NUMEROUS CAUSES OF SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS. 71 



metals, to re-form them, to change them from one to another, 

 and to realise the once absurd notion of transmutation, are 

 the problems now given to the chemist for solution." This 

 from Faraday, and to show the reader that the alchemists 

 were far from being poor dreamers whose researches were 

 founded on total ignorance. A further evidence of the taste 

 for scientific research is to be found in the ENCYCLOPAEDIC 

 WORKS composed during that time,* large portions of which 

 were, notwithstanding the prevalence of theology and scho- 

 lastic metaphysics, devoted to the exposition and teaching of 

 the various branches of natural philosophy then in existence. 

 Besides, a vast number of books dealt with each branch 

 in a separate form a fact which implies the existence of 

 many teachers and countless pupils. So great and ubiquitous 

 was the scientific bent, that numerous didactic poems were 

 composed everywhere, on natural history, mineralogy, geo- 

 graphy, astronomy a fact which speaks volumes about the 

 growing taste. Why, even chroniclers, so meagre and dry 

 before the XHIth century, became remarkably learned and 

 shrewd. Not only did they show a rare comprehension of 

 important events, of their causes, of their effects, but they 

 inquired into questions of morals, geography, ethnology, 

 natural history. This is particularly the case with William 

 of Tyre and James de Vitry (1200), amongst others and the 

 fact constitutes a conspicuous sign of the times. Religious 

 ideas no longer despotically swayed the human mind to the 

 exclusion of all else; the Crusades had freed it from that 

 sway,t and one of the main consequences of that eman- 



* We need here only mention the work of Albertus Magnus, Roger 

 Bacon, Albert of Saxony, Vincent de Beauvais, Ramon Lulle, Basil 

 Valentine, and later on, Ringelbert of Basel (1541), Alsted (1620). The 

 authors of separate works are to be counted by hundreds. (See Hallam, 



499-) 



t The Crusaders had seen their own inferiority to the Greeks and to 

 the Moslems in matters of refinement, art, literature, science ; they had 

 seen the Church " at home," in Rome, and had quickly perceived the 

 laxity of morality among the high clergy, detected the selfish policy of 

 the papacy, and the part played by earthly interests in the so-called 

 religious questions ; they had seen and understood worldly ambition to 

 have been the spring of action of the nobility which rushed to the East ; 

 they had travelled, seen many peoples, monumental cities, two distinct 



