MEMOIR OF ARISTOTLE. 
77 
Derations. In their fierce and scandalous disputes, 
the pugilistic doctors proceeded from words to blows, 
which often terminated in mutilation or death. In 
the hottest of the fray, the name of Aristotle was 
continually invoked, and his doctrines appealed to 
on both sides, though both parties flagrantly violated 
his authority — the Realists embodying their wild fan- 
cies under the name of substantial forms — while the 
Nominalists subtilised all knowledge, even theology 
itself, into shadowy notions and unmeaning terms. 
During the prevalence of these gross corruptions 
in the Schools, and even amid the gloom of Go- 
thic and Saracenic darkness, a few stars brightened 
the literary horizon, and voices were raised in favour 
of genuine philosophy. The calumniated and per- 
secuted Roger Bacon, soaring above the ignorance 
of his times, maintained that Aristotle, rightly un- 
derstood, was the fountain of all knowledge ; and he 
asserted, with equal candour and firmness, that those 
who had undertaken to translate him were totally 
unfit for the task. But the beams of this luminary 
were quenched in the barbarism of the age ; and his 
■uperior erudition, instead of enlightening, dazzled 
the weaker eyes of his contemporaries, who referred 
his wonderful discoveries to magic and the infernal 
arts. His illustrious namesake, Lord Verulam, ri- 
valled his fame, but did not possess his candour in 
regard to Aristotle, whom he studiously copies, and 
continually abuses, for errors that belong to his in- 
terpreters and commentators. It is not a little sin- 
