this is a mistake, since it was known many years before by the Arabs
and by them introduced into Europe. He did study explosives very
deeply, however, and besides learning many things about them,
realized how much might be accomplished by their use in the
after-time. He declares in his Opus Magnum: "That one may cause to
burst forth from bronze, thunderbolts more formidable that those
produced by nature. A small quantity of prepared matter occasions a
terrible explosion accompanied by a brilliant light. One may
multiply this phenomenon so far as to destroy a city or an army."
Considering how little was know about gunpowder at this time, this
was of itself a marvelous anticipation of what might be accomplished
by it.
Bacon anticipated, however, much more than merely destructive
effects from the use of high explosives, and indeed it is almost
amusing to see how closely he anticipated some of the most modern
usages of high explosives for motor purposes. He seems to have
realized that some time the apparently uncontrollable forces of
explosion would come under the control of man and be harnessed by
him for his own purposes. He foresaw that one of the great
applications of such a force would be for transportation.
Accordingly he said: "Art can construct instruments of navigation
such that the largest vessels, governed by a single man, will
traverse rivers and seas more rapidly than if they were filled with
oarsmen. One may also make carriages which without the aid of any
animal will run with remarkable swiftness." {323} When we recall
that the very latest thing in transportation are motor-boats and
automobiles driven by gasoline, a high explosive, Roger Bacon's
prophecy becomes one of those weird anticipations of human progress
which seem almost more than human.
It was not with regard to explosives alone, however, that Roger
Bacon was to make great advances and still more marvelous
anticipations in physical science. He was not, as is sometimes
claimed for him, either the inventor of the telescope or of the
theory of lenses. He did more, however, than perhaps anyone else to
make the principles of lenses clear and to establish them on a
mathematical basis. His traditional connection with the telescope
can probably be traced to the fact that he was very much interested
in astronomy and the relations of the heavens to the earth. He
pointed out very clearly the errors which had crept into the Julian
calendar, calculated exactly how much of a correction was needed in
order to restore the year to its proper place, and suggested the
method by which future errors of this kind could be avoided. His
ideas were too far beyond his century to be applied practically, but
they were not to be without their effect, and it is said that they
formed the basis of the subsequent correction of the calendar in the
time of Pope Gregory XIII., about three centuries later.
It is rather surprising to find how much besides the theory of
lenses Friar Bacon had succeeded in finding out in the department of
optics. He taught, for instance, the principle of the aberration of
light, and, still more marvelous to consider, taught that light did
not travel instantaneously, but had a definite rate of motion,
though this was extremely rapid. It is rather difficult to
understand how he reached this conclusion, since light travels so
fast that, as far as regards any observation that can be made upon
earth, the diffusion is practically instantaneous. It was not for
over three centuries later that Roemer, the German astronomer,
demonstrated the motion of light and its rate by his observations
upon the moons of Jupiter at different phases of the earth's orbit,
which showed that the light of these moons took a definite and quite
appreciable time to reach the earth after their eclipse by the
planet was over.
{324}
Albertus Magnus's other great pupil besides Roger Bacon was St.
Thomas Aquinas. If any suspicion were still left that Thomas did not
appreciate just what the significance of his teachings in physics
was, when he announced that neither matter nor force could ever be
reduced to nothingness, it would surely be removed by the
consideration that he had been for many years in intimate relations
with Albert, and that he had probably also been close to Roger
Bacon. In association with such men as these, he was not likely to
stumble upon truths unawares, even though they might concern
physical science. St. Thomas himself has left three treatises on
chemical subjects, and it is said that the first occurrence of the
word amalgam can be traced to one of these treatises. Everybody was
as much interested then, as we are at the present time, in the
transformation of metals and mercury with its silvery sheen; its
facility to enter into metallic combinations of all kinds, and its
elusive ways, naturally made it the center of scientific interest
quite as radium is at the present moment.
These three men, Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, and Roger Bacon,
were all closely associated with ecclesiastical authorities, and
indeed all three of them had intimate personal relations with the
Popes of their time. Albertus Magnus had been highly honored by the
Dominican Order, to which he belonged. He had been chosen as
Provincial--that is, the superior of a number of houses--in the
German part of Europe at least once, and he had been constantly
appealed to by his superiors for advice and counsel. Although it was
almost a rule that members of religious orders should not be chosen as
bishops, he was made Bishop of Ratisbon, and his appointment was
considered to be due to his surpassing merit as a great scholar and
teacher. In spite of his devotion to scientific studies during a long
life, he lost nothing of the ardor of his faith, and is universally
considered to have been a saint. He has been formally raised to the
{325} altars of the Catholic Church, as the expression is--that is, he
had the title of "Blessed" conferred on him, and his prayers may be
invoked as one of those who are considered to stand high in the favor
of Heaven.
Of Thomas Aquinas the same story may be told only in much more
emphatic words. He was honored by his own order, the Dominican, in
many ways. Early in his life they recognized his talent and sent him
to Cologne to study under the great Albert. When the Dominicans
realized the necessity for not only making a significant exhibition of
the talents of their order at the University of Paris, which had
become the most prominent educational institution in the world, but
also wished to influence as deeply as possible the cause of education,
Albert was sent to Paris, and Thomas Aquinas accompanied him. When
there were difficulties between Dominicans and the university, it was
to Thomas that his order turned to defend them and maintain their
rights. He did so not only with intellectual acumen, but with great
tact and successfully. After this he was sent on business of his order
to England and was for some time at Oxford. His reputation as a
philosopher and a scientist had now spread over the world and he was
invited to teach at various Italian universities where ecclesiastical
influences were very strong. The Popes asked, and their request was
practically a command, that he should teach for some time at least at
their own university at Rome. Later he taught also at the University
of Naples.
While here, one of the Popes wishing to confer a supreme mark of favor
on him, his name was selected for the vacant archbishopric of Naples.
The bulls and formal documents creating him Archbishop were already on
the way when Thomas was informed of it, and he asked {326} to be
allowed to continue his studies rather than to have to take up the
unwonted duties of an archbishop. His plea was evidently so sincere
that the Pope relented and respected Thomas's humility and his desire
for leisure to finish his great work, the Summa Theologiae. He
continued to be the great friend of the Popes and their special
counsellor. When the Council of Lyons was summoned, a number of
important questions concerning the most serious theological problems
were to be discussed. Thomas was asked to go to Lyons as the
theologian for the Papacy. It was while fulfilling this duty that he
came to his death, at a comparatively early age, though not until the
Council, consisting of the bishops of all the world, had shown their
respect for him, had listened to his words of wisdom, and had
acknowledged that he was the greatest scholar of his time and worthy
of the respect and admiration of all of them. Because of all that his
kindness to them had meant for their uplift, the workmen of Lyons
craved and obtained the permission to carry his coffin on their
shoulders to his tomb.
Like his great teacher Albert, Thomas was respected even more for his
piety than for his learning. Not long after his death, people began to
speak of him as a saint. Though he was the most learned man of his
time, he was considered to have given an example of heroic virtue. A
careful investigation of his life showed that there was nothing in it
unworthy of the highest ideals as a man and a religious. Accordingly
he was canonized, and has ever since been considered the special
patron, helper and advocate of Catholic students. All down the
centuries his teaching has been looked upon as the most important in
the whole realm of theology. There has never been {327} a time when
his works have not been considered the most authoritative sources of
theological lore. At the end of the nineteenth century Leo XIII.
crowned the tributes which many Popes had conferred upon Thomas by
selecting him as the teacher to whom Catholic schools should ever turn
by formulating the authoritative Papal opinion--the nearer to Thomas,
the nearer to Catholic truth. When it is recalled that this is the man
who gave the great modern impulse to the doctrine of matter and form,
who taught the indestructibility of matter and the conservation of
energy, and declared with St. Augustine that the Creator had made only
the seeds of things, allowing these afterwards to develop for
themselves, which is the essence of the doctrine of evolution, it is
hard to understand how there should be question of opposition between
the Church and science in his time. With regard to the third of these
great physical scientists, the story of his relation to the
ecclesiastical authorities is not quite so simple. Roger Bacon was in
his younger years very much thought of by his own order, the
Franciscans. They sent him to Paris and provided him opportunities to
study under the great Albert, and then transferred him to Oxford,
where he had a magnificent opportunity for teaching. Many years of his
life were spent in peace and happiness in the cloister. A friend and
fellow student at Paris became Pope Clement, and his command was the
primary cause of the composition of Bacon's great works. All three of
his books, and especially the Opus Majus, were written at the command
of the Pope, and were highly praised by the Pontiff himself and by
those who read them in Rome. Unfortunately, difficulties occurred
within Friar Bacon's own order. It is not quite clear now just how
these {328} came about. The Franciscans of the rigid observance of
those early times took vows of the severest poverty. There had been
some relaxation of the rule, however, and certain abuses crept in. The
consequence was the re-assertion after a time of the original rule of
absolute poverty in all its stringency. It was Friar Bacon himself who
had chosen this mode of life and had taken the vows of poverty. Paper
was a very dear commodity, if indeed it was invented early enough in
the century for him to have used it. Vellum was even more expensive.
Just what material Bacon employed for his writings is not now known.
Whatever it was, it seems to have cost much money, and because of his
violation of his vow of poverty Roger Bacon fell under the ban of his
order. He was ordered to be confined to his cell in the monastery and
to be fed on bread and water for a considerable period. It must not be
forgotten that this was within a century after the foundation of the
Franciscans, and to an ardent son of St. Francis the living on bread
and water would not be a very difficult thing at this time, since his
ordinary diet would, at least during certain portions of the year, be
scarcely better than this. There is no account of how Roger Bacon took
his punishment. He might easily have left his order. There were many
others at that time who did. He wished to remain as a faithful son of
St. Francis, and seems to have accepted his punishment with the idea
that his example would influence others of the order to submit to the
enforcement of the regulation with regard to poverty, which superiors
now thought so important, if the original spirit of St. Francis was to
be regained.
It is sometimes said that Friar Bacon indulged in scientific
speculations which seemed subversive of {329} Christian mysteries, and
that this was one reason for his punishment. Recently he has been
declared the first of the modernists since he attempted to rationalize
religious mysteries. Whatever truth there may be in this, of one thing
we are certain, that before his death Bacon deeply regretted some of
his expressions and theories, and did not hesitate to confess humbly
that he was sorry to have even seemed to hint at supposed science
contrary to religious truth.
Of course, it may well be said, even after all these communities of
interest between the medieval and the modern teaching of the general
principles of science have been pointed out, that the universities of
the Middle Ages did not present the subjects under discussion in a
practical way, and their teaching was not likely to lead to directly
beneficial results in applied science. It might well be responded to
this, that it is not the function of a university to teach
applications of science, but only the great principles, the broad
generalizations that underlie scientific thinking, leaving details to
be filled in in whatever form of practical work the man may take up.
Very few of those, however, who talk about the purely speculative
character of medieval teaching, have manifestly ever made it their
business to know anything about the actual facts of old-time
university teaching by definite knowledge, but have rather allowed
themselves to be guided by speculation and by inadequate second-hand
authorities, whose dicta they have never taken the trouble to
substantiate by a glance at contemporary authorities on medieval
matters, much less by reading the old scholastics themselves.
How much was accomplished in applied science during the Middle Ages,
that is, in those departments of science {330} which are usually
supposed to have been least cultivated, since educators are prone to
ridicule the over-emphasis of speculation in education and the
constant preoccupation of mind of the scholars of these generations
with merely theoretic questions, may be appreciated from any history
of the arts and architecture during the thirteenth, fourteenth, and
fifteenth centuries. Some of the most difficult problems in mechanics
as applied to the structural work of cathedrals, palaces, castles,
fortresses, and bridges, were solved with a success that was only
equaled by the audacity with which they were attempted. Men hesitated
at nothing. There is no problem of mechanical engineering as applied
to structural work which these men did not find an answer for in their
wonderful buildings. This has been very well brought out by Prince
Kropotkin in certain chapters of his book, Mutual Aid a Factor of
Evolution, [Footnote 41] in which he treats of mutual aid in the
medieval cities. He says:
[Footnote 41: New York, McClure, Philips & Co., 1902.]
"At the beginning of the eleventh century the towns of Europe were
small clusters of miserable huts, adorned with but low clumsy
churches, the builders of which hardly knew how to make an arch; the
arts, mostly consisting of some weaving and forging, were in their
infancy; learning was found in but a few monasteries. Three hundred
and fifty years later, the very face of Europe had been changed. The
land was dotted with rich cities, surrounded by immense thick walls
which were embellished by towers and gates, each of them a work of
art itself. The cathedrals, conceived in a grand style and profusely
decorated, lifted their bell-towers to the skies, displaying a
purity of form and a boldness of imagination which we now vainly
strive to attain. The {331} crafts and arts had risen to a degree of
perfection which we can hardly boast of having superseded in many
directions, if the inventive skill of the worker and the superior
finish of his work be appreciated higher than rapidity of
fabrication. The navies of the free cities furrowed in all
directions the Northern Seas and the Southern Mediterranean; one
effort more and they would cross the oceans. Over large tracts of
land, well-being had taken the place of misery; learning had grown
and spread; the methods of science had been elaborated; the basis of
natural philosophy had been laid down; and the way had been paved
for all the mechanical inventions of which our own times are so
proud."
The period for which Prince Kropotkin is thus enthusiastic in the
matter of applied science, is all before the date usually given as the
beginning of the Renaissance--the fall of Constantinople in 1453. The
three centuries and a half from the beginning of the eleventh century
represent just the time of the rise of scholasticism and the beginning
of its decline. Few periods of history are so maligned as regards
their intellectual feebleness, and in nothing is that quality supposed
to be more marked than in applied science; yet here is what a special
student of the time says of this very period in this particular
department.
Kropotkin has shown just what were the limitations of scientific
progress in the Middle Ages while emphasizing how much these wonderful
generations accomplished. In this I am inclined to the opinion that he
does not allow as much to the Middle Ages as he should. I have been
able to point out, I think, in this chapter many evidences of
important principles in science that were fully reached during the
Middle Ages. Because of {332} his more conservative opinion in this
matter, however, Kropotkin's opinion should carry all the more weight
with those who are now called upon to realize for the first time, how
much these despised generations accomplished in matters that were to
prove a precious heritage for subsequent generations, and the
foundation-stones of that great edifice of science which has been
built up in more recent years. Kropotkin says:
"True that no new principle was illustrated by any of these
discoveries, as Whewell said; but medieval science had done
something more than the actual discovery of new principles. It had
prepared the discovery of all the new principles which we know at
the present time in mechanical sciences; it had accustomed the
explorer to observe facts and to reason from them. It had inductive
science, even though it had not yet fully grasped the importance and
the powers of induction; and it had laid the foundations of both
mechanical and natural philosophy. Francis Bacon, Galileo, and
Copernicus were the direct descendants of a Roger Bacon and a
Michael Scot, as the steam engine was a direct product of the
researches carried on in the Italian universities on the weight of
the atmosphere, and of the mathematical and technical learning which
characterized Nuremberg."
"But why should one take trouble to insist upon the advance of
science and art in the medieval city? Is it not enough to point to
the cathedrals in the domain of skill, and to the Italian language
and the poem of Dante in the domain of thought, to give at once the
measure of what the medieval city created during the four centuries
it lived?"
We are prone to think of evolution in human affairs as being the
ruling principle. As a consequence of this, {333} we are apt to
consider that since intervening periods between the nineteenth century
and the Middle Ages were lacking in education, in applied science, and
in interest in physical science to a great degree, beyond doubt, then,
the Middle Ages must have been still more lacking in these desirable
qualities of education and human knowledge. This is the sort of
deduction that greets one constantly in so-called histories of
education, and especially in such supposed contributions to the
history of the relationship of science to religion or theology as have
been made here in America. This deduction, as I have said before, is
made by men who are the first to asperse the medieval scholars for
having used deduction too freely, and who are ever ready to praise
induction. The induction in this matter--that is, the story of the
actual history of science in the Middle Ages--is the direct
contradiction of the deduction from false principles. Intervening
centuries not only failed to progress beyond the Middle Ages, but some
of them were far behind the achievements of that unfortunately
despised period. Once more Prince Kropotkin has touched this matter
very suggestively. After describing the achievements of applied
science in the Middle Ages, he says:
"Such were the magic changes accomplished in Europe in less than
four hundred years. And the losses which Europe sustained through
the loss of its free cities can only be understood when we compare
the seventeenth century with the fourteenth or thirteenth. The
prosperity which formerly characterized Scotland, Germany, the
plains of Italy, was gone. The roads had fallen into an abject
state, the cities were depopulated, labor was brought into slavery,
art had vanished, commerce itself was decaying."
{334}
In the meantime the reformation so-called had come, and had carried
away with it in its course nearly everything precious that men had
gained during the four centuries immediately preceding. Art,
education, science, liberty, democracy--everything worth while had
been hurt; most of them had been ruined for the time. Even the
nineteenth century did not succeed in bringing us back to a level with
the earlier centuries in all the intellectual and esthetic
accomplishments.
Another striking evidence of the deep interest of these generations in
science of all kinds and in details of information with regard to
which they are generally said to have been quite incurious, was the
publication of the famous encyclopedia, the first work of its kind
ever issued, which was written about the middle of the thirteenth
century by Vincent of Beauvais. It is only when a generation actually
calls for it, and when the want of it has been for a good while felt,
that such a work is likely to be undertaken. This immense literary
undertaking was completed under the patronage of King Louis IX. by
Vincent, a Dominican friar, who died at the beginning of the last
quarter of the thirteenth century. His Majus Speculum is not the first
book of general information, but it is the first deserving the name of
Encyclopedia in the full sense of the word that we have. It is divided
into three parts--the Speculum Naturale, Doctrinale, and Historiale.
The only one which interests us here is the Speculum Naturale, which
fills a huge folio volume of nearly a thousand pages, closely printed
in double columns. It is divided into 32 books and some 4,000
chapters. The Encyclopaedia Brittanica says of it:--
"It was, as it were, the great temple of medieval {335} science,
whose floor and walls are inlaid with an enormous mosaic of
skilfully arranged passages from Latin, Greek, Arabic, and even
Hebrew authors. To each quotation, as he borrows it, Vincent
prefixes the name of the book and the author from which it is taken,
distinguishing, however, his own remarks by the word 'actor.'"