82 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION. 



never know how much was suppressed, or fell into 

 oblivion, under ecclesiastical frowns and threats; 

 nor how many thinkers toiled in secret and in dread), 

 none seemed possessed either of courage or desire to 

 supplement the revealed word by examination into 

 things themselves. To supplant it was not dreamed 

 of. But, in the middle of the thirteenth century, one 

 notable exception occurred in the person of Roger 

 Bacon, sometimes called Friar Bacon in virtue of 

 his belonging to the order of Franciscans. He was 

 born in 1214 at Ilchester, in Somerset, whence he 

 afterward removed to Oxford, and thence to Paris. 

 That this remarkable and many-sided man, classic 

 and Arabic scholar, mathematician, and natural phi- 

 losopher, has not a more recognised place in the an- 

 nals of science is strange, although it is, perhaps, 

 partly explained by the fact that his writings were 

 not reissued for more than three centuries after his 

 death. He has been credited with a number of in- 

 ventions, his title to which is however doubtful, al- 

 though the doubt in nowise impairs the greatness 

 of his name. He shared the current belief in al- 

 chemy, but made a number of experiments in chem- 

 istry pointing to his knowledge of the properties of 

 the various gases, and of the components of gun- 

 powder. If he did not invent spectacles, or the 

 microscope and telescope, he was skilled in optics, 

 and knew the principles on which those instruments 

 are made, as the following extract from his Opus 

 Majus shows: "We can place transparent bodies 



