I observe, Messieurs of the "Atlantic," that your articles are commonly written in the imperial style; but I must beg allowance to use the first person singular. I cannot, like old Weller, spell myself with a We. Ours is, I believe, the only language that has shown so much sense of the worth of the individual (to himself) as to erect the first personal pronoun into a kind of votive column to the dignity of human nature. Other tongues have, or pretend, a greater modesty.
What a noble letter it is! In it every reader sees himself as in a glass. As for me, without my I-s, I should be as poorly off as the great mole of Hadrian, which, being the biggest, must be also, by parity of reason, the blindest in the world. When I was in college, I confess I always liked those passages best in the choruses of the Greek drama which were well sprinkled with ai ai, they were so grandly simple. The force of great men is generally to be found in their intense individuality,--in other words, it is all in their I. The merit of this essay will be similar.
What I was going to say is this.
My mind has been much exercised of late on the subject of two epidemics, which, showing themselves formerly in a few sporadic cases, have begun to set in with the violence of the cattle-disease: I mean Eloquence and Statuary. They threaten to render the country unfit for human habitation, except by the Deaf and Blind. We had hitherto got on very well in Chesumpscot, having caught a trick of silence, perhaps from the fish which we cured, more medicorum, by laying them out. But this summer some misguided young men among us got up a lecture-association. Of course it led to a general quarrel; for every pastor in the town wished to have the censorship of the list of lecturers. A certain number of the original projectors, however, took the matter wholly into their own hands, raised a subscription to pay expenses, and resolved to call their lectures "The Universal Brotherhood Course,"--for no other reason, that I can divine, but that they had set the whole village by the ears. They invited that distinguished young apostle of Reform, Mr. Philip Vandal, to deliver the opening lecture. He has just done so, and, from what I have heard about his discourse, it would have been fitter as the introductory to a nunnery of Kilkenny cats than to anything like universal brotherhood. He opened our lyceum as if it had been an oyster, without any regard for the feelings of those inside. He pitched into the world in general, and all his neighbors past and present in particular. Even the babe unborn did not escape some unsavory epithets in the way of vaticination. I sat down, meaning to write you an essay on "The Right of Private Judgment as distinguished from the Right of Public Vituperation"; but I forbear. It may be that I do not understand the nature of philanthropy.
Why, here is Philip Vandal, for example. He loves his kind so much that he has not a word softer than a brickbat for a single mother's son of them. He goes about to save them by proving that not one of them is worth damning. And he does it all from the point of view of an early (a knurly) Christian. Let me illustrate. I was sauntering along Broadway once, and was attracted by a bird-fancier's shop. I like dealers in out-of-the-way things,--traders in bigotry and virtue are too common,--and so I went in. The gem of the collection was a terrier,--a perfect beauty, uglier than philanthropy itself, and hairier, as a Cockney would say, than the 'ole British hairystocracy. "A'n't he a stunner?" said my disrespectable friend, the master of the shop. "Ah, you should see him worry a rat! He does it like a puffic Christian!" Since then, the world has been divided for me into Christians and perfect Christians; and I find so many of the latter species in proportion to the former, that I begin to pity the rats. They (the rats) have at least one virtue,--they are not eloquent.
It is, I think, a universally recognized truth of natural history, that a young lady is sure to fall in love with a young man for whom she feels at first an unconquerable aversion; and it must be on the same principle that the first symptoms of love for our neighbor almost always manifest themselves in a violent disgust at the world in general, on the part of the apostles of that gospel. They give every token of hating their neighbors consumedly; argal, they are going to be madly enamored of them. Or, perhaps, this is the manner in which Universal Brotherhood shows itself in people who wilfully subject themselves to infection as a prophylactic. In the natural way we might find the disease inconvenient and even expensive; but thus vaccinated with virus from the udders (whatever they may be) that yield the (butter-)milk of human kindness, the inconvenience is slight, and we are able still to go about our ordinary business of detesting our brethren as usual. It only shows that the milder type of the disease has penetrated the system, which will thus be enabled to out-Jenneral its more dangerous congener. Before long we shall have physicians of our ailing social system writing to the "Weekly Brandreth's Pill" somewhat on this wise:--"I have a very marked and hopeful case in Pequawgus Four Corners. Miss Hepzibah Tarbell, daughter of that arch-enemy of his kind, Deacon Joash T., attended only one of my lectures. In a day or two the symptoms of eruption were most encouraging. She has already quarrelled with all her family,--accusing her father of bigamy, her uncle Benoni of polytheism, her brother Zeno C. of aneurism, and her sister Eudoxy Trithemia of the variation of the magnetic needle. If ever hopes of seeing a perfect case of Primitive Christian were well-founded, I think we may entertain them now."
What I chiefly object to in the general denunciation sort of reformers
is that they make no allowance for character and temperament. They wish
to repeal universal laws, and to patch our natural skins for us, as if
they always wanted mending. That while they talk so much of the godlike
nature of man, they should so forget the human natures of men! The
Flathead Indian squeezes the child's skull between two boards till it
shapes itself into a kind of gambrel-roof against the rain,--the
readiest way, perhaps, of uniforming a tribe that wear no clothes. But
does he alter the inside of the head? Not a hair's-breadth. You remember
the striking old gnomic poem that tells how Aaron, in a moment of
fanatical zeal against that member by which mankind are so readily led
into mischief, proposes a rhinotomic sacrifice to Moses? What is the
answer of the experienced lawgiver?
"Says Moses to Aaron,
''Tis the fashion to wear 'em!'"
Shall we advise the Tadpole to get his tail cut off, as a badge of the
reptile nature in him, and to achieve the higher sphere of the Croakers
at a single hop? Why, it is all he steers by; without it, he would be as
helpless as a compass under the flare of Northern Lights; and he no
doubt regards it as a mark of blood, the proof of his kinship with the
preadamite family of the Saurians. Shall we send missionaries to the
Bear to warn him against raw chestnuts, because they are sometimes so
discomforting to our human intestines, which are so like his own? One
sermon from the colic were worth the whole American Board.
Moreover, as an author, I protest in the name of universal Grub Street against a unanimity in goodness. Not to mention that a Quaker world, all faded out to an autumnal drab, would be a little tedious,--what should we do for the villain of our tragedy or novel? No rascals, no literature. You have your choice. Were we weak enough to consent to a sudden homogeneousness in virtue, many industrious persons would be thrown out of employment. The wife and mother, for example, with as indeterminate a number of children as the Martyr Rogers, who visits me monthly,--what claim would she have upon me, were not her husband forever taking to drink, or the penitentiary, or Spiritualism? The pusillanimous lapse of her lord into morality would not only take the very ground of her invention from under her feet, but would rob her and him of an income that sustains them both in blissful independence of the curse of Adam. But do not let us be disheartened. Nature is strong; she is persistent; she completes her syllogism after we have long been feeding the roots of her grasses, and has her own way in spite of us. Some ancestral Cromwellian trooper leaps to life again in Nathaniel Greene, and makes a general of him, to confute five generations of Broadbrims. The Puritans were good in their way, and we enjoy them highly as a preterite phenomenon: but they were not good at cakes and ale, and that is one reason why they are a preterite phenomenon.
I suppose we are all willing to let a public censor like P.V. run amuck whenever he likes,--so it be not down our street. I confess to a good deal of tolerance in this respect, and, when I live in Number 21, have plenty of stoicism to spare for the griefs of the dwellers in No. 23. Indeed, I agreed with our young Cato heartily in what he said about Statues. We must have an Act for the Suppression, either of Great Men, or else of Sculptors. I have not quite made up my mind which are the greater nuisances; but I am sure of this, that there are too many of both. They used to be rare, (to use a Yankeeism omitted by Bartlett,) but nowadays they are overdone. I am half-inclined to think that the sculptors club together to write folks up during their lives in the newspapers, quieting their consciences with the hope of some day making them look so mean in bronze or marble as to make all square again. Or do we really have so many? Can't they help growing twelve feet high in this new soil, any more than our maize? I suspect that Posterity will not thank us for the hereditary disease of Carrara we are entailing on him, and will try some heroic remedy, perhaps lithotripsy.
Nor was I troubled by what Mr. Vandal said about the late Benjamin Webster. I am not a Boston man, and have, therefore, the privilege of thinking for myself. Nor do I object to his claiming for women the right to make books and pictures and (shall I say it?) statues,--only this last becomes a grave matter, if we are to have statues of all the great women, too! To be sure, there will not be the trousers-difficulty,--at least, not at present; what we may come to is none of my affair. I even go beyond him in my opinions on what is called the Woman Question. In the gift of speech, they have always had the advantage of us; and though the jealousy of the other sex have deprived us of the orations of Xantippe, yet even Demosthenes does not seem to have produced greater effects, if we may take the word of Socrates for it,--as I, for one, very gladly do.
No,--what I complain of is not the lecturer's opinions, but the eloquence with which he expressed them. He does not like statues better than I do; but is it possible that he fails to see that the one nuisance leads directly to the other, and that we set up three images of Talkers for one to any kind of man who was useful in his generation? Let him beware, or he will himself be petrified after death. Boston seems to be specially unfortunate. She has more statues and more speakers than any other city on this continent. I have with my own eyes seen a book called "The Hundred Boston Orators." This would seem to give her a fairer title to be called the tire than the hub of creation. What with the speeches of her great men while they are alive, and those of her surviving great men about those aforesaid after they are dead, and those we look forward to from her ditto ditto yet to be upon her ditto ditto now in being, and those of her paulopost ditto ditto upon her ditto ditto yet to be, and those--But I am getting into the house that Jack built. And yet I remember once visiting the Massachusetts State-House and being struck with the Pythagorean fish hung on high in the Representatives' Chamber, the emblem of a silence too sacred, as would seem, to be observed except on Sundays. Eloquent Philip Vandal, I appeal to you as a man and a brother, let us two form (not an Antediluvian, for there are plenty, but) an Antidiluvian Society against the flood of milk-and-water that threatens the land. Let us adopt as our creed these two propositions:--
I. Tongues were given us to be held.
II. Dumbness sets the brute below the man: Silence elevates the man above the brute.
Every one of those hundred orators is to me a more fearful thought than that of a hundred men gathering samphire. And when we take into account how large a portion of them (if the present mania hold) are likely to be commemorated in stone or some even more durable material, the conception is positively stunning. Let us settle all scores by subscribing to a colossal statue of the late Town-Crier in bell-metal, with the inscription, "VOX ET PRAETEREA NIHIL," as a comprehensive tribute to oratorical powers in general. He, at least, never betrayed his clients. As it is, there is no end to it. We are to set up Horatius Vir in effigy for inventing the Normal Schoolmaster, and by-and-by we shall be called on to do the same ill-turn for Elihu Mulciber for getting uselessly learned (as if any man had ideas enough for twenty languages!) without any schoolmaster at all. We are the victims of a droll antithesis. Daniel would not give in to Nebuchadnezzar's taste in statuary, and we are called on to fall down and worship an image of Daniel which the Assyrian monarch would have gone to grass again sooner than have it in his back-parlor. I do not think lions are agreeable, especially the shaved-poodle variety one is so apt to encounter;--I met one once at an evening party. But I would be thrown into a den of them rather than sleep in the same room with that statue. Posterity will think we cut pretty figures indeed in the monumental line! Perhaps there is a gleam of hope and a symptom of convalescence in the fact that the Prince of Wales, during his late visit, got off without a single speech. The cheerful hospitalities of Mount Auburn were offered to him, as to all distinguished strangers, but nothing more melancholy. In his case I doubt the expediency of the omission. Had we set a score or two of orators on him and his suite, it would have given them a more intimidating notion of the offensive powers of the country than West Point and all the Navy-Yards put together.
In the name of our common humanity, consider, too, what shifts our friends in the sculpin line (as we should call them in Chesumpscot) are put to for originality of design, and what the country has to pay for it. The Clark Mills (that turns out equestrian statues as the Stark Mills do calico-patterns) has pocketed fifty thousand dollars for making a very dead bronze horse stand on his hind-legs. For twenty-five cents I have seen a man at the circus do something more wonderful,--make a very living bay horse dance a redowa round the amphitheatre on his (it occurs to me that hind-legs is indelicate) posterior extremities to the wayward music of an out-of-town (Scotice, out-o'-toon) band. Now, I will make a handsome offer to the public. I propose for twenty-five thousand dollars to suppress my design for an equestrian statue of a distinguished general officer as he would have appeared at the Battle of Buena Vista. This monument is intended as a weathercock to crown the new dome of the Capitol at Washington. By this happy contrivance, the horse will be freed from the degrading necessity of touching the earth at all,--thus distancing Mr. Mills by two feet in the race for originality. The pivot is to be placed so far behind the middle of the horse, that the statue, like its original, will always indicate which way the wind blows by going along with it. The inferior animal I have resolved to model from a spirited saw-horse in my own collection. In this way I shall combine two striking advantages. The advocates of the Ideal in Art cannot fail to be pleased with a charger which embodies, as it were, merely the abstract notion or quality, Horse, and the attention of the spectator will not be distracted from the principal figure. The material to be pure brass. I have also in progress an allegorical group commemorative of Governor Wise. This, like-Wise, represents only a potentiality. I have chosen, as worthy of commemoration, the moment when and the method by which the Governor meant to seize the Treasury at Washington. His Excellency is modelled in the act of making one of his speeches. Before him a despairing reporter kills himself by falling on his own steel pen; a broken telegraph-wire hints at the weight of the thoughts to which it has found itself inadequate; while the Army and Navy of the United States are conjointly typified in a horse-marine who flies headlong with his hands pressed convulsively over his ears. I think I shall be able to have this ready for exhibition by the time Mr. Wise is nominated for the Presidency,--certainly before he is elected. The material to be plaster, made of the shells of those oysters with which Virginia shall have paid her public debt. It may be objected, that plaster is not durable enough for verisimilitude, since bronze itself could hardly be expected to outlast one of the Governor's speeches. But it must be remembered that his mere effigy cannot, like its prototype, have the pleasure of hearing itself talk; so that to the mind of the spectator the oratorical despotism is tempered with some reasonable hope of silence. This design, also, is intended only in terrorem, and will be suppressed for an adequate consideration.
I find one comfort, however, in the very hideousness of our statues. The fear of what the sculptors will do for them after they are gone may deter those who are careful of their memories from talking themselves into greatness. It is plain that Mr. Caleb Cushing has begun to feel a wholesome dread of this posthumous retribution. I cannot in any other way account for that nightmare of the solitary horseman on the edge of the horizon, in his Hartford Speech. His imagination is infected with the terrible consciousness, that Mr. Mills, as the younger man, will, in the course of Nature, survive him, and will be left loose to seek new victims of his nefarious designs. Formerly the punishment of the wooden horse was a degradation inflicted on private soldiers only; but Mr. Mills (whose genius could make even Pegasus look wooden, in whatever material) flies at higher game, and will be content with nothing short of a general. Mr. Cushing advises extreme measures. He counsels us to sell our real estate and stocks, and to leave a country where no man's reputation with posterity is safe, being merely as clay in the hands of the sculptor. To a mind undisturbed by the terror natural in one whose military reputation insures his cutting and running, (I mean, of course, in marble and bronze,) the question becomes an interesting one,--To whom, in case of a general exodus, shall we sell? The statues will have the land all to themselves,--until the Aztecs, perhaps, repeopling their ancient heritage, shall pay divine honors to these images, whose ugliness will revive the traditions of the classic period of Mexican Art. For my own part, I never look at one of them now without thinking of at least one human sacrifice.
I doubt the feasibility of Mr. Cushing's proposal, and yet something ought to be done. We must put up with what we have already, I suppose, and let Mr. Webster stand threatening to blow us all up with his pistol pointed at the elongated keg of gunpowder on which his left hand rests,--no bad type of the great man's state of mind after the nomination of General Taylor, or of what a country member would call a penal statue. But do we reflect that Vermont is half marble, and that Lake Superior can send us bronze enough for regiments of statues? I go back to my first plan of a prohibitory enactment. I had even gone so far as to make a rough draught of an Act for the Better Observance of the Second Commandment; but it occurred to me that convictions under it would be doubtful, from the difficulty of satisfying a jury that our graven images did really present a likeness to any of the objects enumerated in the divine ordinance. Perhaps a double-barrelled statute might be contrived that would meet both the oratorical and the monumental difficulty. Let a law be passed that all speeches delivered more for the benefit of the orator than that of the audience, and all eulogistic ones of whatever description, be pronounced in the chapel of the Deaf and Dumb Asylum, and all statues be set up within the grounds of the Institution for the Blind. Let the penalty for infringement in the one case be to read the last President's Message, and in the other to look at the Webster statue one hour a day, for a term not so long as to violate the spirit of the law forbidding cruel and unusual punishments.
Perhaps it is too much to expect of our legislators that they should pass so self-denying an ordinance. They might, perhaps, make all oratory but their own penal, and then (who knows?) the reports of their debates might be read by the few unhappy persons who were demoniacally possessed by a passion for that kind of thing, as girls are sometimes said to be by an appetite for slate-pencils. Vita brevis, lingua longa. I protest that among law-givers I respect Numa, who declared, that, of all the Camenae, Tacita was most worthy of reverence. The ancient Greeks also (though they left too much oratory behind them) had some good notions, especially if we consider that they had not, like modern Europe, the advantage of communication with America. Now the Greeks had a Muse of Beginning, and the wonder is, considering how easy it is to talk and how hard to say anything, that they did not hit upon that other and more excellent Muse of Leaving-off. The Spartans, I suspect, found her out and kept her selfishly to themselves. She were indeed a goddess to be worshipped, a true Sister of Charity among that loquacious sisterhood!
Endlessness is the order of the day. I ask you to compare Plutarch's lives of demigods and heroes with our modern biographies of deminoughts and zeroes. Those will appear but tailors and ninth-parts of men in comparison with these, every one of whom would seem to have had nine lives, like a cat, to justify such prolixity. Yet the evils of print are as dust in the balance to those of speech.
We were doing very well in Chesumpscot, but the Lyceum has ruined all. There are now two debating-clubs, seminaries of multiloquence. A few of us old-fashioned fellows have got up an opposition club and called it "The Jolly Oysters." No member is allowed to open his mouth except at high-tide by the calendar. We have biennial festivals on the evening of election-day, when the constituency avenges itself in some small measure on its Representative elect by sending a baker's dozen of orators to congratulate him.
But I am falling into the very vice I condemn,--like Carlyle, who has talked a quarter of a century in praise of holding your tongue. And yet something should be done about it. Even when we get one orator safely under-ground, there are ten to pronounce his eulogy, and twenty to do it over again when the meeting is held about the inevitable statue. I go to listen: we all go: we are under a spell. 'Tis true, I find a casual refuge in sleep; for Drummond of Hawthornden was wrong when he called Sleep the child of Silence. Speech begets her as often. But there is no sure refuge save in Death; and when my life is closed untimely, let there be written on my headstone, with impartial application to these Black Brunswickers mounted on the high horse of oratory and to our equestrian statues,--
Os sublime did it!
Fr. Rogeri Bacon Opera quaedam hactenus inedita. Vol. I, Containing, I. Opus Tertium,--II. Opus Minus,--III. Compendium Philosophiae. Edited by J.S. BREWER, M.A., Professor of English Literature, King's College, London, and Reader at the Rolls. Published by the Authority of the Lords Commissioners of Her Majesty's Treasury, under the Direction of the Master of the Rolls. London: Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts. 1859. 8vo. pp. c., 573.
Sir John Romilly has shown good judgment in including the unpublished works of Roger Bacon in the series of "Chronicles and Memorials of Great Britain and Ireland during the Middle Ages," now in course of publication under his direction. They are in a true sense important memorials of the period at which they were written, and, though but incidentally illustrating the events of the time, they are of great value in indicating the condition of thought and learning as well as the modes of mental discipline and acquisition during the thirteenth century.
The memory of Roger Bacon has received but scant justice. Although long since recognized as one of the chief lights of England during the Middle Ages, the clinging mist of popular tradition has obscured his real brightness and distorted its proportions, while even among scholars he has been more known by reputation than by actual acquaintance with his writings. His principal work, his "Opus Majus," was published for the first time in London in 1733, in folio, and afterwards at Venice in 1750, in the same form. Down to the publication of the volume before us, it was the only one of his writings of much importance which had been printed complete, if indeed it is to be called complete,--the Seventh Part having been omitted by the editor, Dr. Jebb, and never having since been published.
The facts known concerning Roger Bacon's life are few, and are so intermingled with tradition that it is difficult wholly to separate them from it. Born of a good family at Ilchester, in Somersetshire, near the beginning of the thirteenth century, he was placed in early youth at Oxford, whence, after completing his studies in grammar and logic, "he proceeded to Paris," says Anthony Wood, "according to the fashion prevalent among English scholars of those times, especially among the members of the University of Oxford." Here, under the famous masters of the day, he devoted himself to study for some years, and made such progress that he received the degree of Doctor in Divinity. Returning to Oxford, he seems soon to have entered into the Franciscan Order, for the sake of securing a freedom from worldly cares, that he might the more exclusively give himself to his favorite pursuits. At various times he lectured at the University. He spent some later years out of England, probably again in Paris. His life was embittered by the suspicions felt in regard to his studies by the brethren of his order, and by their opposition, which proceeded to such lengths that it is said he was cast into prison, where, according to one report, he died wretchedly. However this may have been, his death took place before the beginning of the fourteenth century. The scientific and experimental studies which had brought him into ill-favor with his own order, and had excited the suspicion against him of dealing in magic and forbidden arts, seem to have sown the seed of the popular traditions which at once took root around his name. Friar Bacon soon became, and indeed has remained almost to the present day, a half-mythical character. To the imagination of the common people, he was a great necromancer; he had had dealings with the Evil One, who had revealed many of the secrets of Nature to him; he had made a head of brass that could speak and foretell future events; and to him were attributed other not less wonderful inventions, which seem to have formed a common stock for popular legends of this sort during the Middle Ages, and to have been ascribed indiscriminately to one philosopher or another in various countries and in various times.[9] The references in our early literature to Friar Bacon, as one who had had familiarity with spirits and been a master in magic arts, are so numerous as to show that the belief in these stories was wide-spread, and that the real character of the learned Friar was quite given over to oblivion. But time slowly brings about its revenges; and the man whom his ignorant and stupid fellows thought fit to hamper and imprison, and whom popular credulity looked upon with that half-horror and half-admiration with which those were regarded who were supposed to have put their souls in pawn for the sake of tasting the forbidden fruit, is now recognized not only as one of the most profound and clearest thinkers of his time, but as the very first among its experimental philosophers, and as a prophet of truths which, then neglected and despised, have since been adopted as axioms in the progress of science. "The precursor of Galileo," says M. Hauréau, in his work on Scholastic Philosophy, "he learned before him how rash it is to offend the prejudices of the multitude, and to desire to give lessons to the ignorant."
The range of Roger Bacon's studies was encyclopedic, comprehending all the branches of learning then open to scholars. Brucker, in speaking of him in his History of Philosophy, has no words strong enough to express his admiration for his abilities and learning. "Seculi sui indolem multum superavit," "vir summus, tantaque occultioris philosophiae cognitione et experientia nobilis, ut merito Doctoris Mirabilis titulum reportaverit."[10] The logical and metaphysical studies, in the intricate subtilties of which most of the schoolmen of his time involved themselves, presented less attraction to Bacon than the pursuits of physical science and the investigation of Nature. His genius, displaying the practical bent of his English mind, turning with weariness from the endless verbal discussions of the Nominalists and Realists, and recognizing the impossibility of solving the questions which divided the schools of Europe into two hostile camps, led him to the study of branches of knowledge that were held in little repute. He recognized the place of mathematics as the basis of exact science, and proceeded to the investigation of the facts and laws of optics, mechanics, chemistry, and astronomy. But he did not limit himself to positive science; he was at the same time a student of languages and of language, of grammar and of music. He was versed not less in the arts of the Trivium than in the sciences of the Quadrivium.[11]
But in rejecting the method of study then in vogue, and in opposing the study of facts to that of questions which by their abstruseness fatigued the intellect, which were of more worth in sharpening the wit than in extending the limits of knowledge, and which led rather to vain contentions than to settled conclusions,--in thus turning from the investigation of abstract metaphysics to the study of Nature, Roger Bacon went so far before his age as to condemn himself to solitude, to misappreciation, and to posthumous neglect. Unlike men of far narrower minds, but more conformed to the spirit of the times, he founded no school, and left no disciples to carry out the system which he had advanced, and which was one day to have its triumph. At the end of the thirteenth century the scholastic method was far from having run its career. The minds of men were occupied with problems which it alone seemed to be able to resolve, and they would not abandon it at the will of the first innovator. The questions in dispute were embittered by personal feeling and party animosities. Franciscans and Dominicans were divided by points of logic not less than by the rules of their orders.[12] Ignorance and passion alike gave ardor to discussion, and it was vain to attempt to convince the heated partisans on one side or the other, that the truths they sought were beyond the reach of human faculties, and that their dialectics and metaphysics served to bewilder more than to enlighten the intellect. The disciples of subtile speculatists like Aquinas, or of fervent mystics like Bonaventura, were not likely to recognize the worth and importance of the slow processes of experimental philosophy.
The qualities of natural things, the limits of intellectual powers, the relations of man to the universe, the conditions of matter and spirit, the laws of thought, were too imperfectly understood for any man to attain to a comprehensive and correct view of the sources and methods of study and discovery of the truth. Bacon shared in what may he called, without a sneer, the childishnesses of his time, childishnesses often combined with mature powers and profound thought. No age is fully conscious of its own intellectual disproportions; and what now seem mere puerilities in the works of the thinkers of the Middle Ages were perhaps frequently the result of as laborious effort and as patient study as what we still prize in them for its manly vigor and permanent worth. In a later age, the Centuries of the "Sylva Sylvarum" afford a curious comment on the Aphorisms of the "Novum Organum."
The "Opus Majus" of Bacon was undertaken in answer to a demand of Pope Clement IV. in 1266, and was intended to contain a review of the whole range of science, as then understood, with the exception of logic. Clement had apparently become personally acquainted with Bacon, at the time when, as legate of the preceding Pope, he had been sent to England on an ineffectual mission to compose the differences between Henry III. and his barons, and he appears to have formed a just opinion of the genius and learning of the philosopher.
The task to which Bacon had been set by the Papal mandate was rapidly
accomplished, in spite of difficulties which might have overcome a less
resolute spirit; but the work extended to such great length in his
hands, that he seems to have felt a not unnatural fear that Clement,
burdened with the innumerable cares of the Pontificate, would not find
leisure for its perusal, much less for the study which some part of it
demanded. With this fear, fearful also that portions of his work might
be deficient in clearness, and dreading lest it might be lost on its way
to Rome, he proceeded to compose a second treatise, called the "Opus
Minus," to serve as an abstract and specimen of his greater work, and to
embrace some additions to its matter. Unfortunately, but a fragment of
this second work has been preserved, and this fragment is for the first
time published in the volume just issued under the direction of the
Master of the Rolls. But the "Opus Minus" was scarcely completed before
he undertook a third work, to serve as an introduction and preamble to
both the preceding. This has been handed down to us complete, and this,
too, is for the first time printed in the volume before us. We take the
account of it given by Professor Brewer, the editor, in his
introduction.
"Inferior to its predecessors in the importance
of its scientific details and the illustration
it supplies of Bacon's philosophy, it is
more interesting than either, for the insight
it affords of his labors, and of the numerous
obstacles he had to contend with in the execution
of his work. The first twenty chapters
detail various anecdotes of Bacon's personal
history, his opinions on the state of
education, the impediments thrown in his
way by the ignorance, the prejudices, the
contempt, the carelessness, the indifference
of his contemporaries. From the twentieth
chapter to the close of the volume he pursues
the thread of the Opus Majus, supplying what
he had there omitted, correcting and explaining
what had been less clearly or correctly
expressed in that or in the Opus Minus. In
Chapter LII. he apologizes for diverging from
the strict line he had originally marked out,
by inserting in the ten preceding chapters his
opinions on three abstruse subjects, Vacuum,
Motion, and Space, mainly in regard to their
spiritual significance. 'As these questions,'
he says,' are very perplexing and difficult, I
thought I would record what I had to say
about them in some one of my works. In the
Opus Majus and Opus Minus I had not studied
them sufficiently to prevail on myself to
commit my thoughts about them to writing;
and I was glad to omit them, owing to the
length of those works, and because I was
much hurried in their composition.' From the
fifty-second chapter to the close of the volume
he adheres to his subject without further digression,
but with so much vigor of thought
and freshness of observations, that, like the
Opus Minus, the Opus Tertium may be fairly
considered an independent work."--pp.
xliv-xlv.[13]
The details which Bacon gives of his personal history are of special interest as throwing light upon the habits of life of a scholar in the thirteenth century. Their autobiographic charm is increased by their novelty, for they give a view of ways of life of which but few particulars have been handed down.
Excusing himself for the delay which had occurred, after the reception of the Pope's letter, before the transmission of the writings he had desired, Bacon says that he was strictly prohibited by a rule of his Order from communicating to others any writing made by one of its members, under penalty of loss of the book, and a diet for many days of bread and water. Moreover, a fair copy could not be made, supposing that he succeeded in writing, except by scribes outside of the Order; and they might transcribe either for themselves or others, and through their dishonesty it very often happened that books were divulged at Paris.
"Then other far greater causes of delay occurred, on account of which I was often ready to despair; and a hundred times I thought to give up the work I had undertaken; and, had it not been for reverence for the Vicar of the only Saviour, and [regard to] the profit to the world to be secured through him alone, I would not have proceeded, against these hindrances, with this affair, for all those who are in the Church of Christ, however much they might have prayed and urged me. The first hindrance was from those who were set over me, to whom you had written nothing in my favor, and who, since I could not reveal your secret [commission] to them, being bound not to do so by your command of secrecy, urged me with unutterable violence, and with other means, to obey their will. But I resisted, on account of the bond of your precept, which obliged me to your work, in spite of every mandate of my superiors....
"But I met also with another hindrance, which was enough to put a stop to the whole matter, and this was the want of [means to meet] the expense. For I was obliged to pay out in this business more than sixty livres of Paris,[14] the account and reckoning of which I will set forth in their place hereafter. I do not wonder, indeed, that you did not think of these expenses, because, sitting at the top of the world, you have to think of so great and so many things that no one can estimate the cares of your mind. But the messengers who carried your letters were careless in not making mention to you of these expenses; and they were unwilling to expend a single penny, even though I told them that I would write to you an account of the expenses, and that to every one of them should be returned what was his. I truly have no money, as you know, nor can I have it, nor consequently can I borrow, since I have nothing wherewith to repay. I sent then to my rich brother, in my country, who, belonging to the party of the king, was exiled with my mother and my brothers and the whole family, and oftentimes being taken by the enemy redeemed himself with money, so that thus being ruined and impoverished, he could not assist me, nor even to this day have I had an answer from him.
"Considering, then, the reverence due to you, and the nature of your command, I solicited many and great people, the faces of some of whom you know well, but not their minds; and I told them that a certain affair of yours must he attended to by me in France, (but I did not disclose to them what it was,) the performance of which required a large sum of money. But how often I was deemed a cheat, how often repulsed, how often put off with empty hope, how often confused in myself, I cannot express. Even my friends did not believe me, because I could not explain to them the affair; and hence I could not advance by this way. In distress, therefore, beyond what can be imagined, I compelled serving-men and poor to expend all that they had, to sell many things, and to pawn others, often at usury; and I promised them that I would write to you every part of the expenses, and would in good faith obtain from you payment in full. And yet, on account of the poverty of these persons, I many times gave up the work, and many times despaired and neglected to proceed; and indeed, if I had known that you would not attend to the settling of these accounts, I would not for the whole world have gone on,--nay, rather, I would have gone to prison. Nor could I send special messengers to you for the needed sum, because I had no means. And I preferred to spend whatever I could procure in advancing the business rather than in despatching a messenger to you. And also, on account of the reverence due to you, I determined to make no report of expenses before sending to you something which might please you, and by ocular proof should give witness to its cost. On account, then, of all these things, so great a delay has occurred in this matter."[15]
There is a touching simplicity in this account of the trials by which he was beset, and it rises to dignity in connection with a sentence which immediately follows, in which he says, the thought of "the advantage of the world excited me, and the revival of knowledge, which now for many ages has lain dead, vehemently urged me forward." Motives such as these were truly needed to enable him to make head against such difficulties.
The work which he accomplished, remarkable as it is from its intrinsic qualities, is also surprising from the rapidity with which it was performed, in spite of the distractions and obstacles that attended it. It would seem that in less than two years from the date of Clement's letter, the three works composed in compliance with its demand were despatched to the Pope. Bacon's diligence must have been as great as his learning. In speaking, in another part of the "Opus Tertium," of the insufficiency of the common modes of instruction, he gives incidentally an account of his own devotion to study. "I have labored much," he says, "on the sciences and languages; it is now forty years since I first learned the alphabet, and I have always been studious; except two years of these forty, I have been always engaged in study; and I have expended much, [in learning,] as others generally do; but yet I am sure that within a quarter of a year, or half a year, I could teach orally, to a man eager and confident to learn, all that I know of the powers of the sciences and languages; provided only that I had previously composed a written compend. And yet it is known that no one else has worked so hard or on so many sciences and tongues; for men used to wonder formerly that I kept my life on account of my excessive labor, and ever since I have been as studious as I was then, but I have not worked so hard, because, through my practice in knowledge, it was not needful."[16] Again he says, that in the twenty years in which he had specially labored in the study of wisdom, neglecting the notions of the crowd, he had spent more than two thousand pounds [livres] in the acquisition of secret books, and for various experiments, instruments, tables, and other things, as well as in seeking the friendship of learned men, and in instructing assistants in languages, figures, the use of instruments and tables, and many other things. But yet, though he had examined everything that was necessary for the construction of a preliminary work to serve as a guide to the wisdom of philosophy, though he knew how it was to be done, with what aids, and what were the hindrances to it, still he could not proceed with it, owing to the want of means. The cost of employing proper persons in the work, the rarity and costliness of books, the expense of instruments and of experiments, the need of infinite parchment and many scribes for rough copies, all put it beyond his power to accomplish. This was his excuse for the imperfection of the treatise which he had sent to the Pope, and this was a work worthy to be sustained by Papal aid.[17]
The enumeration by Bacon of the trials and difficulties of a scholar's life at a time when the means of communicating knowledge were difficult, when books were rare and to be obtained only at great cost, when the knowledge of the ancient languages was most imperfect, and many of the most precious works of ancient philosophy were not to be obtained or were to be found only in imperfect and erroneous translations, depicts a condition of things in vivid contrast to the present facilities for the communication and acquisition of learning, and enables us in some degree to estimate the drawbacks under which scholars prosecuted their studies before the invention of printing. That with such impediments they were able to effect so much is wonderful; and their claim on the gratitude and respect of their successors is heightened by the arduous nature of the difficulties with which they were forced to contend. The value of their work receives a high estimate, when we consider the scanty means with which it was performed.
Complaining of the want of books, Bacon says,--"The books on philosophy by Aristotle and Avicenna, by Seneca and Tully and others, cannot be had except at great cost, both because the chief of them are not translated into Latin, and because of others not a copy is to be found in public schools of learning or elsewhere. For instance, the most excellent books of Tully De Republica are nowhere to be found, so far as I can hear, and I have been eager in the search for them in various parts of the world and with various agents. It is the same with many other of his books. The books of Seneca also, the flowers of which I have copied out for your Beatitude, I was never able to find till about the time of your mandate, although I had been diligent in seeking for them for twenty years and more."[18] Again, speaking of the corruption of translations, so that they are often unintelligible, as is especially the case with the books of Aristotle, he says that "there are not four Latins [that is, Western scholars] who know the grammar of the Hebrews, the Greeks, and the Arabians; for I am well acquainted with them, and have made diligent inquiry both here and beyond the sea, and have labored much in these things. There are many, indeed, who can speak Greek and Arabic and Hebrew, but scarcely any who know the principles of the grammar so as to teach it, for I have tried very many."[19]
In his treatise entitled "Compendium Studii Philosophiae," which is printed in this volume for the first time, he adds in relation to this subject,--"Teachers are not wanting, because there are Jews everywhere, and their tongue is the same in substance with the Arabic and the Chaldean, though they differ in mode.... Nor would it be much, for the sake of the great advantage of learning Greek, to go to Italy, where the clergy and the people in many places are purely Greek; moreover, bishops and archbishops and rich men and elders might send thither for books, and for one or for more persons who know Greek, as Lord Robert, the sainted Bishop of Lincoln,[20] did indeed do,--and some of those [whom he brought over] still survive in England."[21] The ignorance of the most noted clerks and lecturers of his day is over and over again the subject of Bacon's indignant remonstrance. They were utterly unable to correct the mistakes with which the translations of ancient works were full. "The text is in great part horribly corrupt in the copy of the Vulgate at Paris, ...and as many readers as there are, so many correctors, or rather corruptors, ...for every reader changes the text according to his fancy."[22] Even those who professed to translate new works of ancient learning were generally wholly unfit for the task. Hermann the German knew nothing of science, and little of Arabic, from which he professed to translate; but when he was in Spain, he kept Saracens with him who did the main part of the translations that he claimed. In like manner, Michael Scot asserted that he had made many translations; but the truth was, that a certain Jew named Andrew worked more than he upon them.[23] William Fleming was, however, the most ignorant and most presuming of all.[24] "Certain I am that it were better for the Latins that the wisdom of Aristotle had not been translated, than to have it thus perverted and obscured, ...so that the more men study it the less they know, as I have experienced with all who have stuck to these books. Wherefore my Lord Robert of blessed memory altogether neglected them, and proceeded by his own experiments, and with other means, until he knew the things concerning which Aristotle treats a hundred thousand times better than he could ever have learned them from those perverse translations. And if I had power over these translations of Aristotle, I would have every copy of them burned; for to study them is only a loss of time and a cause of error and a multiplication of ignorance beyond telling. And since the labors of Aristotle are the foundation of all knowledge, no one can estimate the injury done by means of these bad translations."[25]
Bacon had occasion for lamenting not only the character of the translations in use, but also the fact that many of the most important works of the ancients were not translated at all, and hence lay out of the reach of all but the rare scholars, like himself and his friend Grostête, who were able, through their acquaintance with the languages in which they were written, to make use of them, provided manuscripts could be found for reading. "We have few useful works on philosophy in Latin. Aristotle composed a thousand volumes, as we read in his Life, and of these we have but three of any notable size, namely,--on Logic, Natural History, and Metaphysics; so that all the other scientific works that he composed are wanting to the Latins, except some tractates and small little books, and of these but very few. Of his Logic two of the best books are deficient, which Hermann had in Arabic, but did not venture to translate. One of them, indeed, he did translate, or caused to be translated, but so ill that the translation is of no sort of value and has never come into use. Aristotle wrote fifty excellent books about Animals, as Pliny says in the eighth book of his Natural History, and I have seen them in Greek, and of these the Latins have only nineteen wretchedly imperfect little books. Of his Metaphysics the Latins read only the ten books which they have, while there are many more; and of these ten which they read, many chapters are wanting in the translation, and almost infinite lines. Indeed, the Latins have nothing worthy; and therefore it is necessary that they should know the languages, for the sake of translating those things that are deficient and needful. For, moreover, of the works on secret sciences, in which the secrets and marvels of Nature are explored, they have little except fragments here and there, which scarcely suffice to excite the very wisest to study and experiment and to inquire by themselves after those things which are lacking to the dignity of wisdom; while the crowd of students are not moved to any worthy undertaking, and grow so languid and asinine over these ill translations, that they lose utterly their time and study and expense. They are held, indeed, by appearances alone; for they do not care what they know, but what they seem to know to the silly multitude."[26]
These passages may serve to show something of the nature of those external hindrances to knowledge with which Bacon himself had had to strive, which he overcame, and which he set himself with all his force to break down, that they might no longer obstruct the path of study. What scholar, what lover of learning, can now picture to himself such efforts without emotion,--without an almost oppressive sense of the contrast between the wealth of his own opportunities and the penury of the earlier scholar? On the shelves within reach of his hand lie the accumulated riches of time. Compare our libraries, with their crowded volumes of ancient and modern learning, with the bare cell of the solitary Friar, in which, in a single small cupboard, are laid away a few imperfect manuscripts, precious as a king's ransom, which it had been the labor of years to collect. This very volume of his works, a noble monument of patient labor, of careful investigation, of deep thought, costs us but a trivial sum; while its author, in his poverty, was scarcely able, without begging, to pay for the parchment upon which he wrote it, as, uncheered by the anticipation that centuries after his death men would prize the works he painfully accomplished, he leaned against his empty desk, half-discouraged by the difficulties that beset him. All honor to him! honor to the schoolmen of the Middle Ages! to the men who kept the traditions of wisdom alive, who trimmed the wick of the lamp of learning when its flame was flickering, and who, when its light grew dim and seemed to be dying out, supplied it with oil hardly squeezed by their own hands, drop by drop, from the scanty olives which they had gathered from the eternal tree of Truth! In these later days learning has become cheap. What sort of scholar must he now be, who should be worthy to be put into comparison with the philosopher of the thirteenth century?
The general scheme of Bacon's system of philosophy was at once simple and comprehensive. The scope of his thought had a breadth uncommon in his or in any time. In his view, the object of all philosophy and human learning was to enable men to attain to the wisdom of God; and to this end it was to be subservient absolutely, and relatively so far as regarded the Church, the government of the state, the conversion of infidels, and the repression of those who could not be converted. All wisdom was included in the Sacred Scriptures, if properly understood and explained. "I believe," said he, "that the perfection of philosophy is to raise it to the state of a Christian law." Wisdom was the gift of God, and as such it included the knowledge of all things in heaven and earth, the knowledge of God himself, of the teachings of Christ, the beauty of virtue, the honesty of laws, the eternal life of glory and of punishment, the resurrection of the dead, and all things else.[27]
To this end all special sciences were ordained. All these, properly speaking, were to be called speculative; and though they each might be divided into two parts, the practical and the speculative, yet one alone, the most noble and best of all, in respect to which there was no comparison with the others, was in its own nature practical: this was the science of morals, or moral philosophy. All the works of Art and Nature are subservient to morals, and are of value only as they promote it. They are as nothing without it; as the whole wisdom of philosophy is as nothing without the wisdom of the Christian faith. This science of morals has six principal divisions. The first of these is theological, treating of the relations of man to God and to spiritual things; the second is political, treating of public laws and the government of states; the third is ethical, treating of virtue and vice; the fourth treats of the revolutions of religious sects, and of the proofs of the Christian faith.
"This is the best part of all philosophy." Experimental science and the knowledge of languages come into use here. The fifth division is hortatory, or of morals as applied to duty, and embraces the art of rhetoric and other subsidiary arts. The sixth and final division treats of the relations of morals to the execution of justice.[28] Under one or other of these heads all special sciences and every branch of learning are included.
Such, then, being the object and end of all learning, it is to be considered in what manner and by what methods study is to be pursued, to secure the attainment of truth. And here occurs one of the most remarkable features of Bacon's system. It is in his distinct statement of the prime importance of experiment as the only test of certainty in the sciences. "However strong arguments may be, they do not give certainty, apart from positive experience of a conclusion." "It is the prerogative of experiment to test the noble conclusions of all sciences which are drawn from arguments." All science is ancillary to it.[29] And of all branches of learning, two are of chief importance: languages are the first gate of wisdom; mathematics the second.[30] By means of foreign tongues we gain the wisdom which men have collected in past times and other countries; and without them the sciences are not to be pursued, for the requisite books are wanting in the Latin tongue. Even theology must fail without a knowledge of the original texts of the Sacred Writings and of their earliest expositors. Mathematics are of scarcely less importance; "for he who knows not mathematics cannot know any other physical science,--what is more, cannot discover his own ignorance or find its proper remedies." "The sciences cannot be known by logical and sophistical arguments, such as are commonly used, but only by mathematical demonstrations."[31] But this view of the essential importance of these two studies did not prevent Bacon from rising to the height from which he beheld the mutual importance and relations of all knowledge. We do not know where to find a clearer statement of the connection of the sciences than in the following words:--"All sciences are connected, and support each other with mutual aid, as parts of the same whole, of which each performs its work, not for itself alone, but for the others as well: as the eye directs the whole body, and the foot supports the whole; so that any part of knowledge taken from the rest is like an eye torn out or a foot cut off."[32]
Such, then, in brief, appears to have been Bacon's general system of philosophy. He has nowhere presented it in a compact form; and his style of writing is often so corrupt, and his use of terms so inexact, that any exposition of his views, exhibiting them in a methodical arrangement, is liable to the charge of possessing a definiteness of statement beyond that which his opinions had assumed in his own mind. Still, the view that has now been given of his philosophy corresponds as nearly as may be with the indications afforded by his works. The details of his system present many points of peculiar interest. He was not merely a theorist, with speculative views of a character far in advance of those of the mass of contemporary schoolmen, but a practical investigator as well, who by his experiments and discoveries pushed forward the limits of knowledge, and a sound scholar who saw and displayed to others the true means by which progress in learning was to be secured. In this latter respect, no parts of his writings are more remarkable than those in which he urges the importance of philological and linguistic studies. His remarks on comparative grammar, on the relations of languages, on the necessity of the study of original texts, are distinguished by good sense, by extensive and (for the time) exact scholarship, and by a breadth of view unparalleled, so far as we are aware, by any other writer of his age. The treatise on the Greek Grammar--which occupies a large portion of the incomplete "Compendium Studii Philosophiae," and which is broken off in the middle by the mutilation of the manuscript--contains, in addition to many curious remarks illustrative of the learning of the period, much matter of permanent interest to the student of language. The passages which we have quoted in regard to the defects of the translations of Greek authors show to how great a degree the study of Greek and other ancient tongues had been neglected. Most of the scholars of the day contented themselves with collecting the Greek words which they found interpreted in the works of St. Augustine, St. Jerome, Origen, Martianus Capella, Boëthius, and a few other later Latin authors; and were satisfied to use these interpretations without investigation of their exactness, or without understanding their meaning. Hugo of Saint Victor, (Dante's "Ugo di Sanvittore è qui con elli,") one of the most illustrious of Bacon's predecessors, translates, for instance, mechanica by adulterina, as if it came from the Latin moecha, and derives economica from oequus, showing that he, like most other Western scholars, was ignorant even of the Greek letters.[33] Michael Scot, in respect to whose translations Bacon speaks with merited contempt, exhibits the grossest ignorance, in his version from the Arabic of Aristotle's History of Animals, for example, a passage in which Aristotle speaks of taming the wildest animals, and says, "Beneficio enim mitescunt, veluti crocodilorum genus afficitur erga sacerdotem a quo enratur ut alantur," ("They become mild with kind treatment, as crocodiles toward the priest who provides them with food,") is thus unintelligibly rendered by him: "Genus autem karoluoz et hirdon habet pacem lehhium et domesticatur cum illo, quoniam cogitat de suo cibo." [34] Such a medley makes it certain that he knew neither Greek nor Arabic, and was willing to compound a third language, as obscure to his readers as the original was to him. Bacon points out many instances of this kind; and it is against such errors--errors so destructive to all learning--that he inveighs with the full force of invective, and protests with irresistible arguments. His acquirements in Greek and in Hebrew prove that he had devoted long labor to the study of these languages, and that he understood them far better than many scholars who made more pretence of learning. Nowhere are the defects of the scholarship of the Middle Ages more pointedly and ably exhibited than in what he has said of them. But, although his knowledge in this field was of uncommon quality and amount, it does not seem to have surpassed his acquisitions in science. "I have attempted," he says in a striking passage, "with great diligence, to attain certainty as to what is needful to be known concerning the processes of alchemy and natural philosophy and medicine.... And what I have written of the roots [of these sciences] is, in my judgment, worth far more than all that the other natural philosophers now alive suppose themselves to know; for in vain, without these roots, do they seek for branches, flowers, and fruit. And here I am boastful in words, but not in my soul; for I say this because I grieve for the infinite error that now exists, and that I may urge you [the Pope] to a consideration of the truth."[35] Again he says, in regard to his treatise "De Perspectiva," or On Optics,--"Why should I conceal the truth? I assert that there is no one among the Latin scholars who could accomplish, in the space of a year, this work; no, nor even in ten years."[36] In mathematics, in chemistry, in optics, in mechanics, he was, if not superior, at least equal, to the best of his contemporaries. His confidence in his own powers was the just result of self-knowledge and self-respect. Natural genius, and the accumulations of forty years of laborious study pursued with a method superior to that which guided the studies of others, had set him at the head of the learned men of his time; and he was great enough to know and to claim his place. He had the self-devotion of enthusiasm, and its ready, but dignified boldness, based upon the secure foundation of truth.
In spite of the very imperfect style in which he wrote, and the usually clumsy and often careless construction of his sentences, his works contain now and then noble thoughts expressed with simplicity and force. "Natura est instrumentum Divinae operationis," might be taken as the motto for his whole system of natural science. In speaking of the value of words, he says,--"Sed considerare debemus quod verba habent maximam potestatem, et omnia miracula facta a principio mundi fere facta sunt per verba. Et opus animae rationalis praecipuum est verbum, et in quo maxime delectatur." In the "Opus Tertium," at the point where he begins to give an abstract of his "Opus Majus," he uses words which remind one of the famous "Franciscus de Verulamio sic cogitavit." He says,--"Cogitavi quod intellectus humanus habet magnam debilitationem ex se.... Et ideo volui excludere errorum corde hominis impossible est ipsum videre veritatem." This is strikingly similar to Lord Bacon's "errores qui invaluerunt, quique in aeternum invalituri sunt, alii post alios, si mens sibi permittatur." Such citations of passages remarkable for thought or for expression might be indefinitely extended, but we have space for only one more, in which the Friar attacks the vices of the Roman court with an energy that brings to mind the invectives of the greatest of his contemporaries. "Curia Romana, quae solebat et debet regi sapientia Dei, nunc depravatur.... Laceratur enim illa sedes sacra fraudibus et dolis injustorum. Pent justitia; pax omnis violatur; infinita scandala suscitantur. Mores enim sequuntur ibidem perversissimi; regnat superbia, ardet avaritia, invidia corrodit singulos, luxuria diffamat totam illam curiam, gula in omnibus dominatur." It was not the charge of magic alone that brought Roger Bacon's works into discredit with the Church, and caused a nail to be driven through their covers to keep the dangerous pages closed tightly within.
There is no reason to doubt that Bacon's investigations led him to discoveries of essential value, but which for the most part died with him. His active and piercing intellect, which employed itself on the most difficult subjects, which led him to the formation of a theory of tides, and brought him to see the need and with prophetic anticipation to point out the means of a reformation of the calendar, enabled him to discover many of what were then called the Secrets of Nature. The popular belief that he was the inventor of gunpowder had its origin in two passages in his treatise "On the Secret Works of Art and Nature, and on the Nullity of Magic,"[37] in one of which he describes some of its qualities, while in the other he apparently conceals its composition under an enigma.[38] He had made experiments with Greek fire and the magnet; he had constructed burning-glasses, and lenses of various power; and had practised with multiplying-mirrors, and with mirrors that magnified and diminished. It was no wonder that a man who knew and employed such wonderful things, who was known, too, to have sought for artificial gold, should gain the reputation of a wizard, and that his books should be looked upon with suspicion. As he himself says,--"Many books are esteemed magic, which are not so, but contain the dignity of knowledge." And he adds,--"For, as it is unworthy and unlawful for a wise man to deal with magic, so it is superfluous and unnecessary."[39]
There is a passage in this treatise "On the Nullity of Magic" of remarkable character, as exhibiting the achievements, or, if not the actual achievements, the things esteemed possible by the inventors of the thirteenth century. There is in it a seeming mixture of fancy and of fact, of childish credulity with more than mere haphazard prophecy of mechanical and physical results which have been so lately reached in the progress of science as to be among new things even six centuries after Bacon's death. Its positiveness of statement is puzzling, when tested by what is known from other sources of the nature of the discoveries and inventions of that early time; and were there reason to question Bacon's truth, it would seem as if he had mistaken his dreams for facts. As it stands, it is one of the most curious existing illustrations of the state of physical science in the Middle Ages. It runs as follows:--"I will now, in the first place, speak of some of the wonderful works of Art and Nature, that I may afterwards assign the causes and methods of them, in which there is nothing magical, so that it may be seen how inferior and worthless all magic power is, in comparison with these works. And first, according to the fashion and rule of Art alone. Thus, machines can be made for navigation without men to row them; so that ships of the largest size, whether on rivers or the sea, can be carried forward, under the guidance of a single man, at greater speed than if they were full of men [rowers]. In like manner, a car can be made which will move, without the aid of any animal, with incalculable impetus; such as we suppose the scythed chariots to have been which were anciently used in battle. Also, machines for flying can be made, so that a man may sit in the middle of the machine, turning an engine, by which wings artificially disposed are made to beat the air after the manner of a bird in flight. Also, an instrument, small in size, for raising and depressing almost infinite weights, than which nothing on occasion is more useful: for, with an instrument of three fingers in height, and of the same width, and of smaller bulk, a man might deliver himself and his companions from all danger of prison, and could rise or descend. Also, an instrument might be easily made by which one man could draw to himself a thousand men by force and against their will, and in like manner draw other things. Instruments can be made for walking in the sea or in rivers, even at the bottom, without bodily risk: for Alexander the Great made use of this to see the secrets of the sea, as the Ethical Astronomer relates. These things were made in ancient times, and are made in our times, as is certain; except, perhaps, the machine for flying, which I have not seen, nor have I known any one who had seen it, but I know a wise man who thought to accomplish this device. And almost an infinite number of such things can be made; as bridges across rivers without piers or any supports, and machines and unheard-of engines." Bacon goes on to speak of other wonders of Nature and Art, to prove, that, to produce marvellous effects, it is not necessary to aspire to the knowledge of magic, and ends this division of his subject with words becoming a philosopher:--"Yet wise men are now ignorant of many things which the common crowd of students [vulgus studentium] will know in future times."[40]
It is much to be regretted that Roger Bacon does not appear to have executed the second and more important part of his design, namely, "to assign the causes and methods" of these wonderful works of Art and Nature. Possibly he was unable to do so to his own satisfaction; possibly he may upon further reflection have refrained from doing so, deeming them mysteries not to be communicated to the vulgar;--"for he who divulges mysteries diminishes the majesty of things; wherefore Aristotle says that he should be the breaker of the heavenly seal, were he to divulge the secret things of wisdom."[41] However this may have been, we may safely doubt whether the inventions which he reports were in fact the result of sound scientific knowledge, whether they had indeed any real existence, or whether they were only the half-realized and imperfect creations of the prophetic soul of the wide world dreaming of things to come.
The matters of interest in the volume before us are by no means exhausted, but we can proceed no farther in the examination of them, and must refer those readers who desire to know more of its contents to the volume itself. We can assure them that they will find it full of vivid illustrations of the character of Bacon's time,--of the thoughts of men at an epoch of which less is commonly known than of periods more distant, but less connected by intellectual sympathy and moral relations with our own. But the chief interest of Bacon's works lies in their exhibition to us of himself, a man foremost in his own time in all knowledge, endowed by Nature with a genius of peculiar force and clearness of intuition, with a resolute energy that yielded to no obstacles, with a combination so remarkable of the speculative and the practical intellect as to place him in the ranks of the chief philosophers to whom the progress of the world in learning and in thought is due. They show him exposed to the trials which the men who are in advance of their contemporaries are in every age called to meet, and bearing these trials with a noble confidence in the final prevalence of the truth,--using all his powers for the advantage of the world, and regarding all science and learning of value only as they led to acquaintance with the wisdom of God and the establishment of Christian virtue. He himself gives us a picture of a scholar of his times, which we may receive as a not unworthy portrait of himself. "He does not care for discourses and disputes of words, but he pursues the works of wisdom, and in them he finds rest. And what others dim-sighted strive to see, like bats in twilight, he beholds in its full splendor, because he is the master of experiments; and thus he knows natural things, and the truths of medicine and alchemy, and the things of heaven as well as those below. Nay, he is ashamed, if any common man, or old wife, or soldier, or rustic in the country knows anything of which he is ignorant. Wherefore he has searched out all the effects of the fusing of metals, and whatever is effected with gold and silver and other metals and all minerals; and whatever pertains to warfare and arms and the chase he knows; and he has examined all that pertains to agriculture, and the measuring of lands, and the labors of husbandmen; and he has even considered the practices and the fortune-telling of old women, and their songs, and all sorts of magic arts, and also the tricks and devices of jugglers; so that nothing which ought to be known may lie hid from him, and that he may as far as possible know how to reject all that is false and magical. And he, as he is above price, so does he not value himself at his worth. For, if he wished to dwell with kings and princes, easily could he find those who would honor and enrich him; or, if he would display at Paris what he knows through the works of wisdom, the whole world would follow him. But, because in either of these ways he would be impeded in the great pursuits of experimental philosophy, in which he chiefly delights, he neglects all honor and wealth, though he might, when he wished, enrich himself by his knowledge."