_Antiquitas Saeculi Juventus Mundi_ (Vol. ii., p. 466.).--Dugald Stewart, in
his Dissertation prefixed to the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, ed. 7., p. 30.,
points out two passages of writers anterior to Lord Bacon, in which this
thought occurs. The first is in his namesake, Roger Bacon, who died in
1292:
"Quanto juniores tanto perspicaciores, quia juniores posteriores
successione temporum ingrediuntor labores priorum."--_Opus Majus_, p.
9. ed. Jebb.
The _Opus Majus_ of Roger Bacon was not, however, printed until the last
century, and could not have been known to Lord Bacon unless he had read it
in manuscript.
The second is from Ludovicus Vives, _De Caus. Corrupt. Art._, lib. i., of
which Mr. Stewart gives the following version:--
"The similitude which many have fancied between the superiority of the
moderns to the ancients, and the elevation of a dwarf on the back of a
giant, is {126} altogether false and puerile. Neither were they giants,
nor are we dwarfs, but all of us men of the same standard; and _we_,
the taller of the two, by adding their height to our own. Provided
always that we do not yield to them in study, attention, vigilance, and
love of truth; for if these qualities be wanting, so far from mounting
on the giant's shoulders, we throw away the advantages of our own just
stature, by remaining prostrate on the ground."
Ludovicus Vives, the eminent Spanish writer, died in 1540, and therefore
preceded the active period of Lord Bacon's mind by about half a century.
Mr. Stewart likewise cites the following sentences of Seneca, which,
however, can hardly be said to contain the germ of this thought:--
"Veniet tempus quo ista quae nunc latent, in lucem dies extrahet, et
longioris aevi diligentia.... Veniet tempus, quo posteri nostri tam
aperta nos nescisse mirabuntur."--_Quaest. Nat._ viii. 25.