THE PATH OF EVOLUTION 



After finishing his studies in Paris, Roger Bacon 

 returned to Oxford in 1250, where he was received 

 with great applause. But Bacon was born, unfortu- 

 nately for him, with a mind and ideas more than 

 three centuries in advance of those who were in power 

 over him. About seven years later, as the natural 

 result of his teaching doctrines differing so widely 

 from those commonly held at his time, his lectures, 

 wherein he urged experimental investigation, were 

 interdicted, and he was ordered to Paris, where he 

 was kept for ten years, virtually in prison and pro- 

 hibited from lecturing or writing for publication. 

 The appointment of Pope Clement IV., who had 

 known Bacon, and the order from him to write and 

 forward him a treatise on the sciences, soon after 

 gave Bacon his liberty. In a work he wrote in 1270 

 Bacon made a virulent attack upon the ignorance and 

 vices of the monks and clergy. Such censures were 

 then considered blasphemies, for which he was pun- 

 ished by fourteen years' actual imprisonment and his 

 books condemned. When set free in 1292 (by the 

 death of Nicholas IV.) he was nearly an octogena- 

 rian, and could no longer inspire fear. Even the 

 date of his death is unknown. For more than two 

 centuries longer, scholasticism slept in peace. 



When we consider the number of men, learned in 

 letters, and having all the means time and opportu- 



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