THE MEDIAEVAL MIND 91 



from the East as instructors in the ancient form of their 

 language, which was still read at Constantinople. 

 Bacon himself was equally impressed with the import- 

 ance of the study of the original language of Aristotle 

 and the New Testament, and put together a book on 

 Greek grammar. He is never tired of insisting that 

 the prevailing ignorance of the original tongues was 

 the cause of that failure in theology and philosophy of 

 which he accused the doctors of the time. In anticipa- 

 tion of modern textual criticism, he points out how the 

 Fathers adapted their translations to the prejudices 

 of their age ; and how subsequent corruptions have 

 crept in through carelessness and ignorance, or by 

 that tampering with the text which had gone on, 

 especially among the Dominicans. Bacon himself 

 was a Franciscan, be it observed. 



But that which marks Bacon out from among the 

 other philosophers of his time indeed of the whole 

 period of the Middle Ages is his clear understanding 

 that experimental methods alone give certainty in 

 science. This was a revolutionary change of mental 

 attitude, only to be appreciated after a course of study 

 of the other writings of his day. Instead of taking 

 the facts and inferences of natural knowledge from 

 Scripture, the Fathers or even Aristotle, Bacon told 

 the world that the only way to reach truth was to 

 observe and to experiment again an anticipation, 

 this time of the famous doctrine of his more renowned 

 namesake, Lord Chancellor Francis Bacon, who lived 

 three hundred and fifty years later. 



And the Franciscan friar, at all events, seems to have 

 practised his own theories, for he says he spent two 

 thousand pounds, an enormous sum for those days, 



