HOMOSEXUALITY AND SCIENTIFIC HUMANISM

T. M. MERRITT

It was stated previously that a second aspect of the theme embodied in the social evolution which marks the history of Western Europe was the gradual acceptance of the principle of rationality as the most effective technique for the solution of man's problems arising out of his efforts to obtain the satisfactions of life. It is the purpose here to examine the concept and trace its development somewhat.

It was among the Greeks that the nature of thought was first looked into in our Western World. It was also the Greeks who taught man to seek the solutions of his problems by his own efforts, rather than to depend upon a mystical other world existing behind a veil. Heraclitus taught that thought is the most excellent of things and wisdom consists in telling the truth and acting as Nature bids. Protagoras taught that man the individual is the measure of all things. Rationality among the Greeks, some times called "the Greek spirit of free inquiry," consisted of first the desire to know, then the determination to find an explanation for phenomena in harmony with reason, and finally the qualities of open-mindedness. sincerity, industry, and power of observation. This humanistic view of rationality caused largely the breakup of the older religious sanctions and brought on the Age of Pericles (445-431 B. C.) which was the high

point of Greek history. Greece fell as a nation about the beginning of the Christian Era and Rome followed with the rise of the Roman Catholic Church. For centuries after the fall of Greece and Rome, rationality or the Greek spirit of free inquiry was lost and authoritarianism became the dominant mode of thought. All wisdom came from God and gradually seeped down through the Pope and clergy to the common man, disbelief or heresy being the chief sin to be stamped out by fire and sword if possible.

Although rationality was in abeyance during the Middle Ages, it was rot entirely lost and there were individuals and centers where real scholarship was cultivated. There were also certain historic events: the Crusades, the growth of towns, trade, commerce and industry, Scholasticism, and Chivalry, which tended to stir men's minds. Then, too, the ancient manuscripts from Greece and Rome had been preserved by the monks in the monasteries, although this fact was not generally known and had no effect until the fourteenth century when an Italian scholar named Petrarch discovered them and brought them to public notice. Immediately a great furor arose and everyone wished to learn Greek, Latin, and Hebrew. With the finding of this material the Greek spirit of free inquiry was re-

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