classical tradition was swept away by the sudden victory of the Church, to be replaced by doctrinaire thundering, intellectual supinity and the forcible dissemination of a private myth. The narrative is clear and fluent, nomenclature is studiously precise, and every judgment is supported by appeal to some authoritative historian or quotation of ancient texts.
The virtues of ancient Christians are admitted Augustine is granted `intellectual stature'(p.306), while Constantine is acquitted of the prejudices that ought to have been entailed by his new religion and the theological conflicts of the fourth century are analysed with a subtlety that might serve as...