OCEANIC DISCOVERIES 24 



jjerpetuity ; and the more extended knowledge of Eastern 

 Asia acquired by traveling merchants, and by monks who 

 had been sent on embassies to the Mogul rulers, and v^^hich 

 was diffused by them among those nations of the southwest 

 of Europe who maintained extensive commercial relations 

 with other countries, and who were therefore most anxious 

 to discover a nearer route to the Spice Islands. To these 

 means, which most powerfully facilitated the accomplishment 

 of the wishes so generally entertained at the close of the fif- 

 teenth century, we must add the advance in the art of navi- 

 gation, the gradual perfection of nautical instruments, both 

 magnetic and astronomical, and, finally, the application of 

 certain methods for the determination of the ship's place, and 

 the more general use of the solar and lunar ephemerides of 

 Regiomontanus. 



Without entering into the details of the history of science 

 which would be foreign to the present work, I would enumer 

 ate, among those who prepared the way for the epoch ol 

 Columbus and Gama, three great names — Albertus Magnus 

 Roger Bacon, and Vincenzius of Beauvais. I have named 

 them according to time, but the most celebrated, influential, 

 and intellectual was Roger Bacon, a Franciscan monk of 

 Ilchester, who devoted himself to the study of science at Ox- 

 ford and Paris. All three were in advance of their age, and 

 acted influentially upon it. In the long and generally un- 

 fruitful contests of the dialectic speculations and logical dog- 

 matism of a philosophy which has been designated by the in- 

 definite and equivocal name of scholastic, we can not fail to 

 recognize the beneficial influence exercised by what may be 

 termed the reflex action of the Arabs. The peculiarity of 

 their national character, already described in a former section, 

 and their predilection for communion with nature, procured 

 for the newly-translated works of Aristotle an extended difTu- 

 •ion which was most instrumental in furthering the establish- 

 ment of the experimental sciences. Until the close of the 

 twelfth and the beginning of the thirteenth century, miscon- 

 ceived dogmas of the Platonic philosophy prevailed in the 

 schools. Even the fathers of the Church believed that they 

 3ould trace in them the prototypes of their own religious 

 •news* Many of the symbolizing physical fancies of Timae- 



* Jourdain, Recherch. Crit.surles Traductions d' Aristofe, p.23Q-23i 

 and 421-423; Letronne, Des Opinions Cosmograpldques dcs Peres d^ 

 V Eglise, rapprochees des Doctrines philosophiques de la Grece, in the 

 Revue des deux Mondes. 183- , t. i,. p. 632. 

 Vol II. —L 



