THE UNIVERSE. OCEANIC DISCOVERIES. 249 



discoveries. Nor are we to ascribe to him profound mathe- 

 matical knowledge. His characteristic is rather a certain 

 liveliness of imagination, which the impression of so many 

 great and unexplained natural phenomena, the long and 

 painful search for the solution of mysterious problems, 

 had raised to a degree of morbid intensity among those 

 of the mediaeval monks whose minds were directed to 

 the study of philosophy. The difficulties which, before the 

 invention of printing, the expense of copyists opposed to 

 the assemblage of many separate manuscripts, produced in 

 the middle ages, when after the thirteenth century the circle 

 of ideas began to enlarge, a great predilection for Encyclo- 

 paedic works. These works are deserving of particular 

 attention in this place, because they led to the generalisation 

 of views. There appeared in succession, one work being in 

 great measure founded on its predecessors, the twenty 

 books de rerum natura of Thomas Cantipratensis, Professor 

 at Louvain in 1230 ; the mirror of nature (Speculum naturale) 

 winch Yincent of Beauvais (Bellovacensis) wrote for St 

 Lewis and his consort Margaret of Provence in 1250 ; the 

 "book of nature" of Conrad of Meygenberg, a priest at 

 Eegensburg in 1349; and the "picture of the world" 

 (Imago Mundi) of Cardinal Petrus de Alliaco, Bishop of 

 Cambray, in 1410. These Encyclopaedias were the precur- 

 sors of the great Margarita philosophica of Father Beisch, 

 the first edition of which appeared in 1486, and which for 

 half a century promoted in a remarkable manner the 

 extension of knowledge. "We must here dwell a little more 

 particularly on the Imago Mundi of Cardinal Alliacus 

 (Pierre d'Ailly). I have shewn elsewhere that this work 

 was more influential on the discovery of America, than was 



