FRIAR ROGER BACON. 261 



have been completely understood before the beginning of our own cen- 

 tury. The note is that of Count Rumford or, at earliest, of Newton 

 and Huyghens, 



That learning might be reformed, he proposed the study of the 

 comparative grammar of Greek, Arabic, Latin and Hebrew, the assidu- 

 ous collection of ancient manuscripts and the ardent study of the 

 classics. Here is the distinctive note of the Renaissance. But if the 

 study of ancient books be so important how much more imperative is 

 the study of the book of Nature ! 



I call experimental science, says Bacon, that which neglects argu- 

 mentation; for the strongest arguments prove nothing so long as they are 

 uot verified by experience. 



Experimental science does not receive truth from the hands of the higher 

 sciences; it is she who is the mistress; the others are but her handmaids. 



She has the right to command; for she alone certifies and consecrates 

 their results. 



Experimental science is then the Queen of the sciences and the limit 

 of all speculation. 



Physicists should know that their science is impotent if they do not 

 utilize the power of mathematics, without which observation grows weak and 

 incapable of any certitude. 



These sentences selected at random out of whole chapters epitomize 

 the teachings of Francis Bacon three centuries later and bring us near to 

 the viewpoint of Helmholtz or Lord Kelvin. 



Bacon had already begun the application of his absolutely new 

 method and he has a clear vision of what may be accomplished in the 

 future. After the mere facts of nature are discovered, he says, the 

 laws back of the facts will be brought to light. When they are once 

 known, the work of speculation will be completed. Man is to be the 

 master of the world and his will is to govern. "Machines will be 

 invented to navigate the seas without rowers; to traverse the land 

 with unimaginable velocity; to fly with artificial wings; to walk on 

 the bottom of the seas without danger; to bridge rivers without piers 

 or columns.'^ We are yet very far from a complete conquest of 

 nature, but the nineteenth century has seen the accomplishment of 

 each of these visions of the astonishing monk of the thirteenth. 



The entire work of Bacon is summed up in two insights of widely 

 different character and of the first importance. Either of them is a 

 title to enduring fame. He was the first of men to expose the essential 

 infertility of scholastic philosophy; and he was the originator of 

 the inductive methods that characterize modern science. If we set 

 down in detail the matured judgments of our own time upon the 

 scholasticism of the thirteenth century we shall find that each and 

 every one of them was fully anticipated by Bacon; that he clearly 



