ROGER BACON
Bibliographical note--Our method of considering him.
I. _Life_
Birth, family, and early life--The years before 1267--Bacon
and the mariner’s compass--The papal mandate--The
composition of the three works--The injunction of
secrecy--Roger Bacon and the Franciscans--Bacon’s life after
1267--His reported condemnation--Franciscans and science:
John Peckham--Was Bacon still writing in 1292?
II. _His Criticism of and Part in Medieval Learning_
Aims and plan of the _Opus Maius_--Bacon’s theological
standpoint--His scholastic side--Attitude to Aristotle
and other authorities--Bacon’s critical bent--Criticism
easier than construction--Commonplaces of medieval
criticism--Debt of Bacon to earlier writers--Limitations
of his criticism--Roger Bacon and Albertus Magnus--Bacon’s
criticism of education applies chiefly to the training
of the friars in theology--His other criticisms of
contemporary education--His personal motives--Inaccuracy
of much of his criticism--Bacon does not regard himself
as unique--Instances of ideas which were not new with
him--Bacon and the discovery of America--His historical
attitude--His “mathematical method”--Its crudity--Its debt
to others.
III. _His Experimental Science_
Has been given undue prominence--“Experimental science”
distinct from other natural sciences--As a criterion of
truth--Lack of method--Bacon and inventions--Marvelous
results expected--Fantastic “experiments”--Credulity
essential--Good flying dragons--Experiment and magic.
IV. _His Attitude Toward Magic and Astrology_
Magic and astrology--Magic in the past--Magicians and
their books still prevalent--Magic a delusion--Some truth
in magic--Magic and science--His belief in marvelous
“extraneous virtues”--Non-magical fascination--The power
of words--Magic and science again--The multiplication
of species--William of St. Cloud on works of art and
nature compared to magic--The two mathematics--Four
objections to the forbidden variety--The rule of the
stars--Astrological medicine--Influence of the stars upon
human conduct--Planetary conjunctions and religious
movements--Was Christ born under the stars?--Operative
astrology--Unlikelihood that Bacon was condemned for magic
or astrology--Error of Charles in thinking that any stigma
rested on Bacon’s memory--But his own statements may have
given rise to the legend.
V. _Conclusion_
Characteristics of medieval books--Features of the _Opus
Maius_.
Appendix I. The Study of Roger Bacon.
Lack of early printed editions of his works--His popular
reputation as a magician--Jebb’s edition of the _Opus
Maius_--General misestimate of Bacon and of medieval
science--Roger Bacon and Francis Bacon--Legend of Roger’s
martyrdom for science--Works of Brewer and Charles--Minor
studies of the later nineteenth century--Recent editions of
Bacon’s works--Continued overestimate of Bacon--Beginnings
of adverse criticism--_The Commemoration Essays_.
Appendix II. Roger Bacon and Gunpowder.
[Sidenote: Our method of considering him.]
Contemporary with the three learned Dominicans of whom preceding
chapters have treated--Albert, Thomas, and Vincent--was the Franciscan
friar, Roger Bacon, who in modern times has received so much attention
and admiration at the expense of his contemporaries and his age.[2030]
Happily in the present volume we are in a better position to estimate
him fairly. The best, if not the only way to appreciate him aright is
by a detailed study of the writings and doctrines of his predecessors
and contemporaries. Roger Bacon has hitherto been studied too much
in isolation. He has been regarded as an exceptional individual; his
environment has been estimated at his own valuation of it or according
to some preconceived idea of his age; and his writings have not been
studied in relation to those of his predecessors and contemporaries.
Thought of as a precursor of modern science, he has been read to
find germs of modern ideas rather than scrutinized with a view to
discovering his sources. Yet his constant citing of authorities and the
helpful footnotes which Bridges, in his edition of the _Opus Maius_,
gives to explain these allusions to other scientists, point insistently
in the latter direction. When one has gone a step further and has read
for their own sake the works of men like Adelard of Bath, William of
Conches, and Daniel of Morley in the twelfth century, or William of
Auvergne, Robert Grosseteste and Albert Magnus in the early and middle
thirteenth century, the true position of Roger Bacon in the history of
thought grows clearer. One then re-reads his works with a new insight,
finds that a different interpretation may be put upon many a passage,
and realizes that even in his most boastful moments Roger himself never
made such claims to astounding originality as some modern writers
have made for him. Conversely, one is impelled to the conclusion that
Bacon’s writings, instead of being unpalatable to, neglected by, and
far in advance of, his times, give a most valuable picture of medieval
thought, summarizing, it is true, its most advanced stages, but also
including much that is most characteristic, and even revealing some of
its back currents. It is from this standpoint that we shall consider
Roger Bacon and endeavor to refute misconceptions that have grown up
concerning his life and learning. We shall also, in conformity with
our main theme, take particular note of his experimental science, long
regarded as the brightest gem in his crown, and of other aspects of his
learning which have hitherto not received special or proper treatment,
namely, the astrology and magic to which he gives so much space and
emphasis and which so seriously affect all his thought, but which
probably did not affect his life and the attitude of his age towards
him in the way that many have assumed.
I. _Life_
[Sidenote: Birth, family, and early life.]
Past estimates of Bacon’s learning have been greatly affected by their
holders’ views of his life; but his biography is gradually being shorn
of fictions and losing that sensational and exceptional character
which gave countenance to the representation of his thought as far
in advance of his age. We cannot tell to which of several families
of Bacons mentioned in feudal registers and other documents of the
times he belonged, and the exact date and place of his birth are
uncertain.[2031] But he speaks of England as his native land, and in
1267 looks back upon a past of some forty years of study and twenty
years of specialization in his favorite branches of learning.[2032] In
another passage he mentions having spent all his spare time for ten
years upon the science of perspective.[2033] Also he speaks of one
brother as rich, of another as a student, and of his family’s suffering
exile for their support of Henry III against the barons.[2034]
He implies that up to 1267 he had not been outside France and
England,[2035] but he had sent across the seas for material to assist
his special investigations and had spent large sums of money.[2036]
[Sidenote: The years before 1267.]
Before he became a friar he had written text-books for students, and
had worked so hard that men wondered that he still lived. When or why
he joined the Franciscans we are not informed,[2037] but his doing
so is no cause for wonder, for both Orders were rich in learned men,
including students of natural science. Bacon tells us that after
becoming a friar he was able to study as much as before, but “did
not work so much,” probably because he now had less teaching to do.
For about ten years before 1267, instead of being imprisoned and
ill-treated by his order, as was once believed without foundation, he
was, as we now know from his own words discovered in 1897, in poor
health and “took no part in the outward affairs of the university.”
This abstention caused the report to spread that he was devoting all
his time to writing, especially since many were aware that he had long
intended to sum up his knowledge in a _magnum opus_, but he actually
“composed nothing except a few chapters, now about one science and now
about another, compiled in odd moments at the instance of friends.”
At least this is what he told the pope in 1267 when trying to excuse
himself for having had no completed work ready to submit to the supreme
pontiff.[2038] During these years he seems to have fallen into some
obscurity, since in the _Opus Tertium_ he compares his tone in the
_Opus Minus_ to that of Cicero, when recalled from exile, in the letter
in which he humbled himself and congratulated the Roman senate. So
Bacon, describing himself probably with some rhetorical exaggeration as
an exile for the past ten years from his former scholastic fame,[2039]
recognizes his own littleness and admires the wisdom of the pope, who
has deigned to seek works of scholarship “from me, now unheard by
anyone and as it were buried in oblivion.”[2040]
[Sidenote: Bacon and the mariner’s compass.]
R. H. Major’s _Prince Henry the Navigator_ is responsible for the
spread of the story that in 1258 Brunetto Latini saw Friar Bacon
at the Parliament at Oxford and was shown by him the secret of the
magnetic needle, which Roger dared not divulge for fear of being
accused of magic. The supposed letter of Brunetto Latini to the poet
Guido Cavalcanti, from which these data are drawn, seems to have
been a hoax or fanciful production appearing first in 1802 in the
_Monthly Magazine_[2041] among “Extracts from the Portfolio of a Man of
Letters,” who is said to have translated them from “the French patois
of the Romansch language.” Certainly the mariner’s compass was pretty
well known in Bacon’s time, nor are we informed of any case where it
involved its possessor in a trial for magic. Bacon says in one passage
that if the experiment of the magnet with respect to iron “were not
known to the world, it would seem a great miracle.”[2042] In another
place he grants that even the common herd of philosophers know of the
magnetic needle; he merely criticizes their belief that the needle
always turns towards the north star; Roger thinks that it can be made
to turn to any other point of the compass if only it has been properly
magnetized.[2043] Perhaps the Latini story was suggested by a third
passage, where Bacon says, in order to illustrate his statement that
philosophers have sometimes resorted to charms and incantations to hide
their secrets from the unworthy, “As if, for instance, it were quite
unknown that the magnetic needle attracts iron and someone wishing to
perform this operation before the people should make characters and
utter incantations, so that they might not see that the operation of
attraction was entirely natural.”[2044]
[Sidenote: The papal mandate.]
Bacon’s career centers about a papal mandate which was despatched to
him in the summer of 1266. Guy de Foulques, who became Clement IV on
February 5, 1265, had at some previous time requested Bacon to send
him the _scriptum principale_ or comprehensive work on philosophy
which he had been led to think was already written.[2045] On June 22,
1266, he repeated this request in the form of a papal mandate, which
is extant.[2046] The former letter is lost, but both Bacon and the
pope refer to it.[2047] Somehow writers on Bacon have paid little
heed to this first request, have assumed that Bacon wrote his three
works to the pope in about a year[2048] despite the “impediments” upon
which he dwells, and have therefore been filled with admiration at
the superhuman genius which could produce such works at such short
notice while laboring under such difficulties.[2049] But this is
assuming that Roger had done nothing in the considerable interval
between the two mandates. And why does he keep apologizing for “so
great delay in this matter,” and “Your Clemency’s impatience at hope
deferred.”[2050] Moreover, his excuses do not all apply to the same
period, and most of them are excuses for not having composed a full
exposition of philosophy rather than for not having composed sooner the
_Opus Maius_, which Roger regarded as a mere preamble to philosophy.
One set of excuses explains why he had no comprehensive work ready when
the first request arrived.[2051] A second set explains why he had not
written it in the interval between the two mandates.[2052] A third set
explains why he finally does not write it at all but sends instead an
introductory treatise, the _Opus Maius_, supplemented by two others,
the _Opus Minus_ and _Opus Tertium_. Of course some excuses hold
equally good for all three periods. But he states in the third treatise
that in writing the second he was free from some of the “impediments”
which had hampered his composition of the _Opus Maius_.[2053] As he
also says that one reason for writing the _Opus Minus_ was lest the
_Opus Maius_ be lost amid the great dangers of the roads at that time,
one infers that the latter work was despatched before the other.
Moreover, the _Opus Minus_ opens with a eulogy of the pope which is
absent in the _Opus Maius_,[2054] in which there are very few passages
to suggest that it is addressed to the pope, or written later than
1266.[2055]
[Sidenote: The composition of the three works.]
The _Opus Maius_, therefore, was practically finished, if not already
sent, when the papal mandate of 1266 reached Bacon. When Roger learned
that Foulques as pope was still interested in his work, visions of what
the apostolic see might do for his programme of learning and himself
flashed before his mind, and, after a fresh but vain effort at a
_scriptum principale_, which kept him busy until Epiphany, he composed
the supplementary treatise, the _Opus Minus_, with its adulatory
introduction to Clement IV, with its excuses for sending or having sent
a preambulatory treatise instead of a complete work of philosophy, with
its hints that such a final treatise can be successfully completed only
with the financial backing of the unlimited papal resources, with its
analysis of the preceding work for the benefit of the busy pope and
its suggestions as to what portions of it he might profitably omit,
and with its additions of matter which in the _Opus Maius_ Roger had
either forgotten or at that time had not been in a position to insert.
The third work, _Opus Tertium_, is of the same sort but apparently
more disorderly in arrangement, and looser and more extravagant in its
tone. Presumably it was undertaken to remind the pope again of Bacon’s
existence and proposals; it is even conceivable that Roger was a little
unstrung when he composed it; it has been suggested that it was left
unfinished and never sent to the pope, who died in 1268. A part at
least of the _Opus Tertium_ was written in 1267.[2056]
[Sidenote: The injunction of secrecy.]
The extant papal mandate orders Bacon not only to send his book but to
state “what remedies you think should be applied in those matters which
you recently intimated were of so great importance,” and to “do this
without delay as secretly as you can.”[2057] This allusion to matters
of importance and this injunction of secrecy have cast a certain veil
of mystery over the three works and the relations of Roger and the
pope. Observance of secrecy may have been intended to guard against
such frauds of copyists as we shall soon hear Bacon describe, or to
secure some alchemistic arcana or practical inventions which the
pope had been led to expect from him. Indeed, so far as alchemy was
concerned, Bacon observed the injunction of secrecy so strictly that he
divided his discussion of the subject among four different treatises
sent to the pope at different times and by different messengers, so
that no outsider might steal the precious truth. It must be added that
even after receiving all four instalments, the pope would not have been
much nearer the philosopher’s stone than before.[2058]
[Sidenote: Roger Bacon and the Franciscans.]
Another moot question in Bacon’s biography besides that of the
composition of the three works is that of his relations with the
Franciscan Order. We have seen that it was natural for him to join
it, and that the change, at first at least, seemed one for the
better. Bacon, however, found irksome the rule made by the order
in 1260, as a consequence of the publication in 1254 of Gerard’s
heretical _Introductorius in Evangelium Aeternum_, that in the future
no Franciscan should publish anything without permission.[2059]
Roger wished to employ amanuenses even in composing his works, and
these men, he tells the pope, would often divulge “the most secret
writings,”[2060] and so involve one in unintentional violation of the
above rule. “And therefore,” says Bacon, “I did not feel the least
bit like writing anything.”[2061] For a man so easily discouraged one
cannot feel much sympathy. There is however another important inference
from his statement: instead of his writings being neglected by his
age, they are so valued that they are pirated before they have been
published. Moreover, this rule of his order should not have hampered
Bacon much in writing for the pope; indeed, Roger himself implies that
he was exempted from this restriction in the earlier request from the
cardinal as well as in the later papal mandate. Raymond of Laon, Bacon
grants, had correctly informed “Your Magnificence, as both the mandates
state,” concerning this regulation, though he had given a wrong
impression as to what Bacon already had written.[2062]
We have heard from Bacon’s own mouth that he did little public teaching
after becoming a friar, that he had as much time for private study as
ever, and that everybody supposed him to be at work at his _magnum
opus_. Yet in the _Opus Minus_ he grumbles that “his prelates were at
him every day to do other things”[2063] before he received the first
mandate from the cardinal, and that even thereafter he was unable to
excuse himself fully from their demands upon his time, “because Your
Lordship had ordered me to treat that business secretly, nor had Your
Glory given them any instructions.”[2064] In the _Opus Tertium_ he
describes the same situation in stronger language: “They pressed me
with unspeakable violence to obey their will as others did,” and “I
sustained so many and so great setbacks that I cannot tell them.”[2065]
On how we interpret a few such passages as these depends our estimate
of the attitude of the Franciscan Order before 1267 to Bacon and his
ideas and researches. He gives so many other reasons why he has no
comprehensive work of philosophy ready for the pope that this attitude
of his superiors seems a relatively slight factor. He needed much
money, he needed expensive instruments, he needed a large library,
he needed “plenty of parchment,” he needed a corps of assistant
investigators and another of copyists with skilled superintendents to
direct their efforts and insert figures and other delicate details.
It was a task beyond the powers of any one man; besides, he was in
ill-health, he felt languid, he composed very slowly. Shall we blame
his superiors for not providing him with this expensive equipment;
and are we surprised, when we remember that the mandates directed him
to send a book supposed to be already finished, that his superiors
continued to ask of him the performance of his usual duties as a friar?
Their attitude can scarcely be regarded as persecution of Bacon or
hostility to his science. On the other hand, Clement IV must be given
credit for his effort to elicit from Bacon a _scriptum principale_; and
it may well be doubted if Roger would have produced anything equivalent
to the _Opus Maius_, _Opus Minus_ and _Opus Tertium_ without this papal
encouragement.
[Sidenote: Bacon’s life after 1267.]
In 1272 in the _Compendium Studii Philosophiae_ Bacon lays bare the
failings of “the two orders” as if he belonged to neither, but he then
proceeds to refute indignantly those masters at Paris who have tried to
argue that the state of the higher secular clergy, such as bishops, is
more perfect than that of the religious.[2066]
[Sidenote: His reported condemnation.]
In 1277, however, we learn “solely on the very contestable authority
of the Chronicle of the XXIV Generals,”[2067] a work written about
1370, although containing earlier matter,[2068] that at the suggestion
of many friars the teaching of “Friar Roger Bacon of England, master
of sacred theology,” was condemned as containing “some suspected
novelties,” that Roger was sentenced to prison, and that the pope was
asked to help to suppress the dangerous doctrines in question. It has
been a favorite conjecture of students of Bacon that he incurred this
condemnation by his leanings toward astrology and magic; but, as we
shall see later, his views on these subjects were not novelties. He
shared them with Albertus Magnus and other contemporaries, and there
seems no good reason why they should have got him into trouble. Suffice
it here to note that the wording of the chronicle suggests nothing of
the sort, but rather some details of doctrine, whereas had Bacon been
charged with magic, we may be pretty sure that so sensational a feature
would not have passed unmentioned.
[Sidenote: Franciscans and science: John Peckham.]
How absurd it is to think that the Franciscan Order was opposed to
Bacon’s pursuit of natural and experimental science, or that he was
alone among the members of that order in the pursuit of such subjects,
may be inferred from a glance at the career of John Peckham who from
1279 to his death in 1292 was archbishop of Canterbury.[2069] According
to a letter of Bacon’s favorite, Adam Marsh, Peckham entered the
Franciscan Order about 1250. He had been educated in France but about
1270 became lector of his order at Oxford. He also became the ninth
provincial minister of the Franciscans in England, and had been called
to Rome by the pope to be _Lector sacri palatii_ before his nomination
by the pope to the archbishopric of Canterbury. Yet this Franciscan
who rose so high in the church was the author of a treatise on
Perspective, one of the five subjects which Bacon held could be of such
service to the church and yet were being so woefully neglected. In his
_Perspectiva communis_, which was printed at Venice in 1504, Peckham
talks of such matters as the reflection of visible rays and experiment.
A work on the sphere and a _Theory of the Planets_ which exists only
in manuscript are also attributed to him. It has even been suggested
that he was the bright lad John whom Bacon sent to explain his work to
the pope, but Peckham was evidently too old in 1267 to fill that rôle.
Bartholomew of England was another Franciscan interested, as we have
seen, both in natural science and astrology, and other Friar Preachers
than Albertus Magnus and Aquinas showed the same interest.
[Sidenote: Was Bacon still writing in 1292?]
This is about all that we know of Bacon’s life except the dates of
one or two more of his works. Mr. Little regards it as “certain that
Roger’s last dated work was written in 1292.”[2070] This was his
treatise on the study of theology, which in one passage gives the year
as 1292 and in another speaks of “forty years and more” as having
elapsed since 1250.[2071] It is rather surprising to find his literary
activity continuing so late, since in 1267 he wrote as if well along in
life.
II. _His Criticism of and Part in Medieval Learning_
[Sidenote: Aims and plan of the _Opus Maius_.]
We turn from Bacon’s life to his writings, and shall center our
attention upon his three works to the pope. In them he had his greatest
opportunity and did his best work both in style and substance. They
embody most of his ideas and knowledge. Much, for example, of the
celebrated “Epistle concerning the secret works of art and nature and
the nullity of magic” sounds like a later compilation from these three
works.[2072] Two of them are merely supplementary to the _Opus Maius_
and are parallel to it in aims, plan, and contents. Its two chief aims
were to demonstrate the practical utility of “philosophy,” especially
to the Church, and secondly, to reform the present state of learning
according to Bacon’s idea of the relative importance of the sciences.
Having convinced himself that an exhaustive work on philosophy was not
yet possible, Roger substituted this introductory treatise, outlining
the paths along which future study and investigation should go. Of
the thirty divisions of philosophy he considers only the five which
he deems the most important and essential, namely, the languages,
“mathematics,” perspective or optic, “experimental science” (including
alchemy), and moral philosophy, which last he regards as “the noblest”
and “the mistress of them all.”[2073] Treated in this order, these
“sciences” form the themes of the last five of the seven sections of
the _Opus Maius_. Inasmuch as Roger regarded himself as a reformer of
the state of learning, he prefixed a first part on the causes of human
error to justify his divergence from the views of the multitude. His
second section develops his ideas as to the relations of “philosophy”
and theology.
[Sidenote: Bacon’s theological standpoint.]
The mere plan of the _Opus Maius_ thus indicates that it is not
exclusively devoted to natural science. “Divine wisdom,” or theology,
is the end that all human thought should serve, and morality is the
supreme science. Children should receive more education in the Bible
and the fundamentals of Christianity, and spend less time upon “the
fables and insanities” of Ovid and other poets who are full of errors
in faith and morals.[2074] In discussing other sciences Bacon’s eye is
ever fixed upon their utility “to the Church of God, to the republic
of the faithful, toward the conversion of infidels and the conquest of
such as cannot be converted.”[2075] This service is to be rendered not
merely by practical inventions or calendar reform or revision of the
Vulgate, but by aiding in most elaborate and far-fetched allegorical
interpretation of the Bible. To give a very simple example of this, it
is not enough for the interpreter of Scripture to know that the lion is
the king of beasts; he must be so thoroughly acquainted with all the
lion’s natural properties that he can tell whether in any particular
passage it is meant to typify Christ or the devil.[2076] Also the
marvels of human science strengthen our faith in divine miracles.[2077]
Bacon speaks of philosophy as the handmaid of “sacred wisdom”;[2078]
he asserts that all truth is contained in Scripture, though philosophy
and canon law are required for its comprehension and exposition, and
that anything alien therefrom is utterly erroneous.[2079] Nay more, the
Bible is surer ground than philosophy even in the latter’s own field of
the natures and properties of things.[2080] Furthermore, “philosophy
considered by itself is of no utility.”[2081] Bacon believed not
only that the active intellect (_intellectus agens_) by which our
minds are illuminated was from God and not an integral part of the
human mind,[2082] but that all philosophy had been revealed by God to
the sainted patriarchs and again to Solomon,[2083] and that it was
impossible for man by his own efforts to attain to “the great truths
of the arts and sciences.”[2084] Bacon alludes several times to sin as
an obstacle to the acquisition of science;[2085] on the other hand,
he observes that contemporary Christians are inferior morally to the
pagan philosophers, from whose books they might well take a leaf.[2086]
All this gives little evidence of an independent scientific spirit,
or of appreciation of experimental method as the one sure foundation
of scientific knowledge. We see how much of a medieval friar and
theologian and how little of a modern scientist Roger could be. It
must, of course, be remembered that he is trying to persuade the Church
to support scientific research; still, there seems to be no sufficient
reason for doubting his sincerity in the above statements, though we
must discount here as elsewhere his tendency to make emphatic and
sweeping assertions.
[Sidenote: Bacon’s scholastic side.]
Writers as far back as Cousin[2087] and Charles have recognized that
Bacon was interested in the scholasticism of his time as well as in
natural science. His separate works on the Metaphysics and Physics of
Aristotle are pretty much the usual sort of medieval commentary;[2088]
the tiresome dialectic of the _Questions on Aristotle’s Physics_ is
well brought out in Duhem’s essay, “Roger Bacon et l’Horreur du
Vide.”[2089] Bacon’s works dedicated to the pope, on the contrary, are
written to a considerable extent in a clear, direct, outspoken style;
and the subjects of linguistics, mathematics, and experimental science
seem at first glance to offer little opportunity for metaphysical
disquisitions or scholastic method. Yet, here too, much space is
devoted to intellectual battledore and shuttlecock with such concepts
as matter and form, moved and mover, agent and patient, element and
compound.[2090] Such current problems as the unity of the intellect,
the source of the _intellectus agens_, and the unity or infinity of
matter are introduced for discussion,[2091] although the question of
universals is briefly dismissed.[2092]
[Sidenote: Attitude to Aristotle and other authorities.]
Two other characteristic traits of scholasticism are found in the _Opus
Maius_, namely, continual use of authorities and the highest regard for
Aristotle, _summus philosophorum_,[2093] as Bacon calls him. Because
in one passage in his _Compendium Studii Philosophiae_ Bacon says in
his exaggerated way that he would burn all the Latin translations of
Aristotle if he could,[2094] it has sometimes been assumed that he
was opposed to the medieval study of Aristotle. Yet in the very next
sentence he declares that “Aristotle’s labors are the foundations of
all wisdom.” What he wanted was more, not less Aristotle. He believed
that Aristotle had written a thousand works.[2095] He complains quite
as much that certain works of Aristotle have not yet been translated
into Latin as he does that others have been translated incorrectly.
As a matter of fact, he himself seems to have made about as many
mistakes in connection with the study of Aristotle as did anyone else.
He thought many apocryphal writings genuine, such as the _Secret of
Secrets_,[2096] an astrological treatise entitled _De Impressionibus
Coelestibus_,[2097] and other writings concerning “the arcana of
science” and “marvels of nature.”[2098] He overestimated Aristotle
and blamed the translators for obscurities and difficulties which
abound in the Greek text itself. He declares that a few chapters
of Aristotle’s Laws are superior to the entire _corpus_ of Roman
law.[2099] His assertion that Robert Grosseteste paid no attention to
translations of Aristotle is regarded as misleading by Baur.[2100]
He nowhere gives credit to Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas for
their great commentaries on Aristotle[2101] which are superior to any
that he wrote. He bases some of his own views upon mistranslations of
Aristotle, substituting, for instance, “matter” for “substance”--a
mistranslation avoided by Albert and Thomas.[2102]
[Sidenote: Bacon’s critical bent.]
Despite its theological and scholastic proclivities, Bacon’s mind
had a decidedly critical bent. He was, like Petrarch, profoundly
pessimistic as to his own times. Church music, present-day sermons,
the immorality of monks and theologians, the misconduct of students at
Oxford and Paris, the wars and exactions of kings and feudal lords,
the prevalence of Roman Law--these are some of the faults he has to
find with his age.[2103] The _Opus Maius_ is largely devoted, not to
objective presentation of facts and discussion of theories, but to
subjective criticism of the state of learning and even of individual
contemporary scholars. This last is so unusual that Bacon excuses
himself for it to the pope in both the supplementary treatises.[2104]
Several other works of Bacon display the same critical tendency.
The _Compendium Studii Philosophiae_ enlarges upon the complaints
and criticisms of the three works. In the _Tractatus de Erroribus
Medicorum_ he detected in contemporary medicine “thirty-six great and
radical defects with infinite ramifications.”[2105] But in medicine,
too, his own contributions are of little account. In the _Compendium
Studii Theologiae_, after contemptuous allusion to the huge _Summae_
of the past fifty years, he opens with an examination of the problems
of speculative philosophy which underlie the questions discussed by
contemporary theologians. As far as we know that is as far as he got.
And in the five neglected sciences to which his _Opus Maius_ was a
mere introduction he seems to have made little further progress than
is there recorded; it has yet to be proved that he made any definite
original contribution to any particular science.
[Sidenote: Criticism easier than construction.]
After all, we must keep in mind the fact that in ancient and medieval
times hostile criticism was more likely to hit the mark than were
attempts at constructive thought and collection of scientific details.
There were plenty of wrong ideas to knock down; it was not easy to
find a rock foundation to build upon, or materials without some hidden
flaw. The church fathers made many telling shots in their bombardment
of pagan thought; their own interpretation of nature and life less
commands our admiration. So Roger Bacon, by devoting much of his space
to criticism of the mistakes of others and writing “preambles” to
science and theology, avoided treacherous detail--a wise caution for
his times. Thus he constructed a sort of intellectual portico more
pretentious than he could have justified by his main building. To a
superficial observer this portico may seem a fitting entrance to the
temple of modern science, but a closer examination discovers that it
is built of the same faulty materials as the neglected ruins of his
contemporaries’ science.
[Sidenote: Commonplaces of medieval criticism.]
Merely to have assumed a critical point of view in the middle ages may
seem a distinction; but Abelard, Adelard of Bath, William of Conches,
and Daniel Morley were all critical, back in the twelfth century.
Moreover, our estimate of any critic must take into account how valid,
how accurate, how original and how consistent his criticisms were and
from what motives they proceeded. Some of Bacon’s complaints the reader
of medieval literature has often listened to before. What student of
philosophy in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries had not sighed at
the invasion of the Roman law into school and church and state? What
devotee of astronomy had failed to contrast its human interest and
divine relationships with the dry drubbing of the jurists? What learned
man had not expressed his preference for the wise and the experts
(_sapientes_) over the _vulgus_ or common herd? The great secrets of
learning and the danger of casting pearls before swine were also quite
familiar concepts. If Bacon goes a step farther and speaks of a _vulgus
studentium_ and even of a _vulgus medicorum_, he is only refining a
medical commonplace or quoting Galen.
[Sidenote: Debt of Bacon to earlier writers.]
In Bacon’s discussion of the four causes of human error his attack upon
undue reliance on authority has often seemed to modern readers most
unusual for his age. But all his arguments against authority are drawn
from authorities;[2106] and while he seems to have got a whiff of the
spirit of rationalism from such classical writers as Seneca and Cicero,
he also quotes the _Natural Questions_ of his fellow-countryman,
Adelard of Bath, who in the early twelfth century had found the
doctrine of the schools of Gaul as little to his liking as was that of
Paris to Roger’s taste, and whom we have heard reprove his nephew for
blind trust in authorities.[2107] Bacon’s fourth cause of human error,
the concealment of ignorance by a false show of learning, might well
have been suggested by Daniel Morley’s satire on the _bestiales_ who
occupied chairs in the schools of Paris “with grave authority,” and
reverently marked their Ulpians with daggers and asterisks, and seemed
wise as long as they concealed their ignorance by a statuesque silence,
but whom he found “most childish” when they tried to say anything. Or
by the same Daniel’s warning not to spurn Arabic clarity for Latin
obscurity; and his charge that it was owing to their ignorance and
inability to attain definite conclusions that Latin philosophers of his
day spun so many elaborate figments and hid “uncertain error under the
shadow of ambiguity.”[2108]
[Sidenote: Limitations of his criticism.]
Bacon’s criticisms have usually been taken to apply to medieval
learning as a whole, but a closer examination shows their application
to be much more limited. In the first place, he is thinking only of the
past “forty years” in making his complaints; in the good old days of
Grosseteste, Adam Marsh, William Wolf, and William of Shyrwood things
were different, and scholarship flowed smoothly, if not copiously, in
the channels marked out by the ancient sages;[2109] nor does Bacon deny
that there was a renaissance of natural science and an independent
scientific spirit still farther back in the twelfth century.
Secondly, except for his tirades against the Italians and their civil
law, Bacon’s criticisms apply to but two countries, France and England,
and two universities, Oxford and Paris. Also those few contemporaries
whom he praises are either his old Oxford friends or scattered
individuals in France. Of the state of learning in Italy, Spain, and
Germany he says little and apparently knew little. Amid his sighing for
some prince or prelate to play the patron to science, he never mentions
Alfonso X of Castile, who was so interested in the “mathematics” and
occult science which were so dear to Bacon’s heart;[2110] Roger
even still employs the old Toletan astronomical tables of Arzachel
instead of the Alfonsine tables issued in 1252, the first year of
that monarch’s reign.[2111] His lamentation over the sad neglect of
astrology among the “Latins” is not borne out by our investigations of
their interest in that subject, and indicates that he was ignorant of
the work at the University of Bologna of the astrologer, Guido Bonatti,
whose voluminous Latin treatise on that art based on wide reading in
both classical and Arabian scholars did not indeed appear until after
1277,[2112] but must have already been in preparation when Bacon wrote,
since Guido was born at some time before 1223.[2113] Bacon grieves
at the neglect of the science of optic by his age, and says that it
has not yet been lectured on at Paris nor elsewhere among the Latins
except twice at Oxford;[2114] he does not mention the Pole, Witelo,
who traveled in Italy and whose important treatise on the subject was
produced at about this time.[2115]
[Sidenote: Roger Bacon and Albertus Magnus.]
While complaining of the ignorance of the natures and properties
of animals, plants, and minerals which is shown by contemporary
theologians in their explanation of Scriptural passages, Bacon not
only slights the encyclopedias which several clergymen like Alexander
Neckam, Bartholomew of England, Thomas of Cantimpré and Vincent of
Beauvais had compiled; he also says nothing of the school at Cologne
of Albertus Magnus, whose reputation was already established by the
middle of the century, who personally investigated many animals,
especially those of the north, and often rectified the erroneous
assertions of classical zoologists, whom the historian of botany
has lauded, whose students too were curious to know not only the
theoretical botany that passed under the name of Aristotle, but also
the particular characteristics of plants, and who in his five books on
minerals discusses the alchemy and indulges in the same occult science
and astrology which Bacon deemed so important. Yet Albert was a noted
theologian and Biblical commentator as well as a student of nature.
In saying that Bacon does not mention Albert’s work in natural science,
I of course do not mean to imply that he never mentions Albert. He
excuses his delay in answering the pope by declaring that the most
noted Christian scholars, such as Brother Albert of the Order of
Preachers, and Master William of Shyrwood, could not in ten years
produce such a work as he transmits; and he incidentally observes that
William is a far abler scholar than Albert.[2116] I am suspicious,
however, of the integrity of the passage[2117] where Bacon sneers at
the theological teaching of “the boys of the two Orders, such as Albert
and Thomas and the others who enter the Orders when twenty years or
under.” It seems incongruous for Bacon to speak of his probable senior,
Albert, as a boy. Other passages in Bacon’s works which have been taken
to apply to Albert, though he is not expressly named, seem to me not
to apply to him at all closely; and if meant for him, they show that
Bacon was an incompetent and unfair critic. Not only was Albert only
for a short time in Paris; he does not seem to have been in sympathy
with the conditions there which Bacon attacks. Nor can I see that Bacon
is meant in the passage at the close of Albert’s _Politics_,[2118]
where he declares that its doctrines, as in his books on physics, are
not his own theories but a faithful reflection of peripatetic opinion;
and that he makes this statement for the benefit of lazy persons who
occupy their idle hours in searching writings for things to criticize;
“Such men killed Socrates, drove Plato from Athens to the Academy,
and, plotting even against Aristotle, forced him into exile.” Such a
passage seems a commonplace one. Both Adelard of Bath and William of
Conches expressed the same fear of setting forth new ideas of their
own, and medieval writers not infrequently in their prefaces apprehend
with shrinking “the bite of envy” which both their Horace and personal
experience had taught would follow fast on publication.
[Sidenote: Bacon’s criticism of education applies chiefly to the
training of the friars in theology.]
Thirdly, while Bacon occasionally makes bitter remarks about the
present state of learning in general, it is the teaching of theology at
Paris and by the friars that he has most in mind and that he especially
desires to reform. Though himself a friar and master of theology,
he had been trained and had then himself specialized in the three
learned languages, Hebrew, Greek and Arabic, in optic and geometry, in
astronomy and astrology, in alchemy and “experimental science,” and
in the writings of the classical moralists. Consequently he thought
that no one could be a thorough theologian who did not go through the
same course of training; nay, it was enough to ruin the reputation of
any supposed scholar in Bacon’s sight, if he were unacquainted with
these indispensable subjects. Bacon held that it was not sufficient
preparation for theology merely to study “the common sciences, such as
Latin, grammar, logic, and a part of natural philosophy, and a little
metaphysics.”[2119] However, it was not that he objected to these
studies in themselves, nor to the ordinary university instruction in
the arts course; in fact, he complains that many young friars start
in to study theology at once and “presume to investigate philosophy
by themselves without a teacher.”[2120] Bacon has a low opinion of the
scholarship of Alexander of Hales, because his university education
had been completed before the chief authorities and commentaries in
natural philosophy and metaphysics had been translated. Against another
friar generally regarded by the academic world as its greatest living
authority Bacon brings the charge that “he never heard philosophy
in the schools,” and “was not instructed nor trained in listening,
reading and disputing, so that he must be ignorant of the common
sciences.”[2121] Such passages show that to represent Bacon’s writings
as full of “sweeping attacks” upon “the metaphysical subtleties and
verbal strifes” of his age is to exaggerate his position.[2122] There
are not many direct attacks upon scholastic method in his works.
[Sidenote: His other criticisms of contemporary education.]
It is true that Bacon complains of the lack of good teachers in his
day, saying in the _Opus Minus_ that he could impart to an apt pupil in
four years all the knowledge that it had taken himself forty years to
acquire,[2123] and in the _Opus Tertium_ that he could do it in a half
or a quarter of a year, and that he could teach a good student all the
Greek and Hebrew he need know in three days for each subject.[2124]
But aside from the young friars who presume to teach theology, the
teachers against whom he rails most are those in his favorite subject
of “mathematics.” Bacon could teach more useful geometry in a fortnight
than they do in ten or twenty years[2125]--a hint that much time was
given in those days to the study of mathematics. These boasts are
not, however, as wild as they may at first seem; after all Roger did
not know a vast amount of geometry and Greek and Hebrew, and he had
no intention of teaching any more of mathematics and the languages
than would be of service in his other sciences, in theology, and in
practical life. He complained that “the ordinary mathematician does
not consider that he knows anything unless he demonstrates it, and so
he takes from thirty to forty years” to master the subject, and that
“the text-books and the teachers of mathematics delight in multiplying
conclusions to such an extent that one has to give years of unnecessary
time to extracting the essentials,” and “this is one reason why
there are so few students of a science which is a prerequisite to all
knowledge.”[2126] Nor were such boasts unique in the age in which Bacon
lived. Another professor and Franciscan friar, who wrote at least no
later than the early fourteenth century, Bernard of Verdun, states that
his little book on astronomy takes the place of “innumerable works and
huge tomes,” and makes it possible for anyone acquainted with geometry
to learn in a short time not only the gist of books which two years
of steady reading could scarce suffice to cover, but also many points
which other books omit.[2127]
[Sidenote: His personal motives.]
It is easy to discern the personal motives which actuated Bacon in his
criticism. He was jealous of his more successful contemporaries and
desperately anxious to secure the pope as his patron. If, as Macaulay
said, Francis Bacon seeking the truth was a very different person
from Francis Bacon seeking the seals, we must remember that Roger
Bacon combined both attempts at once. He grieved to see the neglect by
his fellow theologians of the subjects in which he was particularly
interested, and to see himself second in reputation, influence and
advancement to the “boy theologians.” It angered him that these same
narrowly educated and narrow-minded men should “always teach against
these sciences in their lectures, sermons and conferences.”[2128] And
after all, as he tells the pope, he does not wish to revolutionize
the curriculum nor overthrow the existing educational system, “but
that from the table of the Lord, heaped with wisdom’s spoils, I, poor
fellow, may gather the falling crumbs I need.”
[Sidenote: Inaccuracy of much of his criticism.]
Bacon’s allusions to and dates for events in the history of medieval
learning are sometimes hard to fit in with what we learn from other
sources, and as we have seen he has been detected in misstatements of
the doctrines of other scholars.[2129] His personal diatribes against
the Latin translators of Greek and Arabian science seem overdrawn and
unfair, especially when he condemns the first translators for not
knowing the sciences in question before they ventured to translate,
whereas it is plain that the sciences could not be known to the Latin
world until the translations had been made. Indeed, it may be doubted
if Roger himself knew Arabic well enough to read scientific works
therein without a translation or interpreter. Especially unjustifiable
and ill advised seems his savage onslaught upon William of
Moerbeke,[2130] whom we are told Aquinas induced to translate Aristotle
from the Greek, who was like Bacon interested in occult science, and
to whom Witelo dedicated his treatise on optics. As William held the
confidential post of papal chaplain and penitentiary under Clement IV,
and as he became archbishop of Corinth about the time that Roger was
condemned to prison, there may have been some personal rivalry and
bitterness between them.
[Sidenote: Bacon does not regard himself as unique.]
It should be said to Bacon’s credit that his own statements do not
support the inference which others have drawn from them, that he was
alone in the advocacy or pursuit of the studies dear to him. In the
_Opus Minus_ he says to the pope, with rather unusual modesty it must
be admitted, “I confess that there are several men who can present to
Your Wisdom in a better way than I can these very subjects of which
I treat.”[2131] And though the secrets of the arts and sciences are
neglected by the crowd of students and their masters, “God always has
reserved some sages who know all the necessary elements of wisdom. Not
that anyone of them knows every detail, however, nor the majority of
them; but one knows one subject, another another, so that the knowledge
of such sages ought to be combined.”[2132] Combine it Bacon does for
the pope’s perusal, and he is not ashamed to speak on its behalf, for
though there are fewer Latins conversant with it than there should be,
there are many who would gladly receive it, if they were taught.[2133]
Thus he speaks not merely as an exponent of his own ideas, but as the
representative of a movement with a considerable following at least
outside of strictly theological circles.
[Sidenote: Instances of ideas which were not new with him.]
Bacon has been given great credit for pointing out the need of
calendar revision three centuries before the papacy achieved it; but
he says himself that not only wise astronomers but even ordinary
_computistae_ were already aware of the crying need for reform,[2134]
and his discussion of the calendar often coincides verbally with
Grosseteste’s _Computus_.[2135] When Cardinal Pierre d’Ailly over a
century later again urged the need of reform upon Pope John XXIII he
cited Grosseteste often, but Bacon seldom or never.[2136] The Parisian
version of the Bible, against which Bacon inveighs as a corruption of
the Vulgate, was in the first instance the work of a conscientious
Hebrew scholar;[2137] and the numerous corrections and changes made in
it since, though deplored by Bacon, show the prevalent interest in such
matters. While Bacon holds that there are very few men who understand
the theory of Greek, Hebrew and Arabic grammar, or the technique of the
sciences which have to be studied from those languages, he admits that
many men are found among the “Latins” who can speak those tongues and
that there are even plenty of teachers of Greek and Hebrew at Paris and
elsewhere in France and England.[2138] Thus Bacon was not so superior
linguistically to his age as he has sometimes been depicted.
[Sidenote: Bacon and the discovery of America.]
The treatment of geography in the _Opus Maius_ is simply an intelligent
compilation of well-known past writers, including the wretched
work of Ethicus, supplemented from writings of the friars who had
recently visited the Tartars. Roger Bacon’s name has sometimes been
connected with the discovery of America by Columbus on the ground
that Columbus was greatly influenced by the _Imago mundi_ of Pierre
d’Ailly and that a chapter in that work on the extent of the habitable
earth was copied in large measure without acknowledgment from Roger
Bacon.[2139] Cardinal d’Ailly, however, can scarcely be censured
for failing to mention Bacon in this context since he does cite him
elsewhere and since in this passage all that he borrows from Roger are
the statements of other writers whom Roger cites. That is, against
Ptolemy’s discouraging assertion that five-sixths of the earth’s
surface is covered with water he cites Aristotle, Seneca and Pliny
to prove that the distance west from Spain to India is not great and
the apocryphal book of Esdras to the effect that only one-seventh
of the earth’s surface is covered with water. But it is contended
that the _Imago Mundi_ was not published until 1487[2140] and that
Columbus did not read it until after his first voyage in 1492,[2141]
which is to be regarded as a continuation of the search after new
islands and lands in the western ocean already undertaken by various
Portuguese sailors.[2142] It is interesting to note one argument for
the propinquity of northwestern Africa to India employed by Bacon
which d’Ailly, firm believer in astrology as he was, did not copy.
Bacon argues that Aristotle and his commentator included northwestern
Africa in “Spain,” “since they say as proof of the narrowness of the
sea between Spain and India that there are elephants only in those two
places.” And “Aristotle says that there cannot be elephants in those
places unless they were of like complexion.”[2143]--i. e., under the
same constellations.
[Sidenote: Bacon’s historical attitude.]
If in many respects Bacon’s contribution to learning has been
overestimated, there is one side of his thought which has seldom been
emphasized but deserves some notice, namely, his historical attitude.
In one sense history was a weak point with Bacon as with most of his
contemporaries. He not only accepted the faulty accounts of the past
current in his day, but was apt to pounce upon the most sensational
and incredible details and use these to support his case. He had no
notion of historical criticism. Unfortunately he thought that he knew
a good deal about the history of philosophy, and his attitude to
science is colored by his false ideas of the history of intellectual
development. He of course knew nothing of evolution or of prehistoric
man. For him intellectual history commenced with a complete divine
revelation of philosophy to the patriarchs. Science then declined owing
to the sinfulness of mankind, the invention of magic by Zoroaster, and
further corruption of wisdom at the hands of Nimrod, Atlas, Prometheus,
Hermes Trismegistus, Aesculapius, and Apollo. Complete knowledge
and understanding were granted again by God to Solomon, after whom
succeeded another period of sinful decline, until with Thales began
the gradual upbuilding of Greek philosophy culminating in Aristotle.
Then night set in again, until Avicenna revived philosophy among the
Arabs. To him and Aristotle, however, as infidels, less complete
knowledge was vouchsafed than to the representatives of God’s chosen
people.[2144] Of the composition and development of Roman law Bacon had
so little notion that he thought it borrowed chiefly from Aristotle
and Theophrastus, except that the Twelve Tables were derived from the
laws of Solon.[2145] Though he saw the value of linguistics and textual
criticism, and sought with true humanistic ardor for a lost work like
the _Morals_ of Seneca, he accepted as genuine works of antiquity
spurious treatises like the _De Vetula_ ascribed to Ovid.[2146] He
believed that Paul had corresponded with Seneca and that Alexander’s
conquests were due to Aristotle’s experimental science. We shall
soon see how he used the astrological interpretation of history,
which was the medieval counterpart of our geographical and economic
interpretation. Yet Bacon deserves praise for so often opening his
discussion of a problem by an inquiry into its historical background;
he at least tried to adopt the historical point of view. And on the
whole his historical method makes about as close an approach to modern
research as do his mathematics and experimental science to their modern
parallels.
[Sidenote: His “mathematical method.”]
Yet the introduction of mathematical method into natural science has
often been attributed to Roger Bacon, in which respect he has been
favorably contrasted with Francis Bacon. Therefore it will be well to
note exactly what Roger says on this point and whether his observations
were notably in advance of the thought of his times. It will be
recalled that in his criticism of the teaching of mathematics Roger had
shown little appreciation of the labors of those pure mathematicians
who devoted a lifetime to painstaking demonstration and were satisfied
with nothing short of it. The discussion in the _Opus Maius_ opens
with strong assertions of the necessity for a knowledge of mathematics
in the study of natural science and of theology as well; and we are
told that neglect of mathematics for the past thirty or forty years
has been the ruin of Latin learning. This position is supported by
citation of various authorities and by some vague general arguments in
typical scholastic style. Grammar and logic must employ music, a branch
of mathematics, in prosody and persuasive periods. The categories of
time, place, and quantity require mathematical knowledge for their
comprehension. Mathematics must underlie other subjects because it is
by nature the most elementary and the easiest to learn and the first
discovered. Moreover, all our sense knowledge is received in space, in
time, and quantitatively. Also the certitude of mathematics makes it
desirable that other studies avail themselves of its aid.
[Sidenote: Its crudity.]
But now we come to the application of these glittering generalities
and we see what Bacon’s “mathematical method” really amounts to.
Briefly, it consists in expounding his physical and astronomical
theories by means of simple geometrical diagrams. The atomical doctrine
of Democritus cannot be true, since it involves the error that the
hypothenuse is of the same length as the side of a square. Geometry
satisfies Roger that there can be but one universe; otherwise we
should have a vacuum left. Plato’s assertion that the heavens and
four elements are made up each of one group of regular solids is also
subjected to geometrical scrutiny. Mathematics is further of service
in Biblical geography, in sacred chronology, and in allegorical
interpretation of the dimensions of the ark, temple, and tabernacle,
and of various numbers which occur in Scripture. But mathematics,
according to Bacon, plays its greatest rôle in astronomy or astrology
and in physics, and in his favorite theory of multiplication of species
or virtues, or, as modern writers have flatteringly termed it, the
propagation of force.[2147]
[Sidenote: Its debt to others.]
Astronomy and astrology had together long made up the world’s supreme
science; there was no originality in urging their importance, and
unfortunately it was astrology rather than astronomy which seemed to
Bacon by far the most important and practical part of mathematics.
In physics he borrowed his discussion of weights and falling bodies
from Jordanus, an earlier writer in the thirteenth century, and his
optics from Alhazen and Grosseteste and from treatises which passed
then under the names of Ptolemy and Euclid but were perhaps of more
recent origin.[2148] Bacon’s graphic expression of the multiplication
of species by lines and figures we find earlier in Grosseteste’s _De
Lineis, Angulis, et Figuris_.[2149] It does not seem, therefore, that
Bacon made any new suggestions of great importance concerning the
application of mathematical method in the sciences, and historians of
mathematics have recognized that “he contributed nothing to the pure
science,”[2150] of whose very meaning his notion was inadequate.
III. _His Experimental Science_
[Sidenote: Has been given undue prominence.]
Let us next inquire what contributions, if any, Bacon made in the
direction of modern experimental method. Jebb’s edition of the _Opus
Maius_ in 1733 ended with the sixth part on “Experimental Science,”
which thus received undue prominence and seemed the climax of the
work. Bridges’ edition added the seventh part on “Moral Philosophy,”
“a science better than all the preceding,” and the text as now extant,
after listing various arguments for the superiority of Christianity
to other religions, concludes abruptly with an eight-page devout
justification and glorification of the mystery of the Eucharist.
Our preceding chapters have similarly rectified the place of Bacon’s
discussion of experimental science in the history of thought. We
have already brought out the fact that he was not the first medieval
man to advocate experimentation, but that writers before him contain
“experiments,” rely on experience rather than mere authority, and
mention the existence of other “experimenters” and “experimental
books.” We have noted Petrus Hispanus’ discussion of “the experimental
method” (_via experiment_), Albertus Magnus’ experimental school
for the study of nature, Robert Grosseteste’s association of
experimentation with physics, and William of Auvergne’s association
of experiment with natural magic. We have described experiments of
Constantinus Africanus, Adelard of Bath, Pedro Alfonso, Bernard
Silvester, and many others. We have yet to describe experimental books,
many of which antedate Roger Bacon. His discussion will be found to do
little more than duplicate and reinforce the picture of the medieval
status of experimental method which we have already obtained from other
and earlier sources. He is not a lone herald of the experimental method
of modern science; he merely reveals and himself represents the merits
and the defects of an important movement of his time.
[Sidenote: “Experimental science” distinct from other natural sciences.]
Bacon’s discussion of “experimental science” and of experimental method
are not quite one and the same thing. He treats of “experimental
science” in a separate section of the _Opus Maius_, and seems to regard
it as something distinct from his other natural sciences, such as
optics, alchemy, astronomy and astrology, rather than as an inductive
method through regulated and purposive observation and experience to
the discovery of truth, which should underlie and form an essential
part of them all. Yet he also approaches the latter conception. But
note that, while the sixth part on “Experimental Science” is not
the last section of the _Opus Maius_, it is the last of the natural
sciences to be discussed by him there rather than the first. It is
not, like modern experimentation, the source but “the goal of all
speculation.” It is not so much an inductive method of discovering
scientific truth, as it is applied science, the putting the results of
the “speculative” natural sciences to the test of practical utility.
“Other sciences know how to discover their first principles through
experience, but reach their conclusions by arguments made from the
principles so discovered. But if they require a specific and final test
of their conclusions, then they ought to avail themselves of the aid of
this noble science.”[2151] “Natural philosophy narrates and argues but
does not experiment. The student of perspective and the astronomer put
many things to the test of experience, but not all nor sufficiently.
Hence complete experience is reserved for this science.”[2152] It
uses the other sciences to achieve definite practical results; as a
navigator orders a carpenter to build him a ship or a knight tells a
smith to make him a suit of armor, so the _experimentator_ uses his
knowledge of geometry to construct a burning-glass or outdoes alchemy
at its own specialty of gold-making.[2153] In working out these
practical inventions, however, the “experimenter” often happens on new
facts and truths of which the speculative sciences have not dreamed,
and in this way experimental science “by its own power investigates
the secrets of nature.” Thus Bacon begins to see the advisability of a
close alliance between “experimental science” and natural science, but
it is also clear that they are not yet identified. The artisans of the
gilds and the alchemists--Bacon includes a discussion of alchemy in
the same sixth section with his “experimental science,” although in a
way keeping the two distinct--seem to be engaging in this experimental
science more than do the scholars of the books and schools. As
William of Auvergne associated experimentation with magic rather than
with science, so Bacon seems to regard natural science as largely
speculative, and confirms the impression, which we have already derived
from many other sources, that magicians were the first to “experiment,”
and that “science,” originally speculative, has gradually taken
over the experimental method from magic. This impression will be
strengthened as we proceed to examine in more detail, first Bacon’s
“experimental science” and then what he has to say concerning magic.
From now on, however, we shall credit Bacon with all the traces of
experimental method that we can find anywhere in his writings, as well
as in his separate section on “experimental science” in the _Opus
Maius_ and his further allusions to the same subject in the _Opus
Minus_ and _Opus Tertium_.
[Sidenote: As a criterion of truth.]
Bacon not merely emphasizes the importance of experience in arriving
at the truth, but of all sciences regards his “experimental
science” as the best criterion of truth. “All sciences except this
either merely employ arguments to prove their conclusions, like
the purely speculative sciences, or have universal and imperfect
experiences”;[2154] while “It alone, in truth, has the means of
finding out to perfection what can be done by nature, what by the
industry of art, what by fraud”; for it alone can distinguish what is
true from what is false in “incantations, conjurations, invocations,
deprecations, and sacrifices.”[2155]
[Sidenote: Lack of method.]
But how is one to set about experimenting? On this point Bacon is
disappointing. His explanation of the rainbow, which is his longest
illustration of the value of experimental science, is based merely on
ordinary intelligent observation and reasoning, although he adds at the
close that tests with instruments are needed and that consequently he
will not assert that he has reached the full truth of the matter.[2156]
Elsewhere he speaks of astronomical experiments “by instruments
made for this purpose,” but seems to regard the unaided eyesight as
sufficient for the investigation of terrestrial phenomena. Bacon has
sent “over sea and to various other lands and to annual fairs, in order
that I might see the things of nature with my own eyes.”[2157] “And
those things which are not present in our locality we may know through
other sages who have experienced them, just as Aristotle by authority
of Alexander sent two thousand men to different regions to experience
all things on the face of the earth, as Pliny testifies in his Natural
History.”[2158] The one contemporary who most nearly fulfills Bacon’s
ideal of what an experimental scientist should be, does not spend
his time merely in reading, attending lectures, and engaging in
disputations, but “is ashamed to have some layman or old wife or knight
or rustic know facts of which he is ignorant”; hence he goes out into
the world and observes the doings of common workingmen and even takes
hints from the operations of witches, enchanters and magicians.[2159]
Bacon even accepts the notion which we have already often met in other
writers, that valuable medicines can be discovered by observing what
remedies various animals employ. It would seem that experimental method
is in a low state of its development, if it takes lessons from common
human experience and from the actions of brutes. Bacon sufficiently
indicates, however, that it does not consist merely of observation and
casual experience, but includes purposive experimentation, and he often
speaks of “experimenters.” Undoubtedly he himself experimented. But the
fact remains that he gives no directions concerning either the proper
environment for experimenting or the proper conduct of experiments. Of
laboratory equipment, of scientific instruments, of exact measurements,
he has no more notion apparently than his contemporaries.
[Sidenote: Bacon and inventions.]
It cannot be shown that Roger Bacon actually anticipated any of our
modern inventions, nor that to him in particular were due any of the
medieval inventions which revolutionized domestic life such as chimney
flues and window panes, or navigation such as the rudder and mariner’s
compass, or public and ecclesiastical architecture such as the pointed
vault and flying buttress and stained glass, or reckoning and writing
such as the Hindu-Arabic numerals and paper, or reading and seeing
such as lenses and eye-glasses, or warfare such as gunpowder.[2160]
We probably are justified, however, in accepting such passages in his
works as the following, not merely as dreams that have been brought
true by modern mechanical inventions, but as further indications that
an interest existed in mechanical devices, and that men were already
beginning to struggle with the problems which have recently been solved.
“Machines for navigation can be made without rowers so that the largest
ships on rivers or seas will be moved by a single man in charge with
greater velocity than if they were full of men. Also cars can be made
so that without animals they will move with unbelievable rapidity;
such we opine were the scythe-bearing chariots with which the men of
old fought. Also flying machines can be constructed so that a man sits
in the midst of the machine revolving some engine by which artificial
wings are made to beat the air like a flying bird. Also a machine small
in size for raising or lowering enormous weights, than which nothing
is more useful in emergencies. For by a machine three fingers high and
wide and of less size a man could free himself and his friends from
all danger of prison and rise and descend. Also a machine can easily
be made by which one man can draw a thousand to himself by violence
against their wills, and attract other things in like manner. Also
machines can be made for walking in the sea and rivers, even to the
bottom without danger. For Alexander the Great employed such, that he
might see the secrets of the deep, as Ethicus the astronomer tells.
These machines were made in antiquity and they have certainly been made
in our times, except possibly a flying machine which I have not seen
nor do I know any one who has, but I know an expert who has thought out
the way to make one. And such things can be made almost without limit,
for instance, bridges across rivers without piers or other supports,
and mechanisms, and unheard of engines.”[2161] Since Bacon’s authority
concerning Alexander is unreliable and his conjectures concerning
ancient scythe-bearing chariots unwarranted, we may also doubt if
steamboats and automobiles had “certainly been made” in his day; but
men may have been trying to accomplish such things.
[Sidenote: Marvelous results expected.]
Bacon says far more of the marvelous results which he expects
experimental science to achieve than he does of the methods by which
such results are to be attained. In the main marvelousness rather than
practicability characterizes the aims which he proposes for _scientia
experimentalis_. Indeed, of the three ways in which he represents it
as superior to all other sciences, while one is that it employs sure
proofs rather than mere arguments, two are that by it life may be
greatly lengthened, and that from it a better knowledge of the future
may be gained than even from astrology.[2162] Thus experimental method
is especially connected with alchemy and astrology. Bacon declares that
“it has been proved by certain experiments” that life can be greatly
prolonged “by secret experiences.”[2163] and he believes that Artephius
was enabled by such methods to live for a thousand and twenty-five
years.[2164] Or experimental science may predict the weather by
observing the behavior of animals.[2165]
[Sidenote: Fantastic “experiments.”]
Some of Bacon’s “experiments” are as fantastic as the aims are
marvelous. “A good experimenter says in the book _De regimine senum_”
that the following elixir will greatly prolong life: “that which is
temperate in the fourth degree, and what swims in the sea, and what
grows in the air, and what is cast up by the sea, and plant of India,
and what is found in the entrails of an animal of long life, and
those two serpents which are the food of the inhabitants of Tyre and
Ethiopia.”[2166] We also are told that “at Paris recently there was
a sage who asked for snakes and was given one and cut it into small
sections except that the skin of its belly on which it crawled remained
intact; and that snake crawled as best it could to a certain herb
by touching which it was instantly made whole. And the experimenter
collected an herb of wonderful virtue.”[2167]
[Sidenote: Credulity essential.]
Credulity, in contrast to the sceptical attitude of modern science
is a characteristic of Bacon’s experimental method. He declares, it
is true, that experiment disproves many false notions such as that
hot water freezes faster than cold, that adamant can be broken only
with the blood of a goat, and that the beaver when hunted castrates
itself to save its life;[2168] but we have already heard such beliefs
questioned by Albertus Magnus and others. On the other hand, Bacon
asserts that credulity is necessary to experimentation. “First one
should be credulous until experience follows second and reason comes
third.... At first one should believe those who have made experiments
or who have faithful testimony from others who have done so, nor should
one reject the truth because he is ignorant of it and because he has
no argument for it.”[2169] Taken as a plea for an open-minded attitude
toward scientific investigation on the part of the ordinary man and
of the ecclesiastical authorities, this utterance may be commended;
but as a prescription for the scientific investigator it is dangerous.
Many of Bacon’s “experiments” are copied from books, and the reproach
made against the Greek Empirics that they followed tradition, applies
also to him. Describing a certain marvel of nature, he exclaims,
“After I beheld this, there was nothing difficult for my mind to
believe, provided it had a reliable author.”[2170] In the midst of his
discussion of experimental science we encounter the following instance
of his gullibility:
[Sidenote: Good flying dragons.]
“It is certain that Ethiopian sages have come into Italy, Spain,
France, England, and those Christian lands where there are good flying
dragons; and by an occult art that they possess, excite the dragons
from their caves. And they have saddles and bridles ready, and they
ride the dragons, and drive them at top speed through the air, in
order to soften the rigidity and toughness of their flesh, just as
boars, bears, and bulls are hunted with dogs and beaten with many
blows before they are killed for eating. And when they have tamed
the dragons in this way, they have an art of preparing their flesh
... which they employ against the accidents of age and prolong life
and inspire the intellect beyond all estimation. For no education
which man can give will bestow such wisdom as does the eating of their
flesh, as we have learned without deceit or doubt from men of proved
trustworthiness.”[2171]
Bacon’s discussion of experimental science, therefore, on its positive
side amounts to little more than a recognition of experience as a
criterion of truth and a promulgation of the phrase “Experimental
science” which, however, he himself ascribes to Ptolemy.[2172]
[Sidenote: Experiment and magic.]
On the other hand, the credulity, the superstition, the element of
marvelousness, which seem to vitiate the experimental tendencies of
Bacon, are to be explained as the result of a real connection between
experiment and magic. There is abundant evidence for this. Bacon, it
is true, asserts that experimental science exposes and shuns all the
follies of the magicians, but he admits that many persons confuse
it with magic because of the marvels which it works, and he himself
especially associates it with the occult sciences of alchemy and
astrology. It makes gold such as neither the art of alchemy nor nature
can produce; it can predict the future better than astrology.[2173] It
teaches one to choose the proper constellations for his undertakings,
and to use the right words at the proper times;[2174] it can construct
“philosophical images and incantations and characters” which are vastly
superior to those of magic;[2175] it can alter the world about us,
and incline and excite the human will, though without coercion.[2176]
Moreover, Bacon’s ideal experimental scientist does not scorn to
take hints from wizards, while Roger himself derives his hazel rod
experiment from the magicians. The snake experiment of his sage at
Paris sounds more like the trick of a Hindu conjurer than the procedure
of a modern laboratory.
IV. _His Attitude Toward Magic and Astrology_
[Sidenote: Magic and astrology.]
Thus we are finally led to a consideration of the magic and astrology
which were evidently so closely connected with Bacon’s mathematics and
experimental science. Roger admits a certain connection between magic
and astrology, since he adopts Hugh of St. Victor’s fivefold division
of magic into _mantice_, _mathematica_, _sortilegium_, _praestigium_
and _maleficium_.[2177] However, except for this superstitious
_mathematica_ he approves of astrology, whereas his attitude towards
magic is uniformly one of condemnation and contempt. We shall therefore
take up his treatments of the two subjects separately.
[Sidenote: Magic in the past.]
Bacon discusses or alludes to “magic” in a number of passages scattered
through his works, and to it is more particularly devoted the “Letter
on the secret works of art and nature and the nullity of magic,”
a treatise which faithfully reproduces his point of view whether
actually penned by him as it stands or not.[2178] Bacon had evidently
read a good deal about magic and gives a rather unusual account of
its position in the Roman Empire and early Christian period, but one
which is not so very far from the truth. His idea is that there were
three great conflicting and contending forces in the early centuries
of the Christian era, namely, Christianity, philosophy, and magic,
and that each one of these was then in opposition to the other two,
although there was no sufficient reason for the permanent hostility
of Christianity and philosophy, which have since become allies.[2179]
But at the time the result was that the philosophers often accused the
Christians of practicing magic, and that the early Christians similarly
confused philosophers with magicians, as indeed was often done by
uneducated men of the time who were not Christians. Moreover, Bacon
complains that this confusion still exists in his own time and that
contemporary theologians, Gratian in his work on Canon law, and “many
saints” have condemned many useful and splendid sciences along with
magic.[2180]
[Sidenote: Magicians and their books still prevalent.]
Roger himself, however, not only regards magic as rife in antiquity,
but as still prevalent in his own time. He often refers to contemporary
magicians and witches, old-wives and wizards. He declares that every
nation is full of their superstitions.[2181] He is another medieval
witness to the currency of a considerable body of occult literature,
of which he speaks especially in the second and third chapters of
the _Epistola de secretis operibus_, and again in his commentary on
_The Secret of Secrets_. “Books of the magicians” are in circulation
which are falsely attributed to Solomon and the ancient philosophers
and which “assume a grand-sounding style,” but which “ought all to be
prohibited by law, since they abound in so many lies that one cannot
distinguish the true from the false.”[2182] Such works as _De officiis
spirituum_, _De morte animae_, and _De arte notoria_ embody only
“figments of the magicians.” Yet these books of false _mathematici_ and
demons, ascribed to Adam, Moses, Solomon, Aristotle, and Hermes, have
seduced not only youths but mature and famous men of Bacon’s own time.
[Sidenote: Magic a delusion.]
Bacon, indeed, despite the prevalence of magic both in antiquity and
in his own time, regards it as essentially a delusion. It is “the
nullity of magic” that he especially attempts to demonstrate both in
the _Epistola de secretis operibus_ and elsewhere in his works. He is
medieval Christian enough, it is true, to grant that magic may perform
marvels by the aid of demons.[2183] But he also accepts the orthodox
belief that magicians cannot coerce the demons by their invocations,
sacrifices, and employment of the properties of natural objects, and
that the evil spirits in reality respond only with evil intent and
as God permits.[2184] But his emphasis is not, like Augustine’s upon
the “host of wonders” which magicians work by demon aid. He seems to
be sounding, not a religious retreat from magic, but a rational and
scientific attack upon it. Nor does he dwell much on the criminal
character of magic, although he calls the magicians _maledicti_--“of
evil repute.”[2185] What impresses him most about magic, and the charge
which he most often brings against it, is its fraud and futility. Twice
he speaks of things as “false and magical”;[2186] he mentions the
“figments of the magicians”;[2187] and associates magic and necromancy,
not like Albert with astronomy, but with deception.[2188] For him
magicians are neither _magni_ nor philosophers and astronomers; in half
a dozen passages he classes them with old-wives and witches.[2189] He
will not admit that they employ valid natural forces. He represents
magic as using sleight-of-hand, ventriloquism, subtle mechanism,
darkness and confederates to simulate results which it is unable
to perform.[2190] He further represents the magicians as “stupidly
trusting in characters and incantations,”[2191] and affirms that “the
human voice has not that power which magicians imagine it has.”[2192]
When words are employed in magic, “either the magician accomplishes
nothing, or the devil is the author of the feat.”[2193] Magical
incantations and formulae are made haphazard and at anyone’s pleasure;
they therefore possess no natural transforming power, and if they
seem to effect anything, this is really the work of demons.[2194]
Similarly Bacon regards as worthless the assertion of the magicians
and witches that sudden transformations may be produced by any man at
any time of day.[2195] He dismisses “fascination by word alone uttered
at haphazard” as “a stupid notion characteristic of magic and of
old-wives and beneath the notice of philosophers.” Here again nothing
is accomplished, “unless the devil because of men’s sins operates
unbeknownst.”[2196]
[Sidenote: Some truth in magic.]
In certain passages, however, Bacon suggests that magic is not utterly
worthless and that some truth may be derived from it. The experimental
scientist whom he most admired “investigated even the _experiments_ and
lot-castings of old women”--note that they too were experimenters--“and
their charms and those of all the magicians, and likewise the illusions
and devices of all the conjurers”; and he did so not merely that he
might be able to expose their deceptions, but also “so that nothing
that ought to be known might escape him.”[2197] And his experimental
science not merely “considered all the follies of the magicians, not
to confirm them but to shun them, just as logic deals with sophistry”;
but also “so that all falsity may be removed and the truth of the
art alone retained.”[2198] Roger himself in the case of the split
hazel rod discovered a natural phenomenon concealed by use of a magic
incantation. Bacon also granted that the books of the magicians “may
contain some truth.”[2199] It also was apparently very difficult to
distinguish them from other writings, since he states that many books
are reputed magical which are nothing of the sort but contain sound
learning;[2200] since he calls the magicians “corrupters of wisdom’s
records,”[2201] and charges them not only with fraudulently ascribing
various “enormities” to Solomon, but with misinterpreting and abusing
“enigmatical writings” which he believes Solomon really wrote;[2202]
and since he tells us that even true philosophers have sometimes made
use of meaningless incantations and characters in order to conceal
their meaning. He consequently concludes that experience will show
which books are good and which are bad, and that “if anyone finds the
work of nature and art in one of them, let him receive it; if not,
abandon the book as open to suspicion.”[2203]
[Sidenote: Magic and science.]
Indeed, Bacon seems to think that magic has taken such a hold upon men
that it can be uprooted only by scientific exposition of its tricks and
by scientific achievement of even greater marvels than it professes to
perform. Perhaps he realizes that religious censure or rationalistic
argument is not enough to turn men from these alluring arts, but that
science must show unto them yet a more excellent way, and afford
scope for that laudable curiosity, that inventive and exploring
instinct which magic pretends to gratify. He waxes enthusiastic over
“the secret works of art and nature,” and contends that the wonders
of nature and the possibilities of applied science far outshine the
feats of magicians.[2204] One reason why early Christian writers so
often confounded philosophy and magic together was, in his opinion,
that the philosophers by their marvelous exploitation of the forces of
nature equalled both the illusions of magic and the miracles of the
Christians.[2205] Science, in short, not merely attacks magic’s front;
it can turn its flank and cut it off from its base of supplies.
[Sidenote: His belief in marvelous “extraneous virtues.”]
But Bacon’s science is sometimes occult science. In the first place he
shared the common belief of his time that “herbs and stones and metals
and other things” possess “almost miraculous” powers.[2206] By thorough
investigation of such occult virtues Artephius prolonged his existence
to one thousand and twenty-five years. “Moreover, there are numerous
things which kill every venomous animal by the slightest contact; and
if a circle is drawn about such animals with objects of this sort, they
cannot get out but die without having been touched. And if a man is
stung by a venomous animal, he can be cured by a little powder scraped
from such objects, as Bede writes in his _Ecclesiastical History_ and
as we know by experience. And so there are innumerable things which
have extraneous virtues of this sort, of whose powers we are ignorant
from mere neglect of experimentation.”[2207] By calling such virtues
“extraneous” Bacon seems to imply that they cannot be accounted for
by the properties of the elements composing the objects, and perhaps
further that they are of celestial origin. This points on to his belief
in astrology.
[Sidenote: Non-magical fascination.]
But Bacon goes farther than that, for some of his “secret works of
art and nature” we must regard as plain cases of magic procedure,
and they would indeed be so classified by most of our authors. Bacon
really goes about as far as Albertus Magnus in credulous acceptance of
superstition, but will not admit, as Albert does, that such things are
magic or very closely related to it. The incantations and characters,
the fascination and marvelous transformations of magic Bacon condemns,
but he does not condemn all incantations and characters, nor disbelieve
in marvelous transformations and fascination. While he regards
haphazard fascination as magic, he holds that just as certain bodily
diseases are contagious, so if some malignant soul thinks hard of
infecting another, and desires this ardently, and has full confidence
in its own power to inflict such injury, “there is no doubt that nature
will obey thought, as Avicenna”--who seems to have been the leading
medieval authority on the subject of fascination--“shows in his eighth
book on animals and in his fourth book on the soul: ... and this much
is not magic.”[2208]
[Sidenote: The power of words.]
Bacon makes a close connection between fascination and the power of
words and of the human voice, since in his opinion both are largely due
to the rational soul. Words are the soul’s most appropriate instrument
and almost every miracle since the beginning of the world has been
performed by using them.[2209] “For where the attention, desire and
virtue of the rational soul, which is worthier than the stars, concur
with the power of the sky, it is inevitable that either a word or some
other instrument of marvelous power be produced which will alter the
things of this world, so that not only natural objects but also souls
will be inclined to those ends which the wise operator desires.”[2210]
Again in the _Opus Tertium_ we are told that, while the magician
accomplishes nothing by words, the wise man may for this reason.
“When words are uttered with deep thought and great desire and good
intention and firm confidence, they have great virtue. For when these
four qualities unite, the substance of the rational being is strongly
excited to radiate its own species and virtues from itself into its own
body and foreign matter.”[2211] The rational soul influences the voice,
which in turn affects the atmosphere and all objects contained therein.
The physical constitution of the speaker also has some influence,
and finally the positions of the stars must by all means be taken
into account.[2212] All this reasoning is equivalent to accepting the
power of incantations, for as Bacon states, “They are words brought
forth by the exertion of the rational soul, and receive the virtue of
the sky as they are pronounced.”[2213] Through their power bodies
are healed, venomous animals put to flight, and other such effects
produced. If incantations are made as described above, “then they are
philosophical and the work of a sage wisely enchanting, as David the
prophet says.”[2214] Bacon, however, recognizes that he is dealing
with a delicate matter in which it is hard to distinguish between
philosophy and magic.[2215] Of his further discussion of characters
and images, and effort to show that they need not be magical, we shall
treat presently in connection with his astrology. In his introduction
to _The Secret of Secrets_ he holds that the prayers and sacrifices of
Aristotle and other philosophers were licit and not idolatrous.[2216]
[Sidenote: Magic and science again.]
Thus Bacon fails in his attempt to draw the line between science and
magic, and shows, as William of Auvergne, Albertus Magnus, and others
have already shown, how inextricably the two subjects were intertwined
in his time. His own science still clings to many occult and magical
theories and practices, while he admits that the magicians often try
or pretend to use scientific books and methods, and that it is no
easy matter to tell which books and characters and images are which.
The experimental scientist not only exposes the frauds of magic but
discovers secrets of nature hidden beneath the husk of magical ceremony
and pretense. Also some men employ the marvels of philosophy for wicked
ends and so pervert it into a sort of magic. Finally in one passage
he forgets himself and speaks of “those magnificent sciences” which
properly employ “images, characters, charms, prayers, and deprecations”
as “magical sciences.”[2217]
[Sidenote: The multiplication of species.]
Bacon’s doctrine of the multiplication of species is a good
illustration of the combination of magic and science which we encounter
in his works. This theory has been praised by his admirers as the
propagation of force subject to mathematical law; and he has been
commended for describing the species which every agent causes in all
directions not, like the idols of Lucretius, as material films which
peel off from the agent and impress themselves on surrounding matter,
but as successive effects produced in that matter. Bacon usually
illustrates his theory by the radiation of light from the sun, and by
a discussion of the geometrical laws of reflection and refraction;
thus his theory seems at first sight a physical one. He believed,
however, that the occult influences of the planets upon nature and man
were exercised in the same way, and also such mysterious powers as
those of the evil eye and of fascination. Indeed, he asserts that this
multiplication of virtues is universal, and that spiritual beings as
well as corporeal objects affect in this manner everything about them
and may themselves be so affected by other objects and beings.[2218]
Viewed from this angle, his theory seems a magical one of occult
influence, though given a scientific guise by its assumption that such
forces proceed along mathematical lines after the analogy of rays
of light. This suggests that it is not fair merely to call Bacon’s
science superstitious; we must also note that he tries to make his
magic scientific. But finally we must note that this doctrine was not
original with Bacon; we have already met with it in Alkindi’s work on
stellar rays.[2219]
[Sidenote: William of St. Cloud on works of art and nature compared to
magic.]
It is interesting to find Bacon’s belief that the works of art and
nature can exceed those of magic, and his charge that unscientific
persons are confusing such works with magic, repeated by another
writer. William of St. Cloud composed astronomical tables based upon
his own observations during the period from about 1285 to 1321, in
which he detected errors in the earlier tables of Thebit, Toulouse, and
Toledo. This experimental astronomer, speaking of the powers of mirrors
and lenses, such as those of Archimedes, those by which Caesar saw
Britain from the shores of Gaul, and that by which Socrates discovered
a dragon in the air, says: “These marvels and many others have been
performed in ancient times, not by magic art, as some would have it,
who are ignorant of the secrets of nature and of scientific industry,
but solely by the force of nature and the aid of art.”[2220]
[Sidenote: The two mathematics.]
We now turn to Bacon’s attitude towards astrology, which we have
already seen was an important factor in his “secret works of art
and nature” as well as in his mathematics. He was aware that the
_mathematici_ or astrologers of the Roman Empire had been condemned
by some of the church fathers, and were classed as practitioners
of magic by more recent theologians and writers on Canon law. Like
Isidore, Albertus Magnus, and other authors whom we have already
discussed, Bacon gets around this by distinguishing two varieties of
mathematics, one of which he says is magic, condemned by Cicero in his
_De divinatione_ and by other classical authorities as well as by the
church fathers, the other a department of philosophy, a branch of which
Augustine, Ambrose, Basil, Cassiodorus, and Gregory all approved. In
the _Opus Maius_ and _Opus Tertium_ he states as usual that the “e”
is long in the magical art of divination, while the vowel is short in
the philosophical study; but in other writings he changed his mind and
declared that “all the Latins” were wrong in this opinion and that the
distinction was just the opposite.[2221] Bacon also cites Isidore’s
distinction between two kinds of “astronomy”; one natural science, the
other superstitious. Roger himself sometimes uses the words “astrology”
and “astronomy” indifferently; sometimes speaks of “astrology” as
speculative and “astronomy” as practical; sometimes distinguishes
between speculative and practical astrology, of which the last includes
judicial astrology.[2222]
[Sidenote: Four objections to the forbidden variety.]