14 



did natural science not flourish in the thirteenth century, 

 and was it not a great misfortune for Europe that it did 

 not then flourish? what were the systems of thought 

 which in the Middle Ages preceded, encouraged or 

 thwarted the travail of the human mind, and what of 

 good or ill do we owe to them ? These and such ques- 

 tions it seemed not unfitting that a Harveian Orator of 

 this latter day should consider. Now on the philosophy 

 of the Middle Ages, and on its relation to the era of 

 positive science of which Harvey was perhaps the chief 

 pioneer, there lay in a drawer in my cabinet the confused 

 and occasional notes of many years. An interest in this 

 thorny subject, sown in my mind at first by accident, 

 and reawakened by these enquiring friends, had for me 

 the charms of an old fancy, and I trust some brief 

 essay thereon may have a temporary service ; if, that 

 is, I can touch the imagination of my hearers, and after 

 some broken fashion bring before them a vision of the 

 nations swayed hither and thither upon the face of 

 Europe by a thirst for knowledge of a kind different, 

 both in its methods and in its aims, from our own. 



This oration cannot have the merit of an original 

 study. Had I the equipment I have not the leisure to 

 carry my investigations to the sources. Yet I may have 

 attained to some maturity of judgment herein by long 

 occupation of my mind since, in 1863, my old friend 

 Mr Thomas Marshall of Leeds, sometime of St John's 

 College, Oxford, interested me in the life and work of 

 Roger Bacon, the only eminent forerunner of the great 

 naturalists of the seventeenth century. 



