Historical Relations i 2 5 



experimental scientist, for he clearly perceived the nature and some 

 of the possibilities of the experimental method and did not hesitate 

 to draw general laws from his conclusions. Nicholas was a trained 

 mathematician and took much interest in astronomical and calen- 

 darial matters. He proposed a reform of the calendar similar to 

 that which was adopted by Pope Gregory, Among the most 

 arresting of the passages in his works is a statement in the course of 

 a philosophical treatise that " I have long considered that this earth 

 is not fixed but moves, even as do other stars . . . To my mind the 

 earth turns upon its axis once in a day and a night." Apart from this 

 matter he has left us a short experimental sketch " On experiments 

 with the balance." This is the outline of a really scientific treatise 

 and shows a fair grasp of the experimental method. The basis of 

 the work is that whenever weight is lost or gained the loss or gain 

 can be accounted for by further investigation. This is little else 

 than the older Greek scientific view which formed the basis of the 

 Epicurean philosophy. The working out of the details is most 

 interesting. For example, he shows that earth in a confined 

 vessel in which plants are growing loses weight. He infers that 

 this weight is gained by the plants. He seems, too, to suggest that 

 the plants gain in weight from something that they take from the air, 

 and he affirms that the air itself has weight. The book is written 

 in what, for the time, is a revolutionary spirit. To find a parallel 

 to it one would have to go back to Greek science, a subject in 

 which, by the way, Nicholas was deeply interested. Nicholas had 

 evidently the germs of the idea of the Reign of Law, and on this 

 account his theological and philosophical position is of special 

 interest to us. 



The theological standpoint of Nicholas is set forth in his work 

 " De Docta Ignorantia^'' which has nothing to do with the 

 absurdity of erudition, as its name might be thought to imply, but 

 concerns itself with man's essential incapacity to attain to absolute 

 truth. It was followed by the " De Conjecturis^^ in which he 

 comes to the conclusion that all knowledge is but conjecture and 

 that man's wisdom is to recognise that he can know nothing. 

 From this attitude of apparently pure scepticism he escapes by the 

 mystic way. God, about whom we can know nothing by ex- 

 perience or reasoning, can be apprehended by a special process 

 {intuition), a state in which all intellectual limitations disappear. 

 We need follow Nicholas no further on his theological path, but 



