THE RENAISSANCE OF SCIENCE. 3i 



formal beginnings in the Italian schools of the early years of the 

 twelfth century. 



The history of the first half of the thirteenth century is a proof that 

 the leaven of a revival was then working at Oxford, at Paris, in Eobert 

 of Lincoln, in Eoger Bacon, at other places, and in many other com- 

 panies of men. Long years before the savants of the renaissance. Bacon 

 urged the study of the dead languages, of philosophy, of mathematics, 

 of classic literature. Centuries before Luther he pointed out the errors 

 of the Vulgate, and of the fathers of the church. The way was pre- 

 pared for Petrarch, though in fact he only appeared a full century later. 

 What is the reason of this sudden check to a vigorous and healthy move- 

 ment? No single cause was more efficient than the rehabilitation of 

 Aristotle as the apostle of orthodoxy towards the year 1250. The ad- 

 vent of 'the first modern man' was delayed for a hundred years, and the 

 later renaissance for three centuries. The wars of the fourteenth cen- 

 tury drowned European learning in blood. The history of the prom- 

 ising beginnings of a real revival of learning in the twelfth and thir- 

 teenth centuries is not yet written, and the share that the scientific 

 thought of Bacon and his contemporaries had in such a revival has 

 been strangely undervalued. Science, as one of the motive forces of 

 the whole movement, has been neglected. It is the rarest thing to find 

 in the indexes of professed histories of the renaissance the name of any 

 scientific man — even that of Copernicus almost never appears. 



The earliest stir of the renaissance was in Italy. Petrarch was the 

 first great man of the new world, as Dante was the last of the old. 

 Germany, the seat of the Holy Eoman Empire, felt the impulse quickly 

 on account of its close connection with Italy, and each one of its semi- 

 independent courts was a focus favorable to the new spirit. 



The discoveries of Columbus in 1493 were a mighty aid in freeing 

 men's thoughts from the shackles of prescription and custom. The 

 voyages of Vasco da Gama to India (1497-99) and of Magellan around 

 the world (1519-21) came to confirm the larger view and to excite 

 curiosity and hope. New things are within our reach; search and 

 fijid — ^these were the lessons of the time. They were lessons for all 

 mankind. Even the peasant heard of the new wonders and felt him- 

 self more a man. The philosopher, in his study, was incited to new 

 efforts. A new spirit was born throughout civilized Europe. 



To estimate an epoch, something must be known of its arts and 

 inventions. During the middle ages gunpowder, clocks, telescopes, 

 parchment, paper, the mariner's compass were invented or adopted; 

 mathematics received great developments — especially algebra and trig- 

 onometry; perspective was studied and perfected; experimental chem- 

 istry, not yet a science, was cultivated ; surgery was brought to an equal 

 standing with medicine ; music, as we know it, began with the notation 



