History of the English People, Volume II | Page 7

fiery haste remains in the book itself. The "Opus
Majus" is alike wonderful in plan and detail. Bacon's main purpose, in
the words of Dr. Whewell, is "to urge the necessity of a reform in the
mode of philosophizing, to set forth the reasons why knowledge had
not made a greater progress, to draw back attention to sources of
knowledge which had been unwisely neglected, to discover other
sources which were yet wholly unknown, and to animate men to the
undertaking by a prospect of the vast advantages which it offered." The
developement of his scheme is on the largest scale; he gathers together
the whole knowledge of his time on every branch of science which it
possessed, and as he passes them in review he suggests improvements
in nearly all. His labours, both here and in his after works, in the field
of grammar and philology, his perseverance in insisting on the
necessity of correct texts, of an accurate knowledge of languages, of an
exact interpretation, are hardly less remarkable than his scientific
investigations. From grammar he passes to mathematics, from
mathematics to experimental philosophy. Under the name of
mathematics indeed was included all the physical science of the time.
"The neglect of it for nearly thirty or forty years," pleads Bacon
passionately, "hath nearly destroyed the entire studies of Latin
Christendom. For he who knows not mathematics cannot know any
other sciences; and what is more, he cannot discover his own ignorance
or find its proper remedies." Geography, chronology, arithmetic, music,
are brought into something of scientific form, and like rapid sketches
are given of the question of climate, hydrography, geography, and
astrology. The subject of optics, his own especial study, is treated with
greater fulness; he enters into the question of the anatomy of the eye
besides discussing problems which lie more strictly within the province
of optical science. In a word, the "Greater Work," to borrow the phrase
of Dr. Whewell, is "at once the Encyclopedia and the Novum Organum
of the thirteenth century." The whole of the after-works of Roger
Bacon--and treatise after treatise has of late been disentombed from our
libraries--are but developements in detail of the magnificent conception
he laid before Clement. Such a work was its own great reward.

From the world around Roger Bacon could look for and found small
recognition. No word of acknowledgement seems to have reached its
author from the Pope. If we may credit a more recent story, his writings
only gained him a prison from his order. "Unheard, forgotten, buried,"
the old man died as he had lived, and it has been reserved for later ages
to roll away the obscurity that had gathered round his memory, and to
place first in the great roll of modern science the name of Roger Bacon.
[Sidenote: Scholasticism]
The failure of Bacon shows the overpowering strength of the drift
towards the practical studies, and above all towards theology in its
scholastic guise. Aristotle, who had been so long held at bay as the
most dangerous foe of mediæval faith, was now turned by the adoption
of his logical method in the discussion and definition of theological
dogma into its unexpected ally. It was this very method that led to "that
unprofitable subtlety and curiosity" which Lord Bacon notes as the vice
of the scholastic philosophy. But "certain it is"--to continue the same
great thinker's comment on the Friars--"that if these schoolmen to their
great thirst of truth and unwearied travel of wit had joined variety of
reading and contemplation, they had proved excellent lights to the great
advancement of all learning and knowledge." What, amidst all their
errors, they undoubtedly did was to insist on the necessity of rigid
demonstration and a more exact use of words, to introduce a clear and
methodical treatment of all subjects into discussion, and above all to
substitute an appeal to reason for unquestioning obedience to authority.
It was by this critical tendency, by the new clearness and precision
which scholasticism gave to enquiry, that in spite of the trivial
questions with which it often concerned itself it trained the human
mind through the next two centuries to a temper which fitted it to profit
by the great disclosure of knowledge that brought about the Renascence.
And it is to the same spirit of fearless enquiry as well as to the strong
popular sympathies which their very constitution necessitated that we
must attribute the influence which the Friars undoubtedly exerted in the
coming struggle between the people and the Crown. Their position is
clearly and strongly marked throughout the whole contest. The
University of Oxford, which soon fell under the direction of their

teaching, stood first in its resistance to Papal exactions and its claim of
English liberty. The classes in the towns, on whom