246 PHYSICAL SCIENCE IX THE MIDDLE AGES. 



which proves even so much as this sympathy in the case of Arabian 

 philosophers. 



A good deal has been said of late of the coincidences between his 

 views, and those of his great namesake in later times, Francis Bacon/ 

 The resemblances consist mainly in such points as I have just noticed ; 

 and we cannot but acknowledge, that many of the expressions of the 

 Franciscan Friar remind us of the large thoughts and lofty phrases of 

 the Philosophical Chancellor. How far the one can be considered a? 

 having anticipated the method of the other, we shall examine more 

 advantageously,, when we come to consider what the character and 

 effect of Francis Bacon's works really are. 5 



5. Architecture of the Middle Ages. But though we are thus com- 

 pelled to disallow several of the claims which have been put forwards 

 in support of the scientific character of the middle ages, there are two 

 points in which we may, I conceive, really trace the progress of scien- 

 tific ideas among them ; and which, therefore, may be considered as 

 the prelude to the period of discovery. I mean their practical archi- 

 tecture, and their architectural treatises. 



In a previous chapter of this book, we have endeavored to explain 

 how the indistinctness of ideas, which attended the decline of the 

 Roman empire, appears in the forms of their architecture ; in the 

 disregard, which the decorative construction exhibits, of the necessary 

 mechanical conditions of support. The original scheme of Greek or- 

 namental architecture had been horizontal masses resting on vertical 

 columns : when the arch was introduced by the Romans, it was con- 

 cealed, or kept in a state of subordination : and the lateral support 

 which it required was supplied latently, marked by some artifice. 

 But the struggle between the mechanical and the decorative construc- 

 tion* ended in the complete disorganization of the classical style. The 



* Hallam's Middle Ages, iii. 549. Forster's Mahom. U. ii. 313. 



5 In the Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, I have given an account at consider- 

 able length of Eoger Bacon's mode of treating Arts and Sciences ; and have also 

 compared more fully his philosophy with that of Francis Bacon ; and I have given 

 a view of the bearing of this latter upon the progress of Science in modern times. 

 See Phil. Ind. Sc. book xii. chaps. 7 and 11. See also the Appendix to this volume. 



6 See Mr. "Willis's admirable Remarks on the Architecture of the Middle Ages, chap. ii. 

 Since the publication of my first edition, Mr. Willis has shown that much of the 



" mason-craft" of the middle ages consisted in the geometrical methods by which 

 the artists wrought out of the blocks the complex forms of their decorative system. 

 To the general indistinctness of speculative notions on mechanical subjects 

 prevalent in the middle ages, there may have been some exceptions, and espe- 

 cially so long as there were readers of Archimedes. Boethius had translated the 



