Note 158 — Chapter III

The narrowness of the attainments of the “educated” in Spain in the 17th century is portrayed by Buckle: “Books, unless they were books of devotion, were deemed utterly useless; no one consulted them, no one collected them; and until the 18th century, Madrid did not possess a single public library. * * * De Torres, who was himself a Spaniard, and was educated at Salamanca early in the 18th century, declares that he had studied in the university for five years before he had heard that such things as the mathematical sciences existed. So late as the year 1771, the same university publicly refused to allow the discoveries of Newton to be taught; and assigned as a reason, that the system of Newton was not so consonant with revealed religion as the system of Aristotle.”—History of Civilization in England, vol. ii, pp. 72–3. New York, 1861. Of course these remarks apply to Spain’s period of misfortune and decline, but it must also be remembered that the spirit of intolerance which alone brought about that condition was at its height about the time of the discovery of America.