making fun of these medieval thinkers for having accepted the idea of
the transmutation of metals and searched so assiduously for the
philosopher's stone. This supposed absurdity has for most scientific
minds during the nineteenth century been quite enough of itself,
without more ado, to stamp the generations of the Middle Ages who
accepted it, as utterly lacking, if not in common sense, at least in
serious reasoning power. At the present moment, however, we are in the
full tide of a set of opinions that tend to make us believe not {309}
only in the possibility, but in the actual occurrence of the
transmutation of metals. Observations made with regard to radium have
revolutionized all the scientific thinking in this matter. Radium has
apparently been demonstrated changing into helium, and so there is a
transmutation of metals. On the strength of this and certain other
recently investigated physical phenomena, there is a definite tendency
in the minds of many serious students of physics and chemistry to
consider that other metals possibly change into one another, and that
all that is needed is careful observation to discover it, for this
change is supposed to be going on around us all the time. Not very
long since, a professor of physical science at an important American
university suggested that it would be extremely interesting to take a
large specimen of lead ore, say several tons, and having removed from
it carefully all traces of silver that might be contained in it, put
it away for twenty years, and then see whether any further traces of
silver could be found. The idea that possibly lead occasionally
changes into silver by some slow chemical process is evidently
deep-seated in his mind. It would remind one of Newton's expression
some two centuries ago, that he had seen copper and gold ores
occurring together in specimens, and that he looked upon this as
evidence that copper in the course of time changes into gold. Certain
it is that lead ores constantly occur in connection with silver, or at
least that silver is found wherever lead is; that a corresponding
relationship between gold and copper has also been noted; and that
Newton's idea was not near so absurd, in the light of what we now
know, or still more, what we surmise on good scientific grounds, as
the nineteenth century scientists would have had us believe.
{310}
As I go over this manuscript for the last time just before going to
press, there comes the announcement that Sir William Ramsay has
probably solved the problem of the transmutation of metals. He has
shown apparently that lithium, when acted upon by radium emanations,
changes to some extent to copper. It is true that the change is only
in small quantities, and that there is no question as yet of any
commercial value to the process; but we all know that it is by such
small scientific announcements as this that the entering wedges of
large industrial processes are introduced. The fact that this
announcement should have been made before the British Association for
the Advancement of Science and by a thoroughly conservative English
chemist, probably settles forever the question of the transmutation of
metals, in the way that the people of the Middle Ages looked at the
problem rather than as the intervening centuries did.
The old medieval thinkers, then, were only ridiculous to a few
generations of nineteenth century scientists who, because they knew a
little more about certain details in science than preceding
generations had done, thought that they knew all that there was to be
known about this immense subject, and made fun of thinkers quite as
great as themselves in preceding centuries. At the beginning of the
twentieth century, instead of making ourselves ludicrous by raising a
laugh at the expense of these fellow students in science of the olden
time, we should rather feel like congratulating them upon the
perspicacity which enabled them to anticipate a great truth with
regard to the relationships of chemical elements, especially the
metals, to each other. The present-day idea of thinking physicists and
chemists is {311} that the seventy odd elements described in our
textbooks on chemistry, are not so many essentially independent forms
of matter, but are rather examples of one kind of material exhibiting
special dynamic energies which it possesses under varying conditions,
as yet not well understood. This was exactly the idea that the old
scholastic philosophers had of the constitution of matter. They said
that matter was composed of two principles, prime matter and form.
When this doctrine of theirs is properly elucidated, it proves to be
an anticipation of what is most modern in the thoughts of twentieth
century physicists. A re-statement of the old-time views would read
not unlike many a contribution to a discussion of this subject at an
annual meeting of the British or American Associations for the
Advancement of Science.
This doctrine of prime matter and form, which the scholastics adopted
and adapted from the Greeks, and especially from Aristotle, cannot
fail to be of interest even to modern scientists. According to it,
prime matter was an indeterminate something which made up the
underlying substratum of all material things. Form was the dynamic
element which entered into the composition of matter and made it
exhibit its specific qualities. We have heard much of ionization in
recent times, and in many ways this would remind one even only
slightly familiar with the old scholastics, of their theories of form
entering into matter. Prime matter was supposed to be absolutely
without distinguishing characteristics of its own. It was indifferent,
and had no influence on other material unless when associated with
form. Form was the dynamic and energizing element.
This, of course, still remains in the realm of theory; {312} but it is
interesting to realize that in the olden time they theorized about the
constitution of matter at the universities of the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries just as we do now, and most surprisingly came to
conclusions quite like ours. Their thoughts not only concerned the
same subject, but were worked out in the same way. It is idle to say
that they knew nothing about it and hit on their theory by chance. As
a matter of fact, they knew very little, if any less about it than we
do, for our ignorance on this subject is monumental, and they
anticipated our latest thinking by seven centuries. Many have been the
divagations of thought since that time, but now we return to their
conclusions. It is chastening to the modern mind, so confident of the
advances that have been made by these latter generations, "the heirs
of all the ages in the foremost files of time," to find that we are so
little farther on in an important problem than these men of the
thirteenth century.
Other basic problems with regard to matter and force filled the minds
of the medieval schoolmen quite as they do those of the modern
generations. For instance, they occupied themselves with the question
of the indestructibility of matter, and also, strange as it may seem,
with the conservation of energy. We have presumably learned so much by
experimental demonstration and original observation in the physical
sciences in the modern times, and especially during the precious
nineteenth century, that any thinking of the medieval mind along these
lines might, in the opinion of those who know nothing of what they
speak, be at once set aside without further question as preposterous,
or at best nugatory. The opinions of medieval scholars in these
matters would be presumed, without more ado, to have been so entirely
{313} speculative as to deserve no further attention. Nothing could
well be farther from the truth than this. Nowhere will more marvelous
anticipations of what is most modern in science be found than in some
of these considerations of basic principles in the physical sciences.
For instance, Thomas Aquinas, usually known as St. Thomas, in a series
of lectures given at the University of Paris toward the end of the
third quarter of the thirteenth century, stated as the most important
conclusion with regard to matter that _"Nihil omnino in nihilum
redigetur._--Nothing at all will ever be reduced to nothingness." By
this, as is very evident from the context, he meant to say that matter
would never be annihilated and could never be destroyed. It might be
changed in various ways, but it could never go back into the
nothingness from which it had been taken by the creative act.
Annihilation was pronounced as not being a part of the scheme of
things as far as the human mind could hope to fathom its meaning.
In this sentence, then, Thomas of Aquin was proclaiming the doctrine
of the indestructibility of matter. It was not until well on in the
nineteenth century that the chemists and physicists of modern times
realized the truth of this great principle. The chemists had seen
matter change its form in many ways, had seen it disappear apparently
in the smoke of fire or evaporate under the influence of heat, but
investigation proved that if care were taken in the collection of the
gases that came off under these circumstances, of the ashes of
combustion and of the residue of evaporation, all the original
material that had been contained in the supposedly disappearing
substance could be recovered, or at least {314} completely accounted
for. The physicists on their part had realized this same truth, and
finally there came the definite enunciation of the absolute
indestructibility of matter. St. Thomas's conclusion, "Nothing at all
will ever be reduced to nothingness," had anticipated this doctrine by
nearly seven centuries. What happened in the nineteenth century was
that there came an experimental demonstration of the truth of the
principle. The principle itself, however, had been reached long before
by the human mind, by speculative processes quite as inerrable in
their way as the more modern method of investigation.
When St. Thomas used the aphorism, "Nothing at all will ever be
reduced to nothingness," there was another signification that he
attached to the words quite as clearly as that by which they expressed
the indestructibility of matter. For him _nihil_ or nothing meant
neither matter nor form, that is, neither the material substance nor
the energy which is contained in it. He meant, then, that no energy
would ever be destroyed as well as no matter would ever be
annihilated. He was teaching the conservation of energy as well as the
indestructibility of matter. Here once more the experimental
demonstration of the doctrine was delayed for over six centuries and a
half. The truth itself, however, had been reached by this medieval
master-mind, and was the subject of his teaching to the university
students in Paris in the thirteenth century. These examples should, I
think, serve to illustrate that the minds of medieval students were
occupied with practically the same questions as those which are now
taught to the university students of our day, and that the content of
the teaching was identical with ours.
{315}
The scholars of the Middle Ages are usually said to have been
profoundly ignorant as regards the shape of the earth, its size, and
the number of its inhabitants, and to have cherished the queerest
notions, when they really permitted themselves any ideas at all, as to
the antipodes. This is very true if the ideas of the ignorant masses
of the people and the second-rate authors and thinkers be taken as the
standard of medieval thought. Unfortunately, such sources as these
have only too often served as authorities for modern historians of
education and modern essayists on the history of science. This state
of affairs would painfully suggest the curiously inverted notion of
the supposed ideas entertained with regard to science in our day, that
would be obtained by some thirtieth century student, were he to judge
our scientific opinions from some of the queer books written by
pretentiously ignorant writers, who have pet scientific hobbies of
their own and exploit them at the expense of a long-suffering world,
if by some accident of fortune these books should be preserved and the
really great contributions to science be either actually lost or lost
to sight. It is from Albert the Great and such men, and not from their
petty contemporaries, that the true spirit of the science of the age
must be deduced. Albert's biographer said:
"He treats as fabulous the commonly-received idea, in which
Venerable Bede had acquiesced, that the region of the earth south of
the equator was uninhabitable, and considers, that from the equator
to the South Pole, the earth was not only habitable, but in all
probability actually inhabited, except directly at the poles, where
he imagines the cold to be excessive. If there be any animals there,
he says, they must have very thick skins to defend them from the
rigor of the climate, and they are probably of a white color. The
intensity of cold is, {316} however, tempered by the action of the
sea. He describes the antipodes and the countries they comprise, and
divides the climate of the earth into seven zones. He smiles with a
scholar's freedom at the simplicity of those who suppose that
persons living at the opposite region of the earth must fall off, an
opinion that can only rise out of the grossest ignorance, _'for when
we speak of the lower hemisphere, this must be understood merely as
relatively to ourselves.'_
"It is as a geographer that Albert's superiority to the writers of
his own time chiefly appears. Bearing in mind the astonishing
ignorance which then prevailed on this subject, it is truly
admirable to find him correctly tracing the chief mountain chains of
Europe, with the rivers which take their source in each; remarking
on portions of coast which have in later times been submerged by the
ocean, and islands which have been raised by volcanic action above
the level of the sea; noticing the modification of climate caused by
mountains, seas and forests, and the division of the human race,
whose differences he ascribes to the effect upon them of the
countries they inhabit. In speaking of the British Isles, he alludes
to the commonly-received idea that another distant island called
Thile, or Thule, existed far in the Western Ocean, uninhabitable by
reason of its frightful climate, but which, he says, has perhaps not
yet been visited by man."
In only needs to be said in addition to this, that Albert had more
than a vague hint of the possible existence of land on the other side
of the globe. He gives an elaborate demonstration of the sphericity of
the earth, and it has been suggested by more than one scholar that his
views on this subject led eventually to the discovery of America.
Humboldt, the distinguished German natural philosopher of the
beginning of the nineteenth century, who was undoubtedly the most
important figure in scientific thought in his own time, and whose own
work was great enough to have an enduring influence even down to our
{317} day, in spite of the immense progress made during the nineteenth
century, has praised Albert's work very highly. Almost needless to
say, Humboldt was possessed of a thorough critical faculty and had a
very wide range of knowledge, so that he was in an eminently proper
position to judge of Albert's work. He has summed up his appreciation
briefly as follows:
"Albertus Magnus was equally active and influential in promoting the
study of natural science and of the Aristotelian philosophy. His
works contain some exceedingly acute remarks on the organic
structure and physiology of plants. One of his works, bearing the
title of 'Liber Cosmographicus de Natura Locorum,' is a species of
physical geography. I have found in it considerations on the
dependence of temperature concurrently on latitude and elevation,
and on the effect of different angles of incidence of the sun's rays
in heating the ground, _which have excited my surprise._"
I have thought that perhaps the best way to bring out properly
Albert's knowledge in the physical sciences would be to take up
Humboldt's headings in their order and illustrate them by quotations
from the great scholar's writings--the only scholar to whom the
epithet has been applied in all history--and from condensed accounts
as they appear in his life written by Sighart. [Footnote 40] These
will serve to show at once the extent of Albert's knowledge and the
presumptuous ignorance of those who make little of the science of the
medieval period.
[Footnote 40: Sighart, Albertus Magnus: Sein Leben und Seine
Wisenschaft, Ratisbon, 1857, or its translation by Dixon; Albert the
Great, his life and scholastic labors. London, 1870.]
When we have catalogued, for instance, the many facts with regard to
astronomy and the physics of light that are supposed to be of much
later entrance into the sphere of human knowledge that were grasped by
{318} Albert, and evidently formed the subject of his teaching at
various times at both Paris and Cologne, since they are found in his
authentic works, we can scarcely help but be amused at the pretentious
lack of knowledge that has relegated their author to a place in
education so trivial as is that which is represented in many minds by
the term scholastic.
"He decides that the Milky Way is nothing but a vast assemblage of
stars, but supposed, naturally enough, that they occupy the orbit
which receives the light of the sun. The figures visible on the
moon's disc are not, he says, as hitherto has been supposed,
reflections of the seas and mountains of the earth, but
configurations of her own surface. He notices, in order to correct
it, the assertions of Aristotle that lunar rainbows appear only
twice in fifty years; 'I myself,' he says, 'have observed two in a
single year.' He has something to say on the refraction of a solar
ray, notices certain crystals which have a power of refraction, and
remarks that none of the ancients and few moderns were acquainted
with the properties of mirrors."
Botany is supposed to be a very modern science, and to most people
Humboldt's expression that he found in Albertus Magnus's writings some
"exceedingly acute remarks on the organic structure and physiology of
plants," will come as an supreme surprise. A few details with regard
to Albert's botanical knowledge, however, will serve to heighten that
surprise, and to show that the foolish tirades of modern sciolists,
who have often expressed their wonder that with all the beauties of
nature around them these scholars of the Middle Ages did not devote
themselves to nature study, are absurd; because if the critics but
knew it, there was profound interest in nature and all her
manifestations, and a series of discoveries that anticipated not a
little of what we {319} consider most important in our modern science.
The story of Albert's botanical knowledge has been told in a single
very full paragraph by his biographer. Sighart also quotes an
appreciative opinion from a modern German botanist, which will serve
to dispel any doubts with regard to Albert's position in botany that
modern students might perhaps continue to harbor, unless they had good
authority to support their opinion, though, of course, it will be
remembered that the main difference between the medieval and the
modern mind is only too often said to be that the medieval required an
authority, while the modern makes its opinion for itself. Even the
most skeptical of modern minds, however, will probably be satisfied by
the following paragraph:
"He was acquainted with the sleep of plants, with the periodical
opening and closing of blossoms, with the diminution of sap through
evaporation from the cuticle of the leaves, and with the influence
of the distribution of the bundles of vessels on the folial
indentations. His minute observations on the forms and variety of
plants intimate an exquisite sense of floral beauty. He
distinguished the star from the bell-floral, tells us that a red
rose will turn white when submitted to the vapor of sulphur, and
makes some very sagacious observations on the subject of
germination. . . . The extraordinary erudition and originality of
this treatise (his tenth book) has drawn from M. Meyer the following
comment: 'No botanist who lived before Albert can be compared to
him, unless Theophrastus, with whom he was not acquainted; and after
him none has painted nature in such living colors or studied it so
profoundly until the time of Conrad Gesner and Caesalpino.' All
honor, then, to the man who made such astonishing progress in the
science of nature as to find no one, I will not say to surpass, but
even to equal him for the space of three centuries."
Pagel in Puschmann's History of Medicine gives a list {320} of the
books written by Albert which are concerned with the physical
sciences. These were: Physica, Books VIII., that is, eight treatises
on Natural Science, consisting of commentaries on Aristotle's Physics
and on the underlying principles of natural philosophy, and of energy
and movement; four treatises concerning the Heavens and the Earth,
which contain the general principles of the movement of the heavenly
bodies. Besides there is a treatise On the Nature of Places,
consisting of a description of climates and natural conditions. This
volume contains, according to Pagel, numerous suggestions with regard
to ethnography and physiology. There is a treatise on the causes of
the properties of the elements, which takes up the specific
peculiarities of the elements, according to their physical and
geographical relations. To which must be added two treatises on
generation and corruption; six books on meteors; five books on
minerals; three books on the soul, in which is considered the vital
principle; a treatise on nutrition and nutritives; a treatise on the
senses; another on the memory and the imagination; two books on the
intellect; a treatise on sleep and waking; a treatise on youth and old
age; a treatise on breath and respiration; a treatise on the motion of
animals, in two books, which concerns the voluntary and involuntary
movements of animals; a treatise on life and death; a treatise in six
books on vegetables and plants; a treatise on breathing things. His
treatise on minerals contains, according to Pagel, besides an
extensive presentation of the ordinary peculiarities of minerals, a
description of ninety-five different kinds of precious stones, among
them the pearl, of seven metals, of salt, vitriol, alum, arsenic,
marcasite, nitre, tutia, and amber. Albert's {321} volumes on the
vegetables and plants were reproduced under the editorship of Meyer,
the historian of botany in Germany, and published in Berlin (1867).
All Albert's books are available in modern editions.
In a word, there was scarcely a subject in natural science which
Albert did not treat, in what would now be considered a formal serious
volume, and no department of science that he did not illuminate in
some way, not only by the collection of information that had
previously been in existence, but also by his own observations, and
especially by his interpretations of the significance of the various
phenomena that had been observed. His work is especially noteworthy
for its lack of dependence on authority and the straightforward way in
which the great pioneer of modern science made his observations.
Some of Albert's contemporaries, and especially his pupils, were
almost as distinguished as he was himself in the physical sciences.
In a previous chapter we spoke particularly of Roger Bacon's attitude
toward the physical sciences, above all in what concerns the
experimental method. He was typically modern in the standpoint that he
assumed, as the only one by which knowledge of the things of nature
can be obtained. It will be interesting now to see the number of
things which Friar Bacon succeeded in discovering by the application
of the principle of testing everything by personal observation, of not
accepting things on second-hand authorities, and of not being afraid
to say, "I do not know," in trying to learn for himself. His
discoveries will seem almost incredible to a modern student of science
and of education who has known nothing before of the progress of
science made {322} by this wonderful man, or who has known only
vaguely that Friar Bacon was a great original thinker in science, in
spite of the fact that his life-history is bounded by the thirteenth
century. I may say that the material of what I have to say of him, and
also of his great contemporaries, Albertus Magnus and St. Thomas
Aquinas, is taken almost literally from the chapter of my book, The
Thirteenth Greatest of Centuries, on What They Studied at the
Universities.