ROGER BACON 



degrading. The conviction that whatever was existed 

 in its essence in the mind had the corresponding 

 belief that what existed in thought must have reality; 

 and an a-priori conviction, therefore, had a better 

 foundation than an empirical demonstration ; for the 

 former, if logically deduced from accepted premises, 

 must be-correct ; whilst appearances were deceitful and 

 experience known to be full of error. 



It was not until the advanced days of Scholasti- 

 cism that a Franciscan monk, ROGER BACON, aston- 

 ished, and for the most part disgusted, the learned 

 world by his heterodox teaching, that any effort really 

 to advance scientific knowledge was made in the 

 schools. "About 1248, Bacon, having left Oxford, 

 came to Paris to finish his studies and to be exam- 

 ined for his doctorate. The University of Paris 

 then had a crowd of highly applauded masters, well 

 worthy of their great renown, but Bacon was not sat- 

 isfied with any of them. They did not know, he 

 said, the elements, nor even the object, of true science. 

 These false savants were skillful in composing and 

 distributing a lot of chimerical beings, but had never 

 taken care to observe any real being. They made a 

 profession of teaching physics, but one and the other, 

 whatever might be their sect, deceived the people 

 with the same effrontery : all teaching under the 

 name of physics, only a frivolous metaphysics." 

 3 33 



