[ sr ] 



vation, of our classical knowledge, through 

 ecclesiastical channels. Of this the persist- 

 ence of the Augustinian questions until late 

 in the eighteenth century is an interesting 

 indication. The moulder of Western Chris- 

 tianity had not much use for science, and 

 the Greek spirit was stifled in the atmos- 

 phere of the Middle Ages. ' ' Content to be 

 deceived, to live in a twilight of fiction, un- 

 der clouds of false witnesses, inventing ac- 

 cording to convenience, and glad to wel- 

 come the forger and the cheat ' ' — such , as 

 Lord Acton somewhere says, were the Mid- 

 dle Ages. Strange, is it not ? that one man 

 alone, Roger Bacon, mastered his environ- 

 ment and had a modern outlook. 1 



The practical point for us here is that in 

 the only school dealing with the philosophy 



1 How modern Bacon's outlook was may be judged from the 

 following sentence: u Experimental science has three great preroga- 

 tives over all other sciences — it verifies conclusions by direct ex- 

 periment, it discovers truths which they could never reach, and it 

 investigates the secrets of nature and opens to us a knowledge of the 

 past and of the future. ' * 



