ESSAY-REVIEWS 275 



ments, testify to the strength, radiance, and clearness of his 

 mind, and these qualities made him feel the possibility of insight 

 into both things material and things spiritual. He knew that the 

 testimony of the senses was limited, and also that Nature hid 

 many things from the senses. His love of mathematics made 

 him feel that this was the principal key to all the hidden things 

 of science, from the lower levels where the formula will solve the 

 problem to the higher planes where there are only symbols. In 

 everything his great need of certainty enabled him to make 

 definite steps forward. What the ancients had experienced and 

 thought, what he himself had found and illuminated, he brings 

 before us, not very methodically perhaps, yet in a very striking 

 and naive manner, so that in reading him one feels definitely 

 that " a spirit communicated is a perpetual possession." His 

 maxims are simple but very fruitful in practice, and everything 

 hangs together and has sequence ; and since the known lay 

 clearly before him, the unknown did not seem strange, for he 

 saw ahead, which was then very hard to do, and saw those things 

 which only have become clear after centuries of continuous 

 observation of Nature, and ever finer technique. It would be 

 well to remember this sentence of his in these days of minute 

 specialism in science : " All the sciences are connected and foster 

 one another with mutual aid. They are like parts of the same 

 whole, every one of which accomplishes its own work, not for 

 itself alone but for the others also." 



That the complete work of such a man, who, by his reliance 

 on independence of inquiry and his recognition of the immense 

 importance of experimental science, is still a living power, 

 should after seven hundred years be still inaccessible is a disgrace 

 to the Science of which he is the father. That this disgrace may 

 speedily be wiped out is " a consummation devoutly to be 

 wished," not only on account of the advantage to science, but 

 also that the memory of this poor brother of St. Francis may be 

 duly honoured, after so long a period of neglect, by the publica- 

 tion of those works, written with such difficulty, which should 

 stand as an undying example to us of piercing vision and heroic 

 strength. 



