"Naturally there was developed among both ecclesiastics and laymen a human desire to... know what the creation really is. ...Aristotle had made the first really great attempt to satisfy this curiosity and had begun a development of studies in natural history which remains one of the leading achievements in the story of our race. ...But the feeling which we have already seen so strong in the early Church—that all study of Nature was futile in view of the approaching end of the world—indicated so clearly in the New Testament and voiced so powerfully by Lactantius and St. Augustine—held back this current of thought for many centuries. ...There was indeed an influence coming from the Hebrew Scriptures themselves which wrought powerfully to this end. ...the grand utterances in the Psalms regarding the beauties and wonders of creation, in all the glow of the truest poetry, ennobled the study even among those whom logic drew away from it. But as a matter of course... too much prying into the secrets of Nature was very generally held to be dangerous both to body and soul; only for showing forth God's glory and his purposes in the creation were such studies praiseworthy. The great work of Aristotle was under eclipse. The early Christian thinkers gave little attention to it. ...In place of research came authority—the authority of the Scriptures as interpreted by the Physiologus and the Bestiaries (mingling scriptural statements, legends of the saints, and fanciful inventions with pious intent and childlike simplicity) and these remained the principal source of thought on animated Nature for over a thousand years. ...Pope Gelasius administered a rebuke to the Physiologus; but the interest in Nature was too strong: the great work on Creation by St. Basil had drawn from the Physiologus precious illustrations of Holy Writ, and the strongest of the early popes, Gregory the Great, virtually sanctioned it."