go SCIENCE AND THE HUMAN MIND 



patristic ideas, and symbolic interpretation of Scrip- 

 ture, history and nature. In the Paradiso especially 

 the structure of the physical and astronomical universe 

 and of animated creation is set forth in scholastic and 

 Aristotelian terms. Yet on this basis the genius of the 

 poet rises through intellectualist theology to the loftier 

 insight of direct contemplation, and reaches forward 

 to the more mystical ideas of the coming age. 



The thirteenth century saw the triumphant and 

 applauded work of Thomas Aquinas, the greatest 

 Roger exponent of the scholastic philosophy, and 

 Bacon. ^ saw a i so fa^ tragic life of Roger Bacon, 

 the only man throughout the Middle Ages, as far as 

 records have reached us, who approaches in spirit the 

 men of science of the Renaissance. The tragedy of 

 Bacon's life was as much internal as external, as much 

 due to the necessary limitations of his modes of 

 thought in the existing intellectual environment, as 

 to the persecutions of ecclesiastical authorities. 



Roger Bacon was born about the year 1210, near 

 Ilchester, in the Somerset fens. His family seem to 

 have been people of position and considerable wealth. 

 Roger studied at Oxford, where he came under the 

 influence in especial of two men, both East Anglians, 

 Adam Marsh, the mathematician, and Robert Grosse- 

 teste, Chancellor of Oxford, and afterwards Bishop of 

 Lincoln. " But one alone knows the sciences, the 

 Bishop of Lincoln," said Bacon; and again, " In our 

 days Lord Robert, lately Bishop of Lincoln, and 

 brother Adam Marsh were perfect in all knowledge." 



Grosseteste seems to have been the first in England, 

 perhaps in Western Europe, to invite Greeks to come 



