OCEANIC DISCOVERIES. 241 



perpetuity ; 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 which 

 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 ephernerides 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 of 

 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 arid 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 diffu- 

 sion 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 

 could trace in them the prototypes of their own religious 

 views.* Many of the symbolizing physical fancies of Timae- 



* Jourdain, Recherch. Crit.surles Traductions d' Arislote, p. 230-234, 

 and 421-423; Letronne, Des Opinions Cosmo graphiques des Peres d? 

 VEglise, rapprockf.es des Doctrines philosophises de la Grece, in. the* 

 Revue des deux Mondes, 1834, t. i., p. 632. 



VOL. II. L 



