Before his time, physicians had depended only on the color and the taste of the urine for diagnostic purposes. He proposed that they should weigh it, and even suggested that they should weigh, also, the blood, I suppose in case of venesection, for comparison's sake. He also thought that the comparative weight of various roots, stems, leaves, juices of plants might give hints for the therapeutic uses of these substances. This is the sort of idea that we are apt to think of as typically modern. Specific gravities and atomic weights have been more than once supposed to represent laws in therapeutics, which so far, however, we have not succeeded in finding, but it is interesting to realize that it is nearly five hundred years since the first thought in this line was clearly expressed by a distinguished thinker and scientific writer.

There are many interesting expressions in Cusanus' writings which contradict most of the impressions commonly entertained with regard to the scholars of the Middle Ages. It is usually assumed that they did not think seriously, but speculatively, that they feared to think for themselves, neglected the study of nature around them, considered authority the important source of knowledge, and were as far as possible from the standpoint of modern scientific students and investigators. Here is a passage from Nicholas, on knowing and thinking, that might well have been written by a great intellectual man at any time in the world's history, and that could only emanate from a profound scholar at any time.

"To know and to think, to see the truth with the eye of the mind, is always a joy. The older a man grows the greater is the pleasure which it affords him, and the more he devotes himself to the search after truth, the stronger grows his desire of possessing it. As love is the life of the heart, so is the endeavor after knowledge and truth the life of the mind. In the midst of the movements of time, of the daily work of life, of its perplexities and contradictions, we should lift our gaze fearlessly to the clear vault of heaven, and seek ever to obtain a firmer grasp of and a keener insight into the origin of all goodness and beauty, the capacities of our own hearts and minds, the intellectual fruits of mankind throughout the centuries, and the wondrous works of nature around us; at the same time remembering always that in humility alone lies true greatness, and that knowledge and wisdom are alone profitable in so far as our lives are governed by them."

The career of Nicholas of Cusa is interesting, because it sums up so many movements, and, above all, educational currents in the fifteenth century. He was born in the first year of the century, and lived to be sixty-four. He was the son of a wine grower, and attracted the attention of his teachers because of his intellectual qualities. In spite of comparatively straitened circumstances, then, he was afforded the best opportunities of the time for education. He went first to the school of the Brethren of the Common Life at Deventer, the intellectual cradle of so many of the scholars of this century. Such men as Erasmus, Conrad Mutianus, Johann Sintheim, Hermann von dem Busche, whom Strauss calls "the missionary of human wisdom," and the

teacher of most of these, Alexander Hegius, who has been termed the schoolmaster of Germany, with Nicholas of Cusa and Rudolph Agricola and others, who might readily be mentioned, are the fruits of the teaching of these schools of the Brethren of the Common Life, in one of which Thomas à Kempis, the author of "The Imitation of Christ," was, for seventy years out of his long life of ninety, a teacher.

Cusanus succeeded so well at school that he was later sent to the University of Heidelberg, and subsequently to Padua, where he took up the study of Roman law, receiving his doctorate at the age of twenty-three. This series of educational opportunities will be surprising only to those who do not know educational realities at the beginning of the fifteenth century. There has never been a time when a serious seeker after knowledge could find more inspiration. On his return to Germany, Father Krebs became canon of the cathedral in Coblenz. This gave him a modest income, and leisure for intellectual work which was eagerly employed. He was scarcely more than thirty when he was chosen as a delegate to the Council at Basel. After this he was made Archdeacon of the Cathedral of Lüttich, and from this time his rise in ecclesiastical preferment was rapid. He had attracted so much attention at the Council of Basel that he was chosen as a legate of the Pope for the bringing about certain reforms in Germany. Subsequently he was sent on ecclesiastical missions to the Netherlands, and even to Constantinople. At the early age of forty he was made a Cardinal. After this he was always considered as one of the most important

consultors of the Papacy in all matters relating to Germany. During the last twenty-five years of his life in all the relations of the Holy See to Germany, appeal was constantly made to the wisdom, the experience, and the thoroughly conservative, yet foreseeing, judgment of this son of the people, whose education had lifted him up to be one of the leaders of men in Europe.

It was during this time that he wrote most of his books on mathematics, which have earned for him a prominent place in Cantor's "History of Mathematics,” about a score of pages being devoted to his work. Much of his thinking was done while riding on horseback or in the rude vehicles of the day on the missions to which he was sent as Papal Legate. He is said to have worked out the formula for the cycloid curve while watching the path described by flies that had lighted on the wheels of his carriage, and were carried forward and around by them. His scientific books, though they included such startling anticipations of Copernicus' doctrines as we have already quoted (Copernicus did not publish the first sketch of his theory for more than a quarter of a century after Cusanus' death), far from disturbing his ecclesiastical advancement or injuring his career as a churchman, seem actually to have been considered as additional reasons for considering him worthy of confidence and consultation.

As the result of his careful studies of conditions in Germany, he realized very clearly how much of unfortunate influence the political status of the German people, with their many petty rulers and the

hampering of development consequent upon the trivial rivalries, the constant bickerings, and the inordinate jealousies of these numerous princelings, had upon his native country. Accordingly, towards the end of his life he sketched what he thought would be the ideal political status for the German people. As in everything that he wrote, he went straight to the heart of the matter and, without mincing words, stated just exactly what he thought ought to be done. Considering that this scheme of Cusanus for the prosperity and right government of the German people was not accomplished until more than four centuries after his death, it is interesting, indeed, to realize how this clergyman of the middle of the fifteenth century should have come to any such thought. Nothing, however, makes it clearer than this, that it is not time that fosters thinking, but that great men at any time come to great thoughts. Cusanus wrote:

"The law and the kingdom should be placed under the protection of a single ruler or authority. The small separate governments of princes and counts consume a disproportionately large amount of revenue without furnishing any real security. For this reason we must have a single government, and for its support we must have a definite amount of the income from taxes and revenues yearly set aside by a representative parliament and before this parliament (reichstag) must be given every year a definite account of the money that was spent during the preceding year.'

Cusanus' life and work stand, then, as a type of the accomplishment, the opportunities, the power of thought, the practical scholarship, the mathematical