CHAPTER XLI

ROGER BACON

Of all mediaeval men, Thomas Aquinas achieved the most organic and comprehensive union of the results of human reasoning and the data of Christian theology. He may be regarded as the final exponent of scholasticism, perfected in method, universal in scope, and still integral in purpose. The scholastic method was soon to be impugned and the scholastic universality broken. The premature attack upon the method came from Roger Bacon;[615] the fatal breach in the scholastic wholeness resulted from the constructive, as well as critical, achievements of Duns Scotus and Occam.

Bacon is a perplexing personality. With other mediaeval thinkers one quickly feels the point of view from which to regard them. Not so with this most disparate genius of the Middle Ages. Reading his rugged statements, and trying to form a coherent thought of him, we are puzzled at the contradictions of his mind. One may not say that he was not of his time. Every man is of his time, and cannot raise himself very far out of the mass of knowledge and opinion furnished by it, any more than a swimmer can lift himself out of the water that sustains him. Yet personal temper and inclination may aline a man with less potent tendencies, which are obscured and hampered by the dominant intellectual interests of the period. Assuredly, through all the Middle Ages, there were men who noticed such physical phenomena as bore upon their lives, even men who cared for the dumb beginnings of what eventually might lead to natural science. But they were not representative of their epoch’s master energies; and in the Middle Ages, as always, the man of evident and great achievement will be one who, like Aquinas, stands upon the whole attainment of his age. Roger Bacon, on the contrary, was as one about whose loins the currents of his time drag and pull; they did not aid him, and yet he could not extricate himself. It was his intellectual misfortune that he was held by his time so fatally, so fatally, at least, for the proper doing of the work which was to be his contribution to human enlightenment, a contribution well ignored while he lived, and for long afterward.

Bacon accepted the dominant mediaeval convictions: the entire truth of Scripture; the absolute validity of the revealed religion, with its dogmatic formulation; also (to his detriment) the universally prevailing view that the end of all the sciences is to serve their queen, theology. Yet he hated the ways of mediaeval natural selection and survival of the mediaeval fittest, and the methods by which Albert or Thomas or Vincent of Beauvais were at last presenting the sum of mediaeval knowledge and conviction. Well might he detest those ways and methods, seeing that he was Roger Bacon, one impelled by his genius to critical study, to observation and experiment. He was impassioned for linguistics, for mathematics, for astronomy, optics, chemistry, and for an experimental science which should confirm the contents of all these, and also enlarge the scope of human ingenuity. Yet he was held fast, and his thinking was confused, by what he took from his time. Especially he was obsessed by the idea that philosophy, including every branch of knowledge, must serve theology, and even in that service find its justification. But what has chemistry to do with theology? What has mathematics? And what has the physical experimental method? By maintaining the utility of these for theology, Bacon saved his mediaeval orthodoxy, and it may be, his skin from the fire. But it wrecked the working of his genius. His writings remain, such of them as are known, astounding in their originality and insight, and almost as remarkable for their inconsistencies; they are marked by a confusion of method and a distortion of purpose, which sprang from the contradictions between Bacon’s genius and the current views which he adopted.

The career of Bacon was an intellectual tragedy, conforming to the old principles of tragic art: that the hero’s character shall be large and noble, but not flawless, inasmuch as the fatal consummation must issue from character, and not happen through chance. He died an old man, as in his youth, so in his age, a devotee of tangible knowledge. His pursuit of a knowledge which was not altogether learning had been obstructed by the Order of which he was an unhappy and rebellious member; quite as fatally his achievement was deformed from within by the principles which he accepted from his time. But he was responsible for his acceptance of current opinions; and as his views roused the distrust of his brother Friars, his intractable temper drew their hostility (of which we know very little) on his head. Persuasiveness and tact were needed by one who would impress such novel views as his upon his fellows, or, in the thirteenth century, escape persecution for their divulgence. Bacon attacked dead and living worthies, tactlessly, fatuously, and unfairly. Of his life scarcely anything is known, save from his allusions to himself and others; and these are insufficient for the construction of even a slight consecutive narrative. Born; studied at Oxford; went to Paris, studied, experimented; is at Oxford again, and a Franciscan; studies, teaches, becomes suspect to his Order, is sent back to Paris, kept under surveillance, receives a letter from the pope, writes, writes, writes,--his three best-known works; is again in trouble, confined for many years, released, and dead, so very dead, body and fame alike, until partly unearthed after five centuries.

Inference and construction may fill out this sombre outline. England was the land of Bacon’s birth, and Ilchester is said to have been the natal spot. The approximate date may be guessed at from his reference to himself as _senex_ in 1267, and his remark that he had then been studying forty years. His family seems to have been wealthy. Besides the letter of Pope Clement, hereafter to be quoted, there is one contemporary reference to him. Mathew Paris has a story of a certain _clericus de curia, scilicet Rogerus Bacum_, speaking up with bold wit to King Henry III. at Oxford in 1233. Bacon when a young man studied there under Robert Grosseteste and Adam of Marsh. He frequently refers to both, and always with respect. His chief enthusiasm is for the former. For years this admirable man was chancellor of Oxford; until made bishop of Lincoln in 1235. Although never a Franciscan, he was the Order’s devoted friend, and lectured in its house at Oxford. Grosseteste founded the study of Greek at Oxford, and collected treatises upon Greek grammar. Bacon, following him, wrote a Greek grammar. Grosseteste, before Bacon, devoted himself to physics and mathematics, and all that these many-branched sciences might include. Besides a taste for these studies Bacon may have had from him the idea that they were useful for theology. “No one,” says Bacon, “knew the sciences save Lord Robert, Bishop of Lincoln, from his length of life and experience, and studiousness and industry, and because he knew mathematics and optics, and was able to know all things; and he knew enough of the languages to understand the saints and philosophers of antiquity; but not enough to translate them, unless towards the end of his life when he invited Greeks, and had books of Greek grammar gathered from Greece and elsewhere.”[616] There is evidence that others at Oxford, besides Grosseteste, were interested in the study of Greek and natural science.

From Oxford Bacon went to Paris, where apparently he remained for a number of years; he was made a doctor there, and afterwards became a Franciscan. Since a monk could own nothing, one may perhaps infer that Bacon did not join the Order until after the lapse of certain twenty years of scientific research, in which he spent much money, as he says in 1267, in an often-quoted passage of the _Opus tertium_:

“For now I have laboured from my youth in the sciences and languages, and for the furtherance of study, getting together much that is useful. I sought the friendship of all wise men among the Latins, and caused youth to be instructed in languages, and geometric figures, in numbers and tables and instruments, and many needful matters. I examined everything useful to the purpose, and I know how to proceed, and with what means, and what are the impediments: but I cannot go on for lack of the funds which are needed. Through the twenty years in which I laboured specially in the study of wisdom, careless of the crowd’s opinion, I spent more than two thousand pounds in these pursuits on occult books (_libros secretos_) and various experiments, and languages and instruments, and tables and other things.”[617]

After his first stay at Paris Bacon returned to Oxford. There he doubtless continued his researches, and divulged them, or taught in some way. For he roused the suspicions of his Order, and in the course of time was sent or conducted back to Paris, where constraint seems to have been put upon his actions and utterances. Like the first, this second, possibly enforced, stay was a long one; he speaks of himself in the first chapter of the _Opus tertium_ as “for ten years an exile.” Yet here as always, one is not quite certain how literally to take Bacon’s personal statements, either touching himself or others.

A short period of elation was at hand. He had evidently been forbidden to write, or spread his ideas; he had been disciplined at times with a diet of bread and water. All this had failed to sweeten his temper, or conform his mind to current views. In 1265, an open-minded man who had been a jurist, a warrior, and the counsellor of a king, before becoming an ecclesiastic, was made Pope Clement IV. While living in Paris he had been interested in Bacon’s work. Soon after the papal election our sore-bestead philosopher managed to communicate with him, as appears by the pope’s reply, written from Viterbo, in July 1266:

“To our beloved son, Brother Roger, called Bacon, of the Order of Brothers Minorites. We have received with pleasure the letter of thy devotion; and we have well considered what our beloved son called Bonecor, Knight, has by word of mouth set forth to us, with fidelity and prudence. So then, that we may understand more clearly what thou purposest, it is our will, and we command thee by our Apostolic mandate that, notwithstanding the prohibition of any prelate, or any constitution of thy Order, thou sendest to us speedily in good script that work which, while we held a minor office, we requested thee to communicate to our beloved son Raymond, of Laudunum. Also, we command thee to set forth in a letter what remedies thou deemest should be applied to those matters which thou didst recently speak of as fraught with such peril. Do this as secretly as possible without delay.”[618]

Poor Bacon! The pope’s letter roused him to ecstasy, then put him in a quandary, and elicited elaborate apologies, and the flood of persuasive exposition which he poured forth with tremulous haste in the eighteen months following. Delight at being solicited by the head of Christendom breaks out in hyperbole, not to be wondered at: he is uplifted and cast prone; that his littleness and multiple ignorance, his tongue-tied mouth and rasping pen, and himself unlistened to by all men, a buried man delivered to oblivion, should be called on by the pope’s wisdom for wisdom’s writings (_sapientales scripturas_)!

“The Saviour’s vicar, the ruler of the orb, has deigned to solicit me, who am scarcely to be numbered among the particles of the world--_inter partes universae_! Yet, while my weakness is oppressed with the glory of this mandate, I am raised above my own powers; I feel a fervour of spirit; I rise up in strength. And indeed I ought to overflow with gratitude since your beatitude commands what I have desired, what I have worked out with sweat, and gleaned through great expenditures.”[619]

The word “expenditures” touches one horn of Bacon’s dilemma. He is a Franciscan; therefore penniless; and, besides that, apparently under the restraining ban of his own Order. The pope has enjoined secrecy; therefore Bacon cannot set up the papal mandate against the probable interference of his own superiors. The pope has sent no funds; sitting _in culmine mundi_ he was too busy with high affairs to think of that.[620] And now comes the chief matter for Bacon’s apologies: his Beatitude misapprehends, has been misinformed: the work is not yet written; it is still to be composed.

In spite of these obstacles the friendless but resourceful philosopher somehow obtained opportunity to write, and the means needed for the fair copy. And then in those great eighteen, or perhaps but fifteen, months, what a flood of enlightenment, of reforming criticism, of plans of study and methods of investigation, of examples and sketches of the matter to be prepared or discovered, is poured forth. Four works we know of,[621] and they may have made the greater part of all that Bacon ever actually wrote. With variations of emphasis, of abridgement and elaboration, the four have the one purpose to convince the pope of the enormous value of Bacon’s scheme of useful and saving knowledge. To a great extent they set forth the same matters; indeed the _Opus tertium_ was intended to convey the substance of the _Opus majus_, should that fail to reach the pope. So there is much repetition and some disorder in these eager, hurried works, defects which emphasise the dramatic situation of the impetuous genius whose pent-up utterance was loosed at last. The _Opus minus_ and the _Vatican Fragment_ are as from a man overpowered by the eagerness to say everything at once, lest the night close in before he have chance of speech. And when the _Opus majus_ was at last sent forth, accompanied by the _Opus minus_, as a battleship by a light armed cruiser, the _Opus tertium_ was despatched after them, filled with the same militant exposition, for fear the former two should perish _en voyage_.

Did they ever reach the pope? We may presume so. Did he read any one of them? Here there is no information. Popes were the busiest men in Europe, and death was so apt to cut short their industry. Clement died the next year, and so far as known, no syllable of acknowledgement from him ever reached the feverishly expectant philosopher.

A few words will tell the rest. In 1271, apparently, Bacon wrote his _Compendium studii philosophiae_, taking the occasion to denounce the corruptions of Church and society in unmeasured terms. He rarely measured his vituperation! His life was setting on toward its long last trial. In 1277, Jerome of Ascoli, the General of the Franciscan Order, held a Chapter at Paris, and Bacon was condemned to imprisonment (_carceri condempnatus_) because of his teachings, which contained _aliquas novitates suspectas_.[622] Jerome became Pope Nicholas IV. At a Chapter of the Order held in Paris in 1292, just after his death, certain prisoners condemned in 1277, were set free. Roger Bacon probably was among the number. If so, it was in the year of his liberation that he wrote a tract entitled _Compendium theologiae_; for that was written in 1292. This is the last we hear of him. But as he must now have been hard on to eighty, probably he did not live much longer.

There seems to have been nothing exceptional in Bacon’s attitude toward Scripture and the doctrines of the Church. He deemed, with other mediaeval men, that Scripture held, at least implicitly, the sum of knowledge useful or indeed possible for men. True, neither the Old Testament nor the New treats of grammar, or physics, or of minerals, or plants, or animals. Nevertheless, the statements in these revealed writings are made with complete knowledge of every topic or thing considered or referred to--bird, beast, and plant, the courses of the stars, the earth and its waters, yea, the arts of song or agriculture, and the principles of every science. Conversely (and here Bacon even gave fresh emphasis and novel pointings to the current view) all knowledge whatsoever, every art and science, is needed for the full understanding of Scripture, _sacra doctrina_, in a word, theology. This opinion may hold large truth; but Bacon’s advocacy of it sometimes affects us as a _reductio ad absurdum_, especially when he is proceeding on the assumption that the patriarchs and prophets had knowledge of all sciences, including astrology and the connection between the courses of the stars and the truth of Christianity.

There was likewise nothing startling in Bacon’s view of the Fathers, and their knowledge and authoritativeness. Thomas did not regard them as inspired. Neither did Bacon; he respects them, yet discerns limitations to their knowledge; by reason of their circumstances they may have neglected certain of the sciences; but this is no reason why we should.[623]

As for the ancient philosophers, Bacon holds to their partial inspiration. “God illuminated their minds to desire and perceive the truths of philosophy. He even disclosed the truth to them.”[624] They received their knowledge from God, indirectly as it were, through the prophets, to whom God revealed it directly. More than once and with every detail of baseless tradition, he sets forth the common view that the Greek philosophers studied the prophets, and drew their wisdom from that source.[625] But their knowledge was not complete; and it behoves us to know much that is not in Aristotle.[626]

“The study of wisdom may always increase in this life, because nothing is perfect in human discoveries. Therefore, we later men ought to supplement the defects of the ancients, since we have entered into their labours, through which, unless we are asses, we may be incited to improve upon them. It is most wretched always to be using what has been attained, and never reach further for one’s self.”[627]

It may be that Bacon was suspected of raising the philosophers too near the Christian level; and perhaps his argument that their knowledge had come from the prophets may have seemed a vain excuse. Says he, for example:

“There was a great book of Aristotle upon civil science,[628] well agreeing with the Christian law; for the law of Aristotle has precepts like the Christian law, although much is added in the latter excelling all human science. The Christian law takes whatever is worthy in the civil philosophical law. For God gave the philosophers all truth, as the saints, and especially Augustine, declare.... And what noble thoughts have they expressed upon God, the blessed Trinity, the Incarnation, Christ, the blessed Virgin, and the angels.”[629]

Possibly one is here reminded of Abaelard, and his thought of Christianity as _reformatio legis naturalis_. Yet Christ had said, He came not to destroy, but to fulfil; and the chief Christian theologians had followed Augustine in “despoiling the Egyptians” as he phrased it; the very process which in fact was making the authority of Aristotle supreme in Bacon’s time. So there was little that was peculiar or suspicious in Bacon’s admiration of the philosophers.

The trouble with Bacon becomes clearer as we turn to his views upon the state of knowledge in his time, and the methods of contemporary doctors in rendering it worse, rather than better. These doctors were largely engaged upon _sacra doctrina_; they were primarily theologians and expounders of the truth of revelation. Bacon’s criticism of their methods might disparage that to which those methods were applied. His caustic enumeration of the four everlasting causes of error, and the seven vices infecting the study of theology, will show reason enough why his error-stricken and infected contemporaries wished to close his mouth. The anxiousness of some might sour to enmity under the acerbity of his attack; nor would their hearts be softened by Bacon’s boasting that these various doctors, of course including Albert, could not write in ten years what he is sending to the pope.[630] Bacon declares that there is at Paris a great man (was it Albert? was it Thomas?), who is set up as an authority in the schools, like Aristotle or Averroes; and his works display merely “infinite puerile vanity,” “ineffable falsity,” superfluous verbiage, and the omission of the most needful parts of philosophy.[631] Bacon is not content with abusing members of the rival Dominican Order; but includes in his contempt the venerable Alexander of Hales, the defunct light of the Franciscans. “_Nullum ordinem excludo_,” cries he, in his sweeping denunciation of his epoch’s rampant sins. As for the seculars, why, they can only lecture by stealing the copy-books of the “boys” in the “aforesaid Orders.”[632] “Never,” says Bacon in the _Compendium studii_ from which the last phrases are taken, “has there been such a show of wisdom, nor such prosecution of study in so many faculties through so many regions as in the last forty years. Doctors are spread everywhere, especially in theology, in every city, castle, and burg, chiefly through the two student Orders. Yet there was never so great ignorance and so much error--as shall appear from this writing.”[633]

Bacon never loses a chance of stating the four causes of the error and ignorance about him. These causes preyed upon his mind--he would have said they preyed upon the age. They are elaborately expounded in pars i. of the _Opus majus_:[634]

“There are four principal stumbling blocks (_offendicula_) to comprehending truth, which hinder well-nigh every one: the example of frail and unworthy authority, long-established custom, the sense of the ignorant crowd (_vulgi sensus imperiti_), and the hiding of one’s own ignorance under the pretence of wisdom. In these, every man is involved and every state beset. For in every act of life, or business, or study, these three worst arguments are used for the same conclusion: this was the way of our ancestors, this is the custom, this is the common view: therefore should be held. But the opposite of this conclusion follows much better from the premises, as I will prove through authority, experience, and reason. If these three are sometimes refuted by the glorious power of reason, the fourth is always ready, as a gloss for foolishness; so that, though a man know nothing of any value, he will impudently magnify it, and thus, soothing his wretched folly, defeat truth. From these deadly pests come all the evils of the human race; for the noblest and most useful documents of wisdom are ignored, and the secrets of the arts and sciences. Worse than this, men blinded by the darkness of these four do not see their ignorance, but take every care to palliate that for which they do not find the remedy; and what is the worst, when they are in the densest shades of error, they deem themselves in the full light of truth.”[635]

Therefore they think the true the false, and spend their time and money vainly, says Bacon with many strainings of phrase.

“There is no remedy,” continues Bacon, “against the first three causes of error save as with all our strength we set the sound authors above the weak ones, reason above custom, and the opinions of the wise above the humours of the crowd; and do not trust in the triple argument: this has precedent, this is customary, this is the common view.” But the fourth cause of error is the worst of all. “For this is a lone and savage beast, which devours and destroys all reason,--this desire of seeming wise, with which every man is born.” Bacon arraigns this cause of evil, through numerous witnesses, sacred and profane. It has two sides: display of pretended knowledge, and excusing of ignorance. Infinite are the verities of God and the creation: let no one boast of knowledge. It is not for man to glory in his wisdom; faith goes beyond man’s knowledge; and still much is unrevealed. In forty years we learn no more than could be taught youth in one. I have profited more from simple men “than from all my famous doctors.”

Bacon’s four universal causes of ignorance indicate his general attitude. More specific criticisms upon the academic methods of his time are contained in his _septem peccata studii principalis quod est theologiae_. This is given in the _Opus minus_.[636] Bacon, it will be remembered, says again and again that all sciences must serve theology, and find their value from that service: the science of theology includes every science, and should use each as a handmaid for its own ends. Accordingly, when Bacon speaks of the seven vices of the _studium principale quod est theologia_, we may expect him to point out vicious methods touching all branches of study, yet with an eye to their common service of their mistress.

“Seven are the vices of the chief study which is theology; the first is that philosophy in practice dominates theology. But it ought not to dominate in any province beyond itself, and surely not the science of God, which leads to eternal life.... The greater part of all the quaestiones in a _Summa theologiae_ is pure philosophy, with arguments and solutions; and there are infinite quaestiones concerning the heavens, and concerning matter and being, and concerning species and the similitudes of things, and concerning cognition through such; also concerning eternity and time, and how the soul is in the body, and how angels move locally, and how they are in a place, and an infinitude of like matters which are determined in the books of the philosophers. To investigate these difficulties does not belong to theologians, according to the main intent and subject of their work. They ought briefly to recite these truths as they find them determined in philosophy. Moreover, the other matter of the quaestiones which concerns what is proper to theology, as concerning the Blessed Trinity, the Incarnation, the Sacraments, is discussed principally through the authorities, arguments, and distinctions of philosophy.”

Evidently, this first vice of theological study infected the method of Albert and Thomas, and of practically all other theologians! Its correction might call for a complete reversal of method. But the reversal desired by Bacon would scarcely have led back to Gospel simplicity, as may be seen from what follows.

“The second vice is that the best sciences, which are those most clearly pertinent to theology, are not used by theologians. I refer to the grammar of the foreign tongues from which all theology comes. Of even more value are mathematics, optics, moral science, experimental science, and alchemy. But the cheap sciences (_scientiae viles_) are used by theologians, like Latin grammar, logic, natural philosophy in its baser part, and a certain side of metaphysics. In these there is neither the good of the soul, nor the good of the body, nor the good things of fortune. But moral philosophy draws out the good of the soul, as far as philosophy may. Alchemy is experimental and, with mathematics and optics, promotes the good of the body and of fortune.... While the grammar of other tongues gives theology and moral philosophy to the Latins.... Oh! what madness is it to neglect sciences so useful for theology, and be sunk in those which are impertinent!

“The third vice is that the theologians are ignorant of those four sciences which they use; and therefore accept a mass of false and futile propositions, taking the doubtful for certain, the obscure for evident; they suffer alike from superfluity and the lack of what is necessary, and so stain theology with infinite vices which proceed from sheer ignorance.” For they are ignorant of Greek and Hebrew and Arabic, and therefore ignorant of all the sciences contained in these tongues; and they have relied on Alexander of Hales and others as ignorant as themselves. The fourth vice is that they study and lecture on the _Sentences_ of the Lombard, instead of the text of Scripture; and the lecturers on the _Sentences_ are preferred in honour, while any one who would lecture on Scripture has to beg for a room and hour to be set him.

“The fifth fault is greater than all the preceding. The text of Scripture is horribly corrupt in the Vulgate copy at Paris.”

Bacon goes at some length into the errors of the Vulgate, and gives a good account of the various Latin versions of the Bible. Next, the “_sextum peccatum_ is far graver than all, and may be divided into two _peccata maxima_: one is that through these errors the literal sense of the Vulgate has infinite falsities and intolerable uncertainties, so that the truth cannot be known. From this follows the other _peccatum_, that the spiritual sense is infected with the same doubt and error.” These errors, first in the literal meaning, and thence in the spiritual or allegorical significance, spring from ignorance of the original tongues, and from ignorance of the birds and beasts and objects of all sorts spoken of in the Bible. “By far the greater cause of error, both in the literal and spiritual meaning, rises from ignorance of things in Scripture. For the literal sense is in the natures and properties of things, in order that the spiritual meaning may be elicited through convenient adaptations and congruent similitudes.” Bacon cites Augustine to show that we cannot understand the precept, _Estote prudentes sicut serpentes_, unless we know that it is the serpent’s habit to expose his body in defence of his head, as the Christian should expose all things for the sake of his head, which is Christ. Alack! is it for such ends as these that Bacon would have a closer scholarship fostered, and natural science prosecuted? The text of the _Opus minus_ is broken at this point, and one cannot say whether Bacon had still a seventh _peccatum_ to allege, or whether the series ended with the second of the vices into which he divided the sixth.

Bacon’s strictures upon the errors of his time were connected with his labours to remedy them, and win a firmer knowledge than dialectic could supply. To this end he advocated the study of the ancient languages, which he held to be “the first door of wisdom, and especially for the Latins, who have not the text, either of theology or philosophy, except from foreign languages.”[637] His own knowledge of Greek was sufficient to enable him to read passages in that tongue, and to compose a Greek grammar.[638] But he shows no interest in the classical Greek literature, nor is there evidence of his having studied any important Greek philosopher in the original. He was likewise zealous for the study of Hebrew, Chaldee, and Arabic, the other foreign tongues which held the learning so inadequately represented by Latin versions. He spoke with some exaggeration of the demerits of the existing translations;[639] but he recognised the arduousness of the translator’s task, from diversity of idiom and the difficulty of finding an equivalent in Latin for the statements, for example, in the Greek. The Latin vocabulary often proved inadequate; and words had to be taken bodily from the original tongue. Likewise he saw, and so had others, though none had declared it so clearly, that the translator should not only be master of the two languages, but have knowledge of the subject treated by the work to be translated.[640]

After the languages, Bacon urged the pursuit of the sciences, which he conceived to be interdependent and corroborative; the conclusions of each of them susceptible of proof by the methods and data of the others.

“Next to languages,” says Bacon in chapter xxix. of the _Opus tertium_, “I hold mathematics necessary in the second place, to the end that we may know what may be known. It is not planted in us by nature, yet is closest to inborn knowledge, of all the sciences which we know through discovery and learning (_inventionem et doctrinam_). For its study is easier than all other sciences, and boys learn its branches readily. Besides, the laity can make diagrams, and calculate, and sing, and use musical instruments. All these are the _opera_ of mathematics.”

Thus, with antique and mediaeval looseness, Bacon conceived this science. He devotes to it the long _Pars quarta_ of the _Opus majus_: saying at the beginning that of--

“the four great sciences the gate and key is mathematics, which the saints found out (_invenerunt_) from the beginning of the world, and used more than all the other sciences. Its neglect for the past thirty or forty years has ruined the studies (_studium_) of the Latins. For whoso is ignorant of it cannot know the other sciences, nor the things of this world. But knowledge of this science prepares the mind and lifts it to the tested cognition (_certificatam cognitionem_) of all things.”

Bacon adduces authorities to prove the need of mathematics for the study of grammar and logic; he shows that its processes reach indubitable certitude of truth; and “if in other sciences we would reach certitude free from doubt, and truth without error, we must set the foundations of cognition in mathematics.”[641] He points out its obvious necessity in the study of the heavens, and in everything pertaining to speculative and practical _astrologia_; also for the study of physics and optics. Thus his interest lay chiefly in its application. As human science is nought unless it may be applied to things divine, mathematics must find its supreme usefulness in its application to the matters of theology. It should aid us in ascertaining the position of paradise and hell, and promote our knowledge of Scriptural geography, and more especially, sacred chronology. Next it affords us knowledge of the exact forms of things mentioned in Scripture, like the ark, the tabernacle, and the temple, so that from an accurate ascertainment of the literal sense, the true spiritual meaning may be deduced. It should not be confused with its evil namesake magic,[642] yet the true science is useful in determining the influence of the stars on the fortunes of states. Moreover, mathematics, through astrology, is of great importance in the certification of the faith, strengthening it against the sect of Antichrist;[643] then in the correction of the Church’s calendar; and finally, as all things and regions of the earth are affected by the heavens, astrology and mathematics are pertinent to a consideration of geography. And Bacon concludes _Pars quarta_ with an elaborate description of the regions, countries, and cities of the known world.

Bacon likewise was profoundly interested in optics, the _scientia perspectiva_, which he sets forth elaborately in _Pars quinta_ of the _Opus majus_. Much space would be needed to discuss his theories of light and vision, and the propagation of physical force, treated in the _De multiplicatione specierum_. He knew all that was to be learned from Greek and Arabic sources, and, unlike Albert, who compiled much of the same material, he used his knowledge to build with. Bacon had a genius for these sciences: his _Scientia perspectiva_ is no mere compilation, and no work used by him presented either a theory of force or of vision, containing as many adumbrations of later theorizing.[644] Yet he fails to cast off his obsession with the “spiritual meaning” and the utility of science for theology. He discussed the composition of Adam’s body while in a state of innocence,[645] a point that may seem no more tangible than Thomas’s reasonings upon the movements of Angels, which Bacon ridicules. Again in his _Optics_, after an interesting discussion of refraction and reflection, he cannot forego a consideration of the spiritual significations of refracted rays.[646] Even his discussion of experimental science has touches of mediaevalism, which are peculiarly dissonant in this most original and “advanced” product of Bacon’s genius, which now must be considered more specifically.

The speculative intellect of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was so widely absorbed with the matter and methods of the dominant scholasticism, that no one is likely to think of the eminent scholastics as isolated phenomena. Plainly they were but as the highest peaks which somewhat overtop the other mountains, through whose aggregation and support they were lifted to their supreme altitude. But with Bacon the danger is real lest he seem separate and unsupported; for the influences which helped to make him are not over-evident. Yet he did not make himself. The directing of his attention to linguistics is sufficiently accounted for by the influence of Grosseteste and others, who had inaugurated the study of Greek, and perhaps Hebrew at Oxford. As for physics or optics, others also were interested--or there would have been no translations of Greek and Arabic treatises for him to use;[647] and in mathematics there was a certain older contemporary, Jordanus Nemorarius (not to mention Leonardo Fibonacci), who far overtopped him. It is safe to assume that in the thirteenth, as in the twelfth and previous centuries, there were men who studied the phenomena of nature. But they have left scant record. A period is remembered by those features of its main accomplishment which are not superseded or obliterated by the further advance of later times. Nothing has obliterated the work of the scholastics for those who may still care for such reasonings; and Aquinas to-day holds sway in the Roman Catholic Church. On the other hand, the sparse footprints of the mediaeval men who essayed the paths of natural science have long since been trodden out by myriad feet passing far beyond them, along those ways. Yet there were these wayfarers, who made little stir in their own time, and have long been well forgotten. Had it not been for the letter from Pope Clement, Bacon himself might be among them; and only his writings keep from utter oblivion the name of an individual who, according to Bacon, carried the practice of “experimental science” further than he could hope to do. It may be fruitful to approach Bacon’s presentation of this science, or scientific method, through his references to this extraordinary Picard, named Peter of Maharncuria, or Maricourt.

In the _Opus tertium_, Bacon has been considering optics and mathematics, and has spoken of this Peter as proficient in them; and thus he opens